April 9th - April 15th

April 15, 1955

April 11, 1891 - Brief strike of laborers ends in agreement
April 9, 1916 - Brookline suffragists at forefront of "Suffrage Special"
April 9, 1933 - Beer for sale in Brookline after 46 years
April 15, 1955 - Busy Bee, Brookline’s oldest existing restaurant

April 11, 1891
Brief strike of laborers ends in agreement
A four-day strike by laborers working for Brookline contractors ended with an agreement to meet their demands for a reduction in their working day from 10 hours to nine hours at the same pay rate of $1.75 per day. Some news accounts had put the number of men on strike as high as 200.

Start of a Boston Herald report on the strike, April 9, 1891

The men on strike included laborers working for James Driscoll, M.J. O'Hearne, P.S. Allen, Thomas J. Kelley, and Frank Quimby. Among the projects they were working on for local contractors were a new sewer line, the Riverdale Park (now Cutler Park) on the Charles River in West Roxbury, and the construction of the Beaconsfield Terraces apartments near Washington Square.

One contractor employing mostly Italian immigrant workers on a Corey Hill improvement project refused to accede to his workers' demand for the same hours and wages to which the other contractors had agreed.

April 9, 1916
Brookline suffragists at forefront of "Suffrage Special"
Brookline suffrage leaders Agnes Morey, her daughter Katherine Morey, and Gertrude Newell, were among a group of 23 women that set out from Washington, D.C. on a journey across the country to highlight the campaign for women's right to vote.

This photo, which appeared in newspapers across the U.S., shows suffragists gathered in Washington at the start of a cross-country trip to promote voting rights. Brookline suffrage leaders in the photo include Agnes Morey, second from left, Katherine Morey, fourth from the right, and Gertrude Newell, far right. (Click image for larger view)

The women participating in the journey visited 12 states in the west that had already granted women the right to vote. Newell announced her intention to establish residence in Kansas so she could vote in that state. Several other women planned to do the same "believing [reported the Brookline Townsman] that they could easily afford to relinquish the few rights belonging to them in a non-suffrage state."

April 9, 1933
Beer for sale in Brookline after 46 years

Brookline had become a dry town in 1887 -- 33 years before national Prohibition -- when Town Meeting voted to ban the sale of intoxicating liquors. Prohibition came to an end with the April 7th passage of the Cullen-Harrison Act permitting the sale of 3.2 beer and light wine. Two days later, the Brookline Board of Selectmen granted 31 licenses to sell or serve beer in town.

At least one local restaurant wasted no time: Gurley's Restaurant in Coolidge Corner (where Otto Pizza is today) advertised "legal beer" in the April 13 edition of the weekly Brookline Chronicle.

Beer licenses remained temporary until a town-wide referendum voted overwhelmingly in favor of them two months later. See 1933: After 46 Years, Beer Back in Brookline for more details.

April 15, 1955
Busy Bee, Brookline’s oldest existing restaurant

Brookline today has more than 120 restaurants, with major concentrations in Coolidge Corner, Brookline Village, Washington Square, and St. Mary’s/Beacon Street, and pockets elsewhere. The oldest of these is the Busy Bee at 1046 Beacon Street, which opened in 1955. (See the ad at the top of this post.)

The Busy Bee (Photo from Busy Bee website)

The storefront where Busy Bee is opened in 1921 and housed a variety of business -- including (for a short time) one featuring miniature bowling!  -- before the first of a series of short-lived restaurants opened there in 1949.

There is one Brookline storefront that has been a restaurant location -- though not the same restaurant -- even longer than Busy Bee. It's 1016 Commonwealth Avenue at the corner of Babcock Street, now T. Anthony's. The space was occupied by the Hawthorne Lunch restaurant from 1923 to 1933. Later restaurants include a branch of the Walnut Lunch chain and the Babcock Luncheonette. T. Anthony's took over the space in 1964.