Early Automobiles in 19th Century Brookline

In the spring of 1891 an unusual vehicle appeared on the streets of Brookline. 

It had body built by local carriage maker Michael Quinlan, with two seats up front and an enclosed wooded box behind. Inside the wooden box was a battery-powered electric motor that had been built at the Holtzer Cabot Electric Company factory on Station Street.

The vehicle had been built for lumber magnate Fiske Warren of Waltham. Warren had seen electric powered horseless carriages in France and wanted one for himself. 

Not everyone was happy to see the new contraption on local streets. The Boston Globe, in 1893, called Warren's vehicle "an uncomfortable fad for public highways and skittish horses," adding that "It is certainly ugly enough to frighten even enlightened humans."

One local resident, Philip Sears, petitioned the Board of Selectman to ban such vehicles within the town, claiming that "the carriage was as noisy as a steam-roller" and that he narrowly escaped injury when his horse was frightened by Warren's electric carriage ." Sears, according to the Boston Transcript "believed that if the carriage is allowed upon the streets his experience is not likely to be the only one of its kind."

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In 1895 Warren had another vehicle built, one that looked more like what we think of when we think of early automobiles. Holtzer Cabot made the engine for this one, too, and Charles Holtzer took the members of the Board of Selectman for a ride. 

Charles Holtzer (at the wheel) and Brookline's selectman taking a ride in Fiske Warren's 1895 electric automobile 

In May the Boston Herald ran a long article about "the electric road carriage," with a sketch of Warren's new vehicle. "It is not venturing too much," predicted the paper, "to anticipate that eventually the great bulk of our street and highway traffic will be done on carriages propelled by electricity or some other form of power."

In July the Brookline Chronicle noted that "Following close upon the bicycle and the trolley, the horseless carriage is coming into fashion." The tide was clearly turning, in Brookline and elsewhere. The biggest question seemed to be what to call these new forms of transportation.

Boston Globe, January 26, 1896 (reprinted from New York Herald)

In February 1896 the Board of Selectman held a hearing in Town Hall to discuss widening Boylston Street from Cypress Street to the Newton line, in part to accommodate the growing use of bicycles as a means of transportation. But not just bicycles:

"Then there is the coming 'horseless carriage," Alfred Chandler told the board, "already a successful mode of locomotion and of transportation, soon to be applied far and wide over our great domain."

 

"The manufacture of these vehicles on an extended scale for park and general usage has already begun," Chandler continued. "It would be folly to disregard this factor in building new thoroughfares. Bicycles and horseless carriages demand more room on our highways to secure comfort and safety for all who use them." 

There was even a plan, noted in an illustraated 1899 article, to bring motorized bus service to town, though it did not end up being implemented.

Brookline Chronicle, May 27, 1899

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By the turn of the century, automobiles were increasingly seen in Brookline, as they were in other U.S. cities and towns. (The 1904 Brookline directory, the first to list automobile owners, showed 175 households owning a total of 225 vehicles. By contract, there were almost twice as many owners of horses, with most owning more than one and several more than a dozen.)

This page from the 1904 Brookline Directory shows some of the town's automobile owners, along with ads for the Peerless Motor Car Co. and the Brookline Automotive Garage.

Along with these early cars came early car accidents, like these, reported by in the local press:

Brookline Chronice, July 15, 1899

The Suburban, July 20, 1899

Accidents or not, automobiles had begun their long run in Brookline.

What’s in a name? Mapping Brookline Neighborhoods

Nearly 300 Brookline people responded to my survey about what they call their Brookline neighborhoods. I mapped the responses and wrote about them in an article on Brookline News.

You can read the article and see neighborhood-by-neighborhood maps at https://brookline.news/whats-in-a-name-mapping-brookline-neighborhoods-with-help-from-readers/. 

Take a look and see if you agree with what others call your neighborhood or other parts of town.

What Do You Call Your Brookline Neighborhood?

Map image courtesy of the town of Brookline.

The town of Brookline, like many cities and towns, is made up of several neighborhoods. But what are they called and what are their boundaries?

The answers to these simple questions are not so simple.

Different maps and websites and neighborhood associations may have different names for some of the same parts of town. Or the same names and different boundaries. Some sites show names that may not appear on any map or have any official or quasi-official status.

So what do you call your Brookline neighborhood? Join readers of Brookline News (for whom I first wrote this article) in sharing your name for the part of town where you live: https://brookline.news/what-do-you-call-your-brookline-neighborhood/. (The form is at the bottom of the article.)

I’ll report back with trends and patterns and try to make sense of what is where and where is what.

The Stereopticon: PowerPoint of the 19th Century

On June 24, 1871, the Brookline Transcript announced an "Exhibition of Arctic Views" to be shown to "the scholars of the public schools" at Town Hall. The views, from an expedition led by the artist William Bradford, were said to be "highly instructive, as well as entertaining."

One of the Arctic images from William Bradford's travels

The images were displayed using a device known as the stereopticon, sometimes called the "magic lantern," that projected them on a screen behind the speaker. It was a principal way of delivering illustrated lectures in days before motion pictures, and a common late 19th and early 20th century means of illustrating talks on a wide variety of topics.

The stereopticon projected two slightly different images together to give a sense of three dimensions.

This example of a stereopticon projector was in a 1900 advertisement

This illustration shows an example of a 19th century stereopticon presentation in a large theater.

In Brookline, stereopticon lectures were held in various locations, including churches, schools, and meeting halls, as well as the Town Hall. World travel was a popular topic, with illustrated talks on Egypt, Mexico, the Rhine River, Switzerland, and other parts of the world.

Mae Durell Frazar, a writer and organizer of European tours, gave a series of stereopticon lectures in Brookline's Town Hall in 1891.

Robert Luce, a writer and later lieutenant governor and member of Congress, gave a stereopticon lecture on Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition "of equal interest to those who went to the Fair and those who did not."

Early versions of the stereopticon used candles or oil lamps as the source of light, while later versions used chemically-enhanced limelight for more powerful illumination.

Art and culture were other popular topics for local talks illustrated with stereopticon images:

• Students from the School of Elocution and the New England Conservatory of Music presented an illustrated reading of Longfellow's "The Courtship of Miles Standish" in Town Hall in 1879.
• In 1892,  Annie S. Peck, an expert on Greek antiquities, delivered a series of illustrated lectures at the Bethany Building at the corner of Washington and Cypress Streets.
  

Technology itself was discussed in some talks:

• George Hartwell's 1887 talk on "Harnessing Lightning" looked at "the latest, most novel and practical application of electric power." These included lighting -- The Town Hall was lit up with electric lights -- as well as the use of electricity for sewing machines, pumps, and an electric monorail in New Jersey
• In 1894, John C. Packard, a longtime science teacher at Brookline High School delivered a talk on the telegraph and the telephone, illustrated (according to the Brookline Chronicle) with an "excellent series of stereopticon views" which "were thrown upon the screen" and "added greatly to the clearness of the lecture."

Other stereopticon-illustrated lectures in Brookline covered social welfare topics, including talks by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and others on temperance, clean water, the work of the  Tuskegee Institute, and "the relation of physical training to education."

In 1897, the Chronicle reported on the use of an electric-powered version of the stereopticon at Brookline High School. 

"The light furnished is very steady and uniform, and is powerful enough to so compete with daylight that the blinds are left partially open in the lecture room during demonstrations with the stereopticon, thus allowing students to take necessary notes."

The use of stereopticon slides diminished with the advent of motion pictures in the 1910s, but they were still used in occasional lectures in Brookline as later as 1941. They even made an appearance at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in a 1989 presentation by 3-D photography expert Ron Labbe. 

Ron Labbe's 1989 show of 3-D photography included late 19th/early 20th century stereopticon slides.

The New Coolidge Corner Theatre

Brookline Chronicle, April 21, 1923
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The Coolidge Corner Theatre, a Brookline treasure for more than 90 years, had a grand opening and ribbon cutting of its newly expanded and revised spaces this week. But did you know that Brookline fought for 20 years against having a movie theater in town before the Coolidge finally opened in 1933?

Read about the struggle to bring a movie theater to town in this this two-part blog post from 2009:

• The Movies Come to Brookline -- At Last! Part 1   |   Part 2 

March 26, 2024

Brookline History Walking Tours: Spring 2024

This spring's series of Brookline history walking tours kicks off on April 14th with a tour of the Coolidge Corner shopping district. There are three other walking tours in April and May. All tours are free and open to the public. Details and links for registration are below.

Sunday, April 14th, 9 am - 10 am
Walking Tour: 165 Years of Shopping in Coolidge Corner

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.

Register at https://coolidgecorner041424.eventbrite.com 
Tour begins in front of Trader Joe's, 1317 Beacon Street

Sunday, April 21st, 10 am - 11:30 am
Brookline Village Walking Tour

Highlights will include:

• Brookline’s earliest commercial center, featuring brick buildings from the 1870s
• The Lindens, one of the first planned residential developments in the U.S. (1840s)
• Emerson Garden and the Elijah Emerson House on Davis Avenue (1846)
• White Place, with one of the largest concentrations of vernacular architecture in Brookline
• The town’s civic center, site of the Town Hall, the public library, the Pierce School, and other municipal buildings.

Register at https://brooklinevillage042124.eventbrite.com

Tour begins in front of The Village Works, 202 Washington Street

Sunday, May 5th, 10 am - 11 am
Beaconsfield Terraces Walking Tour

Learn about the chateaux-like Beaconsfield Terraces, on the south side of Beacon Street from Dean Road to just beyond Tappan Street, a residential complex built in the 1880s in which people owned their units but shared ownership of a 6-acre park, stables, a playhouse (known as the Casino), tennis courts, a playground, and a central heating plant.

Register at https://beaconsfield050524.eventbrite.com
Tour begins in front of Star Market, 1717 Beacon Street

Sunday, May 19th, 2 pm - 3:30 pm
Blake Park: History of a Neighborhood

In 1880, banker Arthur Welland Blake engaged Frederick Law Olmsted to draw plans for the subdivision into roads and lots of the Blake family estate on the lower part of Brookline's Aspinwall Hill. Olmsted's plans were never executed, and the estate remained a large tract of open land until a new neighborhood finally emerged — despite failed plans, untimely deaths, and financial scandal — four decades after it was first conceived. 

Register at https://blakepark051924.eventbrite.com
Tour begins in front of Brookine High School, 115 Greenough Street

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.