July 30th - August 5th

August 1, 1937

August 1, 1904 - Got milk? Shhh.
August 1, 1916 - First woman police officer
August 3, 1930 - Murder of Officer O’Brien
August 2, 1937 - Birth control clinic raided

August 1, 1904
Got milk? Shhh.

Brookline's Board of Health took action in response to citizen complaints about "the rattling of milk wagons over the cobblestones, the shouting from one to another of the milkmen, and the banging of back doors and the unnecessary clanging of milk bottles" (among other complaints).

The board sent letters to every milk dealer who made deliveries in town, asking each

to carefully inspect and, if necessary, alter his wagons with reference to preventing rattling and other loud noise, and also to instruct the drivers to drive slowly when near dwelling houses, to avoid cobblestone gutters, to handle the cans and bottles quietly, to refrain from shouting, and in all other ways to do their work without unnecessary noise. 

The Boston Globe found all the commotion about noise fairly amusing.  Their story ("Noise crusade begun by prominent men of Brookline. Milkmen requested not to disturb sleepers") ran on the front page of the August 5th edition with a lightly mocking cartoon ("Brookline, The Silent Suburb") at the top. 

Boston Globe, August 5, 1904

August 1, 1916
First woman police officer
Ida R. Parker, a Wellesley College graduate with experience in social work, was added to the Brookline police department in a new and experimental role designed to help young people, especially girls and young women, stay out of trouble without involving the courts.

Parker, whose appointment was made permanent in January, brought new attention to how police dealt with women and young girls, focusing on the preventive as opposed to the punitive and to the social problems at the root of many encounters with police and the courts.

Ida R. Parker, Boston Globe, January 10, 1917

She left the police force in 1920 -- another woman was appointed in her place - and had a long career in social work. She held positions at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital (now UMass Medical Center) and conducted research on topics including adoption. She died in 1972 at the age of 89.

August 3, 1930
Murder of Officer O’Brien
Brookline police officer Joseph O'Brien was shot three times on Ivy Street while questioning two men suspected of trying to steal cars in Boston and Brookline. He died the next day. He was the second Brookline officer killed in the line of duty. (The only other one was killed in 1904 while trying to apprehend a man who had murdered his wife.)

O'Brien was a lifetime resident of Brookline who lived on Franklin Street in the Point neighborhood. He joined the police force in 1922 after serving in the U.S. Army during World War I. 

One of the suspects was captured in New York City two days after shooting and sent to Brookline, but the gunman, Paul Hurley, evaded arrest until the following March. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in the electric chair.

August 2, 1937

Birth control clinic raided

Brookline police raided and closed down the Mothers' Health Office at 9 Vernon Street, seizing contraceptives and birth control literature and arresting the office's medical director, Dr. Ilia Galleani, and others. The arrests were part of a crackdown in Massachusetts, which had among the most restrictive laws on birth control in the country.

Dr. Ilia Galleani was arrested at the clinic in this building at 9 Vernon Street at the corner of Harvard Avenue

The clinic, which had a large number of supporters among men and women in the state (including many members of the medical professions), offered advice and help for underprivileged women. As Galleani wrote to a supporter while awaiting trial:

"How sad that all we have worked for, has been suddenly smashed. I sincerely hope that it will be temporary for the sake of all these poor women who needed the advice so badly.The push of progressive work has never been easy. But let us hope that the higher courts will judge in our favor. It seems difficult to believe that they will not."

The case ended up in Norfolk County Superior Court where Galleani agreed, more than a year later, to plead guilty and was fined $100.  The Birth Control League of Massachusetts issued a statement that read, in part:

"The former Brookline Mothers' Help Offices has been convicted of giving to sick mothers who cannot afford the services of a private physician the same medical assistance that is freely given in almost every other state and is widely approved by the medical profession.

 

The Mothers' Health Offices, of which Dr. Galleani was the physician in charge, was fulfilling a need which is met in other states, by hospitals and health agencies. The services of the health offices were at all times under the supervision of a highly competent physician and had the endorsement of many other doctors."

July 23rd - July 29th

 

July 24, 1901

July 24, 1901 - Brookline horse sold to Kaiser Wilhelm
July 29, 1917 - World War I military encampments
July 25, 1978 - Condominium eviction dispute
July 25, 2004 - BHS alum Jonathon Riley at Olympics

July 24, 1901
Brookline horse sold to Kaiser Wilhelm
Rudolf Clasen, owner of the Brookline Riding Academy in Brookline Village, was in the news when one of his prize-winning horses was purchased by German Kaiser Wilhelm and shipped to Berlin. The seven-year old stallion, named King, had been brought to the attention of Wilhelm by a member of his court who saw a film of the high-stepping horse "waltzing" to music.

Clasen's stable, where local men and women were taught to ride, stood where Walnut Street and Juniper Street meet today, just east of High Street near the Boston line. The building, erected in the 1870s, had been a carriage house for the horse-drawn Metropolitan Railway before the cars were electrified.

The Brookline Riding Academy building in Brookline Village (Photo courtesy of Leo Sullivan. Click image for larger view)

On July 24th, the German-born Clasen, who had a riding school in Lynn before coming to Brookline, boarded a ship with King to bring the horse to the kaiser's stables. He later moved his school to Worcester.

Rudolf (sometimes spelled Rudolph) Clasen and King, Boston Herald, July 21, 1901

July 29, 1917
World War I military encampments
Visitors were welcomed to the camps of two Massachusetts National Guard units preparing to go overseas after the U.S. entry into World War I. The two units, a cavalry troop and a signal corps, were headquartered at the Commonwealth Armory in Allston but camped across Commonwealth Avenue, in Brookline.

This portion of a panoramic photo taken in August 1917 shows part of the camp of the 101st Battalion Signal Corps. (See the  full view of the scene to zoom in and/or pan left and right)

The cavalry unit was camped in an open field just south of Commonwealth Avenue between Pleasant Street and Crowninshield Road. The signal corps was camped in what had been the ballfields of the Noble & Greenough School, bordered by Pleasant, St. Paul, Dummer, and Egmont Streets. The area was dubbed Camp Norman Prince, after a pilot killed in a crash while fighting for France in the war.

This portion of the panoramic photo looks south toward 127 Egmont Street, still standing today.

The site of Camp Norman Prince became a state-financed 114-unit public housing project, originally built for veterans, after World War II.

July 25, 1978
Condominium eviction dispute
A growing wave of condominium conversions prompted a debate over protections for existing tenants of Brookline apartments. Town Meeting approved a plan to give evicted tenants six months to move but rejected proposals for greater protection put forth by State Representative John Businger (D-Brookline).

It was estimated that ten percent of Brookline's rental apartment has been converted to condos since 1970, with approximately half of those conversions occurring in the past 18 months. Many of the tenants subject to eviction were elderly.

Disputes and legal challenges continued, but ten months later Town Meeting adopted, after several close votes, a Businger-crafted plan that was described as possibly the first ban in the nation on evictions of tenants with leases still in effect.

Brookline Chronicle Citizen, May 10, 1979

July 25, 2004
BHS alum Jonathon Riley at Olympics
Seven years after graduating from Brookline High School, track star Jonathon Riley competed in the 5,000 meter race at the Summer Olympics in Athens. Riley had set numerous school and state records after moving to Brookline from Skaneateles, NY.

The environment at BHS helped foster his success, Riley told the school newspaper the Sagamore (recently renamed the Cypress) in a 2016 profile.

“It was something that I was excited about, and just having been at a small school for a long time, I was pretty excited about what a city type school would be like and just the opportunity to meet more people,”

Jonathan Riley as shown as a member of the Boston Globe All-Scholastic Indoor Track Team, April 9, 1996

Riley, who failed to advance out of the qualifying heats at the Olympics, ran on the professional track circuit for several years. He was inducted into the Massachusetts State Coaches Track Hall of Fame in 2010.

 

July 16 - July 22nd

 

July 20, 1988

July 16, 1879 - Storm destroys church steeple and damages Town Hall
July 19, 1964 - JFK birthplace approved as National Historic Site
July 20, 1988 - Michael Dukakis nominated for president
July 22, 2016 - Opening of Fisher Hill Reservoir Park

July 16, 1879
Storm destroys church steeple and damages Town Hall
A ferocious gale carrying high winds and hail tore through Brookline and other cities and town causing widespread damage. The steeple of the Baptist Church in Brookline Village was destroyed and stained glass windows in the nearby Town Hall were shattered.

Brookline Chronicle, July 17, 1879

Windows were broken in hundreds of other buildings as well. Trees were uprooted, greenhouses were destroyed, and crops were wiped out, according to the local paper. (The Chronicle's reporter, unlike latter-day TV storm chasers, waited till the worst was over before assessing the damage. "Like many other people we knew," reported the paper, "he prefers to be a live coward rather than a dead hero, for 'dead men tell no tales.'")

The Baptist Church would build a new steeple the following year. It was destroyed, along with the rest of the building, in a middle-of-the-night fire on New Year's Eve 1960-61.

July 19, 1964
JFK birthplace approved as National Historic Site
The Beals Street home where John F. Kennedy was born in 1917 was one of 96 places adding to the National Register of Historic Places, reported U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. 

83 Beals Street before its conversion to the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
(Photo credit: Series VI. Photographs, in the Robert Luddington Papers, John Fitzgerald Kennedy NHS)

The house, which the Kennedy family sold in 1920 when they moved to a larger house nearby, had had a marker placed on the site by the Town of Brookline in 1961, after Kennedy became president. 

Kennedy's mother, Rose, repurchased the house in 1966 and had it restored to the way it was when JFK was born. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1967 and officially turned over to the National Park Service on what would have been Kennedy's 52nd birthday, May 29, 1969.

July 20, 1988
Michael Dukakis nominated for president
Massachusetts governor and Brookline native Michael Dukakis officially secured the Democratic nomination for President of the United States at the party convention in Atlanta. Like his Brookline-born predecessor John F. Kennedy, he named a Texas senator -- Lyndon B. Johnson for Kennedy; Lloyd Bentsen for Dukakis -- as his running mate.

Local coverage of Michael Dukakis' nomination in the Brookline Chronicle

A Brookline Chronicle cartoon before the convention, shown at the top of this post, portrayed Dukakis, who famously rode the T work on Beacon Hill, riding a "D" line train to Atlanta and the nomination. 

The local paper's coverage noted that all five members of the Board of Selectmen had sent a telegram congratulating the governor on his nomination, although the one registered Republican member of the board said his signature did not constitute an endorsement. 

July 22, 2016
Opening of Fisher Hill Reservoir Park

Brookline's newest park, built on the former site of the state-owned Fisher Hill Reservoir, was officially dedicated and opened to public use. 

The reservoir, built in 1886-87 as part of the City of Boston’s water system, had been taken out of commission in 1978. Acquired by Brookline in 2011, it was the first acquisition of new park land by the town in 50 years. 

The Fisher Hill Reservoir and its gatehouse, top, and the same site after it conversion to the Fisher Hill Reservoir Park

The park combines an open lawn in the former basin of the reservoir with a variety of plantings and wildlife habitat, including woodlands and a wet meadow traversed by walking paths and a boardwalk. 

July 9th - July 15th

July 14, 1923

July 9, 1897 - Disappearance of Grace Stevenson
July 13, 1900 - Samuel Dutton leaves as school superintendent
July 12, 1921 - "Fire Queen" taken into custody
July 14, 1923 - First self-dialed phones in New England

July 9, 1897
Disappearance of Grace Stevenson
The disappearance of 25-year old Grace Stevenson, last seen leaving her house and boarding a Boston-bound streetcar, garnered national headlines after her family went public with their search two months after she vanished.

Grace Stevenson's disappearance was national news after her family went public in their search. Her wealth, youth, and appearance no doubt drove the attention and was almost always noted in the articles. (Click image for larger view)

Stevenson, the daughter of a wealthy Brookline real estate developer, had left her Beacon Street home, near the intersection with Short Street, in April, seemingly on her way to a brief errand. Her mother, after searching privately and ruling out suicide or elopement, went public with the search.

Sightings were reported for more a decade after she disappeared. In 1911, fourteen years after she was last seen, her mother met backstage at the Tremont Theater in Boston with the actor Margaret Anglin, who had to  convince the distraught woman that she was not her daughter.

July 13, 1900
Samuel Dutton leaves as school superintendent
Samuel Train Dutton, who made major changes in 10 years as Brookline's Superintendent of Schools, left to become a professor of school administration at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Samuel Train Dutton (1849-1919)

Among the innovations Dutton brought to Brookline were teacher training and continuing education and hiring of college educated women to teach younger grades. "There was a general impression that college women could not be interested in the idea of teaching in elementary school," according to a biography of Dutton written three years after his death. "Mr. Dutton believed that this conviction was erroneous, and that the error could be demonstrated."

Dutton also oversaw the building of a new, larger high school for the town. replaced a building that, according to his biographer, was "poorly housed in a small building, inadequately equipped and cared for, the Cinderella of the Brookline school system." The new high school opened in 1895 on Greenough Street.

July 12, 1921
"Fire Queen" taken into custody

A series of fires deliberately set in Brookline and nearby communities over the course of more than a year came to an end with the arrest of a Roxbury man who soon confessed to the crimes. The mysterious arsonist had dubbed themself as the "Fire Queen" in a letter claiming to have set dozens of blazes to please "the God of fire."

Boston Globe, July 13, 1921

The fires had generally been set at homes when they were unoccupied, often because the owners were away at summer homes at the time. There were some reports that items were stolen from the properties before they were set on fire.

Frederick A. Price was arrested in Brookline but charged in Newton, where a witness was able to identify him as having been at the scene of one of the fires. In his confession, he reportedly said he set the fire because of headaches that "could only be satisfied by watching the flames and firemen and listening to the noise." 

NOTE: I could find no record of a conviction or his being sent to prison or a mental institution. In 1940 he was living in the South End of Boston and employed, surprisingly, as a night watchman at a warehouse.

July 14, 1923
First self-dialed phones in New England

Before smartphones, before cell phones, before keypads and answering machines and area codes, before much of what we think of when we think of telephones today, Brookline played a part in the introduction of a major innovation in telephone technology.

At midnight on the night of July 14, 1923, some 1,800 customers of the Aspinwall exchange office on Marion Street became the first in New England to be able to make calls themselves without having to speak first to an operator.

When the old Marion Street building of New England Telephone, left, was torn down, the entry to the building was preserved as an arch, right, leading to the new condominium complex on the site.

The customers had been supplied with new dial telephones. Phone company representatives visited people's homes to show them how to use the new devices, and instructions were distributed in flyers and through the newspapers.

July 2nd - July 8th

July 5, 1938

July 4, 1817 - President Monroe visits Commodore Bainbridge
July 5, 1938 - Old fire engine bites the dust
July 6, 1938 - James Bowditch leaves money to town for trees
July 8, 1960 - Thai king visit to childhood home

July 4, 1817
President Monroe visits Commodore Bainbridge
President James Monroe, on an Independence Day visit to Boston, rode out to Brookline for an early morning breakfast with Commodore William Bainbridge, the commander of the Boston Navy Yard in Charlestown and the former captain of "Old Ironsides," the U.S.S. Constitution.

President James Monroe and Commodore William Bainbridge. (Images from WhiteHouse.gov and the U.S.S. Constitution Museum)

The president, according to a contemporary account, “breakfasted with that officer, his family, and some distinguished citizens, who composed the company.” Leaving Bainbridge's home, Monroe visited the celebrated Brookline gardens of Thomas Handasyd Perkins on his way to Watertown and Waltham.

It is not known where in Brookline Bainbridge was living at the time of Monroe's visit.

July 5, 1938
Old fire engine bites the dust
The Brookline fire department's Engine #2 --reportedly the oldest engine still in use in a large fire department in the state -- ended its long career in the town after 25 years when it fell apart while returning from a false alarm. (The engine. kept around for largely sentimental reasons, is seen at the top of this post in a photo taken before its demise.)

Brookline Chronicle, July 7, 1938 (Click image for larger view)

"[It] came to an abrupt stop 150 yards from home and fell apart completely," reported the Brookline Chronicle. "First, the rear end dropped out, then the boiler split and finally the crank shift collapsed--and the relic of by-gone days was through."

Although destined for "the Valhalla for worn out fire apparatus," according to the article, the old work horse -- which was due to be replaced in a few weeks anyway -- was not dead yet. It had another life after Brookline at the Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut.

July 6, 1938
James Bowditch leaves money to town for trees
The will of landscape architect James H. Bowditch, who died at age 92, left $3,000 for the planting of trees in Brookline, stating that he hoped the money "will be expended in an experimental manner for the purchase and care of new varieties of trees and shrubs in order that the town may beautify its streets."

James H. Bowditch (Photo from Harvard College: portraits of the class of 1869 taken at graduation and in later life, from the collection of the Rijksmuseum)

Bowditch, the wealthy son of abolitionists William and Sarah Bowditch and a longtime member of the town's Tree Planting Committee, expressed a wish in his will that others would be inspired to make similar contributions. The will was contested by several nieces and nephews. The administrator of a trust established by the will said, reported the Boston Globe, that Bowditch had told him he was not close to his relatives and that "most of them were pretty well off.'

In 1942, the Tree Planting Commission placed a memorial to Bowditch on a boulder in what is now Horace James Circle, expressing the hope that "this boulder will serve as a lasting tribute to the civic contribution of this splendid citizen and noble character." Ironically, the memorial today is hidden behind shrubbery and difficult to reach on foot amid heavy automobile traffic.

James H. Bowditch memorial at Horace James Circle (Click image for larger view)

July 8, 1960

Thai king visit to childhood home

Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who ascended the throne in 1946 at the age of 22, visited the Brookline apartment building where he lived with his parents as a baby. He was greeted by current residents and managers of the building, 63 Longwood Avenue.

Boston Globe, July 10, 1960

The future king was born at Cambridge Hospital (now Mt. Auburn Hospital) and lived in Brookline while his father was studying at Harvard Medical School. The six-room suite that had been occupied by the family had been converted to two units by 1960. A plaque marking the site was placed by a private Thai organization in 2009.

Adulyadej, who reigned as Rama IX until his death in 2016, was one of the longest serving monarchs in history. Only Louis XIV of France and Elizabeth II or the United Kingdom are known for certain to have reigned longer. Widely revered in Thailand as a unifying force, his rule was also a time of several military coups and repression of dissent.