January 29th -- February 4th

 

February 2, 1922
Image via Brookline Newspaper Archive, Public Library of Brookline

February 1, 1881 - First list of telephone subscribers distributed
January 31, 1887 - Fire at Metropolitan Railway barn
February 2, 1922 - Civic Bazaar to benefit Brookline Friendly Society
February 2, 1937 - Indictments in police bribery, prostitution scandal

February 1, 1881
First list of telephone subscribers distributed
Less than five years after Alexander Graham Bell was awarded a patent for the telephone and one year after service came to Brookline, the town's first directory of telephone subscribers was distributed. There were 82 subscribers listed.

Subscribers paid three dollars per month for service within the town, with an additional 15¢ for each call to Boston. (Six dollars a month bought unlimited calls to Boston.) Calls were limited to five minutes. Subscribers could pay extra to have bells attached to their phones.

Early telephone subscribers like Henry Collins' provisions store and other businesses advertised the convenience of ordering by telephone
(1880 Brookline Chronicle ad via Brookline Newspaper Archive, Public Library of Brookline)

  

The Brookline Telephone Exchange connected subscribers through the Holtzer Cabot Electric Company building on Station Street. Four decades later, the Aspinwall telephone exchange building on Marion Street became the first in New England to provide direct dialing without going through an operator. (See Dial Telephones in Brookline: A New England First in Muddy River Musings.)

January 31, 1887
Fire at Metropolitan Railway barn
A middle of the night fire at the Metropolitan Railway barn at the corner of Walter Avenue and Morss Street in Brookline Village resulted in thousands of dollars in damages to cars of the horse-drawn street railway. Twelve of the 20 cars were damaged, according to the Boston Transcript. 

Metropolitan Railway barn (View larger, zoomable image)

Some 150 to 200 horses in the adjacent brick stable were turned loose and escaped harm. "They wandered around the streets and caused much trouble," reported the Boston Globe, "and until a late hour they had not all been gathered in."

A horse-drawn railway car outside the barn in 1893.  (See larger view)

The wooden structure was erected in 1875 to house the horse-drawn cars servicing the Brookline-Roxbury Crossing-Downtown Boston line. It was closed as a car house in December, 1894, with the move to new electrified routes, and demolished in 1937. 

February 2, 1922
Civic Bazaar to benefit Brookline Friendly Society
The Brookline Friendly Society was a social service organization that provided health and social services for Brookline residents. It began in 1886 as the Brookline Union with a mission to promote "temperance and good citizenship, encouragement of athletic exercises, and establishment and maintenance of rooms for reading and for social meetings in Brookline."

The Union constructed a brick building at the foot of High Street. Its social service operation took the name of the Brookline Friendly Society and continued under that name until 1999 when it began providing grants rather than direct services and changed the name to the Brookline Community Fund. It was changed to the Brookline Community Foundation in 2005.

The Friendly Society's building stood at the corner of High Street and Walnut Street

The 1922 Civic Bazaar -- an advertisement for it is shown above -- was a big event held in Town Hall designed to celebrate and raise funds for an organization described by the Brookline Chronicle as "a worthy Brookline charity maintained by Brookline people for Brookline residents needing its help."

Many local organizations took part, selling food, sponsoring games, and offering services. The two-day event raised several thousand dollars on behalf of the Society.

February 2, 1937
Indictments in police bribery, prostitution scandal
A corruption scandal erupted as six men, including three police officers and a local doctor, were arraigned in connection with a prostitution ring operating out of an apartment building on the corner of Ivy and St. Mary's Streets.

Boston Globe headline, February 2, 1937

Two patrolmen were found guilty of accepting bribes and sentenced to nine months each in prison. A third officer, described as the town's "one-man vice squad," denied involvement and was acquitted. A Boston man at the head of the operation was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. Charges against the doctor, accused of helping run the ring, were dropped.

The scandal led to a shakeup of the police department, including the retirement of the longtime police chief, who had been in the post since 1920 and on the force since 1893.

January 22nd -- January 28th

 

January 23, 2011

January 28, 1902 - First Annual Meeting of Brookline Historical Society
January 24, 1995 - Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy buried at Holyhood Cemetery
January 23, 2011 - Launch of Brookline's Climate Action Week
January 27, 2019 - Martin Luther King Jr. bust installed in Town Hall

January 28, 1902
First Annual Meeting of Brookline Historical Society
Nine months after receiving its official status as an organization from the office of the Secretary of State, the Brookline Historical Society held its first annual meeting in the Grand Army of the Republic Room of Town Hall.

The Society, which had its origins in the less formal Historical Publications Society seven years earlier, was dedicated to "the study of the history of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, its societies, organizations, families, individuals, events" and other aspects of the town's past. 

Members -- there were 110 at the time of that first meeting -- received an engraved certificate (see below) showing the Edward Devotion House (the Society's headquarters) and seven other landmarks of the town: the 1873 Town Hall; the 1869 library building; the Baptist Church; the First Parish Church; the 1895 High School; and two Colonial Era houses, the Aspinwall House and the Gardner House, both of which had since been torn down.

Today only the Devotion House and the 1893 building of First Parish remain standing. The Society does however, still have the metal plate used to print the certificates.

January 24, 1995
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy buried at Holyhood Cemetery
When Rose Kennedy, mother of President John F. Kennedy and matriarch of the large Kennedy family, died at age 104 she was laid to rest in a private ceremony at the family plot at Holyhood Cemetery in the Brookline part of the Chestnut Hill neighborhood.

Grave of Rose and Joseph Kennedy and other family members at Holyhood Cemetery

Holyhood, founded in 1857, is the second oldest cemetery in Brookline. (Only the Colonial Era Old Burying Ground on Walnut Street is older.) The Kennedy plot is the burial site for several family members, including Rose's husband Joseph Kennedy, their daughter Rosemary, and two sons of Robert F. Kennedy. 

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the son of John and Jacqueline Kennedy, who was born prematurely and died after two days in 1963, was initially buried here, but was later moved to his father's resting place at Arlington National Cemetery after JFK's assassination. The family plot at Holyhood also marks a pregnancy by Joan Kennedy, Ted's wife, that ended in a miscarriage in 1964.

January 23, 2011
Launch of Brookline's Climate Action Week

A joint venture of the volunteer group Climate Change Action Brookline and the Select Board's Climate Action Committee, this event kicked off with a ceremony at the Lincoln School, followed by a week of contests, presentations, exhibitions, and workshops.

"The focus is on moving people from understanding climate change as an issue to taking action," Mary Dewart, one of the organizers, told the Boston Globe. The event was an expansion of Climate Action Day, first celebrated in the town a few years earlier.

Events and exhibits from the second Climate Action Week (2012)

Both sponsoring organizations had their roots in the early 2000s. The volunteer group -- now known as Climate Action Brookline -- was formed in 2000 and become a founding member of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network. The Select Board's committee, formed in 2008, was an outgrowth of the board's 2002 Local Action Plan on Climate Change.

January 27, 2019
Martin Luther King Jr. bust installed in Town Hall
A bronze bust honoring Martin Luther King Jr. by world-renowned African American artist John Wilson, a resident of Brookline for 50 years, was installed in the lobby of Town Hall shortly after the annual celebration of MLK Day. More than 200 people, including Wilson's wife, Julia, and other family members, attended.

John Wilson bust honoring Martin Luther King Jr. in Brookline Town Hall

The bust, a 1982 scale model for a large bust installed in Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Buffalo, was donated to the town by the Committee to Honor John Wilson, which raised funds from community members. 

Wilson, who died in 2015, created many works over his long career, including a 1986 bust of MLK in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, the first work of art honoring an African American in the Capitol building.

January 15th - January 21st

January 16, 1901

January 16, 1901 - Mail collection by automobile announced
January 16,1939 - New Town Hall proposed
January 18, 1958 - Razing of The Farm neighborhood approved
January 15, 1984 - Brook House sold, to be converted to condos

January 16, 1901
Mail collection by automobile announced

The Boston Globe (and the Transcript a few days later) reported that mail dropped off at the Back Bay and Brookline post offices would be collected by automobile for delivery to the central post office beginning March 1st. 

The experiment, announced by Boston Postmaster George Hibbard, would make use of specially designed electric autos with a low gear and an easy to reach seat, "essential points (reported the Globe) in a wagon used for mail collection."

Headline in the Boston Transcript, January 19, 1901

The article included an illustration of the proposed design, shown above. It was expected to cut the time required for collection to 45 minutes, as opposed to one hour and 20 minutes with horse-drawn wagons. It would also reduce the number of personnel used from seven to three for the same volume of mail collected from the two locations.

The proposed experiment never happened. It was abandoned due to delays in securing the necessary vehicles. The failure didn't seem to hurt Hibbard. A few years later he was elected mayor of Boston, defeating John Fitzgerald, John F. Kennedy's future grandfather. (Fitzgerald would win the seat in a rematch two years later.)

January 16, 1939
New Town Hall proposed

1939 proposal for a new Town Hall, as shown in the Boston Herald

Brookline began discussing a replacement for its 1873 Town Hall as early as 1920. The town's population had increased at least five-fold between those years, and town administration had grown along with it. The Victorian building -- the third structure to serve as the Town Hall -- was widely seen as inadequate.

1873 Town Hall

Selected government functions were moved to other buildings, and discussion of a new Town Hall died down for a while. It began again in the mid-1930s as advocates for a new building looked to the New Deal Public Works Administration as a source of funding. 

Finally, in January 1939, a design by local architect George C. Funk (seen above) was presented to the Board of Selectmen. The proposed building was to be constructed approximately where the Town Hall parking lot and public health building are today.

Continued debate about both the need for a new building and the cost, estimated at $672,000, led to a decision being put off. U.S. entry into World War II and a subsequent shortage of construction materials delayed any further action. The 1873 building remained in use, despite growing complaints of its inadequacy, until its replacement by the current Town Hall in 1965.

January 15, 1958
Razing of "The Farm" neighborhood approved

The Brookline Redevelopment Authority (BRA) approved its first major urban renewal project: the razing of the working class, largely Irish-American Brookline Village neighborhood known as The Farm, subject to Federal approval under the Housing Act of 1954.

The neighborhood, which took its name from the old Kimball Farm that occupied the site in the mid-19th century, was home to some 230 families occupying mostly two- and three-story wood-frame houses south of lower Washington Street (Route 9) between High Street and Leverett Pond. (See street-level views of the neighborhood on the Brookline Historical Society website.)

"The Farm" neighborhood. Leverett Pond is at the left and High Street at the right (See larger, zoomable view) 

BRA chair Francis Cappers said "No family will be required to move until suitable living accommodations are found for it and the Authority will endeavor to relocate displaced families in the same school district and parish." 

The project was met with protests and lawsuits by residents, as well as opposition to proposed affordable housing developments nearby that were meant to accommodate families displaced by the razing of their homes. After considerable delay, the neighborhood was replaced by the high-rise, luxury apartment complex known as the Brook House, completed in 1967. (See the next item, below.)

January 16, 1984
Brook House sold, to be converted to condos
The Brook House complex that replaced Brookline's "The Farm" neighborhood in the 1960s (see previous item) was sold for $41 million to Richard Cohen and Harold Brown. Cohen and Brown, described by the Boston Herald as, respectively, a realtor/developer and an apartment czar, announced plans to turn the 762-unit rental apartment complex into condominiums.

Advertisement, Boston Globe, November 10, 1984
(Click image for larger view)

At least some residents of the complex were alarmed by the plans. "We want the place to go condominium," said one resident at a tenant strategy meeting, "but not at these prices."

 

January 8th -- January 14th

 

January 9, 1962

January 14, 1882 - Founding of The Country Club
January 14, 1949 - Parking meters introduced to Brookline
January 9, 1962 - Good Neighbors for Fair Housing campaign launched
January 11, 1994 - Fire destroys Young Israel synagogue

January 14, 1882 - Founding of The Country Club
The Country Club, founded in 1882, is one of the oldest such clubs in the United States. Although best known for its world-class golf course, the club began as a site for horse racing.

A six-hole golf course was laid out in 1893. It was expanded to nine holes a year later and to a full 18-hole course in 1899. It is probably best known for the 1913 U.S. Open victory of amateur golfer Francis Ouimet, a former caddy who grew up in a house, still-standing, across Clyde Street from the club.

The Club also has facilities for tennis, swimming, curling, ice skating, hockey, and skeet shooting. Its clubhouse, shown above, includes one room from the original farmhouse on the site.

The 140-year-old club has also been known for its exclusive — and, at least in the past, exclusionary — membership practices. According to the Boston Globe (6/30/2015), “No Jews were admitted until the 1970s, no women (as full members) until 1989, and no blacks until 1994.”