John F. Kennedy, 5/29/1917-11/22/1963

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in the family home at 83 Beals Street in Brookline on May 29, 1917.  He was killed by an assassin in Dallas, Texas 50 years ago today.

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, it was widely expected that Kennedy would be buried in the family plot at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline.  The Boston Globe and the New York Times and wire service stories that appeared around the country the day after the assassination all reported that Holyhood was the expected burial site.

It was announced later that day that the president would be buried in Arlington National Cemetery instead.

The Kennedys' infant son Patrick, who died two days after birth, had been buried at Holyhood just three months earlier.  (Patrick's body was moved to Arlington in December.) Kennedy's parents, Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, and other family members are buried in Holyhood.

The National Park Service will hold a brief memorial ceremony at the JFK birthplace at 2 pm this Sunday.  The birthplace will also be open to the public Saturday and Sunday.

First Light 2013 at the Devotion House

Brookline's annual First Light Festival, showcasing the talents of local artists, musicians and performers, takes place this Thursday, November 21st, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm.  

Join the Brookline Historical Society at the Edward Devotion House for a slideshow on the history of the Coolidge Corner shopping district.  Step inside for a tour of one of the oldest houses in town.  Chat with us about the past, the present, and the future of our town.

The Edward Devotion House is at 347 Harvard Street, in front of the Devotion School.

Civil War Program, Nov. 17th, 2 pm

Tuesday is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Henry V.D. Stone of Brookline, who was killed at Gettysburg at age 19, is one of the local men whose story will be told Sunday, November 17th, at 2 pm in the lobby of Town Hall. 

The program is free and open to the public.  

For more information, contact the Brookline Historical Society at 617-566-5747 or brooklinehistory@gmail.com.

Lady Betty's Marmalade: Brookline, circa 1914

The latest addition to the collections of the Brookline Historical Society's Edward Devotion House is this marmalade jar (below left) from a line of products manufactured and sold by a Brookline woman a century or so ago.

The jar was recently offered for sale online with no date of origin and little description. Some quick research turned up an advertisement (below right) from the June-July 1914 issue of American Cookery magazine, and the jar was acquired for the Historical Society.

But who was “Lady Betty”? The address — “Beacon and Washington Sts.” — gave just a clue. A second advertisement from 1914, a musically-themed ad in the program of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was a treat to find but offered no further hints to the identity of “Lady Betty.”

Finally, a third 1914 ad was found in the December issue of Good Housekeeping magazine, and this one had a specific address: 1624 Beacon Street.

1624 Beacon Street was (and still is) part of the Rhodes Block, a commercial building on the northeast corner of Washington Square, built in 1913 for the Rhodes Brothers grocery store.  (A branch of Rhodes Brothers occupied the corner location.) 1624 was one of two storefronts on the Beacon Street side of the building; there were two more on the Washington Street side.

The Rhodes Block in 1914.  (From The Brookline Christmas Magazine, published by the Brookline Friendly Society, December 1914). 1624 Beacon is at the far right.

Cleveland Circle Travel occupies the 1624 storefront today.  But a look at the 1914 Brookline Directory gave us the answer we were looking for.  “Lady Betty” was actually a woman named Gertrude Maynard.

Gertrude Maynard was born Gertrude Maria Davis in Vermont in 1847.  She married Abbott Thayer Maynard in Boston in 1869.  Abbott Maynard was a jeweler and silversmith with a business on Boylston Street in Boston for many years.  

The Maynards moved from Boston to Brookline around 1908.  (That’s the first year they were listed in town directories.) It’s unclear when Gertrude Maynard began producing her Lady Betty line of products, but it was no later than 1912.  The ad below for Park & Tilford, one of Lady Betty's retail outlets, appeared in the December 19, 1912 edition of the Evening Herald in New York.

Ads for Lady Betty products appeared in several other newspapers and magazines as well.  The products were sold in stores in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Detroit, and by mail order.  They were exhibited at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.

Maynard advertised her products as “Guaranteed free from adulteration.  No artificial color, flavor, or preservatives.”  As proof, she cited approval from two leaders in the pure food movement of the time: Lewis B. Allyn and Harvey W. Wiley.  Allyn was a professor of chemistry at the Westfield Normal School in Westfield, MA who established the Westfield Standard for food purity and evaluated thousands of food products.

Wiley, also a chemist, played a leading role in the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 and became the first commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  In 1912, he resigned to take over leadership of Good Housekeeping magazine’s food testing laboratories.

Wiley’s 1916 book 1,001 Tests of Food, Beverages and Toilet Accessories, Good and Otherwise: Why They Are So included analysis of several Lady Betty products.  All received his star rating, or stamp of approval, but not without some comment on the ingredients—and the high prices Lady Betty charged.

Gertrude Maynard died in September 1916 at age 69.  The business may have continued for a while after her death.  (Abbott Maynard, who had retired from the jewelry business, was listed in town directories as a manager at 1624 Beacon as late as 1919.)

In any case, this Brookline business started by a woman in her 60s was a short-lived one.  But “Lady Betty” now lives on in the collection of the Brookline Historical Society. 

Life magazine, April 9, 1914

Washington Post, October 30, 1913

Wellesley Townsman, June 8, 1917

Shopping in Coolidge Corner: An Historical Walking Tour

The Coolidge Corner Shopping District: 

A Brookline Historical Society Walking Tour 

Sunday, October 6th at 9 am & 2 pm

The Coolidge & Brother store before the widening of Beacon Street

Coolidge Corner was home to just one store—Coolidge & Brother — from the 1850s to the 1890s. Following the widening of Beacon Street in 1887-88 and the arrival of the S.S. Pierce store a few years later, a major new shopping district took root. Almost all of the existing buildings in this still thriving commercial area were built between 1890 and 1930.

Journey back to the initial development of the Coolidge Corner business district and get a glimpse of local shopping in the early decades of the 20th Century.

This one-hour walking tour led by Ken Liss of the Brookline Historical Society will begin at the Coolidge Corner inbound T stop at 9 am and again at 2 pm.

There is no cost, but space is limited. Call 617-566-5747 or email brooklinehistory@gmail.com to reserve spots for either time.

Boston Transcript advertisement August 24, 1912

1343 Beacon Street (Now Wavelengths Hair Salon)
Brookline Chronicle May 8, 1924

1933: The Electric Kitchen Comes to Brookline

Brookline Chronicle, May 18, 1933
Click image for larger view

"Sponsored by the Brookline Radio and Music Company, 33 Harvard Street, local headquarters for General Electric Refrigerators and household appliances, the famous kitchen on wheels will tour Brookline on Friday, May 19, from 10 A. M. to 7 P. M. and from 7 P. M. to 10 P. M. will be located in front of the Brookline Music and Radio store for inspection.  This is a complete modern kitchen in which electricity performs every conceivable task for the modern American housewife.

"In this 'magic' all-electric kitchen, dishes are washed and dried by simply pushing a button.  A similar operation refrigerates food, manufactures ice, cooks food, turns a range on or off, mixes beverages and foods, provides music, prepares toast, waffles, or coffee, gives shadowless illumination, and ventilates the kitchen. The coach also has space for the exhibition of other electric home work-savers, such as laundry equipment, sun lamps, vacuum cleaners, radios, electric clock, heaters, and kindred products."

Coolidge Corner Newspaper Sketches

Sketches of three Coolidge Corner commercial buildings from three different decades as they appeared in the pages of the Brookline Chronicle. (Click on images for larger views.)

S.S. Pierce Building, Chronicle,  October 28, 1899

Coolidge Corner Building, , Chronicle,  March 16, 1912

Altman Block, Chronicle,  January 14, 1922

The S.S. Pierce Building was already standing at the time the above sketch appeared.  The other two sketches were previews of what was to come.  All three buildings are still in use in Coolidge Corner today.