Brookline Bikes: Sites to See on Beacon Street

The annual Brookline Bikes bicycle parade takes place this Sunday, May 19th.  It's a great event and an opportunity to ride the entire length of the historic Beacon Street boulevard in Brookline unimpeded by automobiles.

The Brookline Historical Society will have a table set up in Amory Park, the starting and ending point for the parade, with information about the development of Beacon Street.  Stop by before or after the ride and check it out.

Shown below are some of the architectural and historical sights you'll see as you ride down Beacon Street. (Photos of Beacon Street landmarks in the past can be viewed on the Brookline Historical Society Web site.)

Pelham Hall (Outbound, at Pleasant Street) Pelham Hall was built as a residential hotel in 1926 as part of a burst of new construction in and around Coolidge Corner.

S.S. Pierce Building (Outbound, at Harvard Street). The S.S. Pierce building, the symbol of Coolidge Corner if not of Brookline itself, was built from 1898-99 on the site of the original Coolidge Brothers store.

The second story of the Pierce Building, now offices, was originally Whitney Hall. Named for Beacon Street developer Henry Whitney, it was used for concerts, lectures, dances, meetings, and other events.  The original tower was taller.  Damaged in a 1944 hurricane, it was remodeled afterward to its current design.  The S.S. Pierce Company continued to occupy the lower floor until the 1960s and the building is still generally called the S.S. Pierce Building, even by residents who didn’t arrive in Brookline until much later.

MBTA Shelters (Both sides at Harvard Street) The tile-roofed shelters for the T, at Coolidge Corner, are the original structures built by Henry Whitney’s West End Railway in 1901. Remodeled a few years ago, they are the only original shelters that remain.

The Stoneholm (Outbound, between Short Street and Lancaster Terrace). The Stoneholm is a magnificent French Renaissance chateau style apartment building that opened in 1909 with such amenities as marble fireplaces, parquet floors, and crystal chandeliers. It was designed by Arthur Bowditch, who lived on Pill Hill.

Chinese Christian Church (Inbound, between Strathmore and Dean Roads). This neo-Gothic church was designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge in 1910. Built for the Leyden Congregational Church, it was bought by the Chinese Christian Church of New England in 1975.

All Saints Church.  (Inbound, at Dean Road). All Saints Church, designed by the architectural firm of Cram, Wentworth, and Goodhue, replaced a temporary wooden church on the site with the completion of the nave in 1899.

The Beaconsfield Terraces (including Richter Terrace,  Inbound at Dean Road and Frances Terrace, Inbound at Tappan Street). The Beaconsfield Terraces were one of the more unusual developments to follow the widening of Beacon Street. Built by Eugene Knapp, a wool merchant, in the early 1890s, the terraces were an early condominium arrangement in which people owned their units but shared ownership of 6-acre park, stables, a playhouse (known as the casino), tennis courts, and a playground. A bell system connected the houses to the stables so that people could call for their horse and carriage. A central heating plant heated all of the buildings. Today, only the residence buildings remain.

Athans Building (Inbound at Washington Street). This commercial block was built in 1898 with stores, offices, and a hall for dances and concerts.



Richmond Court. (Inbound, east of St. Paul Street). Richmond Court was one of the first—possibly the first—courtyard apartment buildings in the country. Built in 1898, it is set back and separated from the noise and bustle of Beacon Street by an iron fence, brick and stone posts, a fountain, and private gardens. Richmond Court was designed by Ralph Adams Cram who went on to design All Saints Church, further out on Beacon Street, as well as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, and many buildings at West Point and Princeton University.

Temple Ohabei Shalom (Inbound at Kent Street). Temple Ohabei Shalom was the first Jewish congregation in Boston, formed in 1842 by immigrant German Jews. The congregation moved to Brookline and this domed temple in 1927.

Amory Park & Hall's Pond (Starting and ending point of parade). Until well into the 19th century, this was the Cedar Swamp. The Swamp and its marshy outflow were largely under-developed until after the Civil War. By stages, Cedar Swamp was filled in until all that remained was a one-acre pond called Swallow Pond that was used largely as a storm drainage pit for the surrounding area.

Today, after being acquired by the Town in 1975 and reborn as the Hall’s Pond Sanctuary, the pond area is what the Boston Globe has called “one of the Boston area's finest examples of green-space restoration,” home to migratory birds, turtles, and a variety of other wetlands wildlife, and “like a little patch of the Everglades in the middle of the city”.

Hall's Pond is named after the Hall Family that settled in the area around 1850 and lived on Ivy Street. Minna Hall, one of the last of the Hall family, was a cofounder of the Boston (later Massachusetts) Audubon Society and a great lover of birds and nature. A great concern of hers was that the pond and its environs be protected.

Remembering Brookline's Civil War Dead

Annual Meeting of the Brookline Historical Society

Remembering Brookline's Civil War Dead

Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 7 pm

American Legion / VFW Post, 386 Washington Street

Two years ago, as the town prepared to rededicate its restored 1884 memorial to 72 local men who died in the Civil War, I helped then Building Commissioner Mike Shephard, who was spearheading the effort, by providing some insight into some of the men whose names were chiseled into the marble of the memorial.

Mike chose to tell the story of Lieutenant Colonel Wilder Dwight whose poignant letter to his mother, written while he lay dying on the battlefield at Antietam, is in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

A month later, I wrote about Dwight and five other Brookline men who lost their lives serving the Union between 1861 and 1865. But it didn't stop there.

A few of the 72 men whose names appear on Brookline's 1884 Civil War Memorial

In the last two years, I've uncovered as much information as I could about all 72 of the soldiers and sailors listed on the memorial. For some, officers and members of prominent families like Wilder Dwight, it was easy. Photographs and correspondence have been preserved; accounts of their lives and deaths were written at the time and later.

But for other men—barely a handful of the 72 were officers and most were tradesman—it was a matter of piecing together details from regimental histories, remembrances of comrades, military and census records, and whatever I could find.

There was the young teamster who came to the U.S. as a toddler in 1832 from County Armagh, a member of the first Irish family to settle in Brookline.

There was the son of a slave-owning family, born in Texas, whose brother died while serving on the other side in the Confederate Army.

There was the 36-year old machinist whose mother received a letter of sympathy from Abraham Lincoln, one of the most famous—and controversial—writings of the 16th president.

There were the three young friends from Kingston, New Hampshire who came to Brookline together to enlist, went into the same artillery unit, were taken prisoner together, and died in the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

Please join me and the members of the Brookline Historical Society on May 16th as I share the stories of these men and some twenty more in this special Civil War Sesquicentennial event.  The program is free and open to the public.  Refreshments will be served.

1933: After 46 Years, Beer Back in Brookline

On April 7, 1933 Prohibition came to a partial end in the United States with the passage of the Cullen-Harrison Act permitting the sale of 3.2 beer and light wine.  Two days later, the Brookline Board of Selectmen granted 31 licenses to sell or serve beer in town.

For the country as a whole it had been 13 years since the start of Prohibition. But in Brookline the action of the Selectmen brought to an end nearly half a century without alcoholic beverages being legally available.

Brookline had been a dry town since 1887, when Town Meeting voted 452-268 to ban the granting of licenses for the sale of intoxicating beverages. (The town voted to go "wet" again in March 1920, but that vote was symbolic only; Prohibition had gone into effect nationally two months earlier.)

At least one local restaurant wasted no time: Gurley's Restaurant in Coolidge Corner (where Otto Pizza is today) advertised "legal beer" in the April 13 edition of the weekly Brookline Chronicle.

Gurley's Restaurant, where Otto Pizza is today, was one of the first to obtain a license when beer sales came back to Brookline after 46 years.

Beer sellers were notified that their licenses were only temporary until a town-wide referendum could be held to approve or reject the granting of licenses.  That came in June, with the "Yes" votes winning easily: 6,718 to 1,600.  Voters also chose, by an even more overwhelming majority, to send "wet" representatives to the Constitutional Convention voting on ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would repeal Prohibition altogether.

There was one more vote on December 28, 1933, three weeks after the final repeal of Prohibition, on whether to allow sales of hard liquor and stronger beer and wine in Brookline.  That too was approved, although turnout was light.  Two days later, coincidentally, the Coolidge Corner Theatre opened its doors, bringing the movies to Brookline after a 20 year fight against allowing a theater in town.  Brookline was definitely loosening up.

Cy Young & "Old-Timers' Night" in Brookline

On a June night in 1938 on Brookline 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, former star pitcher in Boston, Cleveland, and St. Louis and a recent inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Young, reported the Brookline Chronicle,

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. 

[Cy Young, right, at the dedication of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1939, one year after his appearance at "Old-Timers' Night" in Brookline.]

Old-Timers' Night was an annual event in Brookline from 1936 to 1941, though only in 1938 was it graced by the presence of a figure as celebrated as Cy Young.  A handful of other former major league players took part, including Brookline-born Jack Kelleher who played parts of six seasons with four National League teams between 1912 and 1924.

For the most part, the game was a chance to bring back Brookline ballplayers of years past, from Brookline High School and from the many local clubs that competed with one another and with teams from other towns as much as a half-century before.

The Brookline Chronicle's preview of the 1939 Old-Timers' Night included this picture of the old Brookline Marions team from 50 years earlier. (Click for larger view)

In addition to baseball, Old-Timers' Night typically included a parade of vintage vehicles that, according to the Chronicle,

would have done credit to a museum display, ranging from the aristocratic Beverly wagon down through the brougham, landau, surrey, brake, barouche, tally-ho, stagecoach and Irish jaunting car to the common hayrack and cart and including a "steamer" fire engine, a police ambulance and the once-familiar "Black Maria," also a fleet of tandem and single bicycles and high-wheelers and a group of "horseless carriages."

There were also men and women in vintage clothing, including

top-hatted gentlemen with ruffled and bustled ladies and helmeted guardians of the law and red-shirted fire laddies.

The parade, with local luminaries and marching bands, typically began at the Municipal Gymnasium near the High School and wound its way via Greenough, Washington, Cypress, Boylston, and High Streets and Highland and Jamaica Roads to Brookline Field (now Harry Downes Field) where the game was played.  Crowds estimated at 11,000 to 15,000 turned out each year to watch the events.

Old-Timers' Night in Brookline apparently came to an end with the entry of the United States into the Second World War.

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NOTE: 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.  If so, it would have been a nice bit of whimsy from a gentleman of 71 years.

Brookline's Town Seal: Adopted April 3, 1848

165 years ago today, Brookline Town Meeting voted to accept the now ubiquitous Town Seal, picturing "a group of agricultural and farming implements, a view of the City of Boston in the distance, with a train of cars running between the two places" and bearing the inscription "Muddy River, a part of Boston. Founded 1630. Brookline incorporated 1705."

The design, according to a report from then Town Clerk Artemas Newall, was "intended to be emblematical of the character of the Town from its early settlement, when designated and known as Boston Cornfield & Boston Plantation, to the present time,— the inscription to perpetuate, in a degree, its early historical associations."

The symbolism, according to a report from the town Preservation Office, "asserts that Brookline was not just suburban but prosperously agrarian—a suitable home, perhaps, for the country gentleman."

The seal, engraved on steel, was executed for the town by Francis N. Mitchell of Boston at a cost of $56 which included 100 embossed impressions and a press to be used for copying.

Update: Presidents in Brookline

(This post is a Presidents Day update of an earlier post on presidents in Brookline.  When I began researching this topic several years ago, I knew of seven chief executives who had been in the town at one time or another. Based on additional research, that number grew in subsequent updates to 13, then 15, and then 19. It is now at 21, and there may still be others.)

John F. Kennedy, of course, was born in Brookline. But did you know that as many as 21 United States presidents—from George Washington to Barack Obama—have been in Brookline before, during, or after their presidencies?

Theodore Roosevelt was married in Brookline (at the First Parish Church). John Adams made many visits to the town, where his mother, Susanna Boylston Adams, was born and raised.

Other presidents visited prominent residents or toured Brookline sites while on trips to Boston.  A few, including Abraham Lincoln, simply passed through the town in carriages or on the railroad while traveling to or from Boston or other New England communities.

Here is the list, with details of each president's visit.

GEORGE WASHINGTON
George Washington was in command of the Continental forces besieging Boston from July 1775 until the British evacuation on March 17, 1776.  The main route between Washington's headquarters in Cambridge and key fortifications on Dorchester Heights and elsewhere passed through Brookline.

Various secondary sources report the general traversing this route at various times, and it seems likely that he did on several occasions.  There are also unconfirmed stories of his having inspected the Brookline Fort at Sewall's Point during the siege.

Washington certainly passed through Brookline during a visit to Boston in October 1789, six months after his inauguration as president.  William Sumner, who was a boy of 9 at the time, described the visit 71 years later in the New England Genealogical Register.  After inspecting the militia on Cambridge Common, reported Sumner, the president ("on a noble white charger") and a large procession set out for Boston.

Leaving Cambridge, the procession crossed Charles river over the old Cambridge bridge into Brookline.  Thence passing by the Punchbowl tavern through Roxbury, they met at the dividing line between Boston and that town the officers and leading citizens of Boston, who came out to tender Washington the hospitalities of the metropolis.

JOHN ADAMS
John Adams' mother Susanna Boylston Adams, the daughter of Peter Boylston, was born and raised in Brookline.  Adams made numerous visits to Brookline in the course of his long life.

The Rev. John Pierce was ordained as minister of Brookline's First Parish in March 1797, the same month Adams was inaugurated as president.  Many years later, in 1849, Pierce shared this account of one of Adams' visits:

President Adams often mentioned with a lively interest this place of his mother's nativity.  While President of the United States, he called on the Hon. Jonathan Mason, where General Theodore Lyman's house now stands, and remarked, as a striking illustration of the changes in the manners and customs of the country, that the last time he had travelled over the road before, he carried his mother, horse-back, on a pillion behind him.¹

Perhaps the last visit of Adams to Brookline was described by John William Denehy in his 1906 history of the town:

In 1821, President Adams, then 86 years of age, having expressed a desire to again visit the house in which his mother was born, a grand dinner party, given in his honor by Mr. David Hyslop at which Governor Brooks, General Sumner, and other distinguished guests were present, was held at the old Boylston House, which had been purchased from the heirs of Dr. Za[b]diel Boylston, by Mr. Hyslop's father.²

JAMES MONROE
James Monroe came to Boston as president in 1817 and rode out to the country seat of Commodore William Bainbridge, former captain of the U.S.S. Constitution, where the president, according to a contemporary account, “breakfasted with that officer, his family, and some distinguished citizens, who composed the company.”³

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
Evidence of John Quincy Adams in Brookline, birthplace of his grandmother Susanna, is sparse, but Paul C. Nagel in his biography of Adams (John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life, Harvard University Press, 1999) mentions Brookline as one of several towns where the former president made lyceum speeches in 1842.

Adams was certainly aware of his Brookline heritage.  In his memoirs, he mentions speaking with the Rev. John Pierce of the First Parish Church at a dinner in Washington in September 1826, less than two months after his father's death:

Mr. Pierce spoke to me of the remains of my father's maternal family at Brookline—Boylstons and Whites—and of the ancient family estate in that town, which has gone into other hands.⁴

ANDREW JACKSON
Andrew Jackson came to Boston in June 1833 as part of a tour through the northeastern states.  He was honored at Harvard, and visited Bunker Hill, Lynn, Salem, and Concord, New Hampshire, among other places. Jackson became ill and had to cancel plans to visit Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Portland, Maine.

On his way back to Washington from Concord, the farthest point of his journey, Jackson and his party passed through Brookline to reach Roxbury where they spent their final night in Massachusetts.

Not everyone was happy to see the president in Boston.  He had defeated John Quincy Adams for the presidency in 1828, and many of Jackson's policies were strongly opposed in the region.  Some could only hold their noses as they watched the reception the president received. As one Massachusetts paper put it: "Let us not cease to remember that there is a broad line of distinction between the honors due to the office, and the respect due to the man."⁵

MARTIN VAN BUREN
As Andrew Jackson's vice president, Martin Van Buren accompanied Jackson on his Boston visit and passed through Brookline with the president on their way to Roxbury and then to Washington.

JAMES K. POLK
After visiting Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield, President James K. Polk on June 29, 1847 boarded a special train prepared in the latter city to take him to Boston.

Arriving in Brookline amid heavy rain "at the designated point a few rods west of the branch road leading from the mill-dam road," Polk boarded a barouche (a type of horse-drawn carriage) for the ride from Brookline into Boston. Polk's visit also took him to New Hampshire and Maine, where he celebrated the Fourth of July, before returning to Washington.

JAMES BUCHANAN
James Buchanan, as Polk's Secretary of War, accompanied him on his 1847 tour through the northeastern states, passing through Brookline with the president on the way to Boston in late June.  He was elected president nine years later.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Of all the presidents who visited or traveled through Brookline, Abraham Lincoln likely saw less of the town than any. Like Jackson, Van Buren, Polk, and Buchanan before him and Andrew Johnson after, Lincoln only passed through the town in transit between other cities and towns in New England.

In Lincoln's case, he was probably only in Brookline for a few minutes, cutting through the northernmost part of the town on a train en route from Boston to points west. (The tracks of the Boston & Worcester Railroad followed the same route through Boston, Brookline, and Brighton that the Mass Pike follows today.  Most of the Brookline section of the route was later transferred to Boston when Brighton, an independent town until 1874, was annexed to the city.)

Lincoln passed through Brookline this way twice: as an Illinois congressman in September 1848 while campaigning for Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate for president; and in March 1860, after visiting his son Robert at school in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Lincoln's 1848 campaign visit included speeches in Worcester, Boston, New Bedford, Lowell, Dorchester, Chelsea, Dedham, Cambridge, and Taunton.  On September 23, he boarded a train for home by way of Worcester, Springfield, and Albany, passing through Brookline near the beginning of the route.

In March 1860, Lincoln came to New England to visit his oldest son Robert, then a student at Phillips Exeter Academy.  He made speeches in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, and then followed the same train route west, through Brookline, Worcester, and Springfield to Hartford followed by more speeches in that city and others in Connecticut.  Two months later he won the Republican nomination for president at the party convention in Chicago.

ANDREW JOHNSON
Andrew Johnson came to Massachusetts in June 1867 for the dedication of a new Masonic Temple in Boston.  Arriving via Springfield and Worcester on the railroad, the president and his party disembarked in Brookline to a cheering crowd.

At the Longwood or Cottage farm [reported the New York Herald] there was a crowd of from twenty to thirty-five thousand citizens and military organizations numbering two or three thousand guns, all of whom indulged in the most cheerful and heartfelt demonstrations of welcome. A national salute announced the coming of the train, and as it approached the rural station the cheers which the concourse of people sent up completely deadened the screaming whistle and dinging of the bell of the locomotive.⁶

Johnson traveled "through the finest portion of Longwood, and past the elegant and picturesque residences that make Longwood and Brookline so famous” before making his way to Boston via the Town of Roxbury.

ULYSSES S. GRANT
Ulysses S. Grant visited Brookline at least twice, once during his presidency and once after leaving office.

As president, Grant came to Boston in late June 1872, two weeks after accepting the Republican nomination for a second term, to attend the World's Peace Jubilee and International Music Festival.  He met with Robert C. Winthrop and other trustees of the Peabody Educational Fund at the Revere House in Boston and attended a dinner at Winthrop's summer home on Warren Street in Brookline.  (Grant and Winthrop were among the original trustees of the Fund, established by George Peabody in 1867 to support Southern education.)

In October 1880, Grant was in Boston again for several days.  On the 15th, accompanied by John W. Candler of Brookline, Republican candidate for Congress, the then ex-president took a carriage ride through the suburbs, stopping for lunch at Candler's home on High Street Hill.

There may have been other visits as well. In an 1896 history of the town, Charles Knowles Bolton, writing about Brookline resident and railroad president Ginery Twitchell during the Civil War, noted a visit on an unspecified date.

Years afterward [wrote Bolton], Mr. Twitchell entertained in Brookline the great military leader of the war, General U.S. Grant. The general walked into the fields east of Kent street to see some wild animals kept by Mr. Twitchell's son.⁷

Another Ulysses S. Grant—the president's grandson Ulysses S. Grant III—lived on Brington Road in Brookline for a short time in the early 1900s while on military duty in Boston.  Grant and his wife Edith, the daughter of Teddy Roosevelt's Secretary of State Elihu Root, moved to Brookline after a Washington wedding attended by President Roosevelt and many U.S. and foreign dignitaries.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR
Chester A. Arthur, who succeeded the assassinated James Garfield as president in 1881, came to Boston in October 1882.  A large reception was held at Faneuil Hall on October 11th, and in the afternoon the presidential party climbed into barouches for an excursion to Brookline.

Riding out Beacon Street as far as the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, Arthur and his entourage were entertained at the Brookline estate of Charles Sprague Sargent before returning to Boston for the evening.

BENJAMIN HARRISON
Benjamin Harrison, elected in 1888 between the two terms of Grover Cleveland, took an excursion to Brookline by carriage in August 1889 during a visit to Boston, part of a week long New England sojourn.

Late in the afternoon of August 7th, the President and a large party, riding in carriages and accompanied by mounted officers, set out on a ride through Brighton and Brookline.  They climbed to the top of Corey Hill and proceeded from there to a reception at the home of Congressman John Candler on High Street Hill before returning to Boston.

See my earlier post Presidents in Brookline: Benjamin Harrison for more on Harrison's Brookline visit.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
While a student at Harvard, beginning in 1876, Theodore Roosevelt had an active social life. "The young collegian," wrote William Draper Lewis in a 1919 biography, "became a familiar figure in Cambridge and Boston—especially in Brookline—driving about in a sort of sporting phaeton, then the height of the New York style in equipages."⁸

But it was in Chestnut Hill in Newton in 1878 that Roosevelt was introduced to his future wife, Alice Hathaway Lee.  She was the cousin and next-door neighbor of Roosevelt's Harvard classmate Richard Saltonstall.  At 17, she was two years younger than Roosevelt.

After what was described as a tumultuous courtship, they were married on October 27, 1880—Roosevelt's 22nd birthday—in the First Parish Church in Brookline.  Alice Roosevelt died a little over three years later, on February 14, 1884 from Bright's Disease and complications from childbirth.  Roosevelt was devastated and was said to rarely speak about Alice thereafter.

A later visit to Brookline came in 1912, when the then ex-president stayed at the Brandegee Estate in South Brookline.  An Associated Press story reported how Roosevelt sped from the Back Bay Station to Brookline, pursued by the paparazzi of his day.

A flotilla of taxicabs, filled with reporters and camera men, tagged the speeding motorcar through the outlying section to the home of Edward M. Brandegee, in Brookline. The colonel reached the Brandegee home before even the first members of the camera squad could take a snapshot.⁹

Roosevelt stayed at the Brandegee home for four days before returning to New York.

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
William Howard Taft, who succeeded Theodore Roosevelt as president, spent the summers from 1909 to 1912 in his "summer capital" along the shore in Beverly, Massachusetts.  In September of the first year of his presidency, Taft came to Brookline for a field day held in his honor by the Yale Club of Boston.

The president (Yale, Class of 1878) played a round of golf at The Country Club, followed by a luncheon in his honor at the nearby home of Herman L. Whipple.  As the New York Times described it:

The President motored from the club grounds to Mr. Whipple's home, where the latter had invited a company of nearly 300 Yale men to meet President Taft at luncheon.  Following the luncheon came a reception under one of the towering elms on the Whipple lawn.  After the entire company had passed by in a single column and had shaken hands with the President, some one stopped and asked for an autograph on his menu card.  The idea was no sooner suggested than a hundred or more of the college men were swarming about the President in quest of similar souvenirs.¹⁰

Taft later watched the first inning of a baseball game between former Yale players before leaving for the return trip to Beverly.  (Asked to umpire the game, Taft declined, saying, according to the paper "I value my life too much for such a job as that.")

Four years later, Taft was at The Country Club again, in the gallery for the first day of play at the 1913 U.S. Open, the year Brookline's Francis Ouimet won his historic victory over British stars Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. In October 1915, the then ex-president Taft spoke in favor of the proposed League of Nations before 1,300 people in the Harvard Congregational Church on Harvard Street.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
Franklin Roosevelt, like his cousin and presidential predecessor Theodore, took part in a wedding in a Brookline church.  In FDR's case, it was not his own wedding but that of his oldest son James.

James Roosevelt and Betsey Cushing were married at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on June 4, 1930.  Franklin Roosevelt was governor of New York at the time.  The bride's father was renowned neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing of Brookline.

More than 500 guests—"leaders of the medical, political, diplomatic and social worlds," according to the New York Times—were in attendance.  Spectators, noted the Boston Globe, thronged the neighborhood around the church.

Several thousand intensely curious persons followed the incidents of yesterday's marriage and the reception following, with avid interest [reported the Globe].  The crowd of onlookers around the church grounds, in the triangle at Aspinwall av and St Paul st, was so great that it took a large force of policemen and motorcycle men to keep the surrounding streets free of congestion so that the machines conveying members of the bridal party and the guests might reach the church door conveniently.

The church lawns 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.¹¹

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.

JOHN F. KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy, of course, is the only U.S. President born in Brookline.  Kennedy was born May 29, 1917 in the family home on Beals Street, now a National Historic Site administered by the National Park Service and open to the public.

Kennedy lived in the Beals Street home for six years before moving with his family to a larger home on Naples Road nearby.  Kennedy attended both the Edward Devotion School and the Dexter School in Brookline before the family moved to New York in 1927.  He was baptized and served as an altar boy at St. Aidan's Church on Pleasant Street.

JIMMY CARTER
Jimmy Carter came to Brookline while running for the Democratic nomination for president in 1975.  Details of Carter's visit still need to be added.

GEORGE H.W. BUSH & GEORGE W. BUSH
George H.W. Bush was a former president and George W. Bush was seeking the Republican presidential nomination when they attended the Ryder Cup golf tournament together at The Country Club in Brookline  in 1999.

The younger Bush's attendance at the match between U.S. and European golfers was not without controversy.  Bush, then governor of Texas and leading in Republican polls, skipped the California Republican Convention to attend the tournament.  That drew criticism from some of his rivals for the party's nod, but did nothing to derail Bush's drive toward the eventual nomination and the White House.

BILL CLINTON
Bill Clinton made two appearances at campaign events in Brookline during his successful 1992 quest for the Democratic nomination for president. Clinton met with members of the Brookline Democratic Committee in January.  In April, he was back for a fund raiser at the home of Robert Farmer, his national campaign treasurer.

Clinton's January visit with the Brookline Democrats was paired with an appearance before the South Shore Chamber of Commerce in Dedham, a pairing the Boston Globe saw as indicative of his ability to reach out to different segments of the party.

Presidential hopeful Bill Clinton straddled the yin and yang of Massachusetts Democratic politics last week, [said the Globe] pitching his middle-class pragmatism in separate events to Dukakis Democrats in Brookline and Silber Democrats in Dedham, and leaving both crowds smiling.¹²

BARACK OBAMA
It was suggested when I first wrote this piece that Barack Obama may well have been in Brookline while a student at Harvard Law School, perhaps to eat in one of Brookline's restaurants, shop at its stores, or catch a movie at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.  Evidence of such an early visit may yet turn up.  But Obama definitely came to Brookline on May 18, 2011, making one of his two fundraising stops that day at the home of Jack & Eileen Connors in South Brookline.


NOTES
¹ "An address at the opening of the Town Hall, in Brookline: on Tuesday, 14 October, 1845." (A pillion is "a pad or cushion put on behind a man's saddle chiefly for a woman to ride on." - Merriam Webster Online.
 ² A history of Brookline, Massachusetts, from the first settlement of Muddy river until the present time: 1630-1906 
³ A Narrative Tour of Observation: Made During the Summer of 1817.
⁴ Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising portions of his diary from 1795 to 1848, Volume 7
⁵ "The President's visit to Boston." New-Bedford Mercury, June 21, 1833, p. 2.
⁶ "The Presidential tour." New York Herald, June 23, 1867, p. 3.
⁷ Brookline: the history of a favored town
⁸ The life of Theodore Roosevelt
⁹ "Roosevelt is welcomed by Boston crowd: Colonel bows to admirers and speeds to Brookline home." Pittsburgh Gazette Times (Associated Press), February 25, 1912, p. 6.
¹⁰ "President has fun with old Yale Men." New York Times, September 8, 1909, p. 10.
¹¹ "Miss Betsey Cushing married as throng surrounds church." Boston Globe, June 5, 1930, p. 12
¹² "Clinton finds favor playing to 2 audiences." Boston Globe, January 21, 1992, p. 12


 Presidential images from whitehouse.gov

African-Americans in Brookline: Seeking the First Homeowner

Roland Hayes
(Credit: Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Division,
Carl Van Vechten Collection)

The Brookline Commission for the Arts honored its 2012 grant recipients in a ceremony at Hunneman Hall in the Public Library on May 15th. Among them was the Roland Hayes Project, which celebrates the legacy of the pioneering African-American concert singer who lived in Brookline from 1925 until his death in 1977. (You can read more about Roland Hayes here.)

I had to leave before the Hayes Project was recognized, but I heard later that Hayes was said to be the first African-American to purchase property in Brookline. I wondered: Is that true?

Many people, places, and events are said to be the first this or the oldest that.  But the facts are often not that clear. There are doubters and disputants, caveats and qualifiers, questions and counter-claims.

First Things First?
Marblehead and Beverly, for example, have had a long-running debate over which is the birthplace of the American Navy. (The Navy says neither one is right.) No less than half a dozen communities (four of them in New England) have been cited as having the oldest public library in the United States. (Brookline’s library makes no such claim, but is said to be “the first to be organized under May 1851 state legislation allowing communities to tax themselves for such purposes.” Whew! There’s a qualifier for you.)

When I was a Boston tour guide, I learned to describe Old Ironsides, the U.S.S. Constitution in Charlestown, as “the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.” There are older warships still afloat, but they are not still commissioned in their nation’s navies, as is the Constitution. There’s an older commissioned warship: Admiral Nelson’s flagship H.M.S. Victory predates the Constitution by 38 years and is still commissioned in the Royal Navy. But it’s not afloat; it’s kept in drydock in Portsmouth, England. Got that?

Now, it doesn’t really matter whether Roland Hayes was the first, the third, the eighth or the 80th African-American to purchase property in Brookline. His legacy is secure, as is the dedication of the Hayes Project and Brookline to celebrate his talent and his musical and social struggles and accomplishments.

But my skepticism about historical firsts and my love of research led me to look deeper, and, as is often the case, my digging turned up much more than the answer to a single question.

Brookline, Race, and the Historical Record
I went through Census records, town directories, property maps, and newspaper archives. I “met” other African-American residents from Brookline’s past.  And I opened a window, if only a crack, into ways of learning more about an aspect of Brookline’s history that is often overlooked.

I started with the 1930 U.S. Census, the first to show Roland Hayes in Brookline. Records from the Census list 296 Brookline residents of the “Negro” race, out of a total population of 47,579 in 1930.  (Racial classification underwent a major change with the 1930 Census.  See this Wikipedia article for a brief overview of race and ethnicity in the U.S. Census' history)

About two-thirds of those listed as Negro in the Census that year were servants of one kind or another, living with other families and thus not homeowners themselves. (A portion of the search results, via Ancestry.com, is shown below.) A few were shown as lodgers or boarders. Most of the rest were heads of households or their family members.

A portion of the list of Brookline residents classified as "Negro" in the 1930 U.S. Census, as obtained by a search in Ancestry.com

The 1930 Census also indicated whether each home was owned (O) or rented (R).  If owned, it showed the value of the property; if rented, the amount of the monthly rent.  Of the 35 African-American heads of household in Brookline in 1930, six—two women and four men (including Hayes)—owned their own homes.

This portion of Roland Hayes' record in the 1930 Census shows that he owned his home at 58 Allerton Road and that it was valued at $15,000.  The third column from the right indicates his race as "Neg."

Samuel Davis and the Coolidge Corner Garage
Brookline town directories are available in Ancestry.com (and in the Brookline Room of the main library).  I went back to 1924, the year before Roland Hayes purchased the home at 58 Allerton Street and moved to Brookline.  I found Samuel A. Davis of 39 Marion Street, one of the six African-American homeowners from 1930, already there.

In fact, directories, maps, and deeds show Davis and his wife Mary at the Marion Street home as early as 1913 and at his adjacent business, the Coolidge Corner Garage, as early as 1907, nearly two decades before Hayes purchased his Brookline home.

This 1913 map shows the property of Samuel A. Davis on Marion Street.  The yellow (woodframe) building is the home of Davis and his wife Mary at 39 Marion Street.  The pink (brick) building at the back of the property is his business, the Coolidge Corner Garage.
Credit: WardMaps.com

Davis is intriguing.  Neither well-known or well-documented, he was an African-American homeowner and the proprietor of an auto garage at a time when very few African-Americans owned homes or businesses in Brookline.  (Auto garages were a new but growing presence on the scene in 1907.  Four years later, Davis' garage was one of eight in town providing charging stations for electric vehicles.  See my earlier post.) I'm doing further research and hope to tell more of Davis' story soon.

But Samuel and Mary Davis were not the first African-Americans to own property in Brookline either.

A Home on Kent Street at the Turn of the Century

131 Kent Street was the home
of Ulysses and Florida Ridley
 from the 1890s to the 1920s.
Credit: Town of Brookline

Ulysses A. Ridley and Florida Ruffin Ridley, purchased a home at 131 Kent Street around 1896, a decade before the Davises arrived in town and nearly 30 years before Roland Hayes. The Ridleys were the only African-American homeowners listed in Brookline in the 1900 U.S. Census.

Ulysses Ridley was a successful Boston tailor. Florida Ruffin Ridley was a member of a prominent African-American family in Boston. Her father, George Lewis Ruffin, was the first black graduate of Harvard Law School and served as a judge and a member of both the Massachusetts legislature and the Boston Common Council. Her mother, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, was a writer, editor, and organizer who became especially active on behalf of women's rights, education, and the advancement of African-Americans after the death of her husband in 1886.

This sketch of Florida Ruffin
Ridley appeared with an
article written by her in
the Boston Globe in 1894.
Credit: Boston Globe

Florida Ruffin Ridley followed in her parents' footsteps as an activist and a pioneer. She was educated at Boston Teachers College and Boston University and was the second African-American women to teach in the Boston public schools.  She was a co-founder, with her mother and others, of the Women's Era Club in Boston, a precursor to the National Association of Colored Women. She was a major contributor to the Club's journal, Women's Era, and other publications. In Brookline, she was an active member of the Equal Suffrage Association and a co-founder of the Second Unitarian Church on Sewall Avenue.  (You can read more about the Ruffin family here.)

The First?  ... Or Not?
So...

...were the Ridleys, who lived on Kent Street from 1896 until the early 1920s, the first African-American homeowners in Brookline?

Well, maybe. I could not find any others in the U.S. Census records from 1850-1880.  (The 1890 records were destroyed in a fire.) But there is not enough information in pre-1850 Census records and, of course, the Census records do not cover the years between each decennial Census. Plus, Brookline existed as an independent town for 85 years before the first Census in 1790.

Were there other African-American homeowners in Brookline before the Ridleys? I'll have to dig deeper to try to find out. I may or may not succeed. But like most such efforts, that research is bound to lead to other paths and other discoveries along the way.