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.

Early Automobiles in 19th Century Brookline

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

It had a body built by local carriage maker Michael Quinlan, with two seats up front and an enclosed wooden 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 Selectmen 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."

Click image for larger view

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 Selectmen 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 illustrated 1899 article, to bring motorized bus service to town, though it did not end up being implemented.

Brookline Chronicle, May 27, 1899

Click image for larger view

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 contrast, 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 Chronicle, 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
(Click image for larger view)

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.

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.

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.