February 26th - March 4th

March 2, 1969

March 4, 1635 - Cart bridge ordered over Muddy River

March 2, 1920 - Town votes to stop being a dry town
March 2, 1969 - Groundbreaking for Hearthstone Plaza
February 26, 2021 - Renaming of Devotion School for Florida Ruffin Ridley

March 4, 1634
Cart bridge ordered over Muddy River
Many different transportation developments have played a part in Brookline's growth: the opening of the Worcester Turnpike (now Route 9) in 1810; the coming of the railroad to Brookline Village in 1848; the widening of Beacon Street, with streetcar tracks, in the late 1880s.

But the transportation development that first opened up the land that would become Brookline to European settlement was the placing of a wooden cart bridge over the Muddy River in in 1634. Here's what was recorded in the Boston records on March 4th of that year:

That Mr. Richard Dummer and John Johnson shall build a sufficient cartbridge over Muddy River before the next General Court, and that Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Newtown, and Watertown shall equally contribute to it.

Part of a Brookline Historical Society map made in 1923 showing Brookline in 1667. The location of the cart bridge over the Muddy River is circled in red.

Modern aerial view showing approximate location of the cart bridge. Lower Washington Street becomes Huntington Avenue when it crosses the Boston border just west of the bridge carrying the Riverway north. (Image via Atlascope, Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library) 

March 2, 1920
Town votes to stop being a dry town

Brookline voters joined those in dozens of Massachusetts communities in voting to allow liquor sales in town. In Brookline's case, it represented a reversal of a long-standing policy in place since 1886 when  Town Meeting voted 452-268 to ban the granting of licenses for the sale of intoxicating beverages.

Articles in the Boston Globe and Springfield Republican after Brookline voted to allow liquor licenses in town.

The vote, in Brookline and elsewhere, was merely a symbolic one; Prohibition had gone into effect nationally two months earlier. 

Boston Globe headline, March 2, 1920. Brookline would join the protest against Prohibition later that day

The Brookline Chronicle, which had editorialized against going "wet," criticized, "the 'die-hards' who have been shouting 'constitutional rights' and 'personal liberty' in support of a Yes vote. "How weak his protest against the fancied loss of 'personal liberty' must seem to him now." wrote the paper, "beside the real personal liberty from misery which thousands of families are enjoying since the head of the household has been unable to squander a week's pay for drink in one night!"

March 2, 1969
Groundbreaking for Hearthstone Plaza
Major change came to Brookline's oldest commercial area with the ceremonial start to a $5 million office and retail complex to be known as Hearthstone Plaza in Brookline Village. The complex, as completed, is shown in the 1973 photo at the top of this post. (Photo credit: Brookline preservation department)

When finished, the 75,000-square-foot multilevel complex included the headquarters of the Hearthstone Insurance Company, as well as a restaurant, a movie theater, and other retail space. A pedestrian bridge connected the complex to the new Brook House development across Route 9. (The bridge was closed in 2006 and later torn down.)

The new development, the latest urban renewal project in Brookline Village, replaced the older commercial buildings seen below in this photo from 1938. 

Lower Washington Street in 1938

The new movie theater was deep inside the complex but had its marquee in approximately the same place the marquee of the older movie theater it replaced. Movie tastes had also changed: the Brookline Theater in 1938 was showing Tropic Holiday, with Dorothy Lamour and Martha Raye, and Laurel and Hardy's Swiss Miss; the Plaza, in 1973, was showing The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge.

February 26, 2021
Renaming of Devotion School for Florida Ruffin Ridley

A new Brookline school opened in Coolidge Corner in 1892. It was named in honor of Edward Devotion, a colonial era resident who left money to the town upon his death in 1744. He had inherited the old house, built by an earlier Edward Devotion, that stood (and still stands) adjacent to the new school.

This second Edward Devotion was also a slaveholder. An inventory of his property upon his death included land, livestock, household goods, and “one Negrow” valued at 30 pounds. In 2018, with a new Devotion School under construction, local residents Deborah Brown and Anne Greenwald introduced a warrant article to change the name of the school. 

The article was approved overwhelmingly by Town Meeting in May 2018, and a process, led by students, for choosing a new name was established. In 2019, Town Meeting voted that the school be renamed the Florida Ruffin Ridley School in honor of the African American educator, author, civil rights activist, and suffragist.  The renaming ceremony, delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, took place in 2021.