May 28th - June 3rd

June 2, 1974
(Photo courtesy of Puppet Showplace Theater)

June 2, 1849 - Brookline abolitionists welcome Black children
June 2, 1915 - Anti-suffrage carnival at Moses Williams estate
June 2, 1974 - Puppet Showplace Theater opens
May 30, 2011 - Civil War tablets rededicated in Town Hall

June 2, 1849
Brookline abolitionists welcome Black children
William and Sarah Bowditch, whose still-standing Toxteth Street home was a stop on the Underground Railroad, threw a picnic for a group of Black children from Boston, most of them associated with the Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill.

This house, now 9 Toxteth Street, was the home of William and Sarah Bowditch from 1843 to 1867, when they moved to a larger house on Tappan Street.

The children were carried to Brookline and then back to Boston on the recently completed Brookline Village line of the railroad. The picnic, as described in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, was "an occasion of unalloyed satisfaction."

"The merry group employed their time to the best advantage, in swinging, dancing, nimbly pursuing each other, singing the songs of freedom, gathering flowers, and especially in disposing of the refreshments which were so bountifully provided for them."

The Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill, now Boston's Museum of African American History 

Henry "Box" Brown, who had escaped from slavery a few months earlier by having himself mailed in a box, was there and spoke to the children. Other attendees included anti-slavery activists from Brookline and Boston, as well as the ministers of the local Unitarian and Baptist churches.

June 2, 1915
Anti-suffrage carnival at Williams estate

Brookline's upper class families -- men and women alike -- were split on the question of women's suffrage in the years leading up to the passage (1919) and ratification (1920) of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. One of the biggest events of the anti-suffrage forces was this carnival on the Moses and Martha Williams estate on Heath Street.

Boston Globe, June 3, 1915

The carnival, sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association, featured music, dancing, a vaudeville show, children's games, and booths selling many kinds of products. Automobiles ran back and forth from the Boylston Street streetcar line bringing visitors to the site. Large red balloons with the words "Vote No" on them were sold and many were released to be carried over the town by the wind.

The extravagant event attracted large crowds and raised money for the anti-suffrage cause but the political impact was unclear. "[Whether] any more votes against suffrage were made was not determined," reported the Boston Transcript," but one thing was certain--everybody had a good time."

June 2, 1974
Puppet Showplace Theater opens

Puppet Showplace Theater opened its doors on Station Street, bringing entertainment and education through puppetry to Brookline and the Boston area. The Theater was founded by Mary Churchill (1930-1997), shown at the top of this post at the celebration of its third anniversary in 1977.

Puppet Showplace Theater on Station Street (Photo courtesy of Puppet Showplace Theater)

"Puppetry goes back centuries," Churchill told the Boston Globe in 1992. "There is something about puppets that man has always found intriguing and interesting, something about an inanimate object given human qualities that has attracted and still attracts audiences today."

A one-time teacher, Churchill began using puppets as a teaching aid in reading and speech classes, reported the Brookline Chronicle prior to the opening of the theater in 1974. She was also known for adding a feminist twist to classic tales, reported the Chronicle, including having Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother get rid of the Big Bad Wolf without the help of the hunter and making one of the Three Little Pigs a girl who is planning to become a dentist.

May 30, 2011
Civil War tablets rededicated in Town Hall
Brookline’s 1884 memorial to its Civil War dead was restored, rededicated and installed in the lobby of Town Hall on Memorial Day. 

Civil War memorial after its installation and rededication in Town Hall in 2011

The memorial, consisting of seven slabs of marble with the names of 72 men, originally stood in the 1873 Town Hall until it was torn down and replaced by the current building in the 1960s. The marble slabs were put in storage and later placed behind glass in a concrete structure adjacent to Town Hall. The names were often obscured by moisture and mold that accumulated under the glass in the poorly designed structure.

The 1884 memorial as it appeared under glass outside Town Hall after the old Town Hall was torn down.

For more on the move of the memorial and some of the men memorialized, see this 2011 blog post: Remembering Brookline's Civil War Dead

May 21st - May 27th

May 24, 1941

May 27, 1875 - Brookline water turned on
May 24, 1898 - Open house at Pierce School
May 24, 1941 - Tornado in Griggs Park
May 25, 1999 - Vote to fund building of Senior Center

May 27, 1875
Brookline water turned on
Water from the Charles River in West Roxbury became available for Brookline residents, three years after the town was first authorized to use the Charles for a municipal water system. (See TWIBH April 30th-May 6th for the 1872 authorization and construction of the waterworks.)

A schedule of annual rates for water usage had been published in the town's annual report in February. It ran for eight pages, with differing rates for different types of residences and businesses and different types of water consumption. (Single-family houses, for examples, were charged based on the number of faucets, water closets (toilets), urinals, bath tubs, etc.)

First two pages of Brookline's 1875 schedule of water rates. The full eight-page schedule is available online

Users of the town's water supply could choose to have their usage metered instead of paying a fixed rate. The town's 1877 report showed that water usage was lowest in March and November when water was not used for "watering streets" (to keep down dust) or "sprinkling lawns." It was highest from December to February which, according to the report "can only be accounted for by people letting water run to prevent freezing."

May 24, 1898
Open house at Pierce School
Parents and other residents of the town were invited into the Pierce Grammar School to view the work of the students during the school day. The open house was organized by Mary McSkimmon, the principal of the school from 1893 to 1932 and an innovative leader in public education both locally and nationally.

Mary McSkimmon

Among McSkimmon's efforts were the following:

• She was an early promoter of both student government and parental involvement in the schools. 
• She was a co-author in 1914 of a "peace curriculum" for American schools aimed at promoting international understanding and appreciation for other cultures.
• As National Education Association president in 1925, she created a committee on "Problems in Negro Education & Life" which provided for the first time an official way for the predominantly white NEA to work with the predominantly black American Teachers Association.

As the Brookline Chronicle wrote upon her death in 1946, “She campaigned militantly for increase in music, physical training, school doctors and nurses in days when they were considered educational ‘frills,' and she often lectured on the subject, telling civic groups that unselfish taxation must be the rule for education.”

May 24, 1941
Tornado in Griggs Park
A rare tornado touched down in Griggs Park, uprooting nine large trees, each more than 50 years old, and causing widespread damage in just three minutes of destruction. (The aftermath is shown in the Boston Herald photo at the top of this post.)

The damage was described in great detail in the May 29th issue of the Brookline Chronicle:

It ripped a wooden penthouse off one apartment block, tore screens from a number of houses, zoomed galvanized barrels from alleyways, ripped clothes from lines, whipped pots and pans and other utensils off tables and in one house sucked a milk bottle through a window. 

The falling trees took out power lines, reported the Chronicle, and several birds were killed, though no people were injured. Debris landed mostly in the park, but also in Griggs Road and Griggs Terrace, blocking traffic on those streets. A 1944 report on the tornado in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society suggested that the low-lying topography of the park was a factor in formation of the localized tornado. 

1944 report on the 1941 Griggs Park tornado

May 25, 1999

Vote to fund building of Senior Center

Town Meeting overcame objections from a small group of opponents concerned about parking and/or increased taxes to overwhelmingly approve funding for the construction of the Senior Center on Winchester Street. The vote, which required a two-thirds majority, passed 206-30.

Brookline Senior Center, 93 Winchester Street

"We want our own identity, our own place to go," Agnes Rogers, 80, chair of the town's Council on Aging, told the Boston Globe ahead of the vote, Advocates had been pushing for a senior center for more than a decade.

The land for the new center had been donated to the town by real estate developer Roger Stern in 1995. The center, designed by the architectural firm Childs, Bertman & Tseckares, opened in 2001. In addition to town funding, the project received $1.6 million from the Federal Community Development Block Grants program.

May 14th - May 20th

May 20, 1830

May 20, 1830 - Ralph Waldo Emerson in Brookline

May 18, 1864 - Edward Wild and the "African Brigade"
May 16, 1929 - William Wellman's Wings wins Academy Award

May 19, 1984 - Larz Anderson Auto Museum

May 20, 1830
Ralph Waldo Emerson in Brookline
Ralph Waldo Emerson, then a young pastor at the Second Church in Boston, moved with his wife Ellen and his mother Ruth to the old Aspinwall House on Aspinwall Avenue. (The house, shown below, stood from c1660 to 1891 where the Billy Ward Playground is today.)

The old Aspinwall House on Aspinwall Avenue, shown more than half a century after Ralph Waldo Emerson, his wife, and his mother occupied four rooms there in the spring and summer of 1830.

Emerson described the lodgings in a letter to his brother William: 

“I expect mother in town Thursday or Friday & she will go to Brookline & take possession of our lodgings at Mrs. Perry’s — (in old Aspinwall House where Uncle Ralph lived one summer long ago) where we have a parlor & 3 chambers one for mother one for wife & one for you when you will come & welcome. “ 

It was hoped that the new home would help Ellen recover from tuberculosis, with Emerson’s mother there to keep house. Emerson, however, found it inconvenient “traveling four miles out & home daily” to and from his position at the church. In September, after only four months in Brookline, they moved into Boston. (Ellen would die of tuberculosis in February at the age of 19.)

May 18, 1864
Edward Wild and the "African Brigade"

Edward A. Wild

Brigadier General Edward Augustus Wild of Brookline arrived in North Carolina to begin recruiting formerly enslaved men for a Union Army unit that became known as Wild's African Brigade. A Black recruiter working with Wild reported that the freedmen were "greatly elated at the idea of being made soldiers."

The new troops were organized as the 1st North Caroline Colored Volunteers. Wild, according to a biography written by two grandsons of his sister Laura, was also concerned about the families these new soldiers left behind and gave "much time and labor to the care and provision of Negro families."

Edward Wild, a doctor like his father Charles, grew up in his family home, still-standing on what is now Weybridge Road. He lost an arm early in the Civil War, which made it impossible to continue his medical career after the war's end. He engaged in mining and railroad work in the West and in Columbia, where he died in 1891.

May 16, 1929
William Wellman's Wings wins Academy Award
The motion picture Wings, about American pilots fighting for the French in World War I, was awarded the Best Picture award at the first Academy Awards. William "Billy" Wellman, the director, was born in the house at 4 Perry Street, still-standing today. 

Wellman had himself been a pilot in France, joining other American pilots on the French side before the U.S. entered entered the war and being credited with shooting down seven German planes.

William Wellman as a pilot in France and the house in Linden Square, Brookline where he was born

Wellman was not invited to the awards ceremony, reportedly because of tensions between him and the studio. He was nominated for Best Director three times in his career but did not win. He did win an individual Oscar (shared with Robert Carson) for Best Original Screenplay for the 1937 version of A Star Is Born. 

The Perry Street house was built in 1843 and first owned by his grandfather. His family moved to Newton when he was young and he attended Newton High School. 

May 19, 1984
Larz Anderson Auto Museum

The Larz Anderson Auto Museum, then known as the Museum of Transportation, returned to its original home in Larz Anderson Park after a five-year hiatus. The museum, which opened in 1952 under the auspices of the Veteran Motor Car Club of America, had relocated to Museum Wharf in Boston in 1979, but closed three years later amid financial difficulties.

The return of the museum to Brookline and the former carriage house of Larz and Isabel Anderson was brought about by an arrangement between the museum and the Town of Brookline, owner of the carriage house. Under the terms of the agreement, the museum would install a new roof and heating system, helping preserve the building as well its collection of cars.

The carriage house was built in 1888 as a stable and later housed the Anderson's growing collection of automobiles. It was inspired by the Chateau de Chaumont-Sur-Loire in France and designed by Edmund M. Wheelwright, the city architect of Boston.

The carriage house of the Larz and Isabel Anderson estate, now the Larz Andeson Auto Museum

May 7th - May 13th

May 13, 2016

May 11, 1719 - New road planned connecting north and south 
May 12, 1788 - Dr. Aspinwall's  smallpox hospital
May 8, 1874 - Brookline loses its Charles River riverfront
May 13, 2016 - Wulf’s Fish Market closes after 90 years

May 11, 1719
New road planned connecting north and south
Two years after Brookline's first church was built on the Sherborn Road (now Walnut Street) it was agreed to lay out a new road to provide better access to the church for residents in the north part of town. 

Sections of two maps of showing Brookline in 1693 and 1746 prepared for the Brookline Historical Society in 1923 (Click image for larger view)

The road (red arrow) was to be called the New Lane. It would run from today's Washington Street (then called the Watertown Road) to the Sherborn Road near the church (circled in red.) The sparseness of the town at the time is evident in how the end point of the new road was described in town records: "near to the Lower end of the new stone wall by an old white oak tree."

The New Lane is now Cypress Street. By 1746, it had been extended from the Watertown Road to Harvard Street. (That section is now School Street.)

May 12, 1788
Dr. Aspinwall's  smallpox hospital
Town Meeting voted to allow Dr. William Aspinwall to build a hospital on his farm where smallpox inoculation could be administered to help fight the spread of the disease. 

Dr. William Aspinwall in a painting by Gilbert Stuart from about 1815, near the end of the doctor's life.

Aspinwall had reportedly developed an interest in inoculation during his service with the army during the Revolutionary War. Soldiers in the Continental Army has been inoculated at a hospital at Sewall's Point on the Charles River, which was then part of Brookline. In 1778 Aspinwall asked the town for permission to build his own facility, but was turned down.

The success of his post-war hospital led the doctor to build two more such facilities in town. He later turned to the better method of vaccination. Aspinwall died in 1823 at the age of 79.

May 8, 1874
Brookline loses its Charles River riverfront
A narrow strip of Brookline land between the Charles River and today's Commonwealth Avenue became part of the City of Boston, connecting the recently annexed town of Brighton to the rest of the city. Brighton had voted in favor of annexation seven months earlier, on the same day that Brookline voters overwhelmingly rejected annexation.

There was extensive discussion in the state legislature over how much Brookline land should be given to Boston. The most extensive proposal would have given about one-third of Brookline -- the area above the red line outlined on top of an 1874 map below -- to Boston. It would have included all of Brookline north of Beacon Street and a considerable portion extending southwest to encompass the Boylston Street Reservoir (part of Boston's water supply system).

 

The parts of Brookline above the red line -- sparsely populated and lightly developed at the time -- would have been given to Boston in a plan put forth by one group in 1874.

One proponent of the larger land-taking argued that the thin strip eventually given would be "like the cord that holds a stationary balloon to the earth." Opponents of the broader plan, painting it as a backdoor attempt at annexation, prevailed.

May 13, 2016
Wulf’s Fish Market closes after 90 years

Wulf's Fish Market, one of the longest-running retail businesses in Brookline's history, closed its store at 407 Harvard Street. Founded by Sam Wulf in 1926 and later run by his son Alan, Wulf's continues as a wholesale and retail business, operating out of the seaport district in Boston.

Sam Wulf, cutting fish at his Brookline store. (Photo from Wulf's Fish website)

Sam Wulf opened his store in the space formerly occupied by another fish store, Berger's Fish. (The space is now part of Union Square Donuts.) Berger's re-opened across the street in 1930 with an ad proclaiming "Billy Berger Has Returned," but couldn't compete with the by-then well-established Wulf's and closed soon after.

Sam Wulf died in 1988 at the age of 85.