December 24 - December 30th

December 30, 1933

December 28, 1772 - Formation of Committee of Correspondence
December 27, 1896 - Hawaiian queen takes sleigh ride
December 30, 1933 - Coolidge Corner Theatre opens
December 25, 1962 - Old Brookline gymnasium burns

December 28, 1772
Formation of Committee of Correspondence
Brookline Town Meeting voted to join Boston in protesting taxes and duties imposed on the colonies by the British government. The town formed a committee to communicate with the Committee of Correspondence in Boston.

Part of the resolution passed by Brookline Town Meeting

The taxes, imposed without any say in the matter by the colonies, were among the "intolerable Grievances" of the town that represented

"alarming Steps towards rendering the whole executive Power independent, of the People, and setting up an despotic Government in the Province."

 The dispute was part of the growing movement that would lead, in 1775, to the outbreak of the American Revolution.

December 27, 1896

Hawaiian queen takes sleigh ride

Liliuokalani, three years after being deposed as the last monarch of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii, climbed about a sleigh near Coolidge Corner for a ride in the snow through Brookline and Boston.

"It was a bright and beautiful day when the jingling bells and prancing horses acquainted me with the much-praised experience of sleigh-riding, and my kind host had determined that I at least should suffer no inconvenience from the cold, for our sleigh was abundantly provided with robes, and was warmed by a recently invented apparatus," she wrote later in her autobiography.

Liliuokalani had been overthrown in 1893 by a group led by American and other non-native businessmen who took over the government and established the Republic of Hawaii. (It was formally annexed to the United States in 1898.) Read more in this article I wrote in 2017.

December 30, 1933
Coolidge Corner Theatre opens

Brookline's first (and now only) movie house -- the Coolidge Corner Theatre -- opened for business. The grand opening featured two full-length films, a Disney cartoon, a Coolidge Corner newsreel, and live music.

The theater building had been the Beacon Universalist Church before being transformed at a cost of $100,000, including a $35,000 organ. Designed by architect Ernest Hayward with a red and gold color scheme, it had a seating capacity of 1,400.

The opening had been preceded the previous night by a private gala ceremony. Emelia Sharaf, wife of the developer, told those in attendance that "An institution of this sort is an opportunity to serve the community so that both the building and the entertainment offered will be a matter of civic pride."

December 25, 1962
Old Brookline gymnasium burns
A Christmas Day fire that started in a first floor landing destroyed the 54-year old municipal gymnasium on Tappan Street. The building, completed at a cost of $120,000 in 1908, was deemed a total loss.

The Brookline Gymnasium is at left soon after its completion in 1908 and during the 1962 fire that left it in ruins. (Click image for larger view)

Scores of families, reported the Brookline Chronicle Citizen, "left their Christmas celebrations to watch firefighters battle the flames which tore through the stairwells and up through the roof." A truck load of sand was dumped for better footing on the stone steps which had turned to sheets of ice from having water sprayed on the building amid freezing temperatures.

The town used makeshift facilities for several years after the fire as local officials debated the costs of a new building and how it would be administered. The current gymnasium was completed in 1968.