August 20th - August 26th

August 20, 1934

August 24, 1849 - Death of John Pierce
August 22, 1886 - St. Mary’s dedicated
August 20, 1934 - Movie at Coolidge banned
August 26, 1981 - Brookline awards cable TV contract

August 24, 1849
Death of John Pierce
The Rev. John Pierce, minister at Brookline's oldest church for 52 years, died at the age of 76. Pierce had assumed leadership of the church, then the only church in town, in 1797 when he was 24 years old.

Rev. John Pierce and the Walnut Street building -- the second of four in the church's history.  It was constructed under Pierce's leadership in 1806. 

For much of Pierce's time at the church, now known as First Parish, there was little separation between church and state. In addition to his ministerial role, he played a prominent role in town affairs, including decades as a member of the School Committee.

Pierce was minister at the time the more liberal Unitarians split off from the established Congregational Church. Pierce, wrote Ronald Dale Carr, "held his parish together; keeping his theology vague and palatable, he slid the church into the Unitarian camp so gracefully that it is not possible to date the transition with any precision." (Karr, Between City and Country: Brookline, Massachusetts, and the Origins of Suburbia, 2018).

August 22, 1886
St. Mary’s dedicated
Brookline's Catholic parish, St. Mary of the Assumption, dedicated its new church at the corner of Harvard and Linden Streets in Brookline Village. The dedication marked the end of six years of construction since the laying of the cornerstone in 1880.  

The church was designed by the noted firm of Peabody & Stearns. Services were first held in the unfinished Gothic edifice beginning in 1882, when the church left its original wooden building on Andem Place, across from the village railroad station.

The new building was constructed under the leadership of pastor L.J. Morris, who was born in Ireland and emigrated with his family at the age of four in 1849. The congregation had doubled in size, from 1,700 to 3,400, since he assumed the leadership in 1873.

August 20, 1934
Movie at Coolidge banned
One month after banning the Cary Grant/Loretta Young film Born to Be Bad, Brookline's Board of Selectmen banned a second film, The Love Captive, from being shown at the new Coolidge Corner Theatre.

The bans at the town's only picture palace were portrayed as part of a campaign for "better moving pictures." Brookline had fought for years against allowing a movie theater in town, despite theaters being allowed in most neighboring communities. 

The plot of The Love Captive revolved around a doctor who uses hypnosis to seduce women. In Born to Be Bad, Young portrays an unwed mother who seduces a wealthy married man (Grant). Both films were shown in theaters in Boston and elsewhere, but not in Brookline.

August 26, 1981
Brookline awards cable TV contract
Brookline's Board of Selectmen voted 3-2 to award the town's cable television contract to Times Mirror Cable Television. The company was chosen over two other competitors for the contract.

The Times Mirror package would offer 15 channels for the first tier of services, at $2.50 per month per subscriber; 35 channels at a cost of $5.50 per month for the second tier and 60 channels at $8.50 per month per subscriber for the third tier. 

Negotiations with the town dragged out, and it wasn't until January 1984 that cable was finally introduced to Brookline. (Times Mirror had, by then, transferred the license to Cablevision.)

This 1984 article in the Brookline Chronicle Citizen announced the long-delayed launch of cable television service to town.