June 18th - June 24th

June 22, 1917

June 20, 1825 - Lafayette visits Brookline
June 22, 1917 - Marita Bonner graduates from BHS
June 23, 1938 - Cy Young at Old Timers Day
June 22, 1948 - Brookline creates Housing Authority

June 20, 1825
Lafayette visits Brookline
Three days after laying the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Marquis de Lafayette visited Brookline. The Revolutionary War hero was on his second visit to Massachusetts as part of a year-long triumphant return to America that brought him to all 24 U.S. states.

Lafayette laying the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument. (1880s illustration from Cassell's History of the United States

The then 67-year-old Lafayette rode out to Brookline to have lunch at the home of Thomas Handasyd Perkins. Passing the Ebenezer Heath house (still standing today) he saw Heath's daughters gathered with several of their friends at the side of the road to catch a glimpse of the marquis.

"The General, with that courtesy and urbanity that were so conspicuous in his character, stopped his carriage on his way from Col Perkins' [according to an account written later] and gratified each young lady with a warm shake of the hand. Several kissed his hand, a tribute he insisted on returning, while he affectionately lifted the little ones in the party in his arms and blessed them, repeating with emphasis 'You make me very happy.'"

June 22, 1917
Marita Bonner graduates from BHS
Marita Odette Bonner, who would go on to become a celebrated essayist and playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance, graduated from Brookline High School. Bonner lived with her family in the apartment building at 221 Harvard Street, at the corner of Stearns Road.

The young woman, who went by the name Marietta at the time, wrote essays for the Sagamore, the student magazine that later became the school newspaper. She was also a talented musician who was selected in a competition to compose the music for the school song of her graduating class at BHS. (The photo at top is from an article in the Sagamore announcing the contest winner.)

Bonner attended Radcliffe College, although she had to commute from home because Black students could not live in campus housing. In 1922, after graduating from Radcliffe, she launched her literary career by winning first prize in an essay contest at the NAACP magazine The Crisis with an essay titled On Being Young--A Woman--and Colored.

Marita Bonner's 1922  essay in The Crisis

June 23, 1938
Cy Young at Old Timers Day
On Brookline Field (now Harry Downes Field) a 71-year old man  wearing a fake beard and mustache took off his hat and coat and threw a ceremonial first pitch to start an old timers baseball game. The wind-up and delivery were familiar to many in attendance, as the septuagenarian hurler was none other than Cy Young.

Cy Young shown at an old timers game in Sharon a few weeks before his appearance in Brookline

Young, the former star pitcher in Boston, Cleveland, and St. Louis, was a recent inductee in the new Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  Taking the mound, reported the Brookline Chronicle, he

"went through the customary wind-up to the accompaniment of thundering applause and then let go the pitch to officially start the ball game. Before the diamond battle of the year got underway, however, 'Old Cy' mounted the rubber and gave a demonstration of how he used to "burn 'em over" for which he was roundly applauded." 

It's not clear why Cy Young wore a false beard and mustache on Old Timers' Night.  It would not have been to make his presence a surprise, as his participation had been announced in the paper a week before. Perhaps it was simply a nod to the throwback spirit of the event, mimicking the more hirsute fashion of an earlier era.

June 22, 1948
Brookline creates Housing Authority

Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved creation of a housing authority, overcoming the complaints of two members who called the proposal "collectivism and socialism." The vote followed the recommendation of a special committee convened to consider compliance with a new state law that would provide funding for new housing.

"[T]here is a shortage of safe and sanitary housing accommodations  available to families of low-income and particularly to families of veterans of low income at rentals such families can afford," reported the Board of Selectmen in recommending creation of the new authority.

In November, plans were introduced for the first two public housing developments: the High Street and Egmont Street projects, both still managed by the Housing Authority today.

High Street, left, and Egmont Street apartments today. (Photo credit: Brookline Housing Authority)

June 11th - June 17th

June 12, 2016

June 11, 1806 - Second meeting house dedicated
June 16, 1942 - WWII scrap rubber drive
June 12, 1990 - Brookline restricts cigarette machines
June 12, 2016 - Roland Hayes plaque 

June 11, 1806

Second meeting house dedicated

Rev. John Pierce, minister since 1797 of what was then Brookline's only house of worship, dedicated a new meeting house for the church. The new building replaced the original 1717 structure. It stood on Walnut Street where the fourth building of the congregation (First Parish) is today.

"By solemn prayer and praise we now dedicate this temple to the service of him, who can make it the instrument of essential benefit to ourselves, and even to our children's children," said Pierce. The building, according to notes in a published version of Pierce's speech, cost just over $20,000 to build. It was designed by Peter Banner who would, a few years later, design the Park Street Church in Boston, still standing today.

The 1806 Brookline building would be replaced by a new church across Walnut Street in 1848. John Pierce died one year later after 52 years as minister at First Parish.

June 16, 1942
WWII scrap rubber drive
Brookline launched a two-week scrap rubber drive, part of a nationwide effort to make up for a shortage of this vital material used in everything from tanks and airplanes to rafts and rubber boats to the soles of soldiers' shoes.

Old tires were considered the best and largest source of rubber, but residents were also urged to contribute a wide variety of rubber products, large and small. A long list provided in the Brookline Citizen included garden hoses, boots and overshoes, rubber toys, tobacco pouches, bathing caps, bridge table coverings, suction cups, rubber floor tiles, and "any of the hundred and one items containing rubber."

Two young employees of the Brookline Hills Service Station at the corner of Boylston and Cypress Streets are shown with tires and other items collected as part of the rubber drive

Local gas stations, designated as drop-off points for the material, were soon overwhelmed with the amount of rubber collected. 

June 12, 1990

Brookline restricts cigarette machines

Town Meeting voted overwhelmingly in favor of banning cigarette vending machines in town. Exceptions were made for private clubs with liquor licenses and workplaces that were not accessible to minors or the general public.

The bylaw was struck down that fall by the Massachusetts Attorney General who ruled that only the state had the authority to regulate vending machines. It was reinstated by the town as a public health measure, rather than a licensing issue, but continued to face challenges from the vending machine industry and others. 

One option introduced by the industry was an electronic lock-out device that could only be overridden if a vendor verified that the purchaser was not a minor. Town officials conducted a sting operation that showed this was often not enforced. Cigarette vending machines were finally banned nationally, with the exception of adult-only facilities, in 2010.

A salesperson demonstrates a cigarette vending machine with a lock-down device in this 1991 Brookline Citizen photo

June 12, 2016
Roland Hayes plaque 
A plaque honoring the groundbreaking African American tenor Roland Hayes was dedicated in front of the Allerton Street house where he lived for more than 50 years. Hayes (1887-1977), the first African American soloist to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had a long career and helped blaze a path for other Black singers like Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson.

Roland Hayes plaque on Allerton Street

Hayes, born in Georgia on a farm where his mother had once been enslaved, received a music education at Fisk University in Nashville and in Boston. He was known for incorporating old spirituals in his performances, along with classical works.

The Hayes family, including his wife Alzada and their daughter Afrika, moved to Brookline in 1925 when they purchased the Allerton Street house. (See also this 2015 tribute to Hayes, recorded by Brookline Interactive Group.)

June 4th - June 10th

June 6, 1903

June 10, 1895 - Formation of Equal Suffrage Association
June 6, 1903 - First pieces of Longyear mansion arrive
June 4, 1930 - FDR's son married at St. Paul's
June 8, 2008 - Dedication of Skyline Park 

June 10, 1895
Formation of Equal Suffrage Association

The first meeting of the Brookline Equal Suffrage Association took place at the  home of Mary Hutcheson Page on Hill Street (now Hawthorn Road). The organization, reported Anna K. Channing, one of the offices of the new organization, "was to work for the political enfranchisement of women; or, as one woman said, 'to extend the refining influence of the home into public life.'"

"As our president reminded us," wrote Channing, "we need not be disturbed by obstacles or criticisms to be encountered, if we have in mind the justice of our cause and the certainty of its triumph."

Mary Hutcheson Page, in whose home the first meeting of the Brookline Equal Suffrage Association was held

Membership in the association cost 50 cents, with 75 men and women having signed up by the time of the first meeting.

 

June 6, 1903

First pieces of Longyear mansion arrive
Thirty railroad cars carrying the disassembled stones of a Marquette, Michigan mansion arrived in Brookline where the mansion was to be reassembled atop Fisher Hill. 

The large home had been built in 1892 on the shore of Lake Superior for timber and mining magnate John Longyear and his wife Mary. Dissatisfied by the incursion of a railroad line along the shore of the lake, the Longyears arranged to have the large home dismantled and shipped to Brookline, in part to be near Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science).

"Each block of stone from the 66-room mansion was wrapped in straw and cloth and numbered and put in wooden crates," wrote John Longyear. The mansion, shown at the top of this post, was redesigned and enlarged in its new location. After Mary Longyear's death in 1931, it housed the Longyear Museum until 1995 when the property was sold to a developer and turned into condos.

Stones from the Longyear mansion waiting to be reassembled on Fisher Hill, as seen in a Boston Globe photo, August 7, 1903

June 4, 1930

FDR's son married at St. Paul's
New York governor and future president Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Brookline for the wedding of his son James to Betsy Cushing, daughter of renowned neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing, at St. Paul's Church. The wedding, reported the New York Times, was attended by more than 500 guests, including "leaders of the medical, political, diplomatic and social worlds."

New York Daily News, June 5, 1930

"The church lawns," reported the Boston Globe, "were overrun with people on the Aspinwall av and St Paul sides. Verandas and steps of neighboring houses were used as points of vantage from which to watch the arrival of guests and later that of the bridal attendants and the bride herself." 

The ceremony was followed by a reception on the grounds of the Cushing home on Walnut Street where about a dozen large tents were erected on all sides of the mansion, including one with a dancing floor over the tennis courts. James and Betsey Roosevelt were divorced in 1940.

June 8, 2008
Dedication of Skyline Park 

Skyline Park, Brookline's first new park in more than twenty years, was officially dedicated. The park, built on Newton Street atop a former landfill, included a synthetic turf soccer field, a playground,  picnic tables, benches, and recreational pathways that connect to the Lost Pond Sanctuary.

Skyline Park as seen from the air. (Source: Town of Brookline Annual Report, 2010)

Preparation for the park involved capping the former landfill to prevent contamination. The landfill contained ash from the town's old incinerator, used to burn household waste until it was shut down in 1975. All Massachusetts municipalities were required by the state's Department of Environmental Protection to cap old landfills.

In 2009, the town's Parks and Open Space Division was awarded the  Massachusetts Recreation and Park Association's Design and Facility Award for the project at Skyline Park.  

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.