Sunday, March 17, 2024

St. Patrick's Day in Brookline, 1887: A Call for Independence

137 years ago today, on St. Patrick's Day in 1887, Brookline heard the call for Irish independence. At a holiday banquet at Lyceum Hall in Brookline Village, Charles Endicott of Canton delivered a rousing call on behalf of the Irish people.

"From my earliest boyhood I have entertained a deep regard for the people of the Emerald Isle," said Endicott, "and I have always had, and shall ever have, the profoundest sympathy and admiration for the manner in which they have endured for centuries the continued oppression of their British tyrants

 

"Never has the Irish heart submitted without protest to the yoke of England, and the hope of eventual emancipation from the unjust rule of Great Britain has ever sprung eternal in every Irish breast." 


"In spite of poverty and starvation the Irish people have always held steadfastly to the faith that their country must some day be free to develop the material and mental resources with which heaven has so bountifully blest her, the perfection of the possibilities of which has been prevented by the jealousy and greed of their English rivals at the point of the bayonet and at the mouth of the cannon."


The event was organized by Brookline's Grattan Club, organized a year earlier and named for Henry Grattan, an 18th and early 19th century campaigner for Irish rights. Ireland would not gain independence until 34 years later.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Sunday, March 24th: A History of the Brookline Fire Department


In September 1936, the main section of the 1895 Brookline High School building -- the first on its current site -- was destroyed by fire. It was a spectacular blaze, captured in photos like the ones above and in newsreel footage. (You can watch the newsreel online.)


The high school fire will be included in a talk -- "A History of the Brookline Fire Department" -- by retired Fire Chief John Spillane presented by the Brookline Historical Society on Sunday, March 24th. (There will be two sessions: at 2:00 pm and 3:30 pm). The program is free but registration is required.


Chief Spillane's talk will also cover other famous fires from Brookline's past, as well as the overall history of the department, including Brookline firefighters who died in the performance of their duties. The talk will take place at the Fire Department training facility behind Station #6 (by Horace James Circle).


For those interested, there will be tours of Station #6 and the  training facility after the  presentations.

To register for one of the programs, go to https://bit.ly/fireshistory2pm or https://bit.ly/fireshistory330pm.


There is plentiful parking on site for bikes and cars.


Wednesday, March 6, 2024

House Numbers Are Where It's At!

 

                         "Though fog or night the scene encumbers,
                           Why don't all the buildings show their numbers
                                     On lintel, wall, or door?
                          Why can't a house say good and plenty
                          'Hey look at me! I'm Nineteen-twenty,
                                     The joint you're looking for.'"

                                     -- Arthur Guiterman, 1950
 

Street numbers for houses -- and other buildings, too -- serve a fairly simple function. They make it possible to locate a particular building on a particular street. The numbers themselves, with rare exceptions, have no meaning beyond that basic navigational role.


They are a ubiquitous and utilitarian part of our everyday environment. But despite their ordinariness, building numbers can appear in an almost boundless variety of styles and designs, as the images in this post -- all gathered walking around Brookline -- show. 


They come in different fonts and different colors. They are made of different materials. They are displayed as numerals or words, arranged horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. They may have been bought off a rack in a hardware store or designed and created by an architect or graphic designer.


House Numbers Come to Brookline
House numbers were first introduced in Brookline in the 1880s, when mail delivery began in town. (Until then, residents and business owners would pick up their mail at the post office.) They were more common on some of the busier streets at first, though even there the use of numbers could be spotty, as seen in two excerpts from an 1890 town directory.

This page from the 1890 Blue Book of Brookline shows a portion of the Harvard Street listing, with some residences showing house numbers and others with no number.

Another page from the 1890 directory, showing houses on several street, but no house numbers

"Some measure ought to be adopted to compel the numbering of every house in town," opined the Brookline Chronicle in 1888.

Even when numbers were assigned, inconsistency was a source of confusion and complaint in those early years. "The person who has undertaken to number the houses on our street has made a mess of it," wrote one resident in a letter to the Chronicle, also in 1888.

Finally, in 1891, a new bylaw was passed giving the Board of Selectman the authority to order house numbers to be affixed or painted on any building in town.


At least one enterprising businessperson saw an opportunity in the new bylaw. Reuben Chase advertised in the Chronicle, offering signs, apparently of different designs, for sale.

Advertisement, Brookline Chronicle

A Chaotic Condition
Inconsistent enforcement and application continued to plague the town even after the adoption of the building numbering bylaw. "No carrier system can ever become wholly satisfactory so long as the present chaotic condition of house numbers continues" wrote the Chronicle in August 1898.


"The fact is even more apparent than it was a year ago," continued the paper, "that there is no street in the town in which the buildings are properly numbered, while in the newer sections a 'hit or miss' rule of numbering appears to be generally adopted."


Two years later, a competing paper, the Suburban, complained that the numbering system in the town "is confusing in the extreme" and that "something should be done about it at once."


As late as 1918, another Brookline paper, the Townsman, took store owners to task for the lack of numbers on their storefronts. "It has been called to our attention that many of the stores in Old Brookline lack proper identification by street numbers. Would it not be well for the merchants to see their street numbers adorn their store doors? What about it merchants?"


A year later, Town Engineer Henry Varney reported that from 400 to 500 notices were being sent out each year to homeowners who failed to post numbers on their homes.


Later in 1919, the Chronicle came down hard on homeowners who continued to ignore the house numbering by law:


By 1924, the town was able to report that "Practically all occupied buildings are now correctly numbered." Two years later, buildings on Brookline Avenue and Longwood Avenue were renumbered to conform with addresses on those streets across the town line in Boston, but compliance with the bylaw does not seem to be a problem today, even as GPS changes the way we find a particular place, in Brookline or anywhere else.


Unlucky 13?
Triskaidekaphobia -- fear or avoidance of the number 13 -- may be just a bit of whimsy for most people. After all, there's not much you can do about it if you were, say, born on the 13th of any month, let alone on a Friday the 13th. But one arena where the number 13 is mostly avoided is in house and building numbering.


There are even some office and apartment buildings that have no 13th floor. (They do, of course, have a thirteenth floor; it's just numbered 14.)


Even rarer are houses, businesses and other buildings using the number 13 for their address. Developers, builders, and homeowners, superstitious or not, have regularly skipped over that number when assigning addresses in cities and towns, large and small. There are even some reports that having the number 13 as an address lowers the value of a property.


Brookline is no exception when it comes to avoiding this number as an address. Do you know how many locations in Brookline have the number 13? The answer -- cue the Twilight Zone music -- is 13. Even that group seems to avoid the number. There are only 12 buildings on those 13 properties; one -- 13 Aston Road -- is marked "undevelopable" in the town assessor's database. Hmm.

Sunday, February 11, 2024

1924: Electric vs. Gas (and Coal and Oil, Too)

Ads: "Gas for Industrial Heat" and "Electricity is No Longer A Luxury"

Brookline in 2024 is a leader in moving away from fossil fuels. See, for example, the town's Sustainable Buildings page, its Electrify Brookline how-to guides, and other pages on the town website.


It's a transition period, with new local and state regulations and incentive programs paving the way toward a cleaner energy future. (As I write this, we are preparing to have heat pumps installed in our house, built in 1933 as part of the Blake Park development. See my Blake Park website for more on that development.)


One hundred years ago, Brookline (and other communities) were also in a period of energy transition, as evidenced by ads and news articles appearing in the Brookline Chronicle in 1924.

Brookline Chronicle banner


Electric and gas companies (and local businesses) promoted the benefits of their different means of powering appliances.

Ad: "Gas is Boston's Fuel"
January 5, 1924

Ad: "The  Friendly Glow. Try It in Your Home"
June 26, 1924

Gas companies also duked it out with oil and coal suppliers in ads, fighting for consumers' home heating dollars.  (Thomas Edison had invented an electric heating system as early as the 1880s, but it was not really a viable option in the 1920s.)

Ad. Clean, Efficient Heat Direct to Your Boiler"
April 10, 1924

Ad: "Radiant Heating Service"
January 5, 1924

Ad: "Coal is Foolproof and the Safest Fuel Known"
October 2, 1924

The local paper even had competing ads for gas and electric irons!

Ad: "Double Point IWANTU Comfort Gas Iron"
March 1, 1924

Ad: 'Now she can iron to her heart's content, with unburned fingers and back not bent."
February 23, 1924
 
There were still some Brookline homes with gas lighting in 1924, but that market was rapidly disappearing with increasing use of electric lights. Electric companies and suppliers also had their eyes on the kitchens of American homes.

In February 1924, the Edison Electric Light Company held a weeklong exhibition in Beacon Hall, on the second floor of the Beacon Universalist Church in Coolidge Corner. (Nine years later, the church building would be converted into the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline's first move theater.)

Ad: The Brookline Electrical Exposition
February 2, 1924 (Click image for larger view)

A highlight of the exhibition was a demonstration of an all-electric kitchen put on by the Modern Methods Kitchen, an organization headquartered on Boylston Street in Boston.

"The four women in charge [reported the Chronicle] duplicated as nearly as possible the work that is done in the Boylston Street Kitchen -- that is the education of women in the use of electrical appliances. They washed clothes in an electric washing machine and dried them in a drier that drove air through them so fast that in ten minutes they were dry and as sweet and white as if they had been hanging out of doors in a high wind. Then they put them in an ironing machine that smoothed out every wrinkle.

 

"They baked biscuits and cakes on the electric range and served them with varied and delicious fillings with a cup of S.S. Pierce coffee made in an electric percolator or in a Silex percolator made entirely of glass." 


The demonstration, reported the paper, also included waffles cooked on an electric waffle iron.

These photos of the Modern Methods Kitchen in Boston appeared in the magazine Electrical Merchandising in July 1923. "Not until a Boston housewife has brought her favorite recipe and had it actually cooked at the 'Modern Methods Kitchen' is she really convinced that the electric range will do all that is claimed for it!" read the caption on one. (A similar photo appeared in the Brookline Chronicle.)
(Click image for larger view)

Despite that optimism, the electric kitchen did not really take off. Annual reports from Brookline's Supervisor of Wires and Lights reported no more than two dozen installations of electric ranges per year throughout the 1920s, while thousands of electric lights and outlets were being installed annually. 

(There were also a handful of installations of electric waffle irons, as well as a few electric doorbells, time clocks, and even a couple of permanent wave machines.)

from 1924 Town Report

1924 did prove to be a big year for electric applications in general in Massachusetts, in part due to the opening of a huge new electricity generating station serving the metropolitan region. That plant, on the Fore River in Weymouth,  had a Brookline connection. 

The man behind its development was Brookline resident Charles L. Edgar of 259 Kent Street. An apprentice to Thomas Edison in the 1880s, he served as president of the Edison Electric Illuminating Co. in Boston from 1900 to his death in 1932.


Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Pages of the Past: Diaries of Two 19th Century Brookline Readers


Step into the past and explore the lives of two 19th century Brookline women and the books they read. This presentation will take place at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum on Saturday, February 10th, from 12:30 to 2:00 pm.

Proceeds ($15 per person) help support the non-profit museum, which is hosting the event. Register here.


Mary Wild raised six children in her home on what is now Weybridge Road, where she lived from the 1820s to the 1850s. Adelaide Faxon lived nearby, on Linden Street, as a teenager in the 1850s. Both houses are still standing. 

The 19th century homes of Mary Wild, left, and Adelaide Faxon, both still standing today.

One thing they had in common is that both were avid readers who documented what they were reading. The Brookline Historical Society has painstakingly transcribed and annotated the diaries of these women, providing insights into the tapestry of life and society in Brookline during the 1850s.


This program offers a look at the books they read and what they tell us about mid-19th century literature and two people who made it a part of their lives.


Diary entries from Mary Wild, top, and Adelaide Faxon, about books they read.

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Brookline Take-Out a Century Ago

"Dine at Home or Dine With Us"
Brookline Chronicle, October 16, 1920
(Click image for larger view)

Most restaurants today offer take-out as well as dine-in options. That's been true for a long time. At the height of the pandemic, that was the only way restaurants could survive -- many did not -- and delivery services like GrubHub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats expanded their operations.


A century ago, take-out from restaurants was rare and delivery practically unheard of. But an unusual, though short-lived, Brookline business was ahead of its time.

"Community Service Kitchen. Hot-Cooked Meals Delivered"
Image credit: Massachusetts Historical Society

The Community Service Kitchen opened in the western half of a recently constructed commercial building at 1473-1475 Beacon Street in June 1919. Two months later, the business doubled in size, taking over the other half of the two-storefront building as well.


(I told last week how this unusual building -- the only single-story structure and only commercial building on Beacon Street between Coolidge Corner and Washington Square -- came to be.)


Roger Wheeler in 1919
The business was the brainchild of two young Newton brothers-in-law: Guy E. Wyatt and Roger A. Wheeler, both 23.  Wyatt had been in the leather business. (He joked that he "knows the cow thoroughly, inside and out.") Wheeler had left Columbia University to serve in the ambulance corps in World War I. (He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his role in rescuing wounded French soldiers while under fire.)


The name "Community Service Kitchen" may sound like the kind of "soup kitchen" that served those in need, especially during the Great Depression that began a few years later. But it was not like that. 


Wyatt and Wheeler targeted middle- and upper-class women in Brookline, Newton, and the Back Bay.

"Let us save you the trouble and expense of cooking a hot meal every afternoon, and make it possible for you to sit down in the evening with your own family in the privacy of your own dining room to a delicious, hot, home-cooked dinner," they said in an article in the Brookline Chronicle.

 

"We can relieve you of the tiresome planning of meals, the trouble and labor of cooking them yourself, and make every afternoon the 'cook's day off' -- and we can do this at a lower cost to you than if you hire a cook at a present-day salary and give her board as well."

 
The meals were placed in aluminum containers "so constructed as to keep hot for several hours." (The article included a picture of the containers, shown below). 

 
The food was delivered by automobile, and the empty containers were picked up the next morning.


Two delivery vehicles of the Community Service Kitchen, their backs against the curb, are seen in front of the store in this photo. (Click image for a larger view). 
Image credit: Massachusetts Historical Society

"Every housewife can readily see the value of this service," wrote Wyatt and Wheeler. "No standing over a hot range all the afternoon; no worry about keeping the dinner hot and tasty, if Husband happens to come home a little later than usual; and, best of all, no greasy pots and pans to wash after dinner."


Pricing varied depending on how many meals were ordered in a week. Customers ordering meals less than four days a week paid the "casual rate": $1.25 per plate for weekday dinner; $1 per plate for weekday supper; $1.50 per plate for Sunday dinner. Customers placing orders for four or more days a week paid a discounted "regular rate."

"Delivered hot at your dinner hour"
This example of a daily dinner menu from the Community Service Kitchen appeared in the Boston Herald


The Community Service Kitchen was taken over in the fall of1923 by the Maddalena family who continued to operate it until 1926.

"Your Thanksgiving dinner. Prepared -- Delivered piping hot"
Brookline Chronicle, November 10, 1923

Maddalena Bros. Caterers. Wedding Receptions. Afternoon Teas. Two Deliveries Daily
Brookline Chronicle, May 22, 1924

Other businesses followed, as outlined in last week's article, with carpet and rug stores occupying part or all of the space for more than 80 years. It has been home to a childcare center since the 2010s.
 

Wyatt and Wheeler, the founders of the Community Service Kitchen, pursued other careers after that early business venture. Wyatt got into public relations and government service. He was director of field service for the U.S. Department of Commerce in the 1950s. He died in 1964 at the age of 68. Wheeler became a writer and teacher who wrote plays for radio and local theater and hosted a radio program on WEEI. He was 61 when he died in 1956.

Sunday, January 21, 2024

A Beacon Street Oddity

There is an unusual building on the south side of Beacon Street, just across from the inbound Brandon Hall stop on the MBTA Green Line. It's not particularly noteworthy architecturally. In fact, part of what makes the building stick out is its lack of notable architecture.

1473-1475 Beacon Street today


The small, plain, single-story storefront (1473-1475 Beacon Street) is the only one-story building and only strictly commercial building on Beacon Street between the Coolidge Corner and Washington Square commercial districts. It does stick out literally, extending several feet further toward the street than its taller neighbors.

This nondescript building, currently occupied by the School is Cool Academy, a childcare center, may be easy to overlook today. But it certainly wasn't when it was built, in 1915. In fact, it caused quite the furor in Brookline at the time.

"First Blemish on Beacon Street" headline
Headline and image from an article in the Boston Transcript on May 26, 1915

"The building, jutting out from the others, like a sore thumb, not only completely destroys the symmetry of the street," reported the Boston Transcript, "but is regarded by competent real estate men as of serious effect on property values on either side."

 

"Nearly everybody who passed this spot by foot or by car," continued the paper, "has wondered how it was possible for the builder to work with such utter disregard for long-standing conditions and with such lack of respect for the dignity and beauty of one of the most excellent home sections of Brookline."
 

Streei view from the early 1920s
The building at 1473-1475 Beacon Street a few years afters its construction

The developer, H. Bertram Finer, had built several residential and commercial buildings in Brookline. When he bought this undeveloped property, a narrow alleyway between two of the apartment buildings, his intent was to construct a three-story apartment building. That would fit in well with the apartment buildings on either side of it, five to the east and two to the west, all built between 1897 and 1903. 


Restrictions imposed on the site by the town and the difficulty of building at the back, where the plot sloped toward todays' Griggs Park, led to a change of plans. 

1913 and 1919 maps
These maps, from 1913 and 1919, show the empty alley and then the new building at 1473-1475 sticking further out on the sidewalk than the other buildings in the block. (The two sides of Beacon Street are at the top of the map, with the black and white lines representing the streetcar tracks.)

Finer, as well as the Board of Selectman that had approved his new plan, came under attack from other Beacon Street property owners. 

Headlines: "Angry at the Selectmen" and "Finer Anxious to Sell"
Headlines in the Boston Transcript on May 31 (left) and June 4, 1915

Finer was surprised. 

"I have never been accused of erecting cheap buildings until the present time," he told the Boston Transcript. "I don't like the accusation. In erecting the one-story building I had no idea of outraging the feelings of the abutters or anybody else who thinks of the city beautiful. If there is any way I can wash my hands of the whole thing. I am anxious to do it."


But the building remained -- and remains today -- an anomaly in this otherwise residential stretch of Beacon Street. Early tenants -- there were two storefronts, later combined into one -- included a plumbing and heating contractor and an upholsterer/interior decorator. 

There were a number of food-related businesses in the 1920s and 1930s, including an unusual (for its time) restaurant called the Community Service Kitchen that offered home-delivery of hot meals in special containers. (That's an interesting story that I'll cover in a separate post next week.)

But for most of its history, the building has been home to rug stores. Brookline Oriental Rugs and, later, Fine Art Rugs occupied all or part of the space from the late 1920s to the early 2010s when it was taken over by the School is Cool childcare center. 

c1920 view
The Community Service Kitchen, an eat-in and delivery restaurant, c1920.

1930s view
The Brand Spa, an ice cream shop, delicatessen, and convenience store in the 1930s. 1473 and 1475 Beacon Street had been combined into one store by this time, but the original separate entrances are clearly visible at left and right.

1951 view
This image from a 1951 ad for the Brookline Oriental Rug Co. shows the then newly installed angled entrance that is still in place today.

2010 view
Fine Arts Rug as seen in Google Street View in 2010, shortly before the space was taken over by the School is Cool Academy

2024 view
School is Cool Academy in 2024