November 26th - December 2nd

November 30, 1944

December 1, 1924 - Elimination of Beacon Street stops protested
December 1, 1935 - New Coolidge Corner post office
November 30, 1944 - Storm damages S.S. Pierce tower
December 1, 2013 - Plastic and Styrofoam ban goes into effect

December 1, 1924
Elimination of Beacon Street stops protested
The planned elimination of almost half of the streetcar stops on Beacon Street in Brookline drew howls of protest from town officials, residents, and businesses. The Boston Elevated, operator of the system, stuck to its plans for several months before restoring most of the eliminated stops.

Headlines in the Brookline Chronicle captured the ongoing protests against the Beacon Street cuts.

Officials of the Boston Elevated said the changes would save the system $20,000 a year in power consumption and other costs while cutting the time required to cover the distance from Kenmore Square to Cleveland Circle. (The time saving was later shown to be no more than five minutes along the length of the route in Brookline.)

The restoration of the eliminated stops left the Beacon Street route largely as it is today. Although some of the stops have been moved slightly, the only pre-1924 stops that were not restored were those at Centre Street and Strathmore Road.

December 1, 1935
New Coolidge Corner post office

Brookline's new central post office, on Beacon Street in Coolidge Corner, opened for business. The building, designed by Brookline architect Maurice Meade, had been dedicated two days earlier.

The new facility replaced the old post office, located in the northern half of the first floor of the Harvard Street building at the corner  Babcock Street. (That space is now occupied by Zaftig's, Jin's and Nail Monster.)

All incoming and outgoing mail would be processed centrally at the new post office. The existing Brookline Village post office (in the space now occupied by Starbucks and MyEyeDr.) would be replaced by a smaller branch office with more limited services.

November 30, 1944
Storm damages S.S. Pierce tower

A fierce storm with powerful winds knocked loose the cupola atop the tower of the S.S. Pierce store in Coolidge Corner. Traffic was diverted as the dome "teetered back and forth for several hours," as described in the Brookline Chronicle.

The storm shifted the cupola seven inches out of plum, reported the paper, just two inches less than it was designed to withstand without coming off the tower completely.  Crowds gathered the next morning to watch as steeplejacks tried to right the cupola. (The Boston Globe described as "a literal 'leaning Tower of Pisa.'")

The top of the tower, built in 1898 with an open observation deck beneath the cupola, was replaced the following year by a new top, without the open deck, that still stands today.

The tower of the S.S. Pierce Building before and after the original cupola with an open deck was replaced after the 1944 storm.

December 1, 2013
Plastic and Styrofoam ban goes into effect 
A partial ban on plastic bags and polystyrene containers, passed by Town Meeting in November, went into effect for Brookline businesses. Stores could apply for a six-month waiver to allow time to shift over to new, more environmentally-friendly forms.

“People want to comply, but it’s going to take a little time,” Public Health Commissioner Alan Balsam told the Boston Herald.  “I wouldn’t be surprised to see dozens of waivers, and the reason is they haven’t found a substitute for what they’re using, or they have a large inventory (of their current containers or bags) to get rid of.”

Town officials offered workshops to help local businesses comply with the new regulations. Brookline was the first community in Massachusetts to ban plastic bags. Today, 159 Massachusetts cities and towns, representing two-thirds of the state's population, have enacted at least partial bans.

This 2013 display in the window of Dorados Tacos was part of a training for food permit holders as Brookline implemented new polystyrene and plastic bag regulations (Town of Brookline Annual Report, 2013) 

November 19th - November25th

November 24, 1898

November 22, 1896 - Booker T. Washington speech
November 24, 1898 - Washington Square firehouse
November 23, 1933 - Federal work programs in Brookline
November 25, 1963 - Day of mourning. Crowds at JFK birthplace

November 22, 1896
Booker T. Washington speech
Booker T. Washington, principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, gave a speech on "Negro Education in the Black Belt of the South" at the Harvard Church (now United Parish) in Brookline. It was one of several talks he gave in the Boston area about the school he had led since 1881.

Booker T. Washington (Photo credit: Schomberg Centre for Research in Black Culture - New York Public Library Archives)

Washington had also appeared at the Union Building in Brookline two days earlier, giving what the local paper described as "a brilliant address on 'democracy and education.'" He spoke again at the Harvard Church in 1901. 

In 1903, Washington gave a commencement speech at Brookline High School, encouraging the graduating students to assist the nation's Black population and avoid prejudice. "You cannot hurt a member of my race without degrading the bluest blood," he said. "We are all tied together."

November 24, 1898
Washington Square firehouse
Brookline's newest firehouse -- then under construction -- was introduced in an illustrated article in the Boston Globe. The station, on Washington Street just south of Beacon Street, is now the oldest firehouse still in use in town.

The station was built to serve the rapidly growing area of northwest Brookline, which had seen many new houses built in the wake of the widening of Beacon Street. Designed by architect Fred Crosby, it featured a dormitory for the firefighters, electrically operated doors and alarms, and a stable. (The fire engines were horse-drawn.)

Firefighters with their horse-drawn fire apparatus posed in front of the new Washington Street firehouse (Click image for larger view)

The large Italianate tower of the building was used to hang hoses for drying after their use. The building was later modified to accommodate more modern fire apparatus.

November 23, 1933
Federal work programs in Brookline

The Town launched a series of projects funded by the Roosevelt administration's Civil Works Administration (CWA) and designed to provide work for the unemployed and civic improvements amid the hard times of the Great Depression.

Brookline Chronicle, November 30, 1933

Projects included new sewage and drainage systems, improvements at the almshouse and contagious hospital, and construction of watertight vaults for town clerk and building department documents in Town Hall. 

"Multiple benefits will result from participation by the town in the new plan [reported the Brookline Chronicle]. Aside from providing work that will relieve the local unemployment situation and its attendant curtailment of buying power, it will directly aid merchants of the town as it is the intention to purchase from Brookline dealers as much as possible of the materials and incidentals required for the projects."

November 25, 1963
Day of mourning. Crowds at JFK birthplace
A large crowd gathered at the birthplace of John F. Kennedy on Beals Street for a memorial service three days after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. President Lyndon Johnson had declared the day a national day of mourning.

November 25, 1963 (Photo credit: Kehillath Israel)

The crowd for the ceremony, led by clergy from local churches and synagogues, swelled to more than 2,000 people when members of the Kehillath Israel congregation, just down the street from the house, joined in at the end of their own memorial service.

The house, where Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, is now a National Historic Site maintained by the National Park Service and open to the public.

November 12th - November 18th

November 18, 1779

November 18, 1779 - Prince runs away from Joshua Boylston
November 17, 1924 - One-way traffic on each side of Beacon
November 15, 1947 - Roland Hayes concert
November 16, 1967 - Billboard curb passes

November 18, 1779
Prince runs away from Joshua Boylston
A young man named Prince, enslaved by Joshua Boylston, ran away from Boylston's Brookline farm. Boylston, several weeks later, offered a twenty dollar reward (seen above) for his return, but he was never found.

Prince was described (in a notice in the Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser offering the reward) as "about 27 years of age, 5 feet two inches high" and wearing "mean cloaths." It was suspected he might have gone to Salem to find employment as a seaman on a privateer amid the Revolutionary War.

Three years earlier, in April 1775 Prince had been one of three enslaved Brookline men who took part in the fight against the British troops at the outbreak of the war. He is listed on a plaque, now in the lobby of Town Hall, as "Esq. Boylston's Prince."

Plaque in Town Hall

November 17, 1924
One-way traffic on each side of Beacon
More than three decades after the development of the Beacon Street boulevard, a new regulation went into effect restricting westbound traffic to the north side and eastbound traffic to the south side. The regulation, which had been in place for certain sections of the street, now covered its entire length.

Prior to the change, traffic could travel in either direction on either side of the streetcar tracks. (Traffic, of course, was horse drawn when Beacon Street was first laid out in 1851 and continued to be primarily horse-drawn well after the original country lane was converted to the grand boulevard in the late 1880s.)

In August 1924, the Brookline Chronicle called for one-way traffic, already in place on parts of Beacon Street, to be applied to the length of the boulevard.

"[A}utomobile operators have gradually become accustomed to the new arrangement and as a rule traffic over the thoroughfare is now moving smoothly," reported the Brookline Chronicle a few days after the change went into effect. The paper noted that there would be no penalty for violators until motorists had had time to adjust to the new rule.

November 15, 1947
Roland Hayes concert
Pioneering African American concert singer Roland Hayes, a Brookline resident since 1925, marked the anniversary of his historic 1917 Boston debut at Symphony Hall with a new performance at the same venue on the same date 30 years later.

Brookline Citizen, November 13, 1947

Hayes' 1917 concert, reported the Brookline Citizen, "was the start of a career that has established his as one of America's greatest voices." His audience, noted the paper, "has never proved fickle--in the 30 years since his debut, Roland Hayes' admirers have increased steadily."

Hayes' presence in Brookline has been marked by a plaque on his former home on Allerton Street. Earlier this year, his name was selected as the new name for the school now known as the Heath School. 

November 16, 1967
Billboard curb passes
Town Meeting passed a measure giving the town control over billboards. Prior to that only the state's Outdoor Advertising Board could regulate the large advertising signs. Four years later the Town banned billboards altogether.

The Brookline Chronicle Citizen called the ubiquitous billboards "one of the most debilitating factors in the appearance of this or any other community," adding that "some of our billboards are not only unnecessary but are downright distracting."

Lengthy lawsuits tied up the new measure and it wasn't until 1975 that the signs were removed after the State Supreme Court upheld the right of Brookline and other municipalities to ban billboards from their communities. Until then billboards were common in Coolidge Corner, Brookline Village, and other parts of town.

This 1956 photo shows a large billboard advertising gas heat looming over the marquee of the Coolidge Corner Theatre

November 5th - November 11th

November 8, 1926

November 9, 1895 - No booze on the border
November 7, 1914 - Devotion School building dedicated
November 8, 1926 - Opening of Georgian Cafeteria
November 10, 1966 - Hotel Beaconsfield burned

November 9, 1895
No booze on the border

Four Boston taverns and liquor stores on lower Heath Street (now South Huntington Avenue), just across the Brookline border, were forced to close due to a temperance campaign by Brookline officials. Town officials had won a ruling against the businesses from the Boston licensing board in April, with the owners given until November to find new locations.

This segment from an 1895 Boston atlas shows the location of a group of taverns and liquor stores at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Heath Street. A Citgo station occupies the corner today with new residential buildings adjacent to it.

Brookline had banned liquor sales within the town in 1887, but the presence of these businesses so close to the town line rankled town officials and temperance leaders. There was also an underlying, if unspoken, class and ethnic dimension to the protests: the taverns were closest to the working class, largely Irish Brookline neighborhoods of The Farm and The Marsh.

The oldest of the establishments, John Devine's store at 368 Heath Street, had been in business for more than 20 years when forced to move. It relocated to Roxbury.

John Devine's liquor store, 368 Heath Street

November 7, 1914

Devotion School building dedicated
A third building for the then Edward Devotion School was dedicated on Harvard Street between two earlier buildings constructed in the 1890s. That 1914 building is now the oldest part of the school, which has been renamed the Florida Ruffin Ridley School.

The 1914 building, though not yet completed, was used for the school's graduation when this photo appeared in the Boston Globe in June 1914.

The new building, designed by the architectural firm Kilham & Hopkins, included a large hall and eight classrooms. The School Committee described it as 

"....a splendid building, well adapted to its purpose, which will provide ample accommodations for years to come...."

The new school was constructed at a cost of $138,000.

November 8, 1926
Opening of Georgian Cafeteria
The Georgian Cafeteria chain opened a 200-seat restaurant, its tenth, in Coolidge Corner, in the space now occupied by CVS. The Brookline Chronicle described it as "an institution rather than merely a place to eat" and "a distinct asset to the Corner and a realization of the ideal in which Brookline and the residents of the town may well take pride."

The Georgian, marked by both a vertical and a horizontal neon sign, had a bronze entrance that led to a foyer, 50 feet long and 25 feet wide, and a large dining room decorated in a silver, blue, and ivory color scheme.

This December 1936 photo shows the neon signs for the Georgian Cafeteria next to the Coolidge Corner Theatre. The theater opened in 1933, seven years after the restaurant.

The Brookline branch of the Georgian closed in 1944, though the chain continued for a few years after.

November 10, 1966
Hotel Beaconsfield burns

The partially demolished Hotel Beaconsfield, built in 1905 as a luxury hotel serving both short-term and long-term stays, burned in a fire of suspicious origin.

The last resident of the Beaconsfield, a 79-year old woman who had lived there for 55 years, had been forced out when the demolition began. The site remained empty and strewn with rubble and trash for many years as plans for the site faced opposition from neighbors and others.

The Regency Park apartment tower -- scaled down from earlier plans -- was completed on the site in 1980.

October 29th - November 4th

November 4, 1930

November 4, 1930 - Movie referendum passes
November 3, 1948 - Death of Isabel Anderson
November 2, 1954 - First Democrat from Brookline in legislature
November 1, 1966 - JFK house returned to family

November 4, 1930
Movie referendum passes
After two decades of opposition, Brookline voters narrowly said Yes to allowing a license for a motion picture theater to be granted in town. A town-wide referendum that drew 80% of registered voters passed 8,219 to 6,884. 

The Brookline Chronicle came out strongly in favor of the motion picture referendum before the vote

Brookline had stood against allowing movies in town while many neighboring communities allowed them. An earlier referendum, in 1923, to allow a theater license had been rejected by a three-to-one margin.

Within a few weeks of the successful 1930 referendum, the town received as many as 14 proposals for a movie theater. Licenses were granted for two locations: on Beacon Street, just east of Harvard Street; and at Washington Street and Pearl Street in Brookline Village. Both of those fell through, and Brookline finally got its first movie theater, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in December 1933.

(See this two-part blog post for more on the long fight against movies in town.)

November 3, 1948
Death of Isabel Anderson
Isabel Anderson, owner of the South Brookline hilltop estate known as "Weld," died at the age of 72. The 77-acre estate was left to the Town of Brookline and became a public park, named for her husband, diplomat and collector Larz Anderson. 

Isabel & Larz Anderson

Isabel, born Isabel Weld Perkins, was an author, socialite, and philanthropist. She and her husband purchased the estate from other members of the Weld family in 1899 and used it as their summer residence.

Their house, damaged in a fire and in poor condition, was torn down in 1959, but the carriage house that held the Anderson's automobile collection was included in the gift to the town. It is now the Larz Anderson Auto Museum.

November 2, 1954
First Democrat from Brookline in legislature
33-year-old attorney Sumner Kaplan became the first Democrat ever elected to serve Brookline in the state legislature. Kaplan finished third among six candidates competing for three seats. 

Boston Globe, November 3, 1954

Michael Dukakis, who worked on the campaign as a young man, later attributed Kaplan's success to an approach to campaigning that was new to Brookline. 

"This guy shows up at 7 in the morning at every one of the T stops in town. This was so different than anything this town had ever experienced, and it was a lesson for the rest of us." Dukakis told the Boston Globe after Kaplan's death, at the age of 91, in 2011. "He was the mentor for us younger fry who were part of his crew, and in the course of moving Brookline out of the Republican column, he was a great role model."

Kaplan served in the legislature until 1962. He also worked as a lawyer and judge and served several terms as a Town Meeting member and Brookline selectman. 

November 1, 1966
JFK house returned to family
A private group led by attorney Merrill I. Hassenfeld arranged to purchase the Brookline birthplace of John F. Kennedy from a later owner and turn it over to the Kennedy family with the idea of having it preserved as a memorial to the late president.

The group was motivated, reported the Brookline Chronicle Citizen, by rumors that the home, where the Kennedy family lived from 1914 to 1920, was going to be purchased by a private group that planned to commercialize the birthplace. 

Kennedy's mother, Rose, led the three-year effort to restore the house to the way it looked when the family lived there. It was turned over to the National Park Service in 1969 and remains open to the public as the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.

The living room of the John F. Kennedy birthplace as it appears today (National Park Service / Robert Perron)

October 22nd - October 28th

October 24, 1899

October 25, 1848 - Water from Brookline Reservoir comes to Boston
October 27, 1880 - Teddy Roosevelt married in Brookline
October 24, 1899 - Whitney Hall opens
October 23, 1932 - Kenmore to St. Mary's subway tunnel

October 25, 1848
Water from Brookline Reservoir comes to Boston

Water brought from Lake Cochituate to the reservoir on Boylston Street in Brookline was sent to Boston for the first time, bringing fresh water to the city as the culmination of a two-year project. A crowd estimated at 100,000 people gathered on Boston Common to witness the coming of the water, displayed spectacularly in a 96-foot high column of water rising from the Frog Pond.

The flow of water from Brookline to Boston was controlled via the gatehouse, still standing today, at the Boylston Street reservoir. In 1902, the reservoir, no longer used for Boston's water supply, was purchased by the town of Brookline and turned into Brookline Reservoir Park.

These sketches illustrate the exterior of the Brookline Reservoir gatehouse and the interior with a cast iron stairway and pipes that carried water from the reservoir to Boston.

October 27, 1880
Teddy Roosevelt married in Brookline
Recent Harvard graduate Theodore Roosevelt and Chestnut Hill resident Alice Lee were married, on Roosevelt's 22nd birthday, at the First Parish church in Brookline. The couple moved to New York where the future president began his political career.

The certificate for the marriage of Theodore Roosevelt and Alice Lee was issued in Newton -- Lee's hometown -- but notes that the wedding took place in Brookline.

Alice Roosevelt died in 1884 at the age of 22, two days after giving birth to the couple's daughter, Alice. The loss devastated TR, who was said to rarely speak about his first wife thereafter. (He remarried, to a childhood friend, in 1886.)

Brookline was host to another Roosevelt wedding in  1930, when James Roosevelt, son of then New York governor Franklin Roosevelt, was married at St. Paul's Church to Brookline resident Betsey Cushing, daughter of renowned surgeon Harvey Cushing.

October 24, 1899
Whitney Hall opens
The S.S. Pierce Building, constructed between 1898 and 1899, originally included a large function hall on the second floor used for concerts, lectures, weddings, plays, and other events. The hall, which measured 66 feet by 38 feet, was named for Henry Whitney, the developer most responsible for transforming Beacon Street from a narrow country lane to a grand boulevard.

Adjacent to the main hall were a banquet room, a small supper room, a reception room, parlors and women's dressing rooms, and a well-equipped kitchen. The third floor had men's dressing, smoking, and coat rooms.

Whitney Hall continued to be used for events until the 1950s, when the upper floors were divided into office spaces.  

Advertisements and notices for events and activities in Whitney Hall (Click image for larger view)

October 23, 1932

Kenmore to St. Mary's subway tunnel
A new subway tunnel carrying trains under Kenmore Square to emerge at the St. Mary's Street stop on Beacon Street in Brookline was officially opened. 

Boston Globe, October 24, 1932

The tunnel, completed at a cost of $5 million nine months ahead of schedule, was designed to eliminate traffic congestion in the square, where trains and automobiles competed for space. A work force of 1,600 had taken part in the construction of the tunnel and the new Kenmore Station.

Kenmore Square had been known as Governor's Square until 1931, when it was changed by an order passed by the Boston City Council and signed by Governor James Curley. The station was already known as Kenmore after Kenmore Street, a small street intersection Commonwealth Avenue, where it was located.

October 15th - October 21st

October 20, 1931

October 18, 1869 - Opening of first library building
October 17, 1904 - Murder of Officer McMurray
October 20, 1931 - Harvard Church burns
October 15, 1949 - Larz Anderson Auto Museum opens

October 18, 1869
Opening of first library building
Brookline's first free-standing public library was opened on the site of the current library on Washington Street in Brookline Village. The new library replaced the one established 12 years earlier on the first floor of the 1844 Town Hall.

The 1869 Public Library of Brookline. The building behind it on the right was the town's high school from the 1850s to the 1890s.

The site was chosen over several others. It was also decided not to have the library included in a new town hall. (Brookline would construct a new town hall four years later.)

The 1869 building, with an 1888 addition, continued to serve as the library until the first part of the current library building opened in 1910. The older building was moved to the corner -- where the house is in the picture above and where the Civil War statue is today -- and continued to be used until the new library was completed.

These photos from the Public Library of Brookline show the 1869 library raised on railroad ties to facilitate its move to the corner of Washington and School Street. It was torn down when the new library was ready for use. 

October 17, 1904
Murder of Officer McMurray
Brookline police officer Joseph McMurray, responding to a report of a fight and a gunshot in a house on Boylston Street in Brookline Village, was fatally shot as he broke down the door of the apartment. The gunman, who was arrested by other officers, had shot and killed his wife.

McMurray, a Brookline police officer since 1893 who lived on Davis Avenue with his wife and six children, was the first Brookline police officer to be killed in the line of duty. (There would be one more in 1930.). He had won special recognition for rescuing a young boy who had fallen through the ice on Leverett Pond in 1894. In 1900, he had rescued another man from drowning: the same man, Henry Bowles, who killed him four years later.

Residents of the town raised $10,000 to support McMurray's widow, Mary, and her children. Boles, who had been fired from his job with the town's water department for drunkenness,  was sentenced to life in prison.

October 20, 193
Harvard Church burns
The Harvard Church, Brookline's 1873 Congregational edifice at the corner of Harvard and Marion Streets, was destroyed in a Tuesday evening fire. Firefighters are shown battling the blaze in the photo at the top of this post.

The tower of the church was the only part that could be saved. The tower had been rebuilt just a few years earlier due to defects discovered in the original structure.

These images show the Harvard Church as it originally looked and after it was rebuilt following the 1931 fire. The differences in the tower, the only part of the church that was preserved, reflect its rebuilding just a few years before the fire.

The church was rebuilt on the original foundation. It is now known as United Parish, the result of a 1970 coming together of three congregations: the Harvard Church (United Church of Christ, UCC), St Mark’s Methodist Church, and the Baptist Church in Brookline.

October 15, 1949
Larz Anderson Auto Museum opens
Brookline marked the official opening of the Antique Auto Museum (now the Larz Anderson Auto Museum) in the former carriage house of Larz and Isabel Anderson on Newton Street. 

On display, reported the Brookline Chronicle, were "twelve ancient autos and forty horse drawn vehicles" formerly owned by the Andersons, plus six "old-time cars" belonging to members of the Veteran Motor Car Club of America.

The opening of the Antique Auto Museum was announced in the Boston Globe, which also  included pictures of youngsters enjoying some of the old cars.

The ceremonies included a ribbon cutting and a speech on the early days of motoring, plus a parade of old cars driven by collectors and a series of road tests, races, and competitive events.