Brookline's Fisher Hill Reservoirs

Mention “the reservoir” to people in Brookline today and they will probably think of one of two bodies of water: the Chestnut Hill Reservoir or the Brookline Reservoir.

But the Chestnut Hill Reservoir is actually in the Boston part of Chestnut Hill, just over the Brookline border.  

And the much older Brookline Reservoir, while in Brookline, was built as part of Boston’s water supply, not Brookline's.

 

This presentation is not about those reservoirs, but about three other Brookline reservoirs, all on Fisher Hill. These reservoirs no longer exist as bodies of water, but they have left their mark on the landscape and the town.

The map below at left, a portion of an 1855 map of Brookline, shows Fisher Hill at center left, north of the Brookline Reservoir.  The map at right shows more or less the same location today.

 

The older map was made 11 years after the Brookline Reservoir was built as part of the system bringing water from Lake Cochituate through Brookline to Boston. 

The New York and Boston Railroad, introduced in 1845, runs through the low-lying valley in the center of the map, between Fisher Hill and Aspinwall Hill. 

That, today, is the route of the D branch of the Green Line.

Beacon Street, laid out as a narrow, unpaved country lane in the 1850s, is to the north.

A few streets have been laid out across Fisher Hill, though houses are still largely confined to the lower slopes and would remain so for another 30 years.

By 1874, when the view below (part of a larger map) was produced, Brookline was in the process of building its own reservoir on Fisher Hill to serve the town. 

A natural pond, shown in the circle in the center of this view, had been converted into an earthen basin to hold water that could flow through pipes from the high elevation of Fisher Hill to other parts of the town.

The water came from the Charles River, at the Dedham/West Roxbury border, four miles away.

“The Town of Brookline,” reported the Boston Globe, “is now actively engaged in laying down pipes, constructing reservoirs, and setting up the machinery for a supply of water from Charles River.” 

“The water is to be raised to an elevated point near the river….whence it will flow by its own gravity to the summit of Fisher's Hill…. 240 feet above tidewater.”

“From this point it is distributed through service pipes to the consumers.”

The pumping station in West Roxbury, shown below, was built on land owned by the Town of Brookline. It sent the Charles River water through through pipes up to Fisher Hill.

In 1888, the City of Boston built the Fisher Hill Reservoir, across Fisher Avenue from Brookline’s reservoir, as part of Boston’s own water supply

In 1893, Brookline added a second, smaller, covered reservoir to its own water system. It is under the dashed lines, marked “Brookline Water Works," between Fisher Avenue and the town’s older, open reservoir, on the map below.

The trade journal The Engineering Record presented sketches of the unusual covered reservoir. 

But to really get a sense what that looked like, here are underground photos from a few years ago, before a new development was built on the site of the long-unused covered reservoir.

 

By the time of the 1907 map below, the older, open reservoir of the Brookline Water Works had also been covered.

A brick house, owned by Josephine and Frederick Gay, had been built just north of the reservoirs.

This aerial view below, from 2025, shows new housing, outlined in pink, in the area once occupied by the Brookline reservoirs.

Fisher Hill Reservoir Park occupies the space of the former Boston reservoir.

The former Josephine and Frederick Gay house is now Mitton House, named for a later owner and now part of a new senior housing complex called The Newbury at Brookline.

The following views show some of the varied landscapes of today’s Fisher Hill Reservoir Park, opened in 2016…

...while some of the brickwork from the old town reservoir can be seen in the lawn of a new, town-built mixed-income housing development....

...along with an historical marker telling the history of the site.

The Pierce School the Municipal Triangle, Part 1

The map below shows the triangle formed by Harvard Street, Washington Street, and School Street in Brookline Village. It is the location of the Town Hall, the Public Library, the Health Department, and -- for 170 years -- a succession of buildings of the John Pierce School.

You might call it the Municipal Triangle.

The northern part of the triangle was, from 1974 to last year, the location of the fifth building to carry the name Pierce School. It was recently torn down and will be replaced by the sixth building in the long history of Pierce.

The oldest of those buildings, erected in 1855, still stands, along with a larger 1904 addition.

That combined 1855/1904 building--its interior completely changed--will continue to be a part of the school.

I've put together Part 1 of an online history of the municipal triangle. It tells the story of the school, three Town Halls, and other town buildings up to 1970 and the decision to build a new Pierce School, the recently demolished 1974 building.

Part 2, still to come, will cover the 1974 school and bring the story of the Pierce School and the municipal triangle up to the present.

You can watch the illustrated and narrated 30-minute presentation at https://bit.ly/pierceschoolpart1

Spring Walking Tours of Brookline History

This spring's series of Brookline history walking tours kicks off this Sunday at 9 am with 165 Years of Shopping in Coolidge Corner.

Coolidge & Brother Store, 1887

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. 

Join me for a 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. The tour is free, but registration is required. Register at https://bit.ly/coolidgecorner04132025 . 

The tour will begin at the Coolidge Corner inbound T-stop on Beacon Street. For a full list of spring tours, see the Brookline Historical Society website at https://brooklinehistoricalsociety.org/

Brookline's Oldest Restaurant (Or Is It?)

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about Brookline's oldest restaurant, the Busy Bee, which opened on Beacon Street just east of Carlton Street in April 1955.

Ad announcing the grand opening of Busy Bee. Brookline Citizen, April 14, 1955, p7.

Busy Bee has now closed, as reported in Brookline News. So which restaurant gets to wear the crown as Brookline's oldest?

Well, it depends.

By one measure, Martin's Coffee, which replaced Muldoon's Luncheonette at 35 Harvard Street in Brookline Village in November 1955, gets boasting rights. 

Ad in Brookline Citizen, November 24, 1955

But wait. The Martin's website says "Local Fresh Food Since 1918."

And a mural on the inside of the restaurant also says 1918.

Could it be that Muldoon's, the luncheonette that, according to that 1955 ad, was replaced by Martin's, was a restaurant in that space as far back as 1918?

No. Muldoon's opened at 35 Harvard Street in 1948, moving from the nearby building at the corner of Harvard and Linden Street where it had started in 1946, not 1918. 

Brookline Citizen, December 2, 1948. (Click image for larger view)

In fact, there was no retail space at all at 35 Harvard Street in 1918. The three-story building was constructed as an apartment building in the 1890s and the first floor wasn't converted to retail space until 1926. It was then occupied by a series of drugstores -- no restaurants -- until after World War II.

So where does that 1918 date come from? Nobody at Martin's seems to know. (Every time I've asked, I've been told the owner is in his native Albania and is unavailable for comment.)

Still, though Martin's dates to 1955, not 1918, it is -- with the closing of Busy Bee -- now Brookline's oldest restaurant.

Sort of.

As I noted in that 2022 blog post, there is one Brookline storefront that has been a restaurant  -- but not the same restaurant -- longer than Martin's. It's the space at 1016 Commonwealth Avenue at the corner of Babcock Street, now occupied by T. Anthony's.

That storefront, which -- like the Martin's space -- was added to the front of an existing apartment building in the 1920s, was occupied by the Hawthorne Lunch restaurant from 1923 to 1933. Later restaurants include a branch of the Walnut Lunch chain and the Babcock Luncheonette. T. Anthony's took over the space in 1964. 

Adding to the confusion, the T. Anthony's website says "Established in 1976," not 1964! (Turns out that when the current owner took over the then-12-year-old restaurant.)

The Brookline News story on the closing of Busy Bee noted that the Christakis family, which operated the restaurant and still owns the building, is negotiating with a prospective new restaurant tenant. "We’re looking for somebody to keep it the way it is, keep it similar,” Chris Christakis told the paper. A future tenant, he added, might not even change the name.

If that turns out to be the case, if the restaurant that opened in April 1955 comes back, with a new owner in the same location, but with the same name and kept "the way it is," will Busy Bee reclaim the title of Brookline's oldest restaurant.

As always, it depends on how you look at it.

Amateur Photography in 19th Century Brookline

The May 6, 1882 edition of the Brookline Chronicle included a list of 33 books recently added to the collection at the Brookline Library. There were books of history, fiction, science, and travel. 

There were some how-to books, including two guides for would-be painters: A Course of Lessons in Landscape Painting in Oils and Easy Studies in Water-Color Painting.

There was also a how-to book on a relatively new and increasingly popular art form: photography.

"A Sensible Craze"

"Anyone who has undertaken to be his own photographer will tell you there is a great infatuation about it," noted a review of the book in another newspaper. 

"Hence it may be termed a craze," continued the review. "It is also a high art to be able to catch and preserve any little scene of beauty that one may chance to meet with on his summer vacation. Any true art is sensible, therefore amateur photography is a sensible craze."

A year later, the Brookline Chronicle reprinted a lengthy article on "Amateur Photography" from the New York paper The Hour. "The amusement and services that may be had at the cost of a small, cheap photographic outfit are almost numberless," it said.

"Expression, which is the life of a portrait, cannot always be assumed to order in a studio, except by persons whose features are under unusual control, while children's pictures are generally of the variety known as 'wooden.' 

 

"But at home every expression of countenance may be seen and caught. Poses that do not come willingly amid unfamiliar surroundings and before strange observers, succeed each other rapidly in the unrestraining atmosphere of the family circle." 

Technical Innovation and the Boston Camera Club

The growth of amateur photography was spurred by the technical innovations of George Eastman and Henry Strong in Rochester, NY, beginning with dry emulsion glass plates in 1880. Camera clubs and photographic societies, taking advantage of the new, less complicated method of developing photos, sprung up across the country, including in Boston.

The Boston Society of Amateur Photographers was formed in 1881. Five years later, the name was changed to the Boston Camera Club.

Click on image for larger view

Among the early members of the club were several Brookline men, including James Codman (one of the founders), William Hovey, George E. Cabot, John Hubbard, Robert Amory, Percival Lowell, and Edward Philbrick.

This 1886 photo of Cora Codman, age 12, may have been taken by her father, James, one of the founders of the Boston Camera Club. It is one of more than 40 photos of Brookline and Boston children in an album in the collection of the Brookline Historical Society.

The Boston Camera Club is the second-oldest continuously extant amateur camera club in the United States. Headquartered in Boston for most of its existence, it was based in Brookline from 1980 to 2023 before returning to Boston.

The Kodak Camera and the Brookline Camera Club

The next big innovation from Eastman in Rochester -- the Kodak camera -- had a big impact on the growth of amateur photography, including in Brookline. . 

Kodak advertisement, Rochester, NY, August 1888

The Kodak did away with glass plates altogether. The photographer could shoot multiple images without reloading, then send the film to Rochester to be developed, with the finished images shipped back to the sender when they were done.

In 1891, the Brookline Chronicle ran an article about effective advertising, reprinted from the Milwaukee Journal. One of the most effective ad slogans the article cited was Kodal's "You press the button, we do the rest."

1889 Kodak advertisement

In October 1889, it was announced in the Chronicle that a meeting would be held to form a Brookline Camera Club.

"It is desired that all interested in this most fascinating art be present. The object of the club is for social intercourse and the interchange of views, and there are a sufficient number of photographers here to make it a success."

"Amateurs of both sexes are invited," reported the Brookline Chronicle, adding that "the club's constitution provides that "two of the members of the executive committee shall be ladies."  The club was also looking into setting up a darkroom and studio for its members. The club held exhibitions, discussions, and other events in town.

C.A. Chandler, who wrote about photography for the Boston Globe, had noted the creation of the Brookline club in his column.  But he was not a fan of amateur photography.

 

"'Amateur' in its original meaning," he wrote, "is 'a lover of,' and as applied to photography would convey that the man to whom it was applied was an enthusiastic lover of, and consequently a skilled adept in, the art.

 

"Now," he continued, "the meaning is degraded, and the man who buys a detective [a generic name for some 1880s box cameras], presses the button, and sends his paper or plates to be developed and printed from, is an amateur. He knows no more of the art than does the organ-blower [the person who pumped the air into pre-electric pipe organs] know of music."

 
Chandler's criticism notwithstanding, amateur photography continued to grow in popularity with men and women, young and old, including in Brookline, even as professionals came to town.

Brookline Chronicle brief, January 4, 1890

Next up: Professional photographers in Brookline into the 20th century. See also the first article in this series: Brookline Photographers: The Early Years.

Brookline Photographers: The Early Years

In the early days of photography, Brookline people who wanted to have their picture taken traveled into Boston. For example, Mary Wild, in an 1856 entry in her diary, described going with her daughter Laura to have daguerreotypes taken at the studio of J.A. Whipple on Washington Street.

This advertisement for John A. Whipple's daguerreotypes was in the Boston Directory published in 1848, eight years before Mary Wild and her daughter had their pictures taken there. (Click image for larger view.)

By the 1870s, Boston photographers were advertising their services to Brookline's growing population in town directories. 

Cambridge photographers got in on the act as well. In 1887, H. William Tupper, "manager and photographer" at Pach's Studio near Harvard Square, advertised his services in the Brookline Blue Book, an annual directory, noting that his studio was "just a short ride in the horsecar" from Brookline.

Boston-area photographers also came to Brookline to take or to show pictures. The famed photographer J.W. Black -- he had taken photographs before the Civil War of John Brown and Walt Whitman as well as the first aerial photograph in the United States -- had come to town in 1872 to present a display of stereopticon images at Town Hall. 

In 1882, a photographer named F.J. Aiken had set up temporarily in town, offering to take photos of local people.

This notice appeared in the Brookline Chronicle on October 7, 1882. Seven weeks later, the paper noted that "The daguerreotype saloon on High street has been pronounced a nuisance and its removal ordered." This was presumably Aiken's operation, though there is no further information available.

First Brookline Photo Studio

Finally, in May 1888 a short item in the Brookline Chronicle announced that the town would soon have its own photo studio.

"Mr. W.H. Partridge, the well known photographer...will soon erect a studio on Harvard street opposite the Baptist church. Mr. Partridge is one of the foremost artists in the country and he will doubtless be liberally patronized by the residents of this town."

Partridge's studio on Harvard Street is highlighted on this portion of an 1893 map

William H. Partridge was born in Virginia in 1858, in a part of the state that became West Virginia during the Civil War.  The family moved to Massachusetts, where William's father, Asa, became a photographer. (He is one of the Boston photographers whose 1870s advertisements in Brookline are shown above)

William, with his older brother Edward and later on his own, continued in the photo business in Boston after their father moved to California. "Mr. Partridge's work stands second to none in the country," wrote the Chronicle in September, noting that the studio

"is supplied with the best apparatus and a large variety of desirable accessories. Every kind of photographic work will be artistically executed, from the smallest locket picture to a life-size portrait. If desired, pictures will be taken at residences."

Partridge ad in the 1889 Brookline directory

Partridge hired others to manage the Brookline branch of his business, starting with a woman named A.E. Perkins who, according to the Chronicle, "has had an extended experience with leading photographers in Massachusetts, and has been very successful with children's pictures."

Enter A.T. Barraud

In 1890, Partridge hired a Canadian landscape and marine painter and photographer named Alfred Thomas Barraud to manage the Brookline studio. (Barraud's father, Francis, was an English painter best known for the 1898 painting His Master's Voice which was used as the longtime symbol of the Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Victor.) 

A.T. Barraud would remain in charge of the Brookline studio for more than 30 years, until his death in 1925. 

Alfred and Catherine Barraud, Boston Globe, July 25, 1922

The April 1906 issue of Wilson's Photographic Magazine featured six photos of children taken by Barraud at the Partridge studio in Brookline. (Two of the photos are below. See larger versions of all of the photos here.)

The 1880s were also a significant decade for the growth of amateur photography in Brookline (and elsewhere). That aspect of local photographic history will be the subject of my next post.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!

I'm always going down rabbit holes, never knowing where any one thread of Brookline history is going to take me. 

My latest expedition began with a recent article by Celeste Alcalay in Brookline News about Jamie's Ice Cream Co., a small business that was added to the Brothers & Sisters café on Station Street in 2022. 

Brookline News photo by Molly Potter.

I'd done some digging into Brookline's ice cream history before, after the 2013 closing of Sealey's Lunch, which began as Sealey's Ice Cream on Cypress Street in 1936. You can read about that in my original post and a later follow up.

But little did I know how long, rich, and flavorful was the history of ice cream in town.

Ice Cream of All Sorts and Flavors

As early as 1870, ice cream was for sale in the "new dining rooms" at J. Anson Guild's Guild Block at the intersection of Washington and Boylston Streets. (The building was later replaced by the Brookline Bank building, now the NETA marijuana dispensary.)

The Guild Block, left in an 1872 photo, and an 1870 Brookline Transcript advertisement featuring ice cream at one of the businesses in the block. (Click image for larger view.)

Five years later, George Perkins advertised his "dining & ice cream rooms" with "ice cream constantly on hand" in the new Colonnade Block between Station Street and Andem Place.

The first two buildings of the Colonnade Block, still standing today, are shown in the 1874 photograph at left. The third building, where the Brookline Village Post Office is today, was built in 1875, the year the advertisement at right appeared in the Brookline Chronicle. (Click image for larger view.)

The bill of fare at the café, wrote the Boston Globe in October 1875, "is served in a manner that would put some of our first-class cafés all in the shade."

"Mr. Perkins," said the paper, "will continue to cater for private parties as usual, and the parties can be supplied with ice cream of all sorts and flavors, in large and small quantities, at short notice."

Other Brookline businesses -- including restaurants and retail food shops -- also included ice cream in their offerings in subsequent decades. 

(Click image for larger view.)

The "Quick-Freeze" and A New Ice Cream Era

But the real boom in ice cream -- not just in Brookline, but everywhere -- came in the 1930s, spurred by a new, faster, cheaper, more consistent ice cream making process.  (Clarence Vogt's patent for "An Apparatus for Manufacturing Ice Cream and the Like" was awarded in October 1929.)

In May 1931, the H.P Hood & Sons creamery announced that their first store using Vogt's new "quick-freeze" process would be opened in Coolidge Corner. "Quick-freezing," reported the Brookline Chronicle

"has wrought marvels in preserving the natural flavor and texture of several staple food products and applied to the manufacture of ice cream it has brought astonishing results in the improvement of quality by giving greater smoothness and richness."

 

The H.P Hood store at 1300 Beacon Street is shown here in 1936, four years after it opened. The space is now occupied by Coolidge Coolidge Corner Wines & Liquors

In the spring of 1932, another new business, "presenting for the first time [according to the Chronicle] a new idea in the field of merchandising ice cream," opened at 326 Harvard Street.

Named simply the Ice Cream Shop, it was the first in Brookline to sell only ice cream. (Hood's sold all kinds of dairy products.)  "As nothing else is handled," reported the paper, "a remarkable product is made and this is sold at an unusual price."

Brookline Chronicle, September 1932. The Ice Cream Shop occupied the space that is now Cold Brew.

Also opening in the spring of 1932 was a branch of Brigham's ice cream and confectionary store on Beacon Street at the corner of Williston Road. (The space is now occupied by the Sanela hair salon, next door to the Barcelona wine bar and tapas restaurant.)

Brookline Chronicle, January 26, 1933

Sealey's Ice Cream began its long run in Brookline in June of 1936. Six months later and two miles west on Boylston Street, Brookline's first Howard Johnson's restaurant -- as noted for its 28 flavors of ice cream as for its food -- opened  in Chestnut Hill near the border with Newton. (A second Brookline HoJo's opened in Coolidge Corner in the 1950s.)

Brookline Chronicle, December 12, 1936. The Chestnut Hill building, greatly modified, is now occupied by the Charles Schwab investment firm.

The Modern Pied Piper: The Good Humor Truck

Children lining up at the Good Humor truck, as seen in a 1932 advertisement

Howard Johnson and Sealey's were not the only ice cream newcomers in 1936 Brookline. That year also saw the introduction of Good Humor ice cream trucks to New England. Their base of operation? A large garage on Dummer Street just south of Commonwealth Avenue. 

Good Humor ice cream had started in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1923. Thirteen years later, its Massachusetts operation began with a fleet of refrigerated trucks that left the Brookline garage each day to sell the ice cream on a stick treat all over the streets of the Boston area.

"Each morning," reported the Brookline Chronicle, "the 40 little trucks are ammonia-ized and ice cream-ized, & off they go all over Metropolitan Boston to put people into good humor, but more important, to put Good Humor into people."

 

76 Dummer Street today

Good Humor trucks no longer operate, though the ice cream brand is still distributed through stores. And ice cream, introduced to Brookline more than 150 years ago, is as popular as ever in town today.