August 6th - August 12th

August 8, 1900 (Boston Globe)

August 9, 1775 - John Goddard named wagon master
August 8, 1900 - Davis Cup at Longwood Cricket Club
August 8, 1917 - Community market opens at Bethany School
August 8, 1959 - Brookline Hospital opens

August 9, 1775
John Goddard named wagon master
John Goddard of Brookline, a prosperous farmer who amassed, stored, and transported arms for Massachusetts forces leading up to the Revolution, was named Wagon Master General of the Continental Army. 

Goddard, whose 1767 house still stands on Goddard Avenue, played a key role in gathering and transporting supplies that would be used against the British once the war broke out. He supervised a surreptitious operation using 300 wagons bringing cannon and supplies onto Dorchester Heights in March 1776, an action that led the British to abandon Boston.

This French-made cannonball with a fleur-de-lis marking on it, was found in a ravine on what had been John Goddard's property. It is now in the possession of the Brookline Historical Society.

Goddard, who later served several terms in the Massachusetts legislature, died in 1816 at the age of 85.

August 8, 1900
Davis Cup at Longwood Cricket Club
The tennis tournament that would become known as the Davis Cup began its inaugural event at the Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline. Teammates (and Harvard grads) Dwight Davis and Malcolm Whitman in singles and Davis and Holcomb Ward in doubles defeated their British opponents.

Boston Globe, August 10, 1900

"No one could have wished for a better all-round exhibition of scientific tennis," reported the New York Times. In the end, though, said the Times, the Englishman were "simply overwhelmed by a style of play with which they were entirely unfamiliar."

The competition, officially known the International Tennis Tournament, became known as the Davis Cup for the trophy commissioned by Davis for the tourney.

August 8, 1917
Community market opens at Bethany School
A community market selling locally-grown produce opened at the Bethany Building at the intersection of Washington, School, and Cypress Streets. The market, a forerunner of WWII Victory Gardens and modern day farmers' markets, was developed by a town committee on public safety formed after U.S. entry into World War I.

The market operated regularly through the end of the war. Producers selling their output included large estates and small plots located throughout the town. Individuals who could not grow produce on their own land could have plots on several town-owned properties. A staff of 15 gardeners supported the community gardens. There were also lectures and classes on food economy and canning and preservation. 

"One thousand gardens will doubtless be under supervision this year, and, should the war continue one or two years longer, the value of the educational feature together with the actual results cannot now be estimated," reported the committee at the end of 1917. "It will result in raising our own food, lowering the price of food products, and meet a vital war demand."

Brookline High School students from the local chapter of the National Civic Association help out at farm on the Dane estate (just over the Newton border) in the summer of 1917

August 8, 1959
Brookline Hospital opens
The new Brookline Hospital, with an unusual round design, opened on Chestnut Street at the foot of High Street Hill. The new facility replaced the old Allerton Hospital at the corner of Allerton Street and Pond Avenue.

 

The round building was lauded at the time as an efficient, if unusual, design. (The architect, Joseph L. Eldredge, was later the head of the Boston Society of Architects  and writer on architecture for the Boston Globe, the Boston Review of the Arts, and other publications.)

Brookline Hospital suffered from financial difficulties amid a changing hospital industry. It closed in the 1990s. The round building was demolished and replaced with the Goddard House assisted living facility on the site.