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.
Electric and gas companies (and local businesses) promoted the benefits of their different means of powering appliances.
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| January 5, 1924 |
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June 26, 1924
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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.)
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| April 10, 1924 |
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| January 5, 1924 |
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| October 2, 1924 |
The local paper even had competing ads for gas and electric irons!
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| March 1, 1924 |
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| 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.)
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| 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.
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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.)
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| 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.
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