In 1975, the Boston Children’s Museum presented an exhibit and fair on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. This book documents that event.

http://www.jphs.org/storage/locals/centre-street.pdf

This article originally appeared in the Boston Daily Globe on September 20, 1908.

Out in Jamaica Plain is a most peculiar and interesting house. It is dodecagonal in shape — or, in other words, has 12 sides. The odd dwelling is located at 17 Cranston St. Cranston St., formerly known as Terrace Ave., is a short street, the only exits of which are onto Sheridan St. Two of the three exits are so steep that to drive a horse and vehicle through them is an extremely hazardous undertaking. The remaining outlet is an excellent piece of roadway.

The house is on the topmost part of an eminence known some years ago, and still called by the older residents, Cedar Hill. When it was built there were but few structures on the hill, which was at that time covered with cedar trees. The district is now thickly settled, and the cedar trees have disappeared with but few exceptions. The house is owned by Mrs. N.K. Rich of Salem, who speaks of it as her “castle.” It is occupied by Mr. and Mrs. George J. Alpers, with their four children.

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A slide presentation by Bob Fields, one of the current owners
of the house can be downloaded from here. 

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About 40 years ago two brothers from Scotland began the erection of a dwelling, which they intended should be used for their bachelor apartments. That they were expert carpenters and builders of the old school who were able to do their own architectural work is proven by the skill and genius with which the construction was carried on. The house stands today as a monument to their ability, but is a nameless memorial, as nobody can recall their names.

Before the house was completed it is said that the Scotsmen became involved in financial difficulties and lost their all, including their long-cherished bachelor apartments. It was their intention to build a reproduction of an old Scotch castle.

They first pitched a tent on the property, and lived in it until the building was sufficiently completed to allow occupancy. The excavation for the foundation was of the most arduous kind, as they were obliged to blast and cut a way into solid ledge. There is evidence in the cellar of their extremely hard task.

About 30 feet from the foundation at the rear is a precipitous drop of over 50 feet, where thousands of tons of rock have been removed from a quarry which was in operation until a few years ago. The quarry faced Paul Gore St. and the back wall, with the houses apparently on its uppermost edge, is over 100 feet from the street.

The view of the dodecagonal house from Paul Gore St. in an excellent one, as it is the only way that a person can get a clear conception of the plan of the exterior, there being portions of three sections in sight.

On the very edge of the quarry wall is a shed, which was almost dislodged by the blasting and gives the appearance of being ready to tumble over the edge at the least provocation. Added to the labor of digging the foundation was that of making a cistern, which was also blasted out of the solid ledge. It is still in existence, but not in use.

An interesting incident is told about the condition of the water supply on top of Cedar Hill about the time West Roxbury was made a part of Boston. The only water on Cranston St., then Terrace Ave., was that stored in the cisterns, and the residents depended on rain to keep up the supply. Shortly after the taking over of the town by Boston a drought occurred, and the residents on the hill were soon without water.

After strenuous efforts permission was obtained from the Boston Fire Department to use the fire engine in the district to replenish the supply by pumping from the nearest hydrants, which were located on Sheridan St. The residents were assessed for the use of the engine, and were much exercised because the day after the engine replenished their supply a very heavy rain occurred and overflowed their already filled cisterns.

The house is really three hexagons built together. One section consists from cellar to roof of basement kitchen, living room and rear chamber; another section, dining room, parlor and front chamber, while the third contains the cellar, stairs and halls, two small alcove rooms and bathroom.

The interior of the first section is circular in shape, with winding stairs and innumerable small closets in every conceivable space. The walls, being from 12 to 20 inches thick and of wood, afford good opportunity for closets, which are not to be found in any of the rooms.

There are two chimneys running through this section that are peculiar to build inasmuch as they are separated entirely from the walls, thereby allowing space for bathroom and two alcove rooms, also large clothes closets. One of these small rooms is used for a sewing room and the other as a nursery.

The front door is also in this part of the house. It is in two parts, swinging inwardly when opened and when closed completes the angle and hexagonal design of the exterior of the house. Winding stairs connect front hall and rooms, both above and below. Even the doors leading from the hall are curved, to complete the circular effect inside. The cellar is in this section, but is rather small and the fuel supply is about all it will hold.

In the other two sections are to be found the six large rooms. These rooms are hexagonal, and all of them measure exactly the same. Each of their six sides is 109 inches in width, and the design of the rooms of the upper story is carried out in the ceilings, narrowing and rising toward the center and ending in a circle about a foot and a half in diameter.

The absence of closets in the rooms seems to have been intentional in order that the symmetrically arranged plans could be thoroughly carried out. The doors connecting the rooms are placed so that they come within a single side, but are of odd design, being pointed at the top, making two sides of a hexagon.

Single doors connect the rooms and hallways, and are all of the same design. There is but one ordinary door in the house, and that was cut through between the two sleeping rooms within a few years. The large door connecting the living room and parlor is in three parts and opens by swinging one-third on one side, the remaining two-thirds doubling upon the other side of the doorway. These doors are massive in construction and are composed of hard pine, which is painted white, with beautiful selected quartered oak panels in the natural wood.

The windows are peculiarly arranged, there being one on each projecting point of the structure with the exception of the point in which is the front door. They form a three-cornered design in each section, the windows of the second floor being on the outermost points, and those on the ground floor on the other two points. The windows throughout the house are in two parts and swing inwardly upon hinges, the same as a door, and when closed carry out the same general design, making at the top the two hexagonal sides. In the uppermost part of each window is a small six-sided design in colored glass.

The ceilings of the dining room and kitchen are unfinished and the effect is that of being below deck aboard a ship with the stanch beams plainly in view. Upon the top of the house is a cupola placed directly in the center. It is six-sided both interior and exterior. Winding stairs connect the cupola and front hall, while the standing room on the top is reached by a ladder.

The panoramic view of the surrounding country from the top of the house is, indeed, beautiful. It includes Jamaica Pond, the park system, Forest Hills, and Blue Hills. The outside wall of the structure looks like slate, but a close inspection shows it to be of wood, neatly matched and finished with extreme nicety. There is a fleur de lis in wood on the top of each section. That the Scotsmen were not allowed to thoroughly complete their work is indeed unfortunate, as they would undoubtedly have left a structure even more curious than they did.

Photographs courtesy of Steve Garfield

Comments about this article sent to the Jamaica Plain Historical Society:
We truly enjoyed the historical article on 17 Cranston Street. My mother’s family (Joseph and Nancy Magee) lived there from the early 1960’s until 1981 or 1982. I always believed it was a magical place with its castle turret and ghost in residence. One night in the mid 70’s the 6 family tenement next door burned to the ground but the Boston Fire Department managed to save the house. I especially loved the stone cellar in the lowest level that Nana would store her strawberry preserves in. My Mum visited the new owners a few years ago and I understand they are doing a beautiful job of maintaining its’ special character.
Thanks again,
Lisa Cohane


I am Lisa’s mum and I lived at 17 Cranston Street from 1956 to my marriage in 1967. My husband and I and Lisa returned and lived there for awhile in late 1968 and 1969. My parents (Joseph and Nancy Jean Magee) sold the house in 1981. They put the front porch on in the early 1960’s. It was a wonderful house to grow up in, and if you ever want to do an article on ghosts, we all believe that the house had one, he wasn’t bad, but he did like to play jokes on you. And he paced a lot. I never heard about the name Cedar Hill until I read the article. It was like living in a small village. And we still keep in touch with several of our old neighbors.

Helen E. Cohane

Fire, which withstood all the water the apparatus responding to a third alarm could pour into it for three and a half hours yesterday morning, badly wrecked the building known as Curtis Hall at Jamaica Plain.

It was a three-story brick structure with a Mansard roof.  On the first floor was a branch of the Boston Public Library, containing about 15,000 volumes, mostly fiction and school books, which were covered by the protective department, and will not be a total loss, though considerably damaged.  On this floor also were the room of the Jamaica Plain Friendly Society, a janitor’s office and another large room.

On the second floor was a large hall, used for public occasions and dances.  This hall would seat 1200 people and had attached to it dressing rooms, a stage and a balcony.  Above it was a banquet hall and kitchen, and above all a blind attic running the entire length of the building.

Monday night the Oakdale Athletic Association held a dance in the hall, which was attended by nearly 600 persons.  It is not believed, however, that carelessness by smokers caused the fire.  Sergeant Good of Division 13 and John J. Van Tassel were in the hall as late as 2 a.m., and there were no signs of fire then.  Within 45 minutes after Van Tassel left the hall, however, Dr. Orville R. Chadwell saw flames coming from the top of the building, and notified Headquarters by telephone.  While the apparatus was on the way to the fire, starter John Bagley, at the South St. Barns, also saw the fire and an alarm from Box 527 was rung at 2:58 a.m.  As soon as District Chief Mulligan arrived he ordered a third alarm rung in, skipping the second, 10 minutes after the first.  An attempt to fight the fire from the inside of the building was hastily abandoned, and barely in time; the roof crashing in shortly after the men got out of the building.

The fire attracted a huge crowd, and two Sergeants and 80 Patrolmen were needed to handle it. 

The fire seemed to start in the upper part of the building, at a place where the electric cables entered.  But the wiring is declared to be of the most modern conduit system, and is not suspected of causing the fire.

The damage to the building will be from $25,000 to $30,000.  The building was erected by the old town of West Roxbury as a Town Hall in 1868.  It became City property when the town became part of the city.  It was named for Nelson Curtis, the old-time contractor.  He gave the land on which the building stands to the town, of which he was a Selectman.  He also built the hall and furnished the granite trimmings free.  The original building is said to have cost $70,000.  Nelson Curtis was an uncle of ex-Mayor Curtis.

The cause of the fire is being investigated.

This article originally appeared in the Boston Daily Globe on December 16, 1908.

The following is a transcript of a lecture by Richard Schulhoff, Deputy Director of the Arnold Arboretum, given on October 18, 2009. The lecture was held in the Hunnewell Building and sponsored by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society.

In 1640 the colonial legislature granted to Captain Joseph Weld, for his service in the Indian Pequot War, 278 acres in what was then the town of Roxbury, now mostly Jamaica Plain. The homestead included much of today’s Arnold Arboretum. His son, who had been an officer in the Revolutionary War, lived on the estate and in 1806 he sold to fellow war veteran Benjamin Bussey approximately 120 acres of the original Weld holdings.

Bussey, after a poor and frugal childhood and a soldier’s life in the American Revolution, became a merchant, eventually amassing a great fortune from European trade. In 1815 he built a mansion – Woodland Hill – on his Roxbury property where he resided until his death in 1842. His wealth allowed for the entertainment of large groups – using French china, silver pitchers, and crystal goblets, all made for elegant service.

Much of the food grew on Bussey’s land: the cherries from the orchards, vegetables from the garden, and his livestock which provided the popular roasted veal and calves-head soup. Some lilacs on the grounds were planted by Bussey soon after purchasing the property, and those same hedgerows can still be seen on the east side of Bussey Hill, not far from the remains of a building foundation from that era. His neighbors included Enoch Bartlett of Bartlett Pear fame, and Joseph Story, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Bussey hosted visiting dignitaries when they came to town, including the Revolutionary War hero Lafayette, and later President Andrew Jackson, who came to Boston along with Vice President Martin Van Buren, and rode to the manse in Bussey’s yellow horse-drawn coach.

In his will, Bussey created an endowment at Harvard for the establishment of a school of agriculture and horticulture. Also included in his 1835 will was the grant of his estate to the President and Fellows of Harvard College as the site for the school. A number of years passed before the college acted upon the bequest, but in 1870, Bussey’s granddaughter released seven acres of the property for the establishment of the school, and by 1871 the Bussey Institute was established to carry out the terms of the will.

The school was never very large, with only ten graduates in its first decade, but later expanded and was eventually merged with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard in 1930. One of its graduates was Charles Eliot, son of Harvard President Charles Eliot, who was later employed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

The next important personage in Arboretum history was James Arnold (1781-1868). Born into a Quaker family in Rhode Island, he moved to New Bedford to work for a prominent family who had established the whaling industry in New England before the Revolution. Arnold later became a partner, married the boss’s daughter Sarah (who was highly respected in her time as a woman of impressive intellect) and became a wealthy man. He died in 1868 and his will specified that $100,000 of his fortune should be used to advance agriculture and horticulture. The trustees of his will suggested the sum be transferred to Harvard College and in 1872 the Arnold Arboretum was founded on 120 acres of the land originally willed to Harvard by Benjamin Bussey. In the deed between the Arnold trustees and the College it was stipulated that the trust be used:
“for the establishment and support of an arboretum which shall contain, as far as practicable, all the trees [and] shrubs … either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air.”

Charles Sprague Sargent (1841-1927) was appointed the Arboretum’s first director in 1873, and remained in that position until his death 54 years later. [Aside: he was a cousin of the famous painter John Singer Sargent.] He met Frederick Law Olmsted in the summer of 1878 while Olmsted was working on a commission for the Boston Parks Department. Olmsted had earlier suggested an arboretum in his plans for New York’s Central Park, but the offer was rejected. Instead he joined with Sargent in designing the Arnold Arboretum, agreeing on a design with both scientific and aesthetic purpose. The layout was based on the (then) generally accepted botanical classification system of English botanists George Bentham and Joseph Hooker, and was displayed in Olmsted’s usual naturalistic fashion. The Arnold Arboretum is the only extant arboretum designed by Olmsted.

They were also jointly responsible for the creative lease agreement that was forged between the City of Boston and Harvard in 1882. The negotiations went on for a number of years. The proposition first came to a vote by the City Council in October 1882, but after lengthy debate, it failed to pass. Proponents of the Arboretum on the Council quickly moved to set up an Arboretum Committee, and Sargent and Olmsted stepped up their efforts to rally support. A public relations drive was launched that had the “Arboretum Question” debated in the City’s newspapers, with such headlines as: “VOICES OF THE PEOPLE IN ITS FAVOR – THROWING AWAY A BARGAIN,” “THE ARBORETUM’S VALUE TO BOSTON,” and “AN EDUCATIONAL PARK AT A BARGAIN.” Sargent circulated a petition which more than a thousand powerful people signed. A story in the Herald of December 1st of that year read, in part:
“The petition to the city council in favor of the Arnold Arboretum is probably the most influential ever received by that body. It includes almost all of the large taxpayers of Boston. … Nearly all of the prominent citizens are there, including ex-mayors and ex-governors. … The petition would be a prize to a collector of autographs.”

Shortly thereafter, the proposal passed, and after another year of working out details, a thousand-year lease at one dollar a year was signed, and the unprecedented agreement between the City and Harvard began. According to the terms of the lease, the Harvard-owned land on which the Arnold Arboretum was established became part of the City park system, but control of the collections continued to reside with the Arboretum staff. The City was to maintain the perimeter walls, gates, and roadway system and provide security, while the Arboretum in turn agreed to keep the grounds open to the general public, free of charge, from sunrise to sunset every day of the year. As a result of this agreement, the Arboretum became part of the “Emerald Necklace,” the seven-mile-long network of parks and parkways that Olmsted laid out for the Boston Parks Department between 1878 and 1896. In the Arboretum, Olmsted laid out the path and roadway system and designated areas within the Arboretum for specific groups of plants. As Sargent envisioned it:
“A visitor driving through the Arboretum will be able to obtain a general idea of the arborescent vegetation of the north temperate zone without even leaving his carriage. It is hoped that such an arrangement, while avoiding the stiff and formal lines of the conventional botanic garden, will facilitate the comprehensive study of the collections, both in their scientific and picturesque aspects.”

Sargent, an established dendrologist (woody plant expert) with many publications, some of which remain in use to this day, established the Arnold Arboretum as a leading scientific institution.

The Hunnewell Building was built in 1892 with an endowment from H. H. Hunnewell (1810-1902). He was a wealthy banker, railroad financier, philanthropist, and one of the most prominent horticulturists in America in the nineteenth century – probably the first person to cultivate and popularize rhododendrons in the United States. Both the town of Wellesley (founded 1881) and Wellesley College (chartered 1870) were named for Hunnewell’s estate, “Wellesley,” which remains an historical site in that town.

Peters Hill and the Walter Street Burying Ground
Benjamin Bussey purchased the land now called Peters Hill from farmer John Davis in 1837, and the tract of some 68 acres was added to the Arboretum under a second indenture with the City of Boston in 1894. Much earlier, in 1711, Joseph Weld and 44 other men organized the Second Church of Christ. The church building once stood on Peters Hill, and behind it to the south, the burying ground was created. This parcel of less than one acre is one of Boston’s fifteen historic cemeteries. There were ten Welds, including two who fought in the Revolutionary War, and their wives and children, buried in the graveyard. In the early 1900s much of the cemetery was destroyed, but a dozen headstones remain, dating from 1723 to 1776. Known originally as Davis Hill, it was later named after Andrew James Peters, a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1907 to 1914, and the Mayor of Boston from 1918 to 1922.

At present the Arnold Arboretum occupies 265 acres. It is administered as an allied institution within the central administration of Harvard University. As of March 2009, the living collections comprised over 15,000 individual plants representing 4,030 taxa or plant groupings. Taken together, the collections are considered to be one of the largest and best-documented woody plant collections in the world. Many of these accessions are of historical and botanical importance, representing the original North American introductions of Eastern Asian plants collected by Arboretum staff and affiliates such as Charles Sargent, E. H. (China) Wilson, John Jack, Joseph Rock, and others.

The Arboretum’s continuing involvement in botanical and horticultural exploration around the world, especially in eastern Asia, has brought many new plants into cultivation and greatly expanded our knowledge of their evolution and systematics. In addition, the Arboretum holds a library of over 40,000 volumes, while the herbarium contains approximately 130,000 specimens, both part of the extensive collection of Harvard held here as well as in Cambridge. The staff has published a periodic scientific journal continuously since 1888, currently titled Arnoldia. In addition to its research functions, the Arboretum conducts ongoing educational activities for adults, with free tours as well as a program for young children each spring and fall.

From a lecture given at the Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum, probably spring 2009. Production assistance by Kathy Griffin.

Written by and provided courtesy of Richard Heath 

Bromley Park today is one half of the twenty-three acre public housing development in the north end of Jamaica Plain known as Bromley Heath. 

Early in the creation of public housing in Boston, it was decided by the Boston Housing Authority that developments would be named for a major street or landmark in which they were located. The Housing Authority Board wanted the tenants to feel they were part of the community and not in a separate corner of it.   Heath Street Houses took its name from the thoroughfare on which it was built.  The name also commemorates Major General William Heath, George Washington’s second-in-command. The development was built on what was once the pasture of the Heath farm. 

An aerial view of Bromley Heath taken in April 1977.  The Lowell Estate stretched from Centre Street, on the far right, to the ridgeline of the housing cornices. The smokestack in the background is all that remains of the Plant Shoe factory that burned on February 2, 1976. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Bromley Park was a 680-foot long residential square set perpendicular to Bickford Street and dead-ended at the old Boston and Providence Railroad right of way.  The street was lined with brick, bow-front, row houses and divided by three rectangular strips planted with trees, grass and shrubs exactly like those town-house blocks built in the South End such as Rutland Square, Worcester Square and Braddock Park.  Bromley Street and Albert Street came off Bromley Park at right angles and connected it to Heath Street.  The Bromley Park playground, 50 to 60 Bickford Street and 950 to 954 Parker Street now occupy what was Bromley Park for 75 years. 

On March 10, 1785, Judge John Lowell bought a ten and one-half acre farm and farmhouse, which fronted on Centre Street for 750 pounds (Suffolk Deeds: Book 147, Page 269.)  Centre Street - known then as “The Great Road to Dedham and Providence” - was one of the principal thoroughfares through Roxbury. The house stood about where 267 Centre Street is today.  In the 17th century the land was originally owned by John Weld, one of the founding families - and one of the richest landowners - of Roxbury. (Note: until 1851 Jamaica Plain was a part of Roxbury; called the Jamaica end of the town of Roxbury as early as 1667).  The Weld planting fields adjoined the farm of William Heath - another founding family, which stretched up to Parker Hill.

Lowell, described as a “solid citizen of Bristol,” determined at the age of 68 that the future was in the New World.  A man of wealth, he left England in April 1639 with a party of 16 people; his two sons John and Richard and their wives, servants, furniture and livestock. 

It was out of the chaos of the Revolutionary War that the Lowell family emerged as a family of enormous wealth and influence in Massachusetts and established themselves among the highest of the Brahmin class.  Judge Lowell was by inheritance, temperament and the society in which he lived and worked, a Loyalist. That is; a Tory, loyal to the rule of the King of England. But he was a shrewd man and like his forebear, Percival Lowell, he was alert to the fact that the New World had greater things in store than the monarchy of England.  So; although he knew the last two Royal Governors personally, he threw his fortunes in with that of the nascent nation and joined the political arm of the Nationalists; known as the Committee of Safety, as an elected Selectman from Newburyport. 

Lowell seized the opportunity left by the fleeing Loyalists by filling the void they left behind.  The Capital was almost empty of attorneys and Lowell prospered as legal advisor to the State Commissioners responsible for Tory property seized by authorization of the 1779 Confiscation Act. This closely followed the Banishment Act of 1778 that ordered all those who sided with the King to leave the Commonwealth. Lowell drew up Deeds of Sale and arranged leases and auctions of the properties. The sale of Loyalist properties and leases of others - such as the Amory House which Lowell rented from the Commonwealth - helped pay for the costs of the Revolutionary War.  But he made most of his fortune during the war years in managing the legal work on captured ships and commerce seized by privateers from the British. In 1782, Congress appointed him Judge of Appeals for Admiralty cases.


John Lowell (1743-1802), the ‘Old Judge’, son of the Reverend John, founded the triple line that shaped New England history for two centuries. As a member of the Continental Congress, he widened the family horizon Harrison Gray Otis called him ‘the very mirror of benevolence.’ Painting by Gilbert Stuart, on display at Lowell House, Harvard University. Image from The Lowells and their Seven Worlds, Ferris Greenslet, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1946. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Judge Lowell took great interest in the growth of Boston.  If his contemporary John Adams worked on the national level, John Lowell worked to strengthen Boston and Massachusetts in the years after the Revolutionary War. In 1783, Lowell was one of the founding directors of the First National Bank of Boston.  (His son John would be one of the first vice presidents of the Provident Institute for Savings in 1817.) He invested in shares in bridges, canals and toll roads.

After he moved to Roxbury he commuted across the Boston Neck to his law office but mostly he conducted his business on the farm.  And for good reason. Writing in his 1946 biography of the Lowell family, “The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds,” from which much of this history is taken, Ferris Greenslet described the Lowell estate just above Hogg’s Bridge where Centre Street crossed Stony Brook: “In the old Judge’s time and that of his son, it must have been retired and lovely. To the north across the short-pitched valley of Stony Brook, the steep acclivity of Parker Hill hid the spires and soft-coal smoke of Boston. Towards the sunset stretched the shaded hills and bowery hollows of Brookline. Eastward, the old Judge, taking his hundred steps on a sunny morning, could see the bright waters of Boston and Dorchester Bays.”

This old house on a Roxbury hilltop in the centre of an estate of thirty acres was purchased by John Lowell, the Old Judge, just after the Revolution.  There at the early age of forty-two he retired from the more active practice of law. His son, John Lowell the Rebel, who inherited it, christened it Bromley Vale, and added three new greenhouses, a windmill, a swimming pool, and the tower of a ruined castle. Through the lives of both it was a centre of hospitality for foreign travelers and leading Federalists. Entertained there at different times were both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Just after the Civil War, the Vale was pierced by a railroad, and the Old Judge’s great-grandson, Augustus, sold the land for development and moved to Brookline. The Rebel’s two daughters, Anna and Amory, lived in a small cottage on a corner of the estate for another decade.  The house was built before 1765 by Joseph Gardner who owned the land from 1701 to 1779.  Image taken from The Lowells and their Seven Worlds, Ferris Greenslet, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1946. Click on the image to enlarge it.

His brother Thomas settled in Brookline and by 1674 owned 175 acres of farmland over what are today Leverett Pond, Pill Hill, Cypress Street and Route 9.  He became the richest landowner in the Muddy River section of Roxbury.

But more than this Roxbury farm linked the Lowells and the Gardners; the two great families of Salem were connected by marriage too.  In September of 1797 John Lowell’s daughter Rebecca Russell married Samuel Pickering Gardner at the Roxbury house.  Pickering Gardner was born in Salem in May of 1767 but like his father-in-law recognized that the future lay in the capital city of Boston and he moved there in 1793. (Their grandson, John Lowell Gardner, married Isabella Stewart in 1860.) 

A great lover of England, he revisited London in the spring of 1806 and toured the hilltop market town of Bromley ten miles south of London.  In the words of the 1876 “Handbook to the Environs of London,” Bromley is situated: “on the banks of the Ravensbourne River on high ground in the midst of richly wooded and picturesque country much in favor with city merchants.”  It reminded the now homesick Lowell of the Stony Brook valley in Roxbury. Greenslet writes, ” the long ridges overlooking the smoky valley of the Thames and the distant spires, towers and domes of London recalled the Roxbury hilltop he had inherited … Then and there he determined to christen the estate Bromley Vale.”

Lowell The Rebel succeeded his father as president of the MSPA.  He was an honorary member of the Horticultural Society of London, founded in March of 1804, and he corresponded regularly with its founder and president Thomas Andrew Knight.  Knight sent scions of pear, cherry and plum trees to Lowell as well as seeds for distribution to members of the MSPA.  In 1806 six bundles of fruit trees arrived from France and in 1823 the first fruit trees cultivated by the London Horticultural Society arrived in Roxbury. Lowell would plant the trees and vines at Bromley Vale and determine which ones were hardy enough for the New England climate. He would distribute cuttings from his fruit trees to anyone and in time this established a New England fruit nursery system. As he wrote in 1822: “We are utterly destitute in New England of nurseries for fruit trees. We have no place to which we can go for plants to ornament our grounds.”   In another letter of 1824, he had in his mind the germ of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. “As to horticulture, it is newly explored. I recollect the first boxes of cultivated strawberries ever sent to the Boston market; they are now in profusion, of excellent quality, although they can be better.”
 
John Lowell (1769-1840), ‘The Rebel’, the Old Judge’s eldest son by his first wife Sarah Higginson, Federalist pamphleteer, bitter opponent of Jefferson and Madison, was considered by future generations of the family it’s most brilliant member. After the shock of his failure to save the life of Jason Fairbanks, he abandoned the law and devoted his life to travel, agriculture, and good works. He was active in the national and civic affairs from the days of George Washington to those of Andrew Jackson. Painting by Gilbert Stuart, on display at Lowell House, Harvard University. Image taken from The Lowells and their Seven Worlds, Ferris Greenslet, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1946. Click on the  image  to see a larger view.

At his death on March 18, 1840, the periodical, “New England Farmer”  (established in 1822) wrote “the agriculture of Massachusetts was indebted to him more than to any other individual living.” 

On June 11, 1834, the Boston and Providence Railroad opened its passenger line along the valley of Stony Brook through Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, making it one of the first rail lines in Massachusetts.  The railroad skirted the Lowell property and crossed Centre Street at grade. In 1866 when the Boston and Providence Railroad announced that it planned to widen its right of way and expand service to include freight cars for the burgeoning industries in the valley, Lowell and his son Augustus, both living at Bromley Vale, realized that section of Roxbury was dramatically changing.  Augustus (1830 - 1900) moved to a nine and one-half acre estate on Heath Street in Brookline that he bought in that same year which he called Sevenels after the seven Lowells in his family.

On May 10, 1870, three large parcels totaling 3 and 3/4 acres facing Centre Street were sold to his neighbor Owen Nawn for $85,000.  Nawn lived in a large house on 2.29 acres of land directly opposite Bickford Street.  (Today, Chestnut Street goes through the former Nawn property.)  This sale included the stone tower and walls near Bickford Street that John Lowell The Rebel built in 1807.  The deed restricted that the road which Lowell intended to build from Heath Street  (i.e. Parker Street) be kept open as a through way.

The Lowell family burial plot at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain. The stones for ‘Old Judge’ John Lowell and for his son, ‘The Rebel’ are on the left. The Old Judge was removed from the family tomb at the Boston Common Burial Ground in 1895 to allow for the construction of the Boylston Street subway. The author acknowledges with gratitude Ms. Dee Morris for her assistance in locating the Lowell plot.  Augustus Lowell, who sold and subdivided his family’s estate, is buried with his family in another part of the cemetery. Photograph courtesy of Richard Heath, April 28, 2001

On April 1,1884, Owen Nawn sold a 30,000 square foot lot on the east side of Bickford Street for $2,000 to the City of Boston for the Lucretia Crocker School (Book 1631, Page 614.) This was the second school built in this rapidly growing corner of Jamaica Plain; in 1874 the Lowell School was built on Centre and Mozart Streets. 

The Lowell School at the corner of Centre and Mozart Streets. This is now the site of the Mozart Playground. The school was dedicated on November 11, 1874 and razed about 1963 for the playground. Photograph is courtesy of the City of Boston Archives (#0413.002).
After the mansion was destroyed, the only architectural fragment that recalled the name of Lowell was the school at the corner of Mozart Street. This was razed about 1963 and Mozart Playground was built.   Today, only the name Bromley Park remains to recall the Lowell family.  

Richard Heath
June 30, 1999

Acknowledgments
Catharina Slautterback helped me greatly by finding travel books about Bromley in England and for helping me with portraits of the Lowells. Sally Pierce vastly improved this paper for suggesting I look at “Cultivating Gentlemen.”

ARCHITECTURE AS PUBLIC POLICY
THE HISTORY OF BROMLEY-HEATH PUBLIC HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

Written by and provided courtesy of Richard Heath 

The twentieth century was an epoch of vast experimentation and change. No where can this be seen more than in the design and construction of low-cost housing. The architectural heritage of Jamaica Plain has remarkable examples of the three phases in housing designed and built to be affordable to the working man.

The first was the Sunnyside-Roundhill Streets houses in the factory district of Hyde Square which George W. Pope designed for the Workingman’s Building Association. Financed by the philanthropist Robert Treat Paine, over 100 Queen Anne style wooden homes were built between 1889 and 1891. This was unique because - unlike other philanthropic housing experiments - it was part of a financial institution which Paine organized with $25,000 of his own capital in 1887 called the Workingman’s Cooperative Bank. The bank was a partnership between investors and the workingman. By regular savings, the wage earner could earn interest on his money and, with the bank’s guidance, have enough for the down payment and monthly mortgage.

The second was Woodbourne, in Forest Hills, built by the Boston Dwellinghouse Company between 1912 and 1914. The Paine experiment sought to lower costs by joining the housing program with a cooperative bank. The Boston Dwellinghouse Company intended to lower costs by building a large-scale development ( 30 acres ) with standardized housing units built in clusters. For the first time in any philanthropic housing program, Woodbourne was designed as a whole community with common grounds for playgrounds and a clubhouse. Robert Anderson Pope was the site planner and Kilham and Hopkins were the architects.

The third phase was public housing. In this last phase, entirely new methods of financing, design, site planning and construction were introduced. The most dramatic difference was that it was financed and managed by government.

The Heath Street Housing Development - only a few yards away from Roundhill Street - was one of the first eight public housing developments planned and built by the Boston Housing Authority between 1939 and 1942. It was enlarged with the construction of Bromley Park twelve years later.

I. HEATH STREET HOUSES

In its issue of January, 1941, Architectural Record stated: “ publicly owned housing has become a characteristic feature of American life. It is the most single building type [which has pioneered] new techniques of financing, design, construction and management.”

Jamaica Plain had never before seen anything like the architecture and site plan of Heath Street public housing. It was a separate village of low scale, sleek, repetitive, standardized apartment blocks set at angles to Heath and Walden Streets in a free plan that destroyed the familiar, existing - and chaotic - street patterns.

Heath Street houses at 25 Horan Way with hip roof, dormers, and entrance hood added in 1996-1997. Click on the photograph to the left to see a larger view of it.

 

 

 
The Heath Street Development was born out of the catastrophe of the Great Depression. Direct government action in resolving the housing needs of the Commonwealth had always been resisted by private sector investors. But housing became a national issue for the first time in 1932. As the Depression deepened, bank foreclosures on mortgages reached 1000 a day. Massive unemployment virtually stopped home buying in an industry already staggering. ( Home sales began dropping as early as 1926 ). Businessmen began looking to the federal government for help to relieve the construction industry with large scale building program. The April, 1932 issue of Business Week reported that investors were becoming interested in housing developments: “ talk about low cost housing is getting the public excited.”

Heath Street houses showing the original flat roofs and courtyard formed by two apartment buildings. The new trees and lawn fencing are part of the 1996-1997 improvements. Click on the photograph to the left to see a larger view of it.

President Herbert Hoover believed that the responsibility for the eradication of slums and the rejuvenation of home building rested squarely with private business. His administration responded to the housing crisis with two far reaching bills both passed by Congress on July 21, 1932: the Federal Home Loan Act and the Emergency Relief and Construction Act. The first Act - which exists to this day - provided government insured mortgages written by participating banks and lending institutions to take the risk out of home loans. The second provided capital to limited dividend corporations ( much like the Boston Dwellinghouse Company ) which organized to construct low cost housing.

Both were Republican efforts to stave off direct government construction of housing. As Secretary of Commerce Roy Lyman Wilbur wrote in 1932, if the private sector failed to remedy “the evil of slums, housing by public authority was inevitable.”

Wilbur wrote this in the wake of the first housing conference sponsored by an American president held in Washington, D.C. on December 2 - 5 , 1931. Writing in the January,1932 issue of Architectural Record, Michael Mikkleson reviewed the key findings of the conference; three of the most important were:

One. That a house in most American cities could not be built and sold for a profit for less than $4,500. This included the lot, street curb cuts and sidewalks and sanitary lines.

Two. To buy this same house, a family would have to earn an income of $2250 a year to make the down payment of $1125.

Three. In a phrase that would be echoed five years later, Mikkleson quoted the well known housing advocate Edith Elmer Wood, who estimated in 1931 that 2/3rds of all American families have incomes of not more than $2000 and 1/3rd have incomes below $1200.

In short, few Americans on the eve of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration could afford their own home.

The inevitable predicted by Roy Wilbur arrived in the summer of 1933. Facing the failure of the private sector to respond to Hoover’s initiatives, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared the way for the last phase in providing housing for the low income family, public housing.

The only previous experience the United States government had with building large scale housing was the Emergency Fleet Corporation and United States Housing Corporation of 1918-1919. With the entry of the United States in the war against Germany in 1917, the housing shortage for defense workers became a national concern. The production of warships, munitions and heavy equipment on a massive scale never before seen in American history put a huge strain on the housing capacities around defense plants. As a result, war related industry was having a difficult time hiring and keeping workers.

The Wilson Administration considered this a threat to the war effort and on March 1. 1918, the Emergency Fleet Corporation was established ( 65th Congress. 40 Stat. 438 1918 ). It built 21 corporate towns from Maine to Vancouver, one of which was Atlantic Heights in Portsmouth, NH designed by Kilham and Hopkins. In addition 44 townships were built by a second federal entity, the United States Housing Corporation ( USHC ), approved by Congress on may 16, 1918. ( 65th Congress 40 Stat. 550. 1918 ). On July 9,1918, the United States Housing Corporation was organized as part of the Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transportation. It was authorized to provide housing for workers and families in arsenals, Navy yards and other defense industries. The US Housing Corporation could make loans to builders, but generally it built housing itself. By the fall of 1919, whole communities had been built by the federal government in an unprecedented period. At Quincy, Massachusetts three developments were built by the USHC all designed by James E. McLaughlin to house workers employed at the vast Fore River Shipyard Company owned by Bethlehem Steel. Overnight, wrote Stanley Taylor in the December,1918 issue of American Architect, “ the greatest single owner of workingmen’s houses in America was the United States government.” In all, 27 developments were built in 16 states for a total cost of $52. 3 million. In 1933, Ernest M. Fisher wrote that the “ greatest single contribution of the USHC was the advantages shown by the correlation in a single enterprise of all factors put in place to build housing. Operating on a large scale, city planner, architect, engineer and builder all put together as a single result attractive and unified housing.” ( Quoted in Robert Moore Fisher, 20 Years of Public Housing, 1959 ). It would be a rehearsal for the housing programs of the New Deal.

The Hoover administration would follow the precedent established by the Emergency Fleet Corporation, but Congress couldn’t scrap it fast enough after WW I. The 1921 Report to the Senate Select Committee on Reconstruction flatly stated that “ it is in the interest of the public welfare that the federal, state and municipal governments should not participate directly in the housing business.” All EFC housing were sold at a loss of $26 million. ( In the spring of 1921, the Quincy houses were sold at auction for 40% less than the cost to build them. Advertisement, Boston Herald. May 22,1921. )

The Roosevelt Administration confronted the housing crisis in two ways: the first as a public works program and the second as permanent public policy.

On June 16, 1933, President Roosevelt signed into law the National Industrial Recovery Act ( NIRA) to be directed by the Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes. ( 40 Stat. 195. 1933 ). Title II of the Act authorized a comprehensive program of public works including low cost housing and slum clearance. Ickes organized the Housing Division to implement Title II. Beginning in February of 1934, the Housing Division designed, financed and built 51 developments across the country. This provided direct employment nationwide to 230 architects, 45 landscape architects and 100,000 masons, carpenters, bricklayers, iron workers, truck drivers and railroad freight handlers. Two of these were in Massachusetts: Old Harbor Village in South Boston and New Towne Court in East Cambridge. New Towne Court, just outside Kendall Square, began receiving families in January of 1938. Opening day at Old Harbor, now called Mary Ellen McCormack Houses, was on May 1,1938. In his first Report to the President, Ickes stated that the Housing Division had five goals, one of which was “ to demonstrae to private builders and planners and the public at large the practicality of large scale community planning.”

South Boston was selected as the site for Boston’s first public housing development because of the persuasiveness of Congressman John W. McCormack, born and raised in Andrew Square ( the development is today named for the Congressman’s mother). Old Harbor was built on 26 acres of vacant land ( some of it unfilled saltmarsh ) close to Andrew Square between Dorchester and Old Colony Avenues directly opposite Columbus Park. Construction of Old Harbor received a setback in July of 1935 . Large real estate interests took the Housing Division to court in order to block eminent domain proceedings. The U.S.6th Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that the government could not take land by eminent domain for federal housing. This was a right reserved to the states and local housing authorities needed be established to acquire land for public housing. “ Buying one person’s property and selling it or leasing it to another,” the court said, “ is not within the scope of power of the federal government… [ The NIRA ] is at the unfettered discretion of the president [ which is ] an illegal delegation of legislative authority.” The Circuit Court further stated that eminent domain cannot be exercised by the federal government only for a select group - in this case low income people; only the states had this authority.

The Commonwealth passed legislation authorizing public housing authorities on July 26 ,1935 ( MGL Chpt 449 Acts of 1935). The City Council approved the Boston Housing Authority on October 1, 1935. The construction of Old Harbor Village was not stopped by the 6th Circuit Court ruling because the development was built on vacant land. About 20 parcels of land was acquired between September and October 1935 at a cost to the Housing Division of $520,079.

Another delay was caused when the City Council and Mayor Frederick Mansfield unsuccessfully argued that the federal government had to pay property taxes on the development.

Since the Public Works Administration was essentially established to provide jobs, the design of Old Harbor was spread out among seventeen associated architects with Joseph Leland as Chief Architect. Plans were approved in March of 1936 for nineteen walk up apartments from three to five stories high; fifteen, two story row houses, an administration building, power plant and maintenance building. The row houses were the only ones built in any Boston public housing development. There were 1016 apartments of 3 to 5 rooms. The total cost of design and construction was $5. 8 million. Plans and photographs of the nearly completed development were published in Architectural Forum for May, 1938.

Old Harbor was the first housing in Boston inspired by modern European design for domestic architecture that had inspired young architects and city planners in the 1920’s. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City held the first exhibit on this style from February 2 to March 30, 1932. The style was the model for Heath Street and every other housing development in Boston. Briefly. it was marked by functional brick boxes in T, U , L or X shape set out in geometric superblocks without regard to city street patterns. The superblocks created open spaces between them for playgrounds, drying yards and a large community common or square. They were the common grounds of Woodbourne magnified one hundred times. Old Harbor has only one through street , and that is on its edge. The other streets are narrow curving ways designed only for residents.

Old Harbor was built on vacant land so there was no relocation process of finding homes for those displaced by the development as at Heath Street. The Boston Housing Authority managed the rental process. Apartments were made available to any Boston resident except, ironically, those on relief or on the Public Works Administration payroll. Rents were set by the BHA with Housing Division approval: a 3 room apartment rented for $22.15 a month and a 5 room flat for $31. 90. This was out of the price range of most tenement residents. The average annual salary of a tenement working man in 1933 was $1290. In 1935, 56% of all New England families not on relief earned no more than $1500 a year. This meant that a three room apartment would take up 1/4 of the annual take home pay.

A lease agreement to manage Old harbor Village was signed between the USHA and the BHA on Feb. 18 ,1938. The BHA was swamped with 7500 applications from which they selected 557. Many of them had never lived in an apartment with central heating, hot water and flush toilets much less a laundry room in the basement. Ten thousand people attended the dedication on September 11,1938 ; it made the front page of the Boston Globe.

In one of the first critiques of public housing, real estate editor F. E. Drew of the Boston Herald wrote cautiously on October 9, 1938, “ The federal housing projects are still debatable as to both social benefit and financial injury to apartment house men. Many owners have lost tenants … time and experience in the next few years will tell more of the story.”

Housing built directly by the federal government ended in 1935 when the NIRA was declared unconstitutional by the U S Supreme Court. Old Harbor Village and New Towne Court - both underway in 1935 - would be completed, but the housing crisis facing Boston now awaited Congressional action.

Advocates for well-built, low cost housing for the working man were not satisfied with the Housing Division because it was a public works program, not a housing program. They also criticized the Division for building new housing on vacant land, such as at Old Harbor, than in razing dilapidated slums for better housing ( such as New Towne Court ). To the housing advocates of the 1930’s. a half century of failed attempts by philanthropic housing reformers was evidence enough that only government would ever be able to solve the problem of affordable housing. In 1934, one of the preeminent leaders of housing reform in 1930’s America published an influential book called simply Modern Housing. “ The fundamental premise about housing has undergone a tremendous change ,” Catherine Bauer wrote “ It has become a public utility. The right to live in a decent dwelling has taken its place among the national rights, such as water, sanitation, fire and police protection. The solution has nothing to do with the real estate industry. The old real estate industry is largely responsible for the bad conditions of cities and the existence of a housing problem.” Bauer and her housing reform colleagues wanted a permanent public housing policy and they turned to one of the titans of the New Deal, Senator Robert F. Wagner, of New York to get it.

In January of 1935, Senator Wagner introduced the first long range housing act in the nation’s history. It would leave construction and management to local authorities and administration and financing to a new federal housing agency. Catherine Bauer was one of its main authors.

But as Robert Moore Fisher points out in his book Twenty Years of Public Housing, Congress would not have entertained such revolutionary legislation if they had first not seen what public investment in housing looked like. The 1933 - 1935 PWA housing program, wrote Fisher, “gave a practical and legal background for a permanent federal housing program. First, it helped focus public attention to the problem of substandard housing and the use of federal funds to accomplish that. Second, it built the first low rent housing developments in the nation for the public to see. And finally, it stimulated the creation of 30 public housing authorities by 1937.” Public housing went straight to the heart of private property rights, a major pillar of American life. Common land was not a popular notion. Opposition from the National Association of Real Estate Boards, rural congressmen and anti New Deal Republicans was stiff and the bill failed to pass for two years. Another reason was that President Roosevelt did not put his formidable political weight behind the bill.

His cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt was a champion of Progressive legislation yet despite appointing an advisory committee on slums in 1908, he, like most Progressives, took no further action. Its report to the 60th Congress was too far ahead of its time: It stated that it was only common sense that government should provide decent dwellings if it can build prisons for the criminals, asylums for the afflicted and public schools and libraries.

Senator Wagner repeated this new role for Government in a nationwide radio address in April of 1936, “ [ The Housing Bill ] embodies recognition on the part of a socially awakened people that the distribution of our national income has not been entirely equitable and that partially subsidized houisng. like free schools, free roads and free parks is the next step that we must take to forge a new order.”

Franklin Roosevelt was faced with a national emergency and on October 28, 1936 in one of his first public statements on housing, he made it plain that - like the 1908 Report - the federal government had a responsibility to provide better housing for the poor citizens of America. In a speech in Senator Wagner ’s district, of New York City, the President said “We have for too long neglected the housing problem for all our lower income groups. We have spent large sums of money on parks. on highways. on bridges and museums … but we have not yet begun to spend money to help the families in the overcrowded sections of our cities to live as American citizens have a right to live. We need action to get better housing. Senator Wagner and I had hoped for a new law at the last session of Congress … I am confident that the next Congress will start us on the way with a sound housing policy.”

In his annual message to Congress on January 6, 1937, President Roosevelt spoke again about housing. “ There are far reaching problems still with us for which democracy must find solutions… for example many millions of American still live in habitations which not only fail to provide the physical benefits of modern civilization, but breed disease and impair the health of future generations. The menace exists not only in slum areas of very large cities but smaller cities as well.” This was crystallized in one of the most famous statements of his presidency. In his second inaugural address on January 20, 1937 he said :

“I see one third of a nation ill housed, ill clad and ill nourished.”

Senator Wagner introduced a revised housing bill ( S 1685 ) on February 24,1937. Democratic Representative Henry Steagall of Alabama introduced an identical bill in the House ( H 1544). No great partisan of public housing , the chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee was nevertheless loyal to the President and when Roosevelt came out in favor of a housing bill, Steagall took it as marching orders.

As others have said before, what contributed most to form the Wagner - Steagall Act was not its substance but concessions made to appease its opponents. During debate on the bill in August, two amendments were offered up. Massachusetts Senator David I Walsh introduced a measure which stated that one new housing unit had to be built for every one razed in slum clearance. Walsh was no supporter of public housing; he believed it was a misuse of government funds and in direct competition with private industry. He also believed that it wasn’t serving the poor and he justifiably pointed to the rent structure at Old Harbor as evidence.

The most far reaching and dangerous amendment was proposed by Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia on August 4,1937. Byrd believed that radical social philosophies motivated many of the public works projects of the New Deal and wasted millions of dollars. The Byrd Amendment placed a construction cap limit in the housing bill of $4000 for a 4 room unit or $1000 per room. In conference committee , the Byrd Amendment was revised to read that for any city with a population over 500,000 ( such as Boston whose population in 1938 was over 800,000) the cap on apartment costs would be $1250 per room not to exceed $5000; in all other cities the $1000 per room cost restriction remained. The Heath Street Development was designed and built as it was because of Byrd’s unrealistic cost restrictions on each apartment.

In response to the Byrd amendment, Congressman John O’Connor of New York city said in the House chamber on August 18, 1937 that “You cannot possibly in any of the metropolitan districts build one of these projects at a cost of $1000 a room or $4000 a unit. The two [ PWA ] projects in New York, the Harlem and the Williamsburg, cost $1600 a room. Of all the items in the bill, this is the most important. You might as well forget about a housing bill if you adapt an amendment [ of a ] limitation of $4000 a unit. It just cannot be done.”

But Frank Hancock, Congressman from North Carolina, thought about the morale of those who owned their own homes “ through self denial, frugality and self discipline. How do you reckon they will feel when they see this special class entering these comparatively luxurious apartments? The projects built by PWA are superior to the home of the average family. Fellows, let us watch our step, for God knows we are in dangerous territory. Do not do this thing.”

Congressman McCormack said that the real reason for so much emotional opposition to the bill was “unjustified fear”. This was humanitarian legislation and “ we should not permit this feeling to prevent its passage”.

The Wagner- Steagall Act passed the Senate on August 6, 1937 by a vote of 40 to 39. The two Massachusetts senators were divided in their votes: Senator Henry Cabot Lodge supported the bill while Senator Martin Walsh voted no. The House took up the bill on August 18,1937 with 275 members approving public housing and 86 against. There were 14 congressman from Massachusetts in the 75th Congress and all but only two voted in favor of the bill, John McCormack and Joseph E Casey of Clinton. Congressmen representing working class cities such as Lynn, Somerville and Worcester all opposed the housing act including Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of the mill city of Lowell. ( In December of 1937 Lowell was designated as eligible for $2 .7 million in housing funds under the Wagner- Steagall Act ). In the May, 1938 issue of Architectural Forum, the editors wrote . “ For this country to approve the Wagner- Steagall Act is no mean feat… . [ the act ] approaches housing not as employment or a recovery measure but as housing. Congress has been educated to a new approach to housing as a perpetual social obligation ( emphasis added ).”

(On January 18, 1938, The Federal Theater Project opened its new play “ One Third of a Nation” in New York. It was reviewed with photographs from the production in the February issue of Architectural Forum. It was still playing to packed houses when the Forum reported in its May. 1938 issue that the play is “ not without a certain fortuitous significance since the star of the piece is not a blonde but Housing. Housing has just reached its political majority with the passage of the Wagner Steagall Act.” ).

President Roosevelt signed the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act into law on Sept. 1,1937 ( 50 Stat. 888 1937). Its preamble stated “It is hereby the policy of the United States to assist the several states to alleviate unsafe and unsanitary housing conditions and the acute shortage of decent,safe and sanitary dwellings for families of low income.” The bill established the United States Housing Authority ( USHA ), which is today known as the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The USHA was authorized to enter into 60 year loan agreements with local housing authorities for 90% of the cost of housing developments. The first appropriation was $800 million; a second appropriation of $800 million, under which Heath Street was built, was authorized by Congress with little commotion in the summer of 1938. After a glimmer of hope in 1937, the Depression darkened the country in 1938 and Congress wanted to revive the economy.

The Boston Housing Authority Board held a lengthy discussion of the provisions of the Wagner act at its September 15,1937 meeting. In December of 1937, Lowell and Boston had been notified by the US Housing Authority ( USHA ) that they had been approved for housing funds. Boston was eligible for $9 million in housing funds and in that same month, Mayor Mansfield made a tentative agreement with the USHA for three developments: Charlestown, East Boston and South Boston .

But Boston could not receive those funds until the Massachusetts Housing Act was amended to comply with the Wagner - Steagall bill.

Governor Charles Hurley appointed Christian Herter to chair a committee charged with amending the Massachusetts Housing Act.

The BHA had to be given authorization to:

• Enter into agreements with federal agencies relative to borrowing funds.
  
• Enter into a contract with the federal government to purchase or lease housing which it owned. This referred specifically to  the Old Harbor Village which was owned by the United States. It would not be transferred to the BHA until December 31,1958 ).
• Determine the amount of money to be paid to the city annually in lieu of property taxes. Real estate owned by a housing authority was deemed public property and exempt from taxation. 
  

After the City Council approved the creation of the Boston Housing Authority, Mayor Frederick Mansfield appointed architect George Nelson Jacobs as chairman of the six member authority. The other members were architect Harold Field Kellogg, George Green, hotel manger Bradbury F. Cushing, John Carroll, chairman of the State Housing Authority, and Reverend Thomas R. Reynolds, pastor of St. Matthews Church in Dorchester. ( The latter two were appointed by the Commonwealth). In January of 1938, Mansfield’s successor, Maurice Tobin replaced Jacobs with 33 year old John A. Breen, vice president of the Massachusetts Real Estate Exchange. These were the men who would change the housing landscape of Boston.

Debate on a new Massachusetts Housing bill ( H 1965 ) raged for seven months throughout 1938. One of the first meetings took place before the Massachusetts Real Estate Owners Association on February 17,1938. Robert Gardner Wilson, Republican of Ward 17 in Dorchester, said that “ the Old Harbor project is in direct competition with private home owners and no private home owner can compete with them … it’s really not American. We must fight the socialistic policies of the New Deal.” Wilson, who in 1938 had served for 11 years on the Council, would be a vociferous critic of public housing for years. His district, ironically, included St. Matthew’s parish outside Codman Square , the church of BHA member Rev. Reynolds.

Gardner’s opposite was Councilor Clement A. Norton, of Ward 18 which included all of Mattapan and Hyde Park. He characterized himself as the “ friend of the Housing Authority and a believer in what the Authority is doing.” Norton testified at the February hearing that “ private building has admitted its inability to take care of the lowest one third income class. Government must … come to their rescue. Whether we like it or not, slum clearance is here to stay.”

“Bitter protests by property owners,” shouted the headline of the Evening Globe of June 6,1938 reporting on a public hearing on H1965. “ Leading the assault was Mrs. Hannah Connors, president of the Real Estate Owners Association: ‘Federal housing is paving the way for the advance of Communism in this country.’”

Governor Hurley signed the Massachusetts Housing Authority Act into law on July 5, 1938 ( MGL Chpt 484 Acts of 1938 ). His remarks at the State House made little reference to housing for low income families; rather he stressed that the legislation would increase employment for the construction trades. By then the amount of funding available for Boston public housing had increased to $31 million and two weeks later USHA officials came to the city to present Mayor Tobin with the first $15 million in loan guarantees. They also conferred with him on proposed sites which had to meet certain guidelines of the USHA Acquisition Department. Councilor Wilson said in the Globe on July 16,1938 in response to the visit by the USHA that “ no new federal housing should be built until Old Harbor Village is studied to determine whether real estate owners are being penalized with free real estate built with federal funds.”

In August, the BHA began to prepare a 15 year bond issue to cover the 10% of the costs of housing for which it was responsible. Under State law , savings banks could not invest in BHA bonds, but all other banks and financial institutions were invited to participate. On November 29,1940, as the Heath Street Development was getting underway, the BHA entered into a restructured loan contract with the USHA at an interest rate of 2.5%.

In the areas targeted for public housing, the BHA surveyed the existing conditions. What we consider automatic in the way we live today was not the case for many Bostonians in 1938: 92 % of the dwelling places had no central heating, 47% had no hot water and 20% had no bathrooms in the unit but shared communal toilets. To reduce its costs , the BHA narrowed its site selection to land already owned by the City of Boston or in tax foreclosure by the City. Of the land acquired for the first 4 developments, 23% was city owned. On October 24, 1938, the City Council approved ( 17 to 3 ) a service contract between the BHA and the City of Boston for 4 housing sites: Charlestown ( Bunker Hill ), South Boston ( Old Colony ), Roxbury ( Mission Hill ) and Lower Roxbury ( Lenox Street ). The Globe reported that before the vote, “ an avalanche of letters and telegrams descended on the 21 member council” for and against the contract. Labor was strongly in favor, and the building trades representative wrote the council that “the projects will employ thousands of men not on WPA payrolls.”

In an effort to stop the spread of further public housing developments, a non binding referendum was held in 4 wards in November, 1938. Ward 12 ( Roxbury : Dudley Square to Franklin Park ), Ward 18 represented by Clement Norton, Ward 19 ( Jamaica Plain : Forest Hills to Egleston Square ), and Ward 20, West Roxbury. The vote was 30,685 opposed to 14,170 in favor of public housing in these districts. As the BHA was taking land necessary to build the first 4 developments, Councilor Gardner stood up in Council meeting and asked that Mayor Tobin hold a city wide binding plebiscite on public housing before the BHA submits its ten year plan for housing 35,000 families. Based on the November vote , he said, “ I know that the people of Boston are at least two to one” against public housing.

Yet public housing was now on the verge of becoming part of Boston’s architectural heritage . On the opposite slope of Parker Hill from Heath Street, the Lenox Street development got underway in the summer of 1939. In July, the BHA took 4 takings of land covering 5.75 acres between Smith, Ward and Parker Streets. In the next few months, 742 run-down tenements were razed. The architect George Ernest Robinson designed a series of 13 buildings opposite Smith Playground. Construction began on November 9, 1939 and it opened in the spring of 1941.

In April of 1939, the BHA selected 4 other sites for public housing: Roxbury ( Orchard Park ), South End ( Cathedral ), East Boston ( Maverick ), and Heath Street in Jamaica Plain. The Heath Street site ( numbered Mass. 2-7 ) was bordered by Heath Street, a main east- west thoroughfare ; and Bickford and Walden Streets. The Plant Shoe Factory property formed the back of the development. The location was selected for 5 main reasons:

1. It was a deteriorating area which was rapidly spreading its blight.
2. The land could be purchased for $1.50 a square foot as mandated by the USHA.
3. It was convenient to street car, train and bus transportation.
4. Streets could be closed within the boundaries which allowed for good planning of the site.
5. Relocation of current residents presented no problems.

The site for the Heath Street Development was over ten acres of level ground in a valley below Parker Hill. In the 17th century, the land was a pasture belonging to the family of the Revolutionary War General William Heath. After the general’s death in 1814, it was bequeathed to his sons. Beginning in 1860, Mary Heath, the widow of Joseph Heath began to sell the farm off in parcels. Sixty-five multi family and single family wooden houses had been built by 1873 as well as a leather factory on what became Minden Street when it was laid out in 1879. This represented half of the housing stock in place when the land was acquired by the BHA in 1940.

This site was located in Census Tract V- 6 which stretched from Heath Street to Day Street. In 1935 the population was 1,290, all of whom were white. There were 621 buildings that included 1,459 dwelling units. Over 1000 apartments had no central heating; the only source of heat was the kitchen stove.

It was in the factory district of Jamaica Plain: the Plant Shoe Factory on Center and Street, Chelmsford Ginger Ale Company on Heath Street and the Moxie Bottling Company on Bickford Street as well as four other breweries or bottling plants were within a few minutes walk. It was convenient to different modes of transportation: the Heath Street station of the Boston and Provident Railroad was a quarter mile away as were the Columbus Avenue street cars; the Centre Street bus lines were close to many homes. Also close by were Blessed Sacrament Church, the Jefferson , Mozart and Bulfinch Schools and McLaughlin Playground.

The community was largely Italian - Americans who worked as stitchers in the shoe factory or repairing harnesses at the bottling plants. ( A reminder of that community can be seen at the intersection of Chestnut Avenue and Center Street which named in honor of Captain Peter R. Mutascio ). There was also a small group of German Jews who worked in the breweries.

The BHA Board approved the site on February 23, 1939 . It was conveniently located between two through streets, Walden and Bickford, which connected Heath Street to Center Street. Based on the terms of conditions of the Contract signed between the BHA and the USHA on March 10, 1938 outlining the arrangement by which the two parties would finance and build public housing developments in Boston, the housing to be built on Heath Street would not be named for any living person. The development was simply named for the very familiar street which formed the main entrance to the apartments. ( To the USHA it was called - and still is to this day to its successor agency the Department of Housing and Urban Development - as Mass 2-7 ).

Bonds worth $14, 082,000 were authorized by the USHA to be sold for the construction of five developments: Orchard Park in Roxbury, Lenox Street in Lower Roxbury, Heath Street, Maverick in East Boston and Cathedral in the South End. ( The coming of war postponed the Cathedral housing until after 1945 ). Each development had accounts in separate banks approved the USHA in which were deposited the proceeds from the sale of the bonds and drawn down for surveys, engineering, design, demolition and construction costs. On January 3, 1940, a Development Fund Agreement was established for Heath Street at the Webster and Atlas National Bank located in the Sears Building at 199 Washington Street ( One Boston Place occupies the site today ).

Henry F. Bryant and Son was awarded a $2,885 contract to survey the site on March 13, 1940. Robert T. Fowler of Jamaica Plain was one of four appraisers of the properties to be acquired. Rehousing of families living on the site took place between September and November.

Most of the land taking for Mass. 2-7 was completed on July 30, 1940; six city owned parcels - taken previously for non payment of taxes - were sold to the BHA on October 8, 1940. In total, 116 parcels of land were acquired by eminent domain at a cost of $ 497,000 . One building was the original Jefferson School built by the then City of Roxbury at the corner of Walden and Heath Street, which at the time of purchase by the BHA was being used as a motor vehicle repair shop. The demolition contract was awarded in February of 1941. A total of 115 buildings were torn down including garages, stables and not a few outhouses. Many of the buildings were dilapidated and some were so unsafe that the BHA had them razed as soon as they were bought. Six interior streets were discontinued and graded flat to make a roughly square lot : Arklow, Ulmer, Posen and Minden Streets, Heath Place and Heath Avenue. Horan Way was laid out through the development along the same line of Minden Street.

All architects selected by the BHA were given final approval by the USHA based on their guidelines and fee structures, not by the lowest bid, as demanded by the Boston City Council. M. A. Dyer was chosen as the architect for Heath Street Development on July 10, 1940.

Michael Andrew Dyer ( 1886 - 1954 ) was born in Malden to Irish immigrant parents. His father, Michael Sr. was a carpenter who soon moved the family to Medford; in 1888 he was listed in the Malden city directory as a carpenter- contractor. Young Michael graduated from Medford High School and then took classes at MIT; he did not receive a degree. He joined his father’s contracting business at 26 Court Street in Malden in 1907 where he worked as an architect until he opened his own firm in 1924.

The Boston architect Robert Neiley worked as a young g draftsman for MA Dyer Associates in 1950 and he described Michael Dyer as “a real architect in the old sense; he had good traditional training and knew what makes a good building.”

As a young apprentice, Dyer began his profession in the building trade working with his father, so he knew materials and construction before he knew design. Unlike most of today’s architects who don’t learn plastering, framing or bricklaying, Dyer learned that as a teenager by doing. The most famous Renaissance architect of them all, Andrea Palladio was a stonemason by trade and like him, Dyer was a tradesman first. More than likely he worked with his father in designing and building apartment houses and single family homes in the railroad suburbs of Malden, Medford and Woburn. When he opened his own practice, his work shifted to almost excusively public commissions. In 1931, he was the architect of the Woburn Town Hall and in 1937, his firm designed the Medford City Hall, his home town ( He spoke at the dedication ceremony ).

The Heath Street development design contract was probably his first Boston job, but it was not his last: he would work in Boston for the rest of his career. M. A. Dyer Architects designed four more Boston public housing developments between 1949 and 1954 including the massive Columbia Point apartments in Dorchester ( today known as Harbor Point ). In 1952, he designed the BHA central administration building on Kemp Street in South Boston ( adjacent to Old Harbor ) and in 1954, MA Dyer designed the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain.

All of his skills as a builder were required to design the Heath Street Houses where the plans and specifications were controlled by the cost restrictions of the Byrd Amendment. The Wagner - Steagall Act emphasized this and also tried to calm the real estate industry in the preamble: “ Such projects will not be of elaborate or expensive design or materials and economy will be promoted both in construction and administration and the average construction cost is not to be greater than the average cost of dwelling units currently produced by the private sector.”

Plans were completed in three months and building permits were approved on March 1, 1941 for 17 apartment blocks which contained 24 apartments each for a total of 420 residences, an administration building and social hall. Construction began soon afterwards. The largest apartment building was Building Number Ten ( 90 - 98 Heath Street at the corner of Bickford Street ) which had 36 apartments. Most of the apartment blocks were of the same dimensions; Building Number One ( 170 Heath Street ) at the corner of Heath and Walden Streets was 158 feet long, 69 feet wide and 110 feet high. The load bearing walls were built of brick with concrete block back up. Number 170 Heath Street had six , 3 and 1/2 room; nine, 5 and 1/2 room and nine, 4 and 1/2 room apartments. A typical bedroom measured 8 feet 9 inches by 14 feet ten inches and a kitchen averaged 9 feet by 10 feet. Most of the apartments at Heath Street ( 186 out of 420 ) had 4 and 1/2 rooms.

The apartment blocks included courtyards designed for drying yards. play areas and sitting spaces. The community building, administration office , power plant and maintenance shop faced out onto grassed play area for games and for public events. A second open space for sitting and gardens was provided behind the community/ maintenance building. There was no vehicular streets; the circulation patterns were built for pedestrians only. Two perpendicular parking lots named Horan Way were built from Bickford Street and Walden Street and dead ended at the playground. Horan Way was the principle interior thoroughfare, but it was for pedestrians only. All service vehicles entered the development from a separate road from Bickford Street over an easement granted by the Plant Shoe Factory to the maintenance building.

The BHA Board selected Hallam L. Movius, ASLA, as landscape architect and site planner for Heath Street on July 11,1940. Movius, whose office was located at 115 Newbury Street, was also responsible for the site planning and landscaping of Orchard Park, which was planned and built concurrently with Heath Street. These were the last two works Movius designed; he died on August 1, 1942 at the age of 61.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Movius spent three years at the Harvard Graduate school of Landscape Architecture after receiving his BA from the Harvard University in 1902. He was an apprentice with the landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff in 1905 and then worked with several architectural firms before opening his own office in 1912. ( His partner was the architect Arthur G. Rotch ).

His professional work extended from cemeteries to housing subdivisions, but his largest commissions were campus designs for the University of Buffalo and Bowdoin College in Maine. The experience Movius had with large scale campus planning as well as his early work on the staff of architectural firms, served him well in collaborating with Dyer at Heath Street and the architect John M Gray at Orchard Park.

The phenomenon of the landscaping of public housing developments was very new to the profession, however. At the 41st annual meeting of the American Society of Landscape Architects ( ASLA ) held at Washington DC in January of 1940 a full roundtable discussion was devoted to “ Landscape Design and Low Rent Housing” ( See Landscape Architecture, April, 1940, page 132 ). The meeting opened with the admission that “ many landscape architects have had apparent difficulty in solving the planting problems on housing projects.”

An official from the USHA said that in earning how to tackle the job of low rent housing, the landscape architect has to remember two basic points:

The first was that large scale public housing programs required the integration of architect, landscape architect and engineer.

The second was that every project must be “orderly, dignified, livable and very inexpensive.”

Two problems that the landscape architect needed to solve in planning public housing was the matter of different surface treatments; playgrounds, roadways courtyards and common spaces required different surface materials whether it was gravel, macadam , paving blocks or grass.

The second was the ingenuity in the selection of plant materials that are inexpensive and hardy. “ There has still to be produced the housing project having a site developed only with trees and relatively indestructible smaller plants or perhaps with only trees for plant materials.”

Dyer and Movius worked as a team for over three months to produce a plan in which housing and open spaces were balanced in a harmonious pattern. each building, except for those at the corners, had its own drying yard for washing, sitting area and play area. The buildings were grouped together so that the wings would create geometrical squares. In each square shape, Movius placed the play areas and drying yards. Sitting areas were tucked inside the two corner entrances of each building. All of these spaces had hard surfaces, but where the drying yards and play spaces were made of bituminous, the sitting areas were surfaced with paving blocks. There were two large common spaces which the BHA intended for the community as a whole, not as a private reserve for the residents of the development. In the center of the site plan was a one half acre play area with a spray pool ( probably the first spray pool in Jamaica Plain ). This was located adjacent to and served as an outdoor room for the social hall. A second common space was a 550 foot long shady mall called Plant Court which extended between the rear of the social hall and maintenance building to the west property line of the Plant Shoe Factory. Buildings number 14, 15 and 16 look out over this green.

Movius was careful to plant a green edge of grass around the outside of the development, particularly the Heath and Walden Street borders. The two corner buildings at Heath - Bickford and Heath - Walden, as well as Building 17 ( 42 Walden Street at the corner of Horan Way ) have the most lawn areas.

The planting plan was a rich mixture of trees, shrubs and vines. Foundation plantings were kept to a minimum and vines were planted on the fences of the drying yards and play areas outside each apartment. At Building Number One, clematis vines were planted around the drying yard fence. Berberry, mulberry, honeysuckle and privet shrubs were planted at the corners of the building; to provide a little privacy, the sitting areas were screened with privet hedge also.

Eight different varieties of trees were planted throughout the development including linden. American elm,plane tree. little leaf hawthorn and ailanthus. At building number one, mulberry, thornless honey locust and Norway maples were planted ( several of the latter are still providing shade to that corner building today ).

The John Bowen Company was selected as the contractor on December 4, 1940 with a bid of $1.6 million. ( Bowen built the Bunker Hill and Maverick developments before the war and Franklin Hill in 1951 - 52 ). Demolition was well underway when John Breen, the Chairman of the BHA, escorted Governor Leverett Saltonstall, Mayor Maurice Tobin and the State Housing Board on a tour of the eight developments under construction or nearly completed on January 24, 1941.

The original purpose of public housing began to change, however, in 1941. On May 27, 1941, in reaction to the war in Europe, President Roosevelt announced that an unlimited national emergency confronted the United States. The pace of war - related industry, from ships to ammunition - increased dramatically and as employment rose so did the need for housing of defense workers. Unlike 1917, however, the United States already had housing under construction in the form of low rent apartments nationwide. ( By the end of 1941, 143,200 housing units had been built across the country ). To house shipyard workers, the barely completed Old Colony Development in South Boston, located within sight of Old Harbor Village, was sold by the BHA to the federal government in February of 1941 for $21,530,000 ( Authorized by the Lanham Act. PL 849. 76th Congress). On November 4, 1941, when Heath Street was over half built, the BHA adapted a resolution that gave preferential housing to low income defense workers at Heath Street and Maverick Street developments. ( Low income was defined as having an annual wage of $1768 or less ). After the declaration of war a month later, apartments in all the new developments were offered first to defense workers eligible under the income limits.

On January 6, 1942, the Chief of Construction of the BHA accepted as completed buildings number one through five and buildings seven and seventeen. Three weeks later the whole development was accepted as completed.

Rents for the Heath Street development were established on January 6, 1942:

As mandated by the Wagner Steagall Act, no family would be accepted whose annual income was in excess of five times the annual rent. On April 1, 1942, the BHA increased the income level to $2800 for defense workers.

A four bedroom apartment plus utilities rented at $18 a month for a family whose annual income did not exceed $918.

For a family with an income of $2596, the rent was $45 for a four rooms apartment.

Income was one standard for judging the eligibility of tenants, another was if a family had been living for six months or longer in a substandard apartment or house. Substandard was defined as:

1. Hazardous; in need of roof, wall, steps or floor repairs.
2. No inside toilets.
3. No electricity.
4. No running water.
5. One or more families living in the same unit.

During January of 1942, 106 leases were completed and the first tenants began taking their apartments the next month. Heath street Houses was fully occupied by November. Many of the tenants were families of active duty Naval personnel as well as defense workers. (After the war, Heath Street became housing for returning servicemen and their young families.) Some families at their request were transferred to heath street from Old Harbor because they need a five room apartment.

Final certificate of title was taken by the BHA on November 25, 1942. The Heath Street Development cost $2,436,000 to design and build.

The Heath Street Development solved the two most critical problems of previous philanthropic housing in Boston: how to build big enough and with enough financing to keep costs down and rents affordable for the poor. Despite sound planning and good intentions, every philanthropic housing programs since the first one in 1871 had floundered on these two problems which meant that for the most part the housing built was out of reach of the working poor. Only the United States government had enough capital and resources to lower the costs of housing.

Most importantly of all, Heath Street was the first self contained community Jamaica Plain had ever seen. In keeping with one of the main ideologies of housing reformers of the New Deal Era, public housing was developed as a planned community. Woodbourne came close with common areas for gardens and playgrounds and a community building; but Heath Street was an orderly community with spaces individually adapted for specific uses. It had its own heating plant, maintenance facility, management office, community rooms, playground as well as play spaces in front of the apartment door, sitting areas and a small town common for gardens and more passive use at the rear of the development. Parking areas and pedestrian walkways were clearly separated; for mothers with children it was one of the safest places to live in Jamaica Plain because there was no motor vehicle traffic in front of any building.

As architecture, Heath Street is also unique because its site planning and architectural style were unknown before 1938. The housing reformers and city planners of the New Deal Era championed not only low income housing but an egalitarian architectural style of pure function devoid of any historical references, such as the English cottage and Colonial Revival at Woodbourne, the last of the philanthropic housing. Heath Street Houses was a mixture of the American garden city, Beaux Arts planning and European innovation.

In Modern Housing, Catherine Bauer explained that “ old methods must be considered outmoded and new ones set in their place. She advocated for self contained residential neighborhood with a central plant for heat and hot water

Prior to 1938 when Old Harbor opened, the only precedents for government sponsored housing was in Europe and in the 1920’s idealistic architects an city planners flocked to Germany, Holland. Switzerland and France to see what the future of housing looked like.

“There are certain times,” wrote the architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock in 1932,” When a new [architecture ] really begins” In America that time was between 1932 and 1934 when European models of cluster housing was mixed with the International Style to become modern housing.

The Heath Street Houses followed the style of the Zeilenbau formation of standardized rows oriented north - south for maximum morning and afternoon light. As shown at Heath Street, these rows were set in rows on a northeast to southeast axis at an angle to the main street. This pattern of housing began to be built in Munich and Berlin just before WW I and picked up again in other German cities in the 1920’s. Its basic characteristic was that of large but low scale three to four story walk up buildings set in wide open usually level sites in which the old street patterns had been destroyed for a free form space. By breaking away from the usually disorganized, often narrow street pattern, city planners were free to place buildings in less cramped spaces to make allowances for light, ventilation, public spaces and playgrounds.

Heath Street Houses was laid out in alternating U shaped blocks set at 60 degree angles to Heath and Walden Streets. The apartment blocks are spaced out to create five interior courts. Unlike the surrounding housing, the Heath Street apartments relate to each other as a whole rather to the city street. This concept fit perfectly into the ideology of the housing reformers of the time who wanted housing styles and site patterns that looked completely different from the old slum tenement streets. The three story buildings of Heath Street fit into the low scale residential housing patterns of the rest of the neighborhood, but otherwise it was a completely new town.

In Boston the Zeilenbau style was mixed with the familiar Garden City plan of which Woodbourne is the best example. The Heath Street apartment houses were ( and still are) nestled among tree shaded green lawns, courtyards and playgrounds. ( the plaza has since been taken up for parking ). This is classic Garden City planning but the architecture went out of its way to be unapoligetically functional. Heath Street was built in the International Style which America glimpsed for the first time in 1932 at the Museum of Modern Art, exhibit organized by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Phillip Johnson. To accompany the displays, Hitchcock wrote one of the first descriptions in America of this new European architecture.

The International Style had no history. It was not based on Greek temples. French chateaux, Italian palaces or Japanese pagodas. It was an architecture, wrote Hitchcock, based on economics not aesthetics.

“Modern construction is one of straightforward expression. It uses standardized parts and avoids ornament or unnecessary detail. It provides for its purpose adequately, completely and without compromise.” He identified three masters of the Style: Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe in Germany and Le Corbusier in France. Displayed at the exhibit was an apartment house from Stuttgart, Germany designed by Mies in 1927 which bears many of the characteristics of the Heath Street Houses.

Hitchcock described four guidelines of the International Style and each is illustrated at Heath Street.

1. Volume over mass. The true character of the building must be evident in the construction. The Heath Street Houses have load bearing walls of concrete block faced with brick but they are not heavy looking buildings. The flat roof was an essential aesthetic point of the Style since it did not hide the character of the building. The entrances at Heath Street are at the corners of the wings of each block which adds to the private, domestic feel of the buildings.
2. The surface material must be of one even texture. The cheapest brick is often the best because it keeps a permanent color, does not crack and streak, comes in different shapes and can be laid in different patterns. Brick is also the best material for large low cost construction.
3. Buildings must have a regular rhythm in the use of standardized parts, shapes and a sense of order in the placement of the parts. This was in direct response to the chaos of architectural styles, building sizes and congested street patterns of the 19th century city. Moving housing away from this chaos had been one of the most significant issues with housing reformers for decades. The order of the Heath Street Houses of standardized materials. uniform massing and Beaux Arts formality in the placement of the buildings was in total opposite to the disorganized housing it replaced.
4. Avoidance of applied decoration and restraint in the use of color. American architecture had been reducing and streamlining the use of facade decoration since the 1920’s but especially with the Art Deco style of commercial buildings in the 1930’s. The International Style destroyed ornament altogether. They advocated sleek buildings in which the windows were the most decorative detail. Windows created a rhythm in their placement in the thin walls of the buildings and the window frame material provided contrast in color with the building facade material, usually a light colored metal against the darker brick.

Architectural ornament was opposed because advocates of the International Style wanted to stress the universal over the particular. They wanted no reminders of historical forms. They rejected the excessive sentimentality about homes of the past such as the Colonial Revival, which was then well on its way to becoming the quintessential American architectural style.

After 1934, the International Style and the Zeilenbau patterns became the standard for the Public Works Administration Housing Division and later the USHA. The architectural style and site plan offered huge cost savings. It helped solve the severe cost restrictions imposed by the Byrd Amendment to the Wagner Act. Ready made design, standardized parts, and cheap, cast materials kept construction costs - and hence rents - down.

World War II stopped low rent housing construction across the country. In Boston, the proposed development for the South End was postponed for a over decade. The Heath Street Houses was managed for twelve years as a single development until its neighbor Bromley Park was completed in 1954 when the two developments were merged into one managerial unit. Bromley Park has its own history based on the policy stated in the second housing act in American history, the Taft- Ellender Housing Act of 1949.

II. BROMLEY PARK

The demand for housing and the spread of slums was even greater after 1945 and to remedy both of these urban problems, Congress passed the Omnibus Housing Act of 1949 ( often called the Taft - Ellender Act after its chief Senate sponsors ) which reauthorized, amended and expanded the 1937 Wagner - Steagall Act. It was under the 1949 Housing Act that the Heath Street development was enlarged with the construction of the apartments at Bromley Park.

Seen here is an aerial view of Bromley Heath development taken in April 1977.  The Lowell Estate stretched from Centre Street, shown on the far right, to the ridgeline of the housing cornices. The smokestack is all that remains of the huge Plant Shoe factory that burned on February 2, 1976. Click on the photograph to the left to see a larger view of it.

 

 

The 1949 housing bill was no easier to pass than its predecessor in 1937 and mostly for the same reasons: opposition from real estate interests. But the times were vastly different too: the 1937 housing act was born out of the Great Depression when unemployment was high and decent affordable housing was low; indeed, Congress doubled the appropriation for low housing construction in 1939 because the economy had taken a drastic downturn turn. In 1949 America was basking in the warm air of post war prosperity and low income housing was not seen nationwide as being an urgent need; there were no Broadway plays about low cost housing in 1949 as there had been in 1938. The housing problem had not disappeared,though. Statistics from the Federal Bureau of the Census revealed that 30% of American families in 1947 had incomes of less than $2500 which meant they could afford rents of only $27 a month. New homes were out of the question for this group of Americans given that the average house was being sold for $7000.

But the Republican landslide in the Congressional elections of 1946 was interpreted to be a repudiation of the New Deal. More to the point, Americans were just tired of social problems. Still the movement from a wartime to a peacetime economy was painful for everyone and there was a wide group of Americans that prosperity failed to reach:

• Families without workers.
• Non whites, mostly blacks.
• Broken families.
• Relief cases.
• The aged.

These were the tenants which made up a large part of the second wave of public housing in Boston built between 1950 and 1954. Along with this group of chronically poor people came attendant social problems that housing managers now had to understand and learn to resolve.

After four years of failure to pass a new housing bill, Congress convened early in January, 1949 and took up S1070, a housing act with very broad bipartisan support. Introduced by Senator Allan J. Ellender ( Democrat of Louisiana ) and Senator Robert A. Taft ( Republican of Ohio ) on February 25,1949, the bill had eleven Republican and eleven Democratic sponsors including Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine and Wayne Morse of Oregon.

The Taft -Ellender bill was introduced at the same that the Cold War had settled over American political life to freeze and polarize political debate for the next forty years and both advocate and opponent alike argued the housing act in anti-Communist rhetoric.

When the Senate took up debate on the bill on April 14,1949, Ellender said that the legislation was important because the way the defeat Communism was to make democracy work.” foreign ideologies will not appeal to our people if they can obtain decent shelter in which to live and pleasant surroundings.”

“The American people,” Raymond Foley, the Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, said in a speech on April 4, 1949, “ have a right to expect the American system to work in such a fashion that it will develop opportunity.”

On the opposite side, Congressman George A. Dondero of Michigan said that if this “ colossal program” is adapted, “ the Russian ideology will have gained a foothold on the shores of freedom.”

Congressman Frederick C. Smith of Ohio stated that the bill was nothing but Communistic and suggested that the title be changed to “ A bill to further enslave the people of the United States.”

Congressman John W. McCormack said it was amusing to hear members denounce the bill as socialism since “ those very people have been in fact the strongest advocates for government aid and assistance.” ( Most of all new private sector housing starts, for example, were made possible by mortgages guaranteed by the federal government, the most popular public housing program then and now in the country ).

On June 6, 1949. McCormack introduced the results of research he had requested which showed that, far from being socialistic, the housing bill was supported by the United States Constitution. He made a strong case that Federal public housing was authorized under Article I, which gave to Congress the power to lay and collect taxes for the general welfare. ( for the full text of McCormack’s research, see the Congressional Record, 81st Congress, 1st Session, Appendix I, page A 3483 ).

The usual quintet of opposition was in full force throughout the winter and spring of 1949:
The US Chamber of Commerce
The National Association of Real Estate Boards ( NAREB )
The US Savings and Loan Association
The national Association of Retail Lumber Dealers
The National Association of Home Builders

These groups had never stopped fighting public housing even after passage of the Wagner - Steagall Act. “ The United States Housing Authority projects now underway are undiluted socialism,” bellowed the NAREB in 1939.

On April 14,1949, One of the sponsors of the housing bill, Senator John Sparkman of Alabama vented his impatience at this relentless opposition,

“We have never really had a fair test of public housing. We started public housing before the war and before we really had a chance to test it , we were in the war. Housing is a national problem.” The Housing Act of 1949 . he said, is a fundamental measure to improve the living conditions of the American people.

The adjective “ public “ before the word housing rattled the private sector and Sparkman tried to alleviate that by saying many people[ get the wrong idea that the federal government owns housing. It was owned by local communities and local housing were authorities established under state laws. The NAREB was unmoved: housing, it said, should remain a matter of private enterprise and private ownership.

As the Heath Street Houses showed, public housing was in many ways a private enterprise: local real estate men got the fees for appraising the properties, it was designed by private sector architects, built by private sector contractors using private sector suppliers, truckers and tradesmen from masons to bricklayers, plasterers to electricians.

As page after page of testimony showed, the private sector could not meet the housing needs of a very large part of the American people,” Private enterprise,” said Senator Ellender, “ even with the aids presently available to it, is unable to meet the total housing needs of the American people because it cannot produce houses at the prices and rents which a large portion of the American people can afford.”

Arrayed against the opposition quintet was another formidable group of five who supported the bill:
The AFL - CIO
The US Conference of Mayors
The American Municipal Association
The NAACP
Veterans organizations

They had their voice in President Harry S. Truman. Housing legislation was in suspension in the four post war years largely because Truman, serving out the term of President Roosevelt who had died in office in April, 1945, did not have good relations with Congress; and after the 1946 Republican sweep of both the Senate and House, that party saw him as a lame duck president who would soon be gone. But Truman’s unbelievable victory in the presidential election of 1948 changed all that: he was now president in his own right and one of the highest priorities of his Fair Deal was the housing bill.

The debate on the bill in the Senate lasted seven days, from April 13 to 21, 1949; the House hearings took a month, from April 9 to May 7th. But during the House - Senate Conference formed to reconcile the two versions of the legislation, debate was so acrimonious and the real estate lobbying so intense, that the Truman administration feared that the bill might fail to pass. On June 17,1949, Truman signed a letter written by the White House counsel and the head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency to Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn which said,

“ I have been shocked in recent days at the extraordinary propaganda campaign unleashed against this bill by the real estate lobby. I do not recall ever having witnessed a more deliberate campaign of misrepresentation and distortion against legislation of such crucial importance to the public welfare… [ it ] consistently distorts the facts of the housing situation in the country … The real estate lobby continues to cry socialism in a last effort to smother the real facts which this bill is designed to meet. [ It is a ] malicious and willful appeal to ignorance and selfishness … The American Legion, Jewish War Veterans, AFL, the US Conference of Mayors … all of them have seen through the charge of socialism and support the bill [ as ] necessary to the public interest.”

The basic difference between the House version and that of the Senate was contained in Section II: Amendments to the National Housing Act. The Senate version provided for 810,000 units of housing with $308 million a year in annual contributions to the local housing authorities over six years. The House wanted 1,05,000 units and $400 million in annual contributions over seven years. In the conference committee the Senate version prevailed and President Truman signed the bill into law on July 15, 1949 ( 63 Stat. 81st Congress, Ch 338 1949 ).

The 1949 Taft - Ellender Housing Act differed in one very substantial way from the 1937 Wagner - Steagall Act: where the 1937 Act was strictly dedicated to low rent housing, the 1949 bill included Title I, Slum Clearance and Urban Renewal as well as the authorization to build 810,000 units of low rent housing nationwide. If job creation helped mightily to win passage of the 1937 public housing law, in many ways urban renewal made possible the 1949 Housing Act. The 1949 bill was acceptable to many House members only

because of Title I and most mayors across the country supported the bill because of what slum clearance would bring to increase their city’s tax base. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota recalled his tenure as mayor of Minneapolis in his remarks in support of the bill.

“The Housing Act of 1937 was basically a public housing act. This particular bill is pointedly directed at slum clearance. Municipalities cannot live on public housing. Municipalities which are required to pay for education, health, sanitation, police and fire costs cannot live on the rents coming from public housing. “

Humphrey favored Title I, the Community Redevelopment section of the bill, because it would do the most for big cities. Yet he admitted that although slum clearance was the heart of the bill, if the public housing section was eliminated, Title I alone would be useless. Urban renewal would force the relocation of thousands of families and public housing was needed to house them. Urban renewal could not start until public housing facilities were built. “ S1070 is a balanced bill, “said Humphrey. It had public housing and slum clearance.

The Housing Act of 1949 committed the United States to “ the goal of a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family”. In a major change from the 1937 law, Title III, Low Rent Housing, Section 301 of the bill established not only minimum income limits for admission but maximum limits for continued occupancy. This provision of the housing law would over time come to change the culture of public housing developments from one of mixed income communities to a homogeneous community of the very poor. No income levels were set; these would be determined at the local housing authority level subject to approval by the US Public Housing Administration. Section 302 explained that preferences in the selection of tenants were to be given first to families displaced by any low rent housing project or slum clearance initiated after January 1, 1947 and disabled veterans were to be at the top of that list of applicants. Families of other veterans and active duty servicemen were next. Section 303 increased the cost per unit to $1750. If an acute need for housing could be demonstrated by the local housing authority or if design and livability standards had to be sacrificed, the cost per unit could be increased to a maximum of $2500 with the approval of the US Public Housing Authority. The total authorization for annual contributions was set in the bill at $08 million. In the first year beginning July 1,1949, $85 million was authorized for annual contributions and $25 million in loan funds.

The Housing Act specified that over a six year period, 810,000 units of housing could be built not to exceed 135,000 a year. But like the Wagner - Steagall Act, the 1949 Housing Act was not able to gain any momentum. Almost immediately, the Korean War halted construction in the middle of the first full year of operation. On July 18,1950, President Truman set a limit on public housing starts to just 75,000 in order to conserve steel and other raw materials for the war effort. This interruption gave the real estate lobby an opportunity to get Congress to further reduce the number of units to be built. In January of 1953 at the start of the Eisenhower administration only 156,000 units had been built nationwide after three and one half years. If the opponents of public housing could not stop houisng legislation, they could dilute it.

Bromley Park was built under the F/Y 1952 authorization of 50,000 units of housing. The times were vastly different from the days when Heath Street was built. First, of the five man Board of Directors of the BHA only John Carroll remained as the only original member with an invaluable institutional memory. He was also a strong advocate for housing the aged, which became a hallmark of Bromley Park.

In 1940, the Boston Housing Authority was primarily occupied with the design and construction of public housing; it managed only one development at Old Harbor Village and that was under lease agreement with the USHA.

In April of 1950 when the BHA first turned its attention to expanding Heath Street, it was not only the manager of the first eight developments built under the 1937 housing act it was also the construction manager of several large State -funded veterans housing developments in the period between 1946 and 1950 ( such as the Arborway Veterans Housing near the West Roxbury District Court in Jamaica Plain; sold to a private investor in 1955 ). In addition, during the four years from concept to completion of Bromley Park, the BHA built no less than twelve developments across the city, a mixture or federal and state funded projects. These were:

• Archdale in Roslindale ( State aided housing )
• West Broadway in South Boston ( State aided )
• South Street in Jamaica Plain ( State aided veterans housing )
• Orient Heights in East Boston
• Columbia Point in Dorchester
• Cathedral in the South End ( delayed by WW II )
• Mission Extension in Roxbury
• Washington - Beach in Roslindale
• Commonwealth - Faneuil in Brighton
• Franklin Field in Dorchester
• Franklin Hill in Dorchester
• Whittier Street in Roxbury

Fourth and finally the BHA was until 1957 the City of Boston’s development agency charged with implementing Title I, the urban renewal provision of the of the housing act. During the four years of Bromley Park’s construction, the BHA managed the start of New York Streets urban renewal site ( bordered by Dover, Albany and Washington Streets and the NYNH + H R/R right of way), and laid the ground work for Charles River Park and the Prudential Center. So in addition to the complex problems of tenant selection and reviewing income levels as mandated by the 1949 housing act, the BHA had to face the enormous challenge of rehousing those families displaced by the New York Streets Urban Renewal Project.

On April 26, 1950, the BHA Board ordered a feasibility study of the thirteen acre site bounded by Bickford, Heath and Center Streets and the NYNH + H R/R viaduct to determine its potential as a housing site. This mainly rectangular shaped site was at a slightly higher elevation than Heath Street and included a ridge of Roxbury conglomerate in the middle nearest Center Street. The land had the advantage of being located on two major roads, Heath and Center Streets. Although far more open today, the site was blocked on its Bickford Street side by the looming walls of the Plant Shoe Factory ( which burned in 1976 ) and on its southeast side by the twenty foot wall of the railroad viaduct ( razed in 1981 for the Southwest Corridor ).

The area was more densely built up than the Heath Street parcels a decade earlier, but it was better planned.: most of the 150 buildings were attached row houses built of brick or wood with a few semi detached houses on Bromley Park. In addition the site included two industries, the 2 acre Moxie Bottling Plant on Heath, Bickford and Parker Streets and the White House Bakery on Bromley Street. One large 2.8 acre parcel on Center Street next to the railroad had been vacant for 50 years. ( This was originally part of the Lowell estate. See the appendix for the land use history of Bromley Park ). The housing stock was 75 to 80 years old, almost all tenements and rapidly and badly aging. It was largely an Italian American neighborhood; half of the property owners at the time of the land takings in 1951 and the Jamaica Plain Italian American Social Club was located at the corner of Bromley Park and Albert Street.

The Lucretia Crocker School on Bickford street near center was originally not part of the land to be acquired because it was still needed by the School Department; so Bromley Park was built up around the 1885 schoolhouse.

On March 21, 1951, Thomas F. McDonough was chosen as the architect of the new development numbered Ma 2-19; to the BHA it was called Bromley Park after a street in the middle of the property. In practice since 1944, this appears to have been McDonough’s first public housing development. One indication of the changing times was the time it took to accomplish the phases of the work for Bromley Park. It took a year simply to authorize McDonough to begin preliminary planning for the development. There was more urgency in 1940, when Heath Street was getting underway: Michael Dyer was hired as the architect in July and had completed plans four months later.

John Carroll, the only original BHA member, remembered the first developments and he was critical of the US Public Housing Administration for monitoring details so closely, from finances to brick. It took the USPHA six months to approve McDonough as architect and to authorize the BHA to proceed with its development plan. Basically. McDonough was asked to take a space the same size as Heath Street and find room for almost twice as many units; the result was a very dense development a housing complex of 732 apartments containing 2 - and 3- bedrooms on a thirteen acre site. The plan also included a through street ( Parker Street ) and ten parking lots for 300 cars. ( Heath Street had only 100 parking spaces for 420 units). The basic plan was In April, 1952, The National Shawmut Bank was designated as the agent for the sale of $1.5 million in bonds for Bromley Park. McDonough was paid $21,870 for his firm’s preliminary plans. In addition to the apartment buildings, the plan included a playground, maintenance building and social hall.

As land appraisals were taking place on the parcels to be acquired for the development, Mc Donough and the BHA Chief of Construction met on October 31, 1951 and discussed seven points regarding its site planning and construction. These points were:

• The possibility of developing the vacant land first since rehousing the 300 families then living there was becoming a problem. This meant building on the 2.8 acre Center Street lot first.
• Preserving and adapting the row housing on Bromley Park.
• What type of playground was needed since nearby Heath Street had one.
• The height of the buildings.
• Zoning issues.
• Status of the abandoned school.
• The necessity of keeping Parker Street open to accommodate parking lots. The question of the school was resolved in November when the Boston School Superintendent wrote the BHA to say the school was still required by the Department.
• The issue of building heights was answered when the Zoning Board ruled in 1952 that buildings could only cover 60% of the site. As planned, Bromley Park was built over just 20% of the site, but since ten of the original buildings were seven stories high, the visual appearance in such a low scale area was one of great massing and density.

It was the intention of the BHA Board to include Bromley Park in the congressional authorization of 50,000 units of housing in f/y 1952; to achieve that goal, on December 7, 1951. the BHA forwarded the Bromley Park building program to Raymond Foley, Commissioner of the Housing and Home Finance Agency for President Truman’s approval.

On January 29,1952, the Public Housing administration approved $1,169,950 for acquisition of 157 parcels of land for Bromley Park. The BHA, however, did not move right away on land takings because they wanted to relocate as many families as possible first; to that end they authorized first priority in other developments for Bromley Park residents. Unlike Heath Street, where rehousing was accomplished fairly smoothly, the Bromley Park relocation process took over a year. By May, 1952 about 2/3rds of the families had found new homes, thirty families still remained in September. They refused to pay rent and eviction warrants were issued by the Authority, something it rarely did on land takings, on September 17, 1952.

The contract for demolition was awarded to the American Building Wrecking company for $19,985 on November 5,1952 and the next month Bromley Park, Bromley Street and a portion of Parker Street were discontinued as public ways by order of the City of Boston Street Department. ( Parker Street - from Heath Street to Bickford Street remained open as a street but under BHA jurisdiction. Today it is no longer open to through traffic).

Thomas F. McDonough AIA, the architect of Bromley Park had his office at 25 Huntington Avenue near the Boston Public Library. The site planner and landscape architect was George D. Cabot and Associates. As first built - an additional seven story building was added in 1962 - Bromley Park contained seventeen buildings, including a social hall - maintenance building both under one roof. The architects and site planners had three challenges not present at Heath Street : The first was a through street, Parker Street. which although under the jurisdiction of the housing authority, still carried traffic through the center of the site and served to divide it; the second was parking capacity for 300 cars; and third, the density of having to accommodate 732 apartments. These problems were not solved with ingenuity or creativity.

First and foremost these is no order in the way the buildings relate to one another as a whole development plan. The buildings instead are set in four groupings. Group one, the high rise buildings number one through four set close together on Center Street . Group two buildings number five, six, seven and sixteen placed at sharp angles to Parker Street. Group three is a set of three seven story buildings in the island formed by Bickford and Parker Streets numbered eight, nine and ten. Group four is the row of three story buildings lined up on Heath Street. With the noatble exception of the group on Center Street, all are separated and isolated by parking lots. There is an odd mix of low and high rise buildings in the middle of the site: building number sixteen, a three story zig- zag shaped building, is surrounded and dwarfed by seven story buildings.

The Heath Street boundary is the most satisfying because McDonough and Cabot placed four, three story apartment buildings lined up with the street. ( Although these are the backs of the buildings; the entrances face the interior parking lot ). This created a uniform streetscape from Walden Street to the railroad bridge. The Bromley Park buildings are set closer to the street line and are much longer than those at the Heath Street development, so they appear more like a wall.

A wide gulf separates two of those buildings - number eleven and twelve - because a parking lot was built perpendicular to Heath Street. As this misuse of space illustrates, there is very little private green areas devoted to the individual buildings, which is the most obvious fault in the landscape planning of Bromley Park. Virtually all of the available open space between buildings - which at Heath Street was given over to drying yards, sitting areas and playspaces - has been sacrificed to the automobile at Bromley. Some buildings have patches of lawn but except for the Center Street buildings, no thought was given to the balance between private passive spaces and built areas. Even building sixteen 62 Parker Street - which houses a day care center, faces a blacktop parking lot. The building’s location adjacent to the Bromley playground was obviously the reason why it was chosen to be adapted for day care use, but it has no direct access to the play space; children and teachers had to walk through the paved area and go around the building to the playground. There are no intimate courtyard spaces at Bromley except around the elderly housing highrises on Center Street. The playground is three times the size of Heath Street, but unlike the earlier development the Bromley playground - and adjacent social hall - were built at the rear of the devlopment up against the wall of the railroad viaduct. ( This is not the case today; the playground and Bromley Hall were incorporated into the Southwest Corridor Park in 1987).

The group of four, seven story buildings along Center Street at Bickford are the most familiar maze of tall buildings in Jamaica Plain and as a whole is the most recognizable part of Bromley - Heath. This group has the most pleasing site plan balance of buildings and green space in Bromley Park. ( In 1962, a fifth, seven story building was added to this ensemble with the completion of 50 - 60 Bickford Street ). This area covers about one quarter of the site but it is the only part that has passive shaded open space devoted to the residents of those buildings as the courtyards provide at Heath Street. Unfortunately, the Bromley buildings are not only too big for Center Street, they appear even bigger because they were built right on the sidewalk line. Building number three - 275 - 279 Center Street- is 293 feet long, the longest building in the development and because it was built on high ground close to the street, the building appears to be endless to anyone walking along the sidewalk. Nevertheless, the tree shaded mall between buildings three and four is very pleasant and approximates the design and intention of Plant Court at Heath Street. The design is compromised, however, by the fact that building three is set at a different angle than its neighbors in order to fit the site plan; consequently, the mall becomes pinched at its interior end.

Bromley Park is dominated by ten, seven story buildings due to the fact that the architect was asked to provide for 732 units. The lack of affordable, suitable and available land coupled with the great need for low rent housing in 1950 meant that housing authorities across the country were building taller. ( They were also selecting less than ideal sites: Columbia Point and Archdale were both built in isolated corners of Boston. The Archdale development in Roslindale is the most obscure public housing in the City; it was built flush against the railroad tracks hidden from the main street by older housing. Despite fantastic views over Dorchester Bay, Columbia Point apartments were located in a virtual no man’s land: the nearest neighbors were enormous trash dumps. Moreover. it proved difficult to build due to the shifting ground caused from decades of land filling over saltmarsh ). The flexibility of the unit costs built into the 1949 housing law meant that local authorities could pay more for land and construction costs.

Tall buildings set amidst open space and free of interior automobile roads was a concept advocated by some of the biggest names in architecture and Bromley Park tried bravely to emulate it. Such influential architects as Le Corbusier in France and Frank Lloyd Wright in America had drawn up plans for such ideal cities twenty five years earlier. These “ Towers in the Park” had been advocated in Boston as early as 1910. The March 20, 1910 Boston Sunday Herald ran a half page illustration of a series of ten, fifteen story hexagonal towers which formed a square ring around a superblock of lawns, trees and pedestrian walks. This was the plan of Professor Ellen Swallow Richards, instructor in sanitary chemistry at MIT ( as well as a Jamaica Plain resident ) and her colleague. Mable K. Babson, who had recently graduated from the same institute. They proposed a series of ten tall and narrow buildings built on an eight acre site ( the equivalent of two city blocks ) in such a manner as to preserve seven acres for recreation and parkland to provide each apartment with the maximum of light and air. The illustration that accompanied the description of the project closely resembles Bromley Park in two ways: the buildings are built right on the sidewalk line and they are much taller than the surrounding community. The main difference is that each building is widely separated from the other to provide ventilation and sunlight but also to provide sight lines through the development. There are no site lines through the complex of buildings at Bromley ( in marked contrast to Heath Street ) and the brick walls of the long tall buildings make the development visually and psychologically denser and impenetrable.

“Tower in the Park”. The tree shaded mall betwe two seven-story buildings at 279 and 267 Centre Street, Bromley Park. Click on the photograph to the left to see a larger view of it.

In France in the 1930’s architects were experimenting outside Paris with new developments in housing called the gratte ceil , or heaven scratching apartments, which were twelve to fourteen story towers in the International Style built as a focal point on the edge of much larger apartment wings of four stories. These were described in Boston Sunday Globe of January 23,1938 by Eleanor Manning O’Connor, one of the Seventeen Associated Architects who designed Old Harbor Village. On a visit to Paris she had stopped to talk with planners of the new buildings and enthusiastically wrote about them as something that should be tried in America .

What McDonough did was design not towers but high rise slabs in elongated Z - shapes placed at sharp angles to Center, Parker and Bickford Streets. In this second phase of public housing in Boston the zeilenbau arrangement of buildings designed in the International Style was triumphant, but without thought; they were cheap imitations of the originals in Europe. The architects of Bromley Park simply took without understanding them the outlines of the concepts of parallel buildings in Z and U shape built in simple, standardized forms and plopped them down on the site. Dyer understood the concept of Beaux Arts planning behind the zeilenbau formations and he used the style at Heath Street more successfully than most architects of Boston public housing before World War II.

( Unfortunately he forgot this in his post war developments ). As Henry Russell Hitchcock wrote in his book The International Style. “ Only great architects are capable of achieving brilliant effects with limited means.” McDonough was far from being great; he was a pedestrian practitioner who created a parody of the zeilenbau forms in the International Style at Bromley Park. It mimicked the Plant Shoe Factory. The result is the tallest, densest mass of buildings in Jamaica Plain which are today out of all proportion to the surrounding community. While Heath Street broke away from the original street patterns to make maximum use of the site for housing and recreation, it still kept within the scale of the community around it of three and four story residential buildings.

Plans were submitted to the City of Boston Building Department in April of 1952. Designs for 275 - 279 Center Street were submitted on April 10 as one of a group of sixteen buildings. It was described as seven stories in height, 293 feet long with 60 apartments. The estimated construction cost was $840,000. The plans for number 960 - 964 Parker Street were submitted on April 25 and showed a three story building, 250 feet long with 48 apartments. ( The ground floor was remodeled in 1955 by McDonough into a child care center. In 1971, the first floor was again remodeled for an infant and pre -school child care center run by the Martha Eliot Health Center). The three story Building number fifteen, 50 Albert Street ( or Lamartine Street Extension as it was known for thirty years ) was 173 feet long and contained 40 apartments. Its estimated construction cost was $186,000.

Low-rise apartment at 921-925 Parker Street, Bromley Park. Note strip of glass blocks over the projecting entrance bay. Click on the photograph to the left to see a larger view of it.

The Building Department denied all the permit requests because they violated the zoning code which stated that there be no more than two families per building in an industrial district. The Board of appeals ruled in favor of the BHA on June 13,1952 stating that “ Bromley Park solves the problem of acute housing shortage and need of apartments. public housing is a benefit to the public good.”

The matter of housing for the elderly had been on the minds of the BHA Board for the past year since Cornelius Ryan brought up the need at the November 21,1951 meeting to consider housing for elderly residents iving alone. John Carroll continued the discussion in June and on September 17, 1952, the architect was directed to make changes in two buildings to adapt them for elderly living. Buildings number one and two ( 295 - 297 and 285 - 287 Center Street near Bickford Street ) for a total of 84 apartments would be made available for elderly residents. The units would be one bedroom, the kitchens would have electric and not gas ranges and stall showers with hand grips would be built in the bathrooms. All of these changes involved special permission from the USHA ( one bedroom apartments in particular were not allowed in any development in the country ). But the federal housing authority agreed with the BHA and permission for change orders was given in mid 1953. One point the USHA would not budge on and this was the cause of a heated debate between the BHA and federal housing authorities in 1953. In order to reduce costs, elevators in high rise buildings were built with a skip - stop system: they would stop only at every other floor causing residents to walk up or down one flight to their apartments. The BHA Board did not think this was proper for elderly residents and they requested that the USHA permit the elevators in buildings number one and two to stop at each floor. The USHA refused that request in September of 1953 after months of back and forth debate.

As the year 1953 began, the BHA Board was eager to begin construction of Bromley Park which had been delayed due to relocation and land takings. ( People were still living in Heath Street tenements in September, 1953 ; they were the last to be rehoused ). On January 16, M.S. Kelliher was approved as general contractor with a bide of $7.4 million. Despite the fact that construction was underway, some property owners were not adverse to getting all the money they could from the federal government and many sought higher damages for their land. The owners of the filling station on Center Street opposite Chestnut Avenue took the BHA to Land Court in June, 1953 and won an $ 8000 increase on their property ( it now cost the USHA $40,000 ) . The Moxie plant owners wanted $800,000 for their parcel ( even though the BHA had to pay more to have thousands of empty glass bottles removed from the site ) but scaled this back to $380,000; to keep the matter from going to court the USHA agreed to pay them $340,000 - an increase of $47,000 over the appraisal.

Bromley Park in 1873. Click on the photograph to the left to see a larger view of it.

John T Ryerson was the subcontractor for reinforcing steel and by the end of October, 1953, 50% of the buildings had been framed with structural steel and bricklaying was underway. Sixty tons of steel were used on each seven story building because the poor soils of the site required more than usual structural strength. After two frustrating years of delays, work on Bromley Park was well underway by the end of 1953. Work proceeded smoothly enough so that on July 14,1954, the BHA Tenant Selection Board reported that 295 applications had been received. At the same time their was some discussion by the BHA Board of using Bromley Park as relocation housing for those who would be displaced by the New York Streets urban renewal project.

Over the summer of 1954, the BHA Board directed that management get prepared for the full staffing of Bromley Park. In November of 1953 , the Board had discussed combining Heath Street with Bromley Park and Orchard Park under one management group, but this was modified six months later and the new Bromley Park apartments would be placed under the management of the Heath Street staff headed by Robert Driscoll. Driscoll, who had worked for the BHA since 1939, was named the first manager of the combined Bromley-Heath development - which totaled 1,152 apartments with a population of about 3000 - at a salary of $5500.

The 1949 Housing Act mandated for the first time maximum income limits for not only those seeking admission but the limits at which families could remain in public housing. At its July 21,1954 meeting, the BHA set the limits of income for Boston public:

Number of Rooms Minimum Income Maximum Income
2 $2800 $3500
3 - 4 $3000 $3750
5 - 6 $3300 $4125
7 $3500 $4375

The Board approved that $100 could be added to the income limits for each minor child.

The Boston Housing Authority was proud of the fact that Bromley Park was the first publicly funded housing for the elderly in the region. They wanted to promote that fact and in August they approved paid advertisements in the Boston Post and the Jamaica Plain Citizen and Roxbury Citizen to run in September when the first buildings would be available for occupancy. The ads underwriting the special insert would be paid for by the general contractor, subcontractors and suppliers who worked on the development. A week long open house was scheduled for September 17 through September 24, 1954. On September 8, 1954, Buildings number one and two ( 285 - 297 Center Street at the corner of Bickford ) were accepted as partially completed by the BHA Chief of Construction and these buildings would be used for exhibit purposes at the opening week celebration.

The September 23,1954 issue of the Jamaica Plain Citizen and Roxbury Citizen included a seven page feature supplement on the opening of Bromley Park. It was the first time since Old Harbor Village opened in 1938 that a Boston public housing development was opened with such fanfare. The front page of the supplement ( paid for by the general contractor M S Kelliher ) included in addition to half tones of the new apartment complex photographs of Governor Christian Herter and Mayor John B Hynes. The two display buildings totaled 84 apartments and one of them was completely furnished as a model by Leo Kaplan, owner of Metropolitan Furniture on Center Street opposite the firehouse in Jamaica Plain. Mr. Kaplan also took out a full page ad announcing his new appliances on sale. According to both newspapers, hundreds of visitors filed through the diddle apartment as they toured the buildings. The average apartment for a senior resident had an 11 x 10 foot bedroom, a kitchen/dining room which measured 11 x 12 feet and an 8 foot 9 inch by 14 foot living room. These dimensions were not much different for the average 2 bedroom apartment in the other buildings.

The timing for the open house wasn’t very good for the BHA, however. Hurricane Carol visited Boston with reckless fury the week before and almost delayed the event. The storm caused flooding and related damage to low lying areas across Metropolitan Boston, especially along the Neponset River. Much worse for the authority was the headline of the Boston Post on September 24, 1954, “ Housing Scandal Probed Here”.

The US District Attorney for Boston announced that he had convened a grand jury to investigate corruption in the activities of the BHA relating to construction contracts and annual contributions contracts. Bribery, he alleged. was rampant throughout the authority and he vowed to root it out.

Bromley Park was completed by the end of November, 1954 when the social hall and maintenance building / heating plant were finished and awaited only furniture. The development was fully occupied by January of 1955. The certificate of completion was approved on April 27, 1955. The total cost was $10 million; the cost per room was $1953 or about $200 over the cost per room as mandated in the 1949 housing legislation. In June, Albert street - first built in 1874 - was extended to Center Street by the City Public Works Department which renamed it Lamartine Street Extension Thirty years later, the street was taken up and turned into parkland adjacent to the new Jackson Square Orange Line Station.

In May, the City of Boston sold the Crocker School to the BHA for $1 and the authority used its own funds to raze the vandalized building. The BHA was unclear what it wanted to do with the site; at first it thought about a playground for the land but it soon resolved to build a third elderly housing building there to take advantage of new legislation authorizing housing for the aged.

The Massachusetts Housing for Elderly Persons of Low Income Act ( Chapt 688 of 1953 ) allocated $ 15 million for single men and women aged 65 and over. BHA had filed a preliminary application on December 10, 1953 for five elderly housing developments; one in Roxbury, two in Dorchester and two in Jamaica Plain. The BHA decided to use the Crocker School site as the location of one of the elderly housing buildings and Thomas McDonough was chosen as the architect for what was labeled Building 17 ( number 50 - 60 Bickford Street ). Groundbreaking was held on June 16, 1961. Officiating were Mayor and Mrs. John F Collins, USPA Regional Director Herman D. Hillman, six rabbis, six priests, five ministers, the BHA Board and the new BRA director Edward Logue. It was opened in 1962 with 64 apartments for single men and women over the age of 65 or 62 respectively. The ground floor today has been remodeled for the Disciples Baptist Church and School. The Jamaica Plain APAC has its office next door at 295 Center Street at the corner of Bickford Street.

For forty years, Bickford Street cut the two developments in two until it was turned into a pedestrian way in 1997. That design decision finally links the two halves together but they still look like two separate housing developments. The main reason for this, of course is size. Even when the Plant Shoe Company was still standing Bromley Park was oversize. Today, with the factory and the railroad viaduct gone and in an area in which nothing but Blessed Sacrament Church is over three stories tall, Bromley Park is a huge, overbearing presence on Center Street.
 
Bromley Park in 1965. Click on the image to the left to see a larger view of it. 

Standing at the corner of Bickford Street and Heath Street today on the dividing line between the 1941 housing and the 1954 addition, one can see three other stylistic differences in the architecture. The face brick is of a much higher quality at number 10- 12 Bickford Street ( built in 1954 ) than its 1941 neighbor 17 Bickford Street. Secondly the windows are set in groups of two or three at Bromley Park. Finally Bromley Park uses ribbons of glass bricks as a signature decorative feature. In the International Style, ornament for its own sake was forbidden. The texture and color of the materials were the buildings’ decoration and the Bromley Park glass bricks - a favorite material of Frank Lloyd Wright - were used to provide light and decoration. Building number twelve ( 925 Parker Street ) has a distinctive tower entrance built in the middle of the U shaped building and placed in the center above the door is a double course of glass bricks which light the stairwell. The two elderly apartment buildings on Center Street have glass brick strips set in the corner entrances which faces the street. The day care building at 962 Parker Street also has a ribbon of glass above the door. In 1987 - 1988 Vitols Associates designed new entrance steps, canopies, windows and roofs at Bromley Park providing more color and decoration especially at the entrances.

In 1954, the Boston Public Housing Authority had built and was managing fourteen developments from East Boston to South Boston; Dorchester to Mattapan. Nationwide, as the lifespan of the 1949 Housing Act came to an end, 2710 developments had been built that housed 1.7 million people at a capital investment of $ 3 billion by the end of 1957.

Today, the Boston Housing Authority manages thirty public housing developments which are the homes of 23,000 low income people. They are an integral part of Boston’s topographic and architectural history.

BIBLIOGRAPHY BOOKS

Review of the Activities of the Boston Housing Authority: 1936 - 1940 Rehousing the Low Income Families of Boston. Boston Housing Authority.

Amory, Elizabeth Gardner , The Gardner Family of Salem and Boston, June, 1908. Typescript, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Bauer, Catherine, Modern Housing, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1934.

Benson, Albert Emerson, History of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Plimpton Press, Norwood, Ma 1925.

Brown, Robert K., The Development of the Public Housing Program in the United States, Georgia State College of Business Administration, Atlanta , GA , June. 1960.

Fisher, Robert Moore, Twenty Years of Public Housing, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1959.

Gardner, Frank Augustine, Gardner Memorial, privately printed, Salem, MA, 1933. Bostonian Society.

Greenslet, Ferris, The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds, Houghton, Mifflin Co., Boston, 1946.

Huthmacher, J. Joseph, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism, Atheneum, New York, 1968.

Keith, Nathaniel S., Politics and the Housing Crisis Since 1930., Universe Books, New York, 1973.

Hitchcock, Henry Russell, The International Style, WW Norton, New York, 1932 ( 1966 edition )

Mee. Arthur, The King’s England: The County of Kent, London, n.d.

McDonnell, Timothy L., SJ, The Wagner Housing Act: A Case Study of the Legislative Process, Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1957.

Radford, Gail, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Report on Real Property for the City of Boston 1934, ERA project, City Planning Board, August, 1935.

Roxbury Vital Records, Volume II, Births and Marriages to the End of 1849. Essex Institute, Salem, Ma. , 1924.

Savage, James, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England Those who Came Before 1690. Four volumes. Vol II. Little Brown. 1860.

Thorn, James, Handbook to the Environs of London, John Murray, London, 1876.

Thornton, Tamara P. , Cultivating Gentlemen, The Meaning of Country Life Among the Boston Elite, 1785 - 1860, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989.

Trout, Charles H. , Boston, The Great Depression and the New Deal, Oxford University Press 1977.

Von Hoffman, Alexander, Vision Limited: the Political Movement for a US Public Housing Program, 1919 - 1950, Taubman Center, John F. Kennedy School of Government, May, 1996.

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

Bromley Real Estate Atlas for Roxbury, 1873, 1884, 1890 and 1915.

Board of Commissioners Minutes, Boston Housing Authority, 1938 - 1955. State Achives, CD - BHA 1410x

Boston Housing Authority Archives, Plans of Heath Street and Bromley Park. Housed at the BHA Central Administrative Office.

Congressional Record, 75th Congress, 1st Session, 1937.

Wagner- Steagall Housing Act ( S 1685 ) debate. Pages: 7969 - 7992, 8075 - 8091, 8186 - 8196 ( Byrd Amendment ), 9283.

95 Congressional Record, 81st Congress, 1st Session. 1949. Wagner - Ellender - Taft Housing Act ( S 1070 ) debate. Pages: Questions and Answers on the Act, 4603 - 4620, 4728 and 4740 - 4755 ( Urban Renewal ), 4791 - 4821, 4836, and Appendix A2026.

Norfolk County Registry of Deeds, Dedham, Ma. Lowell estate

Suffolk County Registry of Deeds, New Chardon Street Court House, Boston. Lowell Estate Gardner Estate Old Harbor Village land takings Heath Street land takings ( ( Bk 5871 Page 223 ) Bromley Park land takings

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Roxbury, 1919 and 1950.

PERIODICALS

Analysis of the First Year of the USHA” The Architectural Forum, January, 1940

“Contributions of Science and Technology to Building Design: A Symposium, 1891 - 1941.” The Architectural Forum , January, 1941, page 42

“50 Years of Housing Legislation”, Journal of Housing, Sept - Oct, 1987, pg 153.

“41st Annual Meeting of the ASLA,” Selected proceedings. Landscape Architecture, April, 1940.

“Housing and Slum Clearance Projects Eligible for Loans and Subsidies.”Architectural Record, Sept, 1933, page 157.

Mikkleson , Michael “ Findings and Suggestions of the Housing Conference”, Architectural Record, Jan, 1932, page 39..

Obituary of Hallam Movius. Landscape Architecture , Oct, 1942, page 32

Obituary of Michael Dyer, Boston Herald, October 8, 1954, Obituary of Anna Cabot Lowell, Boston Transcript, November 14, 1894.

Pommer, Richard, “ The Architecture of Urban Housing in the United States During the Early 1930’s”. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Dec, 1978, “ Public Housing.” Architectural Forum, May . 1938. 345.

Von Hoffman, Alexander. “ High Ambitions: The Past and Future of American Low Income Housing Policy”, Housing Policy Debate, Vol 7, Issue 3 ( 1996

Von Hoffman, Alexander. “ The Curse of Durability: Why Housing for the Poor Was Built to Last.” Journal of Housing, Sept - Oct, 998.

Richard Heath Heath Street history first written, March 12, 1999. Revised and expanded, July 15, 1999. Bromley Park history completed , July 28, 1999.

 Additional Maps

Heath Street development as built in 1941 shown at the same angle as the 1933 map to illustrate the objective of public housing planners to obliterate interior streets, increase light,air and park spaces between buildings, and decrease housing costs by constructing z - shaped superblocks. 

 

 

The property and streets taken for Heath Street development as it looked in 1933. This was the city that the 1920s and 1930s housing advocates considered  unhealthy.





Copyright © 2005 Richard Heath

By Walter H. Marx

Forest Hills Cemetery was originally set aside in 1848 by the City of Roxbury as a city cemetery.  In the corner of the grounds near Walk Hill and Canterbury streets, explorers will find the glass-enclosed white marble statue titled “Boy in the Boat,” and marked LL on the cemetery’s map of curiosities.  Books on Boston’s statues unfortunately bypass its cemeteries’ sculptures.  This statue is as fresh, pure and lifelike as the day it was erected due to its glass covering and, in addition, it has a most interesting story to tell.

Also erected with the monument was a marble bench with a moveable drawer (since removed), where the grieving mother could come to clean the glass, polish its brass fitting, place flowers, and do other duties as she saw fit.  Due to financial reverses, Mme. Mieusset’s private income ceased, and she went to work as a domestic on Beacon Hill.  She lived on Kirkland St. in the South End, becoming increasingly frail but ever attending her son’s grave by scrimping and saving.

Perhaps the most lovely element about this tale is that it has no ending.  For even after the death of his mother (whose grave is not specifically marked), fresh flowers are left at the site almost daily, anonymously.  Even stakeouts at the site have never revealed who it is that keeps the site so dutifully.  Those who know the sculpture of the cemetery well rightly match Louis with Gracie Allen (marked HH on the map of curiosities); another mint marble statue preserved in a glass case, a young girl who had died in 1880 at nearly the same age as Louis.  These extraordinary outdoor statues are only two of the sculptural highlights that can be seen at Forest Hills.

Max Greim, the artisan who worked on the “Boy in the Boat’ statue. Max Greim was born March 18, 1863 in Bavaria and immigrated to the United States in 1869. Greim was living in Jamaica Plain at 56 Chestnut Street when he was married and lived at 14 Ashley Street at the time he became a citizen. Greim is shown here next to the model for a portion of the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, immortalizing the brave attack on Battery Wagner by the Massachusetts 54th Regiment. Photograph courtesy of Chris Rohter. 

Written by and provided courtesy of Richard Heath 

Egleston Square is a classic example of housing development following public transit lines. It also shows how the expanded capacity of the transit lines made possible public acceptance of increased density with the development of multi-family housing between 1910 and 1930.

In 1867 the Metropolitan (Horse) Railroad Company bought a half acre of land at the corner of Washington and School Streets for a horse and car barn for the extension of their transportation route from Dudley Square to Forest Hills. Two years later, the real estate investor and contractor George Cox bought three acres of land and by 1873 there were fifty-five new homes and three new streets all clustered around the new station. A sketch of Egleston Square based on a plate from the 1874 G.M. Hopkins Atlas of Suffolk County can be viewd here.

Forty years later, Simon Hurwitz did exactly the same thing when he bought a two-acre estate at the crest of Walnut Park and built fourteen multi-family houses on it in the wake of the new Boston Elevated Railway opening at Egleston Square in 1909.

Cox created a village of two story wood frame houses on narrow lots, some of which were duplexes and many can be seen today on Weld Avenue and Beethoven Street. This type of density was unusual beyond downtown where land values were high, but Cox could justify it because there was now regularly scheduled fixed rail transportation from Egleston Square to downtown or to steam rail connections at Forest Hills and Jackson Square. He was right; almost every house lot was sold and built on in three years. All the houses were built around the station too; none were built on the north side of the Square.

Hurwitz could also justify the expense of building what was at that time a very large and dense cluster of three story brick buildings because of improved transit. The elevated trains which stopped at the new station down the hill could carry 500 to 800 people every eight to ten minutes directly into the main transit system.

The homes built on the Cox lots were in the architectural style of the day, many in the fashionable French Second Empire style. Hurwitz built apartment houses, which had only recently become socially acceptable in Boston. The concept of several unrelated families living together on the same common floor was slow to gain approval by Bostonians. One or two family hotels - as they were called - did appear, most notably the Dunbar Hotel in Dudley Square built in 1885 and the taint slowly wore off. Two of the most revolutionary buildings in Egleston Square are both four-story brick apartment houses opposite each other at 3125 and 3122 Washington Street developed by the Littlefield brothers. Built four years apart, in 1893 and 1897, they are among the first apartment buildings built in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. The Littlefields recognized that apartment living was gaining respectability but they also recognized one other factor - that the rapid electrification of the old horse car lines begun in 1887 would dramatically increase fixed rail transportation. Electrified streetcars could carry many more people much faster than the horse cars and more people could be encouraged to live out in the suburbs - only three blocks away from the new Franklin Park too. Like Cox, the Littlefields built their apartment houses next to the streetcar barn.

Period Drawing of an Egleston Square Horse Car at Beethoven Street. This unattributed drawing shows the Egleston Square Methodist Church built in 1872 and razed by 1914. The Egleston Square Theater was built on the site in 1926, replaced In 2004 by the 3089 Washington Street Apartments. Drawing courtesy of the Museum of Afro American History. 
Both Littlefield buildings had ground floor retail space, which was also uncommon beyond downtown. The first sign of the evolution of the Square from strictly residential to mixed use came in 1882 when Francis Kittredge built 3013 Washington Street at the corner of Beethoven Street. Is was originally a double wood frame two story building with ground floor shops and apartments above. A doorway in the center gave access to the upstairs flats (half of it was razed in the late 1980’s.)

The elevated rapid transit transformed the residential landscape of Egleston Square like nothing before but along the same tends - faster trains carrying more passengers on a fixed route brought more people to live in the district who needed more housing. With the establishment of both rapid transit and apartment house living, Egleston Square was set to take advantage of its third opportunity: large lots of vacant or underused land that varied from one-half to two acres. From 1910 until 1929, thirty-eight multi-family buildings were built in the Square bounded by Westminster Avenue, Walnut Avenue, Columbus Avenue and Bragdon Street. Around these homes were built six new storefronts housing over a dozen businesses, a church, a new school, a movie theater, three public garages, a taxi company, two filling stations and a streetcar barn built adjacent to the elevated station for Grove Hall and Mattapan feeder lines; all completed by 1927.

The third phase of residential development was by government intervention through urban renewal and was marked by assembling and clearing large parcels of land for the construction of dense, high rise, low income multi-family housing. There were two in Egleston Square - Academy Homes I & II and the brick infill houses at 2010 - 2030 Columbus Avenue. Both were experiments in prefabricated interchangeable building forms developed to reduce construction costs so that rents would be affordable for the lowest income family. The third was an elderly apartment house developed by the Boston Housing Authority built right next to the elevated station in 1968. It is the only round tower residential building in Boston and is a textbook example of the tower-in-the-park concept of urban housing that originated in France in the 1920’s and advocated in America by Frank Lloyd Wright.

There are no designer name buildings in Egleston Square; although Carl Koch comes closest with Academy I & II and Westminster Court. Instead there are sets of sound multi-family housing designed by the best practitioners of apartment house design working in Boston from 1910 to 1930. Among the best of this class are Fred Norcross and CA & FN Russell. Charles Russell designed one of the two earliest apartment buildings in the Square - and among the first in the city - at 3122 Washington Street.

Fred Norcross together with David Silverman of Silverman Engineering designed four multi-family housing blocks that have defined the community since 1912, at Bancroft, Dimock-Bragdon and Wardman Apartments and 1891 Columbus Avenue; and Isodor Richmond’s elderly residents tower is the lighthouse of Egleston Square.

Egleston Square needs to be looked at as a whole to understand its significance. It has lessons of how to create low income and market rate housing mixed with retail to make maximum use of the large vacant parcels of public and privately owned land around transit stations.

 

The Origins of the Name
On November 16, 1848, a land surveyor acting on behalf of the Roxbury Latin School produced a plan of house lots and a new street on an eighteen-acre sloping tract of land bounded by School Street, Washington Street and Walnut Avenue (Norfolk County Deeds, Book 231, p. 19; Plan Book 250, p. 77).

This was part of one of the largest bequests ever received by the school, founded in 1645, the oldest grammar school in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and one of the oldest in British North America.  At his death in 1672, the merchant Thomas Bell gave all his landed estate in Roxbury, where he had lived from 1635 until his return to England in late 1647, to the Roxbury Latin School.  Bell’s home was near the corner of Boylston and Lamartine streets where 179 Amory Street is today.  Part of this land stretched from about Lamartine Street to Walnut Avenue.  School Street was laid out through his estate in January 1662.  A rare cross-town street, it was unnamed until 1825 when it was called School Street after the owner of the land, the Roxbury Latin School.  The land was rented out to local farmers for annual operating income.  Writing in 1847, Charles Ellis described it as “smooth open field on the brow of the hill with great apple orchards.”

In 1848 the School looked to sell the land to increase its endowment.  On December 3, 1848 a Boston merchant and real estate broker named Thomas Lord bought the eighteen-acre hillside tract.  Lord lived at Pinckney Street on Beacon Hill but he apparently moved to Roxbury in 1850, because in that year he joined Roxbury First Church and was a pew owner.  This was about the time he completed his home on the highest part of his property facing Walnut Avenue, a three-acre parcel at the corner of School Street. 

When Lord confirmed his deed and subdivision on September 15, 1853, presumably to pay off the mortgage, the document stated that it included a house and stable on “Walnut and Seaver Street or Egliston [sic] Square.”  The property extended over to the “land of Aaron Davis Williams called Walnut Park.”

This is the earliest documented evidence of the name Egleston (or Egliston) Square, and it was apparently laid out at the expense of Thomas Lord, a very common practice by property owners who planned to subdivide their lands into house lots.

On March 6, 1866 the Board of Selectmen of the town of West Roxbury voted to approve the “petition of WBS Gray and others to have Eggleston [sic] square so called laid out and accepted as a town way.”  Indicating that this square had already been built, the selectmen went on to state that as “the street has been found to be the requisite width and in good condition for public use, we have therefore laid out the street.”  It was forty-eight feet wide and nine-hundred feet long.  The cost was $2000.  Walnut Park was apparently built by A. D. Williams but not accepted as a Roxbury town road until 1863.

Thomas Lord lived in his Walnut Avenue house first as a citizen of Roxbury, and after West Roxbury broke away, as a citizen of that town until his death in January of 1860.  The 1853 deed shows the property divided into house lots.  The earliest houses built were numbers 38, 44 and 46 School Street, completed in 1851 and still standing.  Built by house wrights, number 38 is the most unusual:  it is an L-shaped gambrel-roof cottage, built by Nathaniel Dorsey, a very rare style for the time period.  Three fine ample mansions had been built on Egleston Square by 1873, one year before West Roxbury was annexed to the City of Boston.  Lord’s house was bought by Edward Rice, a dye-stuff factory owner, by 1873.  He remodeled it in the French style in 1876.  It was acquired by the Home for Aged Couples on May 1, 1887.

For forty years Egleston Square ended at Washington Street, which was originally constructed in 1806 as the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike, and was known as Shawmut Avenue until 1866.  It was renamed Washington Street for the 1876 Centennial.

Egleston Square ceased to exist when it became absorbed in the extension of Columbus Avenue in 1895.  By then it had long changed from a public way to the name of the community that connected Jamaica Plain and Roxbury.

Who or what Egleston was named for remains a mystery, except it apparently was significant to Thomas Lord, who was responsible for investing in and subdividing the eighteen acres that became Egleston Square.

Egleston Square Architecture

Part I.
1. 3134 Washington Street. - 82 School Street.
Egleston Square YMCA, Greater Egleston Community High School & Our Place Theater.
Originally built as a horsecar barn for the Metropolitan Railway Company which opened for service to Dudley Square in Sept., 1856. Service was extended to Forest Hills through Egleston Square in 1865. On August 6, 1867 this parcel was bought by the MRCo for $3000 and the barn was built shortly thereafter. (Norfolk County deeds. Bk. 357. Pg. 95).
Enlarged with a brick addition replacing a wooded building by John Donnelly & Sons Outdoor Advertising. Office, studio shop and garage. Permit Sept. 30, 1921. W, M. Stone, architect.

The YMCA is housed in the 1921 billboard shop addition; the school and theater are in the ca. 1865 brick carbarn.
Acquired by Urban Edge in 1991, the billboard shop was renovated for offices in 1992 and expanded to a youth center, after school program and YMCA in 1996.

The upper floors of the sign shop were reconfigured for the Greater Egleston Community High School in 1999.
From March to November, 2002 the school was expanded into the carbarn building and its existing classrooms in the upper floors of the sign shop were renovated. Gail Sullivan Associates, architects. Estimated cost $1.8 million.

2. 3118 – 3122 Washington Street – 87 School Street.
Daniel.F. and S.Walter. Littlefield,  owners.
Charles A. Russell, architect.
13 families and one store. Permit May 6, 1897.
Completed   Dec., 1897.
Estimated cost $40,000.
With his brother Frederick, CA Russell designed many important apartment houses in Roxbury such as 296 – 300 Seaver Street and 575-577 Blue Hill Avenue.

3. 3115 – 3125  Washington Street.
D.F. and S,W. Littlefield. Owner.
J.F. and J.S. Smith, architect.
6 families and stores.
Permit May 4, 1893.
Estimated cost $19,000
Changed to 12 families in 1900.
The first apartment building in Egleston Square and one of the first built in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.

4. 103 School Street
105 - 107 School Street
The Littlefield brothers owned two adjacent lots on School Street directly behind
3125 Washington Street.

Number 103 is a woodframe duplex with a hip roof and very distinctive scroll bracketed porch. This was built by 1890 and it appears that it was moved over to create a larger lot for its neighboring building at number 105- 107.
105 - 107 School Street
Ralph E. Sawyer, architect
6 family brick duplex apartment building “ The Georgian”
Distinctive Colonial Revival doorways.
Permit April 3, 1905
Completed March 27, 1906.

5. 3103 – 3113 Washington Street.
The Kittredge Block
Francis W. Kittredge, owner.
Waite and Cutler, architect.
2 story wood frame dwelling and store.
Permit May 19, 1882.

The earliest documented housing- over- retail-stores block in Egleston Square. It marked for the first time the change from residential to commercial. Originally a duplex, one half of it – that contained the Egleston Hardware Store for many years - was taken down for the present parking lot in the late 1980’s. Francis Kittredge, a Justice of the Peace, bought two parcels for this building from George Cox on May 5, 1870. Kittredge lived in a large house on Columbus Avenue where number 2030 is today. He commuted by train to his office at 33 School Street.

6. 3106 - 3108 Washington Street
A unique, three-story wood frame building with ground floor commercial and two upper floors housing, it was built by 1890. It is a companion to the Kittredge Block directly opposite and was probably built after that was completed. Together they predicted the commercial future of Egleston Square.

7. 3096 - 3104 Washington Street
Two stores
Highland Businessmen’s Association, owner.
A.J. Carpenter, architect
Permit May 25, 1908.
Grocery and restaurant
Combined into one storefront in 1948.
Permit Oct. 8, 1947
Completed May 24, 1948.

The earliest documented one story building built exclusively for business.
Carpenter designed the public garage at 3050 Washington Street in 1919.

8. 3089 - 3091 Washington Street at Beethoven Street
Egleston Theater
Littlefield Trust, owner.
Densmore, LeClear and Robbins, architect.
Theater and stores.
Permit Feb. 26, 1925.
Completed May 1, 1926.
New box office and poster cases built in 1937 and a new marquee was built
in 1947. Closed in April,1961.

On the site of the wood frame Egleston Methodist Episcopal Church dedicated on June 13,1872.
Densmore. LeClear and Robbins were involved at the same time with their design of Beth Israel Hospital on Brookline Avenue.
Razed in July and August, 2003 to make way for 20 units of affordable rental housing developed by Urban Edge. Icon Architects, designer.

9. 3080 Washington Street and 1986 - 1987 Columbus Ave.
Storefront
Permit April 29, 1925.
A. John Halferstein. architect.
Permit for removal of woodframe two family house July 16, 1925.
The last storefront built until Egleston Center opened 71 years later in 1996.

10. 1971 – 1979 Columbus Avenue
C.G.Maguire Realty Co., owner.
Samuel S. Levy, architect.
2 brick stores.
Permit March 4, 1915.
Completed Dec. 5, 1917.
This storefront was built around number 1 Weld Avenue a duplex woodframe house built about 1871.
Two years after the Metropolitan Railway Company built its horsecar barn at the corner of School Street, George Cox bought 2.7 acres of land between School Street, the new Egleston Square and Washington Street on Sept. 8, 1869 for $13,639. ( Norfolk County Deeds. Bk. 384. Pg. 33).This was part of the 18 acres sold by the Roxbury Latin School in 1848. Predicting an increase in population due to improved transportation, he had the land divided into 30 houselots.  ( Norfolk County deeds. Plan Bk. 325. End).Twenty one were sold in the first year and Cox built Weld Avenue at his expense in 1871 to connect the new homes that were soon built to Egleston Square (such as numbers 1- 3, 6,7 and 9 – 11 Weld Avenue, all of which are s till standing today). By the end of 1872 he had sold 58 houselots on Weld Ave., School Street, Washington Street as well as on land he owned on Beethoven Street and Atherton Street ; 55 of which had homes on them in the 1873 real estate atlas. Beethoven Street is an intact street of homes built on Cox land between 1870 and 1872. An entirely new community had been built within two years of single or duplex woodframe homes built close together on narrow lots.

11. 1989  - 1991 Columbus Avenue and 7 - 13 Dixwell Street.
Morris Weinstein, owner.
David Silverman, Silverman Engineering, architect.
Three story brick apartments for 18 families.
Permit July 9, 1911.
Completed Jan. 12, 1912
Weinstein built 1- 11 Bancroft, 1871 Columbus Avenue, 58- 60 Bragdon Street and 2- 12 Ernst Street in 1912.

12. 12  - 20  Dixwell Street.
Two, 6 - family brick apartment buildings built adjacent to the Hernandez Schoolyard
Originally three duplicate buildings. A small corner sitting area occupies the location of 4- 8 Dixwell St.
Morris Weinstein, owner.
Fred Norcross, architect.
Permit May 11, 1911.
Completed Dec 23 + 26 . 1912.
Estimated cost  $32,000 for two buildings.
Acquired by Urban Edge in 1982. Complete rehab with new roof, windows, new kitchen and baths, repaired ceilings and walls, new electrical systems, heating and plumbing. Permit May 5, 1983. Estimated cost $180,000.

13. 17 - 21 Dixwell Street
Elizabeth Gleason, owner.
Henry F. Keyes, architect.
3 family brick bowfront  apartment house.
Permit June 6, 1904.
Henry F. Keyes designed the Boston Fish Pier in 1914.

14. 61 School Street
Rafael Hernandez School.
Originally built as the Theodore Roosevelt School in 1923.
Joseph A. Driscoll, architect.
The school sits on a large 69,374 square foot lot (about 1.5 acre). It replaced the first school in Egleston Square, a 3 story brick building completed in 1881. It was named the George Putnam School after the pastor of Roxbury First Church in Eliot Square who died in 1878. As a sign of how quickly the 19th century was being forgotten, when the school was replaced 40 years later it was named after the swashbuckling President Theodore Roosevelt who died in 1919. When the Hernadez School removed to the building in 1987 from its original quarters at 370 Columbia Road, the schoolhouse got its third name after the Puerto Rican composer and poet Rafael Hernandez reflecting the demographic changes around the Square.

The Putnam School faced Egleston Square (today Columbus Avenue) where the schoolyard is located. The original granite wall of the 1881 school is still there.

15. 48  - 54 School Street
N.Fitts, owner
William Holmes, architect.
12 family, 3 story yellow brick apartment block with pressed metal bays above the first story on the Grenada Street side and distinctive Venetian windows along School Street.
Permit Nov 28, 1896

16. 71 & 73 School Street
A pair of wood frame three family houses.
Theodora Kraft, owner.
J. McIsaac, architect and builder.
Permit July 1, 1895.
Completed May 20, 1896.
Estimated cost $5000 each.

17. 45 – 47 School Street
Two 3 family attached brick bowfront apartment houses.
Theodora Kraft, owner and contractor.
George A Fuller, architect
Permit Aug.13,1897.  Completed Jan. 26,1898.

Part II.

1990 Columbus Avenue
Washington Park High Rise for the Elderly
20 story, 168-unit tower.
Boston Housing Authority with the Boston Redevelopment Authority
Built as part of the Washington Park Urban Renewal Program
Isidor Richmond and Arnold Jacobson, architect.
Plans submitted April, 1968.
Opened and occupied June 23,1970.
The only circular tower building in Boston. A classic example of the tower- in – the- park concept so popular among International Style architects beginning in the 1920’s with Le Corbusier. The old Prudential Center is the apotheosis of this idea. Stull & Lee architects used the same concept with their design of the $6 million, 16 story Council Towers at 2875 Washington Street completed on Jan.14, 1986.

2000 – 2030 Columbus Avenue
Housing Innovations, developer with the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
Washington Park Urban Renewal project.
Four, 3-story concrete block buildings on a 58,000 square foot lot.
Plans dated March 6, 1971.
Sepp Firnkas Engineering Inc, architects with Stull Associates.
Partially completed by the end of 1972.
Project abandoned due to lack of financing.

Acquired by Urban Edge in 1984 using one of the first Boston Housing Partnership grants.
Partially rebuilt and rehabilitated by Tennant Gadd, architects
Permit Sept. 19, 1984
Occupied in June of 1987.
Principle funding was through the Mass. Housing Finance Agency (today MassHousing) and Fannie Mae.
Building low cost housing affordable for families of low and moderate income using prefabricated materials and construction systems has been a goal of progressive American architects for a century. The most famous of them was Frank Lloyd Wright who invented two; the first was American System Built Houses of 1915  and the second the Usonion home in 1936
Egleston Square has two examples of prefabricated low cost housing types: Academy Homes I + II and 2000- 2030 Columbus Avenue. The latter is an example of what was called infill block housing. Sepp Firinkas was involved with both; he was the structural engineer with Carl Koch on Academy Homes I + II. Academy Homes II failed because of structural problems caused by poor construction. The infill blocks failed because of the economic recession of the early 1970’s.

They started with great promise in 1968 when the Director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority Hale Champion announced a plan to build “ instant housing” on 300 scattered city -owned parcels using a construction system devised by architect Don Stull of prefabricated concrete or wood slabs notched together. One of the largest sites was adjacent to the elderly housing tower. Many masonry and wood homes were built in one year on sites around Roxbury and Dorchester and three in Jamaica Plain. All of the masonry houses were left incomplete when the investors went bankrupt in 1972 because Fereral funding ended. Some were torn down; but most lay vacant for 15 years such as the cluster on Columbus Ave. A trio of wood frame duplex infill houses were completed and occupied on Ennis Road off School Street. Owned and managed by the Boston Housing Authority, they were awarded to Urban Edge in 2001 which rehabilitated them in 2003. Rehabilitation plans by Mostue and Associates, architects.

2044 Columbus Avenue  - Egleston Square Branch Library
Isidor Richmond, Carney + Goldberg, architect
Landscaped by Olmsted Associates, the successor firm of Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Franklin Park.
Plans completed March 6, 1952.    Opened July, 1953.
A unique example of the International Style.
The library occupied the site of the Katherina Dahl house, a 3-story wood home built after Egleston Square was laid out in 1866.. The dwelling, carriage house greenhouse  and gardens on the  25,000 square foot parcel were all standing when the city acquired the estate in 1951.

2054 Columbus Avenue / 377 Walnut Avenue
St. Mary of the Angels Church
Edward T.P. Graham, architect.
Permit for lower church and basement Aug 2, 1907.
Completed March 2, 1908.
Original roof removed and replaced with steel truss pitch roof.
Harry Keefe, architect.
Permit Sept. 25, 1987.
Estimated cost $100,000.
The parish house was built about 1867 as the home of Joseph Howard an executive with the South Boston Iron Company. His estate extended along the new Egleston Square for almost two acres and may have been one of the landowners who donated land for the new square when the Town of West Roxbury laid it out. The Howard house faces Walnut Avenue which suggests it was built before Egleston Square was built.

St. Mary of the Angels Church was carved out of the parish of St. Joseph’s Church on May 26, 1906. (St Josephs Church on Washington street and Circuit Street just west of Dudley Square was built in 1844).
For the first two years while the church hall was being built, the parish celebrated mass at the West End Street Railway barn.
Architect Edward T. P. Graham designed many Boston buildings and churches; City Hall Annex, which houses the School Department and Neighborhood Department of Development, Our Lady of Lourdes and Holy Name Church are three of his buildings. His plans called for a granite block Gothic church with square tower (published in the Boston Herald on Oct. 6, 1907) and it was assumed that as the parish grew funds would be available to complete it. But the neighborhood demographics became Jewish after 1910 and remained that way for the next 50 years so the church remained small. The parish flourished though.

2061 – 2055 Columbus Avenue / 409 Walnut Avenue
Home for Aged Couples
a. Walnut Avenue Building. Corner of School Street. John A.Fox , architect.
Cornerstone laid on July 21, 1892.
b. Badger Building. Corner of Columbus Ave. John A. Fox, architect
Permit March 29, 1910. Fox designed two buildings for Dimock Community Health Center during this same period.
c. 2055 Columbus Ave, Coolidge, Shepley, Richardson & Abbott, architect.
Permit May 23, 1927.
Completed May 2, 1929.
This was the Edward Rice estate, the owner of a dyestuff factory who built his house on 3 acres of land in 1876; it was the largest estate in Egleston Square.  The Home for Aged Couples bought the estate and removed from their cramped Shawmut Avenue home on May 1, 1887 no doubt in part to take advantage of the new Franklin Park then under construction just across the street. The Rice estate boundary wall frames the property to this day.

2031 – 2041 Columbus Avenue
Two sets of yellow brick bowfront apartments with distinctive round arch doorways.
W. H. Smith, owner
W. Booth, architect.
Permit: Oct 30, 1900
Completed in 1902.
This group of ten, three family apartments was the earliest subdivision of a complete estate, the Thomas Robinson estate of over an acre built about 1869. When Columbus Avenue was extended through the original Egleston Square in 1895 it gave direct electric streetcar access from the Square to the downtown business district for the first time and encouraged increased residential growth; Cleaves Court separates the two blocks and likely predates the yellow brickfronts although no building permit exist.

Cleaves Court is a parallel group of 12 red brick three family homes reached by a set of stairs from Columbus Avenue almost exactly where the Robinson house stood. The four blocks of flats total 66 units of rental housing and fill up the entire Robinson parcel in an efficient use of space. They are the earliest example of dense multi family cluster housing in Egleston Square followed by Wardman Road a decade later.

The sculpture in the center of the court is by George Greenameyer and was set up in 1973 when Cleaves Court was completed renovated.

Part III.

1. 24 Walnut Park.
14 family apartment house. Brick and stone
Harvey and Paul Rubin, owner
Saul Moffie, architect.
Permit Nov 28, 1928.
Completed Dec. 24, 1929
Estimated cost $56,000.

2. 30 Walnut Park
23 family apartment house. Brick and stone.
Harvey Rubin, owner
Saul Moffie, architect,
Completed Dec. 24, 1929

3. 38 Walnut Park
Barney Swartz, owner
Saul Moffie, architect
12 family apartment house, Brick and stone
Permit Dec. 8, 1925.
Completed June 18, 1926.
Estimated cost $45,000
Urban Edge acquired the housing by Nov. 1987 as part of the Boston Housing Partnership/HUD Granite Properties disposition.
Complete renovation of the building
Tennant Gadd Associates, architect, Permit Feb. 8, 1989.
Estimated cost $500,551

4. 50 Walnut Park

 

 

5. 15 Waldren Road

Simon Hurwitz, owner and developer.
Thomas M. James. Architect.
Permit: Sept. 21, 1910. Completed: March 29, 1912.

6. 11 Waldren Road
Simon Hurwitz, owner and developer.
Fred Norcross, architect.
Permit: Dec. 10, 1910.
Completed Dec. 23, 1910.
Fred A. Norcross (1871 - 1929 ) was probably the most prolific designer of apartment buildings in Boston. An informal list totals 110 multi family houses he designed between 1900 and 1929 in the North End, Beacon Hill, the Fenway, Back Bay, Roxbury, Brighton and Brookline; by far the most were in Roxbury. He was one of a select group of Boston architects who specialized in multi family housing at the height of its popularity between 1910 and 1930; Saul Moffie and C.A. + F.N. Russell were two others. Norcross collaborated with Hurwitz in 1906 on a long imposing Romanesque Revival block at 367 – 395 Blue Hill Avenue between Brunswick and Intervale Streets. In 1905, Norcross designed the enormous twin towered synagogue at 397 Blue Hill Avenue and Brunswick Street completed in Sept, 1906. (today it is the First Haitian Baptist Church). This no doubt brought him to the attention of Hurwitz.

7. 60 Walnut Park & 19 Wardman Road
Simon Hurwitz, owner and developer
Fred Norcross, architect
Permit June 6, 1911.
Completed Sept. 28, 1912.
Estimated cost $42,000.
Two attached apartment houses. Number 60 has a distinctive high porch with cast turn knob posts. Cut into the architrave is the name “Westminster Chambers”. The same porch and name was duplicated at 71 Westminster Avenue.

8. 7 - 17 Wardman Road
27 apartments in 3 attached buildings.
Simon Hurwitz, owner and developer.
Fred Norcoss, architect
Permit: June 6, 1911.
Completed Sept 12, 1912.
Estimated cost: number 7 – 9 Wardman was estimated to cost $38,000.
This long row is characterized by rhythmic window bays and classical revival porches with round arch doors below broken pediments flanked by compound pilasters.

9. 8 - 20  Wardman Road.
6 attached. 3 family brick houses.
Phillip Glazer, owner.
Samuel S.Levy, architect.
Permit March 4, 1917.
An unusual development because very little was being built during WW I..

10. 71 & 73 Walnut Park
Twin wood frame three family houses.
Louis Greenblatt, owner and contractor
Fred Norcoss, architect.
Permit; March 14, 1910.
These are unique buildings for two reasons. They are the only woodframe buildings built after 1900 in Egleston Square and  they are the first documented woodframe buildings designed by Norcross who worked exclusively in brick. Number 73 has its original distinctive carved wood porch; number 71 includes a steel prefabricated portable garage by the Brooks Skinner Company of Quincy built in the spring of 1918. This is the earliest documented portable metal garage in Egleston Square. Brooks Skinner was a major manufacturer of
prefabricated metal buildings and garages were a specialty, although few appear to be built in Egleston Square. The second documented portable garage delivered and set up by Brooks Skinner was built in 1925 at 39 Atherton Street. It was a 2-car model and cost $500.

11. 72  - 76 Walnut Park.
10 family yellow brick apartment.
Castlegate Realty Corp, owner.
Saul Moffie, architect.
Permit: May 6, 1926.
Completed: Oct. 14, 1926.
Estimated cost $30,000.

12. 79 Walnut Park
14 -family, yellow brick and stone apartment house with red tile band at the cornice. A duplicate building built at right angles to this was razed in the mid 1970’s.
Henry Dinner, owner and developer
Silverman & Brown, architects.
Permit: Feb. 13, 1929
Estimated cost $56,000
Enlarged to 15 families
Permit: Sept. 24, 1951
Completed Jan. 29, 1952
Silverman liked his grand architectural flourishes as can be seen at his earlier building at 1889 - 1991 Columbus Avenue.  At number 79 he added a dramatic two-story classical revival entrance of attached white columns supporting a broken pediment and urn.

Rehabilitation of all apartments and exterior of the building by Urban Edge similar to that described for number 50 Walnut Park. The red tile cornice band was removed in July, 2001.Permit April 9, 2001. Estimated cost $828,000. Icon Architects, architect.

13. 81 Walnut ParkHenry Dinner, owner and developer.Samuel S. Levy, architect.10 family brick apartment house.Permit: Sept 12, 1924Completed May 25, 1925.Estimated cost $40,000.This was approximately on the site of the W. Dudley Cotton house built in 1881. Dinner bought the Cotton estate in three lots on March 22, 1922 for $36,000. ( Suffolk County Deeds. Bk. 4384. Pg. 461).Number 79 Walnut Park and 361 – 363 Walnut Avenue was also part of the Cotton estate.

15. 358 - 360 Walnut Ave corner of Homestead St.6-family, 2 attached brick apartment housesJoseph Herman, ownerArhur Rosenstein, architectPermit July 26, 1916Estimated cost: $28,000 total.

19. 60  - 74 Westminster Avenue, 78 - 109 Westminster Avenue & 301 Walnut Avenue  - Westminster Court
Two cluster blocks of 41 apartmentsDevelopment Corporation of America owner and developer.
Carl Koch & Associates, architect.
Property acquired Oct 1, 1965.
Permit: Feb.1, 1966.
Certificate of occupancy: March 14, 1967.
Built on the 2.75 acre Howard-Hersey estate, the low-rise homes are made of prefabricated pieces just like Academy Homes I & II but designed at a lower scale and much better built. The housing is arranged carefully around massive outcrops of Roxbury conglomerate. Acquired by Urban Edge/Westminster Community LP. Rehabilitation of all units. Mostue Associates, architect.
Permit: July 16, 1996.
Estimated cost $2,286,426.

21. 65 Westminster Avenue
Six family detached brick and stone apartment house.
Simon Hurwitz, owner
Thomas M. James, architect
Permit: Nov. 23, 1910.
Completed Dec. 21, 1911.
Estimated cost $20,000.
Change of occupancy to 14 families
Permit March 30, 1936
H.Fellerman, architect.
Owned by Urban Edge. Interior and exterior rehabilitation same as described for 50 Walnut Park.
Permit: October 12, 2000.
Estimated cost $828,000.
The west façade facing Washington Street was built without windows in a cheaper quality of brick; that and the fact that the building is built right on the property line suggests Hurwitz may have planned to build a duplicate attached apartment house on the next lot.

23. 3 - 5 Westminster Terrace
A.Russell, owner and contractor
New England Cement Stone Company
H.J.Erlund architect.
2, 3 family cement stone apartment houses
Permit: March 25, 1911.
Estimated cost $10,000 each
Two matching attached houses number 7 - 9 have been razed. This is a very rare concrete block building with a cement stucco finish.It is set at a right angle to Westminster Avenue with a flamboyant Dutch Gable facing both the street and the private way. Putting the apartment houses at right angle to the street made maximum use of the lot but also created the illusion of a smaller building in a neighborhood that may not have been in favor of multi family houses.

1. 3068 Washington Street - Egleston Center
Urban Edge, owner and developer
Stull + Lee architect.
Plans first proposed in Nov. 1991. Opened  Nov. 28, 1996.
On site of the Egleston Square streetcar and bus barn and waiting area built in 1916 adjacent to and connected with the elevated station completed in 1908.Razed in the spring and summer of 1989.Two wings of the new building are connected by an arcade supported by steel beams designed to duplicate the structure of the old elevated trestle.

3. 3050 - 2058 Washington Street corner of Walnut Park.
Public garage and stores. Brick.
George Kimball, owner
A. J. Carpenter, architect
Permit May 7, 1919.
Estimated cost $40,000.
This building adjacent to what was at the time the elevated railroad streetcar barn took advantage of the grade change and put stores on the lower level facing Washington Street and the garage entrance at the Walnut Park side.

5. 3012 Washington Street corner of Westminster Avenue
Public garage. Concrete.
Exchange Realty Trust, owner
Saul Moffie, architect.
Permit Nov, 25, 1925
Completed Jan. 27, 1927.
This building has gone from housing private cars in rented spaces by residents in the apartment houses on Westminster Avenue and Wardman Road to an automobile dealership (Westminster Motors which sold Dodges. Now on Morrissey Blvd.) to a Moxie Company and then a hosiery shipping warehouse, and finally a sign shop.

This 14,00 square foot lot at the corner of Cobden Street was cleared as part of the Washington Park Urban Renewal program in 1965 when 6 woodframe 3 family houses were taken and razed by the BRA, which had planned that corner site for retail/commercial use.Taken by the city for back taxes in 1991, it was sold to NICE Day Care which moved into its new building in 2000 from its older quarters shared with the Brookside Health Center at 3297 Washington Street.

8. 2969 - 2975 Washington Street
4 attached brick apartments for 12 families.
Louis F. Abbott, owner
C.A.+ F. N. Russell, architect
Permit July 26, 1911
Estimated cost $30,000
Notable for the courtyard and projecting bowfronts of the interior houses.

10. Academy Homes II
236 apartments.
3 story woodframe buildings built in clusters on three sites totaling 7.5 acres.
A. Codman Park, Washington Street and Townsend Street. Twelve row house blocks.
B. Washington Street and Dimock Street. Nine row house clusters
C. Ritchie Street. Three row house clusters.
MassHousing Agency, owner and developer
Elton Associates and Chia Ming Sze, architect
Paula Collins of Chia Ming Sze, Project Architect
Plans filed Feb. 27, 2000
Building Permit: Jan. 11, 2001
Groundbreaking Sept. 28, 2001
Estimated construction cost $45 million.
All three sites cleared of old buildings between Feb. 28, 2000 and Feb 1, 2001. All homes fully framed by April, 2003. Ritchie Street clusters nearly ready for occupancy in April, 2003. These homes replaced the original Academy Homes II which was made up of 10 concrete slab, 3 story cluster blocks, some of enormous size, designed by Carl Koch. Washington Park Urban Renewal Program. Parcel B 3. Permit: June 6, 1966 .Occupied in October, 1968.

Part V.

1. 1895 -1905 Columbus Ave. corner of West Walnut Park
C.J. Spenceley  Block
6 apartment buildings and one storefront
Christopher J. Spenceley, owner
Patrick J. Tracy, architect
Permit July 19, 1898.
Bancroft St., West Walnut Park and Columbus Ave. create a scalene triangle and the Spenceley Block was built at the tip facing Egleston Square. C. J. Spenceley was a carpenter/contractor who lived in the South End. He owned the land since at least 1873. At that time it faced West Walnut Park. When Columbus Avenue was laid out, it cut diagonally through his square parcel leaving him with a triangular shaped lot. It was the first building built in Egleston Square after Columbus Avenue was extended to Seaver Street in 1895. The building is a distinctive flatiron apartment block made of yellow brick with a heavy overhanging cornice and six metal bays between round arch doorways. It’s also the only building in Egleston Square named for the owner: a limestone plaque at the West Walnut Park corner reads  “C. J. Spenceley Block. 1898”

2. 1891 Columbus Ave at Bancroft Street
Two bay automobile garage and office.
Filling station built by and for J.F. Delancy
Permit: Sept 27, 1927.
Expanded for the Roxbury Gas Tap Company for the storage and sale of range oil for home heating. Permit: July 26, 1929.
Present building was built as concrete block and stucco gas station for the Miller Oil Company.
Phillip Miller, owner
Weinbaum & Wexler, architect.
Permit: March 15, 1940
Completed Nov. 9, 1940.
Change of occupancy to auto repair shop by Rafael Benzan, owner for Santana Tire and Auto. Permit: Oct 7, 1997.
This is a large 12,000 square foot triangular parcel within the larger scalene triangle and is the first documented filling station in Egleston Square The large lots around the Square which were ideal for multi family housing were also perfect for gas stations and automotive garages which needed space for storage tanks, pump islands, parking, buildings and space for tanker trucks to make deliveries; especially corner lots like this one. When housing production resumed after 1922, the motor vehicle was a fact of urban life and land use was changing to accommodate it. Not only in street widening and straightening, but architecture too: auto and truck showrooms, gas stations, service garages  and  parking garages – mostly unknown  a decade earlier — were now  part of the urban streetscape.  Range oil for home heating became increasingly popular in the 1920’s and gas stations were used as storage and transfer stations for this fuel because they already had the storage space and were permitted to hold flammable material.

3. 1900 Columbus Avenue  - Grace & Hope Mission.
1. Radio supply retail store “Gerber Radio Supply”.
Sarah Gerber, owner.
Saul Moffie, architect.
Concrete and brick
Permit: May 28, 1948.
Second story added in 1952. Permit May 21, 1952.
2. Change of occupancy to Grace & Hope Mission June. 1968.
Conversion architects Beaver Corporation. Permit: Nov. 8, 1967. Completed June 10, 1968.
One story addition and garage added at 1910 Columbus Avenue in 1992 by LeBeau Co., architects. Permit: Sept. 4, 1992.

4. 1890 Columbus Avenue at Bragdon St. Walgreen’s
1. Originally built as a garage and service station by Reardon Building Trust.
James H.McHaughton, architect.
Permit July 1, 1924.
This served as a truck rental  business and for several taxi companies, the last of which was Yellow Cab in the 1960’s, The Yellow Cab dispatch waiting room was at 1967 Columbus Avenue.
2. Walgreen’s
Mark Investment Company (Bernard Shadrawy, principle).
Combined three parcels into one 65, 255 square foot area.
Asfour Associates, architect.
Permit: April 4, 1996.
Completed Nov. 12, 1997.
Estimated cost 41.2 million.

5. 1 - 11 Bancroft Street
1671 Columbus Avenue
58 - 60 Bragdon Street
2 - 12 Ernst Street
This ensemble of seven buildings was built together by the developer Morris Weinstein and designed by N. L. Silverman of Silverman Engineering in 1912. (Weinstein and Silverman also collaborated in the design and construction of 1889 - 1991 Columbus Avenue).

Although designed at the same, each apartment house is a distinct building grouped around an interior courtyard.
Permit for 1 -11 Bancroft St and 1871 Columbus Ave dated Dec. 20,1911
Completed on Oct 17 and Dec 11, 1912. These are identical buildings. The cornice of 1871 has been removed.
Permit for 59 - 60 Bragdon Street and 2 - 4 Ernst Street dated March 8, 1912. Completed Dec. 17, 1912.
Like Simon Hurwitz at Walnut Park and Westminster Avenue and Max Wulf who developed the adjacent Dimock-Bragdon Apartments, Weinstein bought up one of the big parcels of land that were so numerous around Egleston Square, in this case two parcels totaling 35,000 square feet (about 3/4 acre) for $90,000  on Feb. 8, 1911.

The parcel on which he built 2 -12 Ernst and 58 - 60 Bragdon Streets were acquired from the Roxbury Latin School. It was part of the land bequeathed to the school in 1672 by Thomas Bell. ( See “Notes on the origins of the name Egleston Square”).

6. 15 Bancroft Street
Israel Gordon, owner and contractor
Miller & Levy, architect.
 2 story, 2 family wood frame house.
Permit: Feb. 13,1929
Completed Oct 14, 1930
Estimated cost $8000.
Change of occupancy to 3 families in 1947
Completed Sept. 25, 1947.

7. 14 Ernst Street.
Hyman Silverstein, owner and contractor
Miller & Levy, architect
2 family, 2 story, wood frame pitch roof house
Permit: June 14, 1929
Completes Oct. 15, 1930
Estimated cost $8000.

8. 70 - 82 Bragdon Street between Ernst and Miles Streets
7 attached, 3 story, brick 3 family apartment houses,
Ellen Connell, owner
George Edmund Parson, architect
Permit: Dec. 31, 1900
Completed in Sept. 1906.
Estimated cost for all 7 buildings $100,000.

9. 1865 – 1841 COLUMBUS AVENUE
7 attached 3 -story brick apartments. One 15 family and 6, 6 family apartment houses.
Max S. Wulf, owner and contractor. Wulf Construction Co., Chelsea.
Fred A. Norcross, architect.
Permit: July 9, 1912
Completed July 18, 1913.
(Note: the building permit for number 1865 is lost.)
Estimated cost of construction of 1841 – 1863 Columbus Avenue totaled $102,000.
Max S. Wulf took out a $90,000 mortgage for this long lot on June 14, 1912. This was the second Norcross commission in Egleston Square; once the Wardman-Westminster project was nearly completed he moved on to the Wulf development. Just like Wardman Road these buildings have a distinctive style that define the street.

On Sept 11, 1944, the new owner of 1841 Columbus Ave., the New England Hospital for Woman and Children (the Dimock Health Center today) changed the occupancy to nurses housing. 

After decades of neglect Dimock - Bragdon housing was a half empty shell when Urban Edge acquired the entire block in 1981 and spent $1,455. 216 in a total rehabilitation and repair project designed by Stull & Lee, architects. Permit: Sept 28, 1982. The work included all new windows (many were gone) new roof, new doors both exterior and interior (many outside doors were missing too), new kitchens and baths to bring them up to modernization, structural repairs, new heating system and electrical wiring.

10. Egleston Square Fire Station
Robert Cutler, architect
Dedicated Dec. 19, 1952.

11. 41 - 55 Dimock Street and 1800 Columbus Ave.
Dimock Community Health Center. Ten-acre campus.
Originally known as the New England Hospital for Women and Children, incorporated on March 12, 1863.
The most prominent buildings are:
1. Cary Cottage. 1872.Cummings & Sears, architect. (Willard T. Sears was the architect of the Gardner Museum in 1899).
2. Zakrzewska Medical Building. 1873, Cummings & Sears, architect.
3. Sewall Maternity Building. Two wings. 1892 and 1910. John A. Fox, architect of both. (Fox designed 2 buildings for the Home for Aged Couples on Walnut and Columbus Avenue at this same time.)
4. Cheney Surgical Building. 1899 -1900. Cummings & Sears, architect.
5. Goddard Nursing Home,1909. John A. Fox, architect.
6. Richards Children’s Building. 1930. Kendall & Taylor, architect.
7. Ruth Batson Youth & Family  Services Building, 1800 Columbus Avenue. 1992. August Associates, architect.
Permit: Sept. 10, 1990
Dedicated: June 12, 1992.
Named in honor of a benefactor of the health center and a co-founders of METCO, Dr. Ruth Batson of Roxbury. Dimock Community Health Center is one of two major Boston institutions built by and for women in Egleston Square. The second was Notre Dame Academy which was its neighbor for over a century. Founded in 1862 as the N.E. Hospital for Women and Children, it was named after Dr. Susan Dimock (1847 - 1875) America’s first female resident surgeon. Denied access to male dominated medical schools in America, a group of women doctors formed their own teaching hospital and moved to a spacious campus in Roxbury outside Egleston Square in 1872. The Dimock Hospital quickly established a series of imposing firsts; the first teaching hospital to educate women doctors, the first hospital in the nation to train nurses in obstetrics and gynecology (it was said until well into the 1960’s that most of Jamaica Plain was born at Dimock) and graduated the first black nurse, Ms Linda Richards in 1873.

12. 1596 Columbus Avenue. - Academy Homes I
Ritchie Street, Columbus Avenue and Aacdemy Road.
202 mid priced and affordable apartments spread over 7. 4 acres in 11, 3 story clusters.
Built on the site of the Sisters of Notre Dame Academy ( 1859 – 1962 ).
Building Services Employees International Union, development corporation of America, developers and owners with the BRA.
Washington Park Urban Renewal District housing program. BRA responsible for site acquisition and clearance.
Carl Koch, architect.
Groundbreaking May 10, 1963.
Opened in 1965.
Acquired by Urban Edge and Academy Homes Tenant Council in April, 1998 for $6. 8 million.
Renovations begun in April, 1999 by Mostue Associates, architect.
Completed May 8, 2000.
Estimated cost of $20 million.
This was the first new housing in the Washington Park Urban Renewal District and it was planned as low cost housing for those families displaced during site clearance for Warren Gardens and the Civic Center complex of Boys & Girls Club, courthouse and branch library. This was the poorest part of the urban renewal district with the lowest income families. BRA director Edward Logue handpicked architect Carl Koch, with whom he had worked in New Haven, to design a system of prefabricated parts that could be interchangeably fit together for a variety of unit sizes. Koch invented an advanced program of interchangeable prestressed concrete plank and wall parts that he called Spancrete. The parts wee factory made and delivered to the site to be notched together. Non-load bearing walls were made of prefabricated stressed plywood.

The City of Boston Building Department required considerable coaxing to permit this experimental style of construction with which they had no experience and contractors had limited success with putting the pieces together correctly:  consequently structural damage plagued both Academy Homes developments for decades. Sepp Firnkas was the structural engineer on Koch’s team working on Academy Homes I and went on to design the other experimental prefabricated construction system for the Infill houses program.

The architectural community loved the Spancrete concept and Progressive Architecture gave it a citation for advanced residential design in its January, 1965 issue. Edward Logue in his farewell remarks as outgoing BRA director in 1967 considered it an outstanding achievement of his term.  So proud of it in fact that the BRA named the two interior streets Weaver Way and Slayton Way; Weaver was Robert C. Weaver, the first director of the Housing and Urban Development agency appointed by President Lyndon Johnson; William Slayton was the director of the urban renewal program in HUD.
Academy Homes I fared better in construction than Academy II which  had to be razed less than 35 years after it opened.
The housing developments take their name from where they were built, on the sprawling, hilly 16- acre campus of the Sisters of Notre Dame Academy. The Archdiocese of Boston bought the property in June of 1853 for the purpose of establishing a boarding school for girls who would educated by the Notre Dame Order to be teachers for the parochial schools in the diocese. The large brick building was designed by Patrick C. Keely and opened on May 1, 1859.

In 1919, the Sisters of Notre Dame established Emmanuel College, the first Catholic women’s college in New England.  Designed by Charles Maginnis of Maginnis and Walsh, It was dedicated in September, 1919 on the Fenway. It was founded by Sister Helen Ingraham, a native of Framingham, Mass, who graduated from Notre Dame Academy in 1905. She was president of Emmanuel College for its first 31 years and died on January 24, 1989 at the age of 101. The Sisters of Notre Dame removed to the South Shore about 1961.

VI.

West Walnut Park and Atherton Street

West Walnut Park
West Walnut Park was built in two phases; the first from Washington Street to Bancroft Street was completed in October of 1877 and extended to Amory Street in 1898.

Jamaica Plain was incorporated into the City of Boston on January 3, 1874. This automatically made Jamaica Plain residents citizens of Boston and  they wasted little time letting city government know they wanted new streets, water works, schools, parks, police stations, firehouses  and libraries.

New public streets (often with water and sewer lines) were particularly valuable for the real estate interests who could subdivide the open lots on either side of the new ways. The homes on West Walnut Park and Atherton Street are examples of this private development at public expense.

Homes on the first block of West Walnut – number 20 to 44 – were all built by 1890 after the first leg of the street was constructed. The remainder of the street waited 30 years for residential development, but when it occurred it happened in the amazing space of two years.

In a rush of residential development unprecedented in Egleston Square, all but one of the 26 homes built between Bancroft and Amory Streets were erected between 1928 and 1930. Fourteen of these homes – all two family woodframe houses- were developed by Joseph Dupre and designed by Arthur Weinbaum and David Wexler, architects. This firm designed 3 other homes for different developers and Saul Moffie designed 3 for Edith Shugarman.

Despite being woodframe houses of two stories built at the same time mainly by the same architects, the streetscape is not monotonous because of the variety in porch styles and placement of entrances and of course to changes made over the past 6 decades by individual owners.

The last house built on West Walnut was number 109. This was unique for two reasons, first because it was the only apartment house not only on that street but on Amory street too and second, the building permit was issued on Oct. 5, 1931 as the Great depression howled across the  nation. Number 109 West Walnut Park is the last documented residential building built in Egleston Square until Academy Homes.

The first homes permitted were a row of five two family houses number 54-56;58 - 60; 64. 66 - 68; and 72-76. Permitted on May 10, 1928 ; each was completed in May of 1929. The estimated cost of each house was $8000 and many had garages added at the same time. Nine houses were completed in October of 1930, number 46 - 48; 47; 74 - 76, 79 - 81; 83 - 85; 87 - 89; 95 - 97; 99 - 101 and 103 - 105. All of these were developed by Dupre and designed by Weinbaum and Wexler.

109 West Walnut Park
Hyman Shulman, owner
Weinbaum & Wexler, architect
12 family brick and cast stone apartment.
Permit: Oct. 5, 1931
Completed Feb. 11, 1933.
Estimated cost $40,000.
One basement store added in 1937 which is today the management office.

 98 - 100 West Walnut Park
John McGrail ,owner
Gary Martell, architect and contractor
2 family woodframe house. One of two attached homes.
The second faces Amory Street.
Permit: Sept. 12, 2002
Completed May, 2003.
Estimated cost $225,00
Atherton Street

Atherton Street is two streets – the first are small woodframe houses clumped together on little lots as far as Arcadia Street; the second is a row of spacious and often elegant single family homes on larger lots. 

The architectural style reflects the time the street was built. The brief stretch to Arcadia Street was built in 1874 soon after Jamaica Plain was annexed to Boston and the first new road off Egleston Square Most of the houses on that section were built before 1890. The remainder of the street was built in 1886 -1888 during a period of great prosperity that saw the rise of a new American middle class. This class wanted their own homes close to rail transportation in the leafier “suburbs” like Jamaica Plain and Roxbury.  Most new homeowners seemed to prefer competent craftsman/architects – builders who took their styles form the popular and readily available house plan books of the day. (The housewife was gaining more influence on how the house was to be designed in that period; she could order plans advertised in the Ladies Home Journal. Indeed, two of the homes described below were owned by women).

That section of Atherton Street from Copley to Amory Street was clearly the most affluent in Egleston Square indicated by the large houses but also by the earliest documented construction of “ auto houses” in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain; the first in 1902.  Seventeen homes were built after 1886 -1888 after the extension of Atherton Street was completed.  The earliest homes are numbers 28 - 38 - 41 & 55 each built before 1890.  Building permits are scarce, but most houses appear to be built from 1892 - 1893 and 1896 - 1900.  Number 59 – for which there is no information – is an early and important Colonial Revival house with a double gambrel roof.
   
6 Atherton Street
Peter Schneider, architect-builder
Completed May 5, 1891.
A housewright designed home a few steps in from Washington Street. This is the earliest documented residence on Atherton Street.

8 Atherton Street
Francis King, owner
Richardson & Rafter, architect – builder
One family home
Permit: April 24, 1893
Estimated cost $6000
Changed to a two family house on July 15, 1924.

37 Atherton Street
Sophia M. Housding, owner
M.A.Blanchard, architect- builder
One family house
Permit: March 16, 1892

42 Atherton Street.
No building permit but it is a duplicate of number 48 which suggests it may have been built in the same year by the same architect.

The owner Peter Besse had the first documented “auto house” built in Egleston Square at the rear of his lot.  A woodframe structure measuring 15’ & 16’, the building permit was issued on Sept. 29, 1902.
He wisely replaced it with a concrete block garage with a hip roof in 1909 built by the New England Cement Stone Company  which built 5 Westminster Court. The permit was issued on Nov. 12, 1909.
In 1902 only the rich could afford a motor car and few were seen on Boston streets.  The automobile industry would dramatically change Egleston Squares land use patterns after WW I, but in 1902 a horseless carriage was a rare beast. Besse was an auto pioneer. The first automobile show in Boston was held at Mechanics Hall on Huntington Avenue during the week of March 16, 1903. Attended by over 3000 people, dealers sold $200, 0000 worth of motorcars.

48 Atherton Street
Catherine E.Landers, owner
Julius A. Schweinfurth, architect
One family home
Permit: Nov. 1, 1892.
Wooden garage added on July 19, 1905
Julius Schweinfurth (1858 - 1931) was a significant Boston architect of private homes and schools. This early house was apparently a moonlighting job since he was employed as a draftsman for Peabody & Stearns at the time. It shows signs of his later use of Colonial Revival and Shingle Style types of domestic architecture. It is a large house with an imposing oversized two story bowed bay that supported a wide gable  resting on exposed rafters. Number 42 is an exact replica and number 44 next to it is almost the same except that the two-story bay is polygonal in shape. Schweinfurth designed the first major buildings at Wellesley College in 1910 and The High School of Practical Arts in Roxbury (today the Dearborn School) in 1914. 
This house was owned in 1919 by the nearby brewery owner Rudolph Haffenrefer who hired Jacob Luippold to design a new piazza. Permit: Aug. 7, 1919.

Luipold was the architect of the German Methodist Church on the opposite corner of Atherton and Amory Streets. Dedicated on Jan, 14, 1900.
(Boston Sunday Herald. Jan. 14, 1900. Pg. 11).

50 Atherton Street
Roswell S. Barrows, owner
John P. Campbell, architect
One family house
Permit: Nov. 22, 1895
Completed:  Jan.18, 1897.
Born in Providence, Roswell Barrows moved to Jamaica Plain in 1878 and become one of its most ardent supporters in large part because of his successful real estate business.  A champion of local growth, he built over 30 houses between 1878 and 1900 largely financed by the West Roxbury Co-Operative Bank of which he was a founder in 1881.  The Office of Robert T. Fowler carries on the Barrows real estate business today.  (Roswell’s daughter Alice married the first Robert T, Fowler who joined his father-in-law’s firm in 1903.) ( Local Attachements. Alexander Von Hoffman, Pg. 111- 116) Barrows also developed and Campbell designed number 52 Atherton Street the next door which is no longer standing.  Number 50 is a very distinctive house with applied Colonial Revival decoration and especially for the stained glass bay window and dropped pendant window facing Amory Street. Campbell was a Jamaica Plain architect of houses and at least one church.

Illustrations and Photographs (click on the image to see a larger view)

Egleston Square Orange Line station. Summer of 1982. Photograph by Richard Heath. 

 

 

Platform view of Egleston Square Station taken on April 26, 1987, the last day the line operated. Photograph by Richard Heath.




Egleston Square platform on July 30, 1908. The Egleston Square Methodist Church shown on the right was overwhelmed by noise from the trains and moved to a quieter place to worship on Walnut Ave.


Orange Line elevated tracks from Washington Street at Westminster Ave. looking north. Photograph by Richard Cheek in the summer of 1982.



This power substation for the elevated railway was built in 1909. Photograph by Richard Cheek in the summer of 1982.

 

3125 Washington Street (1893-1894) is shown here on the left and 3122 Washington Street (1897) is shown here on the right. These are the first apartment houses in Egleston Square and two of the earliest documented multi-family dwellings in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. They were built on the streetcar line and next to streetcar station on School Street. The Forest HIlls-Dudley Square bus shown in the photo is traveling the same route serviced by the Metropolitan Railroad Company beginning in 1867.

3125 Washington Street. Built 1893-1894.

 

 

3122 Washington Street. This building was designed by Charles A. Russell and completed in 1897.

 

 

87 School Street was attached to and designed as a whole with 3122 Washington Street. The main entrance to the building was directly opposite the streetcar station.



3113 Washington Street.  The Kitteredge Block. Built in 1882, it is the first documented commercial building in Egleston Square.



3113 and 3125 Washington Street. The Kitteredge Block was originally a double building and extended to the brick apartment house. Together these buildings mark the change in Egleston Square to a multi-family retail district.


Plan of Academy Homes I.


 

8 Academy Court at Academy Homes I.




31 Slayton Way at Academy Homes I.




Academy Homes I, view from Columbus Avenue.

 

 

Richie Street cluster of Academy Homes II (2004) with Academy Homes I in the background.

 

 

Academy Homes II, completely redesigned and reconfigured. Photograph taken Spring, 2005. View from Codman Park looking across Washington St. to Dimock St.



Codman Park.

 

 

Academy Homes II, then and now. Washinton Street and Cobden Street. The photograph on the right was taken in April, 2003.



The original Academy Homes II.  Completed in 1967. Carl Koch, architect. Photographed in April, 2001 prior to demolition.



Map of Walnut Park showing Walnut Avenue and Westminster Avenue.

 

 

1-3 Weld Avenue and 1979 Columbus Avenue. The duplex house was built in 1872. It was designed andbuilt by George Cox. The storefront was added in 1915. The duplex was similar to the one built behind it in 1872 facing Washington Street that was replaced by a commercial building in 1924. Note the original detailing on the bay window and porch.

Number 7 (1872) and 5 (circa 1880) Weld Avenue. These are “Streetcar” housing that were developed, designed, and built by George Cox.



21-23 and 19 Westminster Avenue. 19, on the right, was built about 1872 for H.A. Thomas. 21-23 was built by Urban Edge in 2003 as first time home-buyer condos. Designed by Stull & Lee in the same scale and character as the Cox housing.


50 and 60 Walnut Park on Hilson Square. 50 was designed by Thomas M. James in 1910. 60 was designed as part of a long block in 1911 by Fred Norcross. The largest grouping of multi-family housing built in Egleston Square, the developer located them at the crest of a hill well away from the elevated tracks but within an easy walk to the station.

71 Westminster Avenue and 3-5 Wardman Road. Fred Norcross, architect, 1911. The is the opposite end of number 60 Walnut Park.



65 Westminster Avenue. Thomas M. James, architect, 1910. A large detached apartment house, it was the biggest in the cluster developed by Hurwitz and originally had the most spacious apartments. The six flats in the building were divided into 14 in 1936.


2010 and 1990 Columbus Avenue. 2010 was part of a prefabicated housing infill program developed by the BRA in 1968 and partially completed in 1972. A hulking shell for over ten years, it was literally rescued by Urban Edge in 1984 and is today housing and offices. 1990 was opened for occupancy as elderly housing in 1970. The 20 story building was designed by Isidor Richmond and Arnold Jacobson. It is the only round residential tower in Boston.

3033 Washington Street was built in 1912 as a public garage. It was the first garage built in Egleston Square and allowed apartment dwellers a place to protect their cars from the elements. Owned by Urban Edge, it will be relaced by a four-story apartment house of 44 flats and groundfloor retail space.


3-5 Westminster Terrace (1911). Built at the same time as the Hurwitz development nearby, it was designed and built by a dealer in cement block and is a rare example of cement block housing construction.




















Map of Part I  - School Street to Columbus Avenue. Click on the image to see a larger view.

School Street and Washington Street. The Metropolitan Street Railway Company began horse car service from Dudley Square to Forest Hills in 1867 and built a station and car barn at Egleston Square in 1867-1868, visible behind the car. After streetcars became electrified after 1889 the barn was used for storage and repair. The building in the background was built on 1872-1873 as a duplex house and apparently retail was added later, notice the two storefronts. This was replaced with the present brick apartment house built in 1897 by which time all horse car lines were run on electric power. Photograph courtesy of Boston Public Library.

After West Roxbury was annexed to Boston the city began to build public services. The firehouse and police station at Centre Street and this new firehouse was built at Egleston Square. Note the corner of the Egleston Square Methodist Church. The firehouse was replaced by the present Columbus Avenue firehouse built in 1952. Photograph courtesy of Boston Public Library.1914 Bromley Real Estate Atlas page showing the location of Firehouse Engine 42. It shows a brick front building on the site of the church, presumably retail stores or maybe a garage. It was replaced by the Eglston Square Theater in 1926.

The Charles M Clapp Monument at Forest Hills Cemetery. Thanks to Michael Reiskind and Anthony Sammarco for information on Charles M Clapp Photograph by Richard Heath 2013

 The George Putnam School, built in 1881 on the site of the present -day Hernandez School playground. It was the first school in Egleston Square. One of the first school gardens in the country was started at the Putnam in 1891 where students leaned how to grow their own vegetables. The school stood until about 1930. George Putnam was the pastor of Roxbury First Church who died in 1878. When the present day Hernandez School was built on School Street in 1923 it was named for President Theodore Roosevelt who had died in 1919. After the Hernandez School moved from 370 Columbia Road into the Roosevelt School building in 1987, the school name was changed to the Rafael Hernandez School after the Puerto Rican poet and composer. Hernandez was born in 1892 and died in 1965. Photograph from the City of Boston Archives, Guide to the Photographs of School Buildings. 0403. 002

Copyright 2005 Richard Heath. All Rights Reserved.

By Dennis Gately

It was wonderful to read the stories of the old neighborhood in and around Egleston Square. As I read those stories I couldn’t help wondering how many of you I may have met during the years my family was there.

Well, a little history of my family may help, so I’ll start when we arrived in Egleston Square in 1949, from Attleboro, Mass. We lived across the street from the Egleston Theatre. It was the only private home in the Square proper. There were five children in the family, Bruce, Beth, Barry, Dennis, and the youngest, Denise. At the time, Bruce was fighting a war in Korea, which back then was called a “Police Action.” Barry was at a private school in Providence RI. Beth was at Boston Latin while I was attending the George Putman School and Denise had a year to go before starting school. Dad was commuting to Quincy, and Mom was a Pharmacist.

We were delighted and fascinated with Egleston Square. There were streetcars (trolleys) that ran all the way from Forest Hills, through Egleston Square, to downtown Boston. Above us was the Egleston Square Elevated Railway train station that covered the intersection of Washington Street, Seaver Street and Columbus Avenue. (We old-timers considered Seaver Street to be an extension of Columbus Avenue.) The price was right (five cents) for riding either the surface or elevated transit systems. You could receive a Transfer if changing trains or trolleys going in the same direction.

The Egleston Square neighborhood for us kids was bordered by Columbus Avenue up to Walnut Avenue (adjacent to Franklin Park), then to School Street, down to Arcadia Street, north to Atherton Place out to Columbus Avenue and back up to Walnut Avenue. Washington Street, the main thoroughfare, was in the center of the neighborhood.

The most fascinating thing about Egleston Square was the ethnic diversity of the neighborhood. There were Greeks, Italians, Germans, Poles, and Armenians. There were more groups, but you get the idea. Oh yeah, Irish and Scotch were there too! Today, Egleston Square is mostly Latino, Mexican, African American and Vietnamese.

Egleston Square from the late 1940s to 1961 was a neighborhood made up of close- knit families where everyone knew everyone, or knew of them. You would think there was a language barrier but we kids took care of that problem. You see, most of the parents were widows who lost their husbands during the war and these mothers brought with them their culinary arts! … Us kids started to learn some of the language basics by keeping it simple. We soon knew how to say “thank you” and it wasn’t long before we were being invited to different homes to have supper! Mmmmmm! Well, in no time, our mothers would be sharing recipes and now you can see how the language barrier wasn’t too much of a problem.

Another way the neighborhood became close was the Fourth of July celebration. Everyone would walk to Jamaica Pond to watch the wonderful fireworks that would last until midnight and of course you would introduce your friend’s Mom to your Mom and you would interpret as best as you could, but in the end it didn’t matter because they would become friends and they would have fun learning from each other and us kids would become connoisseurs of foreign foods … (well, just enough to eat!)

One thing us kids learned around the neighborhood was respect … respect of other people was foremost. It didn’t matter if they came from a different country. Yes, a lot of families were displaced from their homes because of the war but you never reminded them of that; you just helped them out, being ever mindful of their pride and what they had been through. Some of our new friends had tattoos from concentration camps. Our dads who saw these things during the war would tell us what they went through … and to be respectful of their silence unless they wanted us to know.

Egleston Square had a very eclectic group of grocery stores that included the A&P, the First National and Lodgen’s Market located beside the Egleston Theatre, across the street from our home. During the early mornings, Egleston Square would come to life as the aroma of the bakery would float gently through the Square. Do you “Eggies” out there remember the mocha cakes? Mmmmmm!

The Square also hosted a “genuine” shoe repair shop whose owner was from Italy. His name was Mr. Busa and most of Egleston Square and the surrounding neighborhood would come to have their shoes resoled or to have metal taps put on the heels to keep them from wearing out. Back then shoes were made from real leather and they were fabricated in the USA, as were most other things we bought. Mr Busa allowed me to work in his shop, as he was busy most of the day. I was the shoeshine boy. He was kind enough to teach me how to repair shoes and to operate the stitching machine that attached the soles to the bodies of the shoes!

Yes, Egleston Square was a close community, but that was the norm in most communities then. Sure we had parents but it was the community as a whole that taught us how to cope with the necessities of life. Making friends in and around the “Square” was easy and sometimes there were surprises about friends that you made. Take for instance Mr. McGinnis, who was the proprietor of the Egleston Package Store, which sold liquor. My Dad and he were friends. Us kids would visit Mr. (Joe) McGinnis after school and during the summer months and he’d smile and laugh with us and always ask “were we doing good in school?” Then after giving us some snacks he’d send us on our way telling us to “watch out for the trolley cars.” He was a kind man to us kids in the neighborhood. I remember him letting Dad borrow his car so we could drive up to New Hampshire. Then, there he was in the newspaper … something about the Brinks robbery and some of Joe’s friends who we knew were in there also.

Yes, Egleston Square does have a unique history. Though it’s been over fifty years, the sounds of the “Square” are still with me. I still hear the ice wagon pulled by horses clattering over the trolley tracks and their hooves on the cobblestones, Peabody coal trucks, The Rag Man and his cart, elevated trains coming into the station, Air Raid Drills and the testing of the sirens, Tony’s barbershop, Mr. Joseph Busa and the pleasant aroma of leather and shoe polish and George, the manager of the A&P grocery store who allowed us kids to learn about ethics. Yes, Egleston Square and its surrounding neighborhoods: Forest Hills, Green Street, Franklin Park, Mattapan, and last but not least, Jamaica Plain and its wonderful pond. They have raised us well. When time seems to slip by my thoughts return to Egleston Square where it is held at bay for a short while. The sights and sounds drift by and I hear the laughter of the old gang that once was and … I’m home again for a short time.

Dennis welcomes your e-mail. You may contact him at:

A major source of information on the older houses of Jamaica Plain is the 1982 Survey & Planning Grant: Inventory Forms, compiled by the Boston Landmark Commission. Street by street this document provides evaluations of the homes by type, description, condition, architectural, and historical significance. In a project of such scope the researchers of necessity provide only a minimum of information on past owners of the houses. Sometimes further investigation can shed interesting light on the occupants. One of the houses described is 5 Eliot St. the last house on the left before the Monument, a "stick style" frame house of two stories. The first two owners of the house identified were Joseph Hankey and Anthony Hankey. Joseph Hankey, a confectioner, purchased the property from Stephen M. Weld in 1863. The survey report postulated that the current house was built sometime prior to 1874.

Until the 1920's, according to a long time Jamaica Plain resident, the house faced Centre Street. The 1874 Boston City Directory suggests that the entrance to the confectioners shop was on Centre St. and the residential entrance on Eliot. The property was sold in 1873 to Anthony Hankey, although his brother Joseph evidently continued to live there until his death in 1880. Joseph's wife, Abby Simonds Hankey, a Lexington native, assisted him in the confectionery business until her death in 1878. Maud Howe Elliott once described the excursions of a group that she belonged to in childhood.

"The 'Rovers of Boston,' the earliest association I ever joined, were divided in their views on the question. Where can the weekly five-cent allowance best be spent?" --- In the spring, when the weather was warm, the Rovers grew adventurous and hiked out to Mrs. Hankey's shop in Jamaica Plain, in search of the cocoanut cakes that made her name famous to many generations of girls and boys."

The Hankey's were successful examples of Jamaica Plain's once thriving German community. There were three of them, Joseph, born 1817, John, born 1822, and Anthony, born 1824. As children they emigrated from their birthplace of Kutzenhausen, in the French Department du Bas Rhin, Alsace. Although French, their native region had strong ties on both sides of the Rhine, and the Hankey's in this country were all married in Holy Trinity Church on Harrison Avenue, the German Church, in the City of Boston.

In 1848 Anthony Hankey, in partnership with Francis Stiles, Jr. and H.C. Bishop purchased property in the Village of Rochdale, Massachusetts where they established a manufactory of machine knives. His activities in manufacturing led him into invention. Patents for his devices, which ranged from an "Improved Machine for Grinding Knives," Patent No. 17,952, dated August 4, 1857, to a mechanical "Street Sweeper," Patent No. 553,751, dated March 4, 1895. By 1881 the firm of A. Hankey & Co. could boast in Hurd's 1889 History of Worcester County that they were the "largest and most complete shop in the world for the exclusive manufacture of machine knives." Hurd also claims that the first knives that were used on a planning machine in this country were forged by hand by Mr. Hankey in Boston, and also that the first dies for cutting out paper collars were made at his shop in Rochdale. In 1881 a branch plant was established in Philadelphia. Following Anthony Hankey's death in 1899 the business was carried on by other family members until 1922.

By Henry Scannell

Sources:

• Boston Herald, Feb. 10, 1880, p. 2, death notice of Joseph Hankey
• Boston Landmarks Commission, Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1982 Survey and Planning Chart, Part II - Jamaica Plain Inventory Forms
• Deaths in Boston, Reg. no. 3723, July 10, 1878, death record of Abby HankeyElliott, Maud Howe, "The Old Rosewood Desk," in Days and Ways of Old Boston, Boston: R.H. Stearns & Co., 1915, 5th ed., 1972, pp. 61-76.
• Hurd, D. Hamilton, History of Worcester County, Massachusetts, Vol. 1, Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Co., 1889, p. 722
• Jamaica Plain News, June 24, 1889, p. 2, obituary of Anthony Hankey
• Strasbourg Archives Departmentale, Documents no. 4E253(2): 1817, No. 43; 1822, No. 15; 1824, No. 36.U.S. Patent office. Commissioner's Reports.
• Letterhead from author's personal files.

Reprinted from From the Archives, Fall 1989, a newsletter once published by the Archive Committee of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. Copyright © 1989-2003 Jamaica Plain Historical Society.

By Rhea Becker

Crematory. The very word tends to conjure up a feeling of mystery and the unknown.

Forest Hills Cemetery held a public program in October that successfully laid to rest (so to speak) the participants' fears and questions about crematories and cremation, and shed light on the little-explored procedure.

A talk on cremation and the history of cremation at Forest Hills was given by Rachel Sideman, a former intern at the cemetery who wrote on the subject for her Simmons College master's thesis. The talk was followed by a comprehensive tour of the cemetery's cremation facilities, led by Anthony Hollingshead, cemetery superintendent.

Bud Hanson, president of Forest Hills Cemetery, opened the program. "We're all touched by mortality," he said, as he welcomed the two dozen or so curious participants.

Sideman explained that Forest Hills Cemetery led the region in cremation, building the first facility in New England, in 1893.

Suffragist and abolitionist Lucy Stone expressed her desire to be first person cremated in the new facility. The problem was, she died before construction was completed. Her body was stored on site for a short time, and when the facility was ready, she was cremated on Dec. 30, 1893.

"Lucy Stone's cremation was front-page news," said Sideman. Following Stone's lead, 87 people were cremated at Forest Hills in the first year. (Stone's remains now reside in a large urn in a Forest Hills columbarium.)

In the early years of the Forest Hills Crematory, cremations cost $30. Those who pre-paid received a ticket that could be redeemed at the time of death.

Cremation Past
Cremation is believed to have begun around 3000 B.C., most likely in Europe and the Near East. The practice spread around the world, until the modern cremation movement was launched after a cremation chamber was displayed at the 1873 Vienna Exposition.

In America, the popularity of cremation got off to a strong start in 1876 when Dr. Julius LeMoyne built the first crematory in the country in Washington, Pa. The second crematory opened in Lancaster, Pa. Among the forces that led people to embrace cremation were concerns about the health issues surrounding early cemeteries and a desire to reform funeral practices.

By 1900, 20 crematories were in operation in this country and by the time Dr. Hugh Erichsen founded the Cremation Association of America in 1913 there were 52.

In 1998, over a half-million cremations were performed in North America.

Cremation Present
Cremation is growing in popularity because it is less costly than traditional burial and the practice conserves land.

"By the year 2010, one out of two people will be cremated," said Bud< Hanson.

The facilities at Forest Hills are "state-of-the-art," said Hollingshead as he started the tour. The units, which reside in a spotlessly neat and clean room, work by introducing high heat (1400 degrees). The units are considered the best technology available, he said.

Next to the cremation units is a room where technicians process the remains by removing foreign materials. Then the remains are further processed by a machine that reduces them to a fine consistency.

At this point, a number of options can be pursued. Forest Hills Cemetery offers scattering, in-ground burial and columbaria (columbaria allow for memorialization of the deceased through a display of the urn). The cemetery also offers a range of urns.

The cremation talk/tour was presented by the Forest Hills Educational Trust on October 14, 2001.

Boy in the Boat Statue
By Walter H. Marx

The Jamaica Plain Historical Society recently toured a part of the Forest Hills Cemetery, originally set out by the City of Roxbury in 1848 for a city cemetery. In the cemetery's Walk Hill/Canterbury section may be found the glass-enclosed white marble statue titled "Boy in the Boat" and marked LL on the cemetery's map of curiosities. Books on Boston's statues unfortunately bypass its cemeteries' sculptures. This statue is as fresh, pure and lifelike as the day it was erected due to its covering and, in addition, it has a most interesting story to tell.

Its brief frontal text proclaims-uniquely in French-that it is the grave of Louis Ernest Mieusset at nearly five years of age, erected by his mother for her fils bien aime (well-beloved son). How does Louis, a little French boy of the high Victorian era, with his rowboat and tennis racquet happen to rest in Forest Hills? He indeed was born in France in 1881, but his mother and father had a parting of the ways and Mme. Mieusset brought her young son to the United States.

On September 26, 1886, while in a small boat near the shore of a little pond, Louis noticed his pet rabbit running along the bank. Wishing to bring the rabbit with him, he tried to reach for his pet, but lost his balance and fell out of the boat and drowned. It is this last moment of life that Mme. Louis Hellium Mieusset chose to commemorate in her son's last resting place in Forest Hills Cemetery.

Also erected with the monument was a marble bench with a moveable drawer (since removed), where the grieving mother could come to clean the glass, polish its brass fitting, place flowers, and do other duties as she saw fit. Due to financial reverses, Mme. Mieusset's private income ceased, and she went to work as a domestic on Beacon Hill. She lived on Kirkland St. in the South End, becoming increasingly frail but ever attending her son's grave by scrimping and saving.

After breaking a leg, she went to the City facility on Long Island and died of complications from that accident. Having no heirs and not having told the hospital about her grave lot at Forest Hills, Louise Mieusset was buried in a pauper's grave in Potters Field on Long Island. Fortunately, a neighbor, Mrs. Jackson knew Mme. Mieusset's tale and wrote ex-Mayor Curley. Within 24 hours she lay next to her son awaiting eternity.

Perhaps the loveliest element about this tale is that it has no ending. For even after the death of his mother (whose grave is not specifically marked) fresh flowers are left at the site almost daily, anonymously. Even stakeouts at the site have never revealed whom it is that keeps the site so dutifully. Those who know the sculpture of the cemetery well rightly match Louis with Gracie Allen (marked HH on the map of curiosities): another mint marble statue preserved in a glass case, a young girl who had died in 1880 at nearly the same age as Louis. These extraordinary statues are only two of the sculptural highlights that can be seen at Forest Hills.

Reprinted with permission from the August 3, 1989 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.

Franklin Park was designed by Frederick Law Omsted, America’s preeminent landscape architect. It was the hub of a huge Boston park system. Construction of this system began in 1879 in the Back Bay Fens. Franklin Park’s plan was completed in 1885.  Construction of Franklin Park, containing 527 acres at that time, began in the spring of 1885.  Work continued for 13 years. This brochure lays out two walking tours to allow the visitor an opportunity to explore the park.

Follow this link to read the brochure.

Towards the Commercial Unraveling of Green Street
By Walter Marx

A mile from this Towne lieth Roxbury, which is a faire and handsome Countrey-towne: the inhabitants of it being all very rich. - William Wood. New England's' Prospect: a true, lively, and experimental description of that part of America, commonly called New England, 1643.

When the Jamaica Plain Historical Society was founded in mid-1987, one of its purposes was to understand better the Jamaica Plain that had preceded us. Some longtime residents of Jamaica Plain can recall a vivid and thriving commercial Green Street. Little remains today except on the Washington Street end. When the archives committee began looking for pictures of this area in the various depositories around Boston, we found the photograph reproduced on the next page in the Print Department of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square.

Shown is a then spacious Woolsey Square off Green Street along the railroad tracks, when they yet stood on their 1896 embankment and before their depression in the late 1980’s. Woolsey Square was on the Centre Street side of the tracks and Bartlett Square on the Washington Street side. Each square centered about the in or outbound commuter Jamaica Plain Railroad Station and the tracks, which had first been laid in 1834. Of the squares today nothing remains but a street sign some several feet above the original level in the picture.

Yet here was the seed that led commerce along Green Street to both Centre and Washington Streets. Thus on the far left of the photo one can just see the Victorian style railroad station. Across the street is a building that included Jamaica Plain’s Post Office, before its move up Green Street to its present location. The next store with its distinctive turret on the corner of Gordon Street is the Gordon Building named for its owner who gave his name to the street as well. In 1891 it served as offices for the Jamaica Plain Gaslight Company; E.B. Taylor, paperhanging’s; B.E. Murray, undertaker; and G.W. Stuart Co. upholsterers. Later it became the Hotel Gordon.

Crossing Gordon Street one comes to a block built up by the Woolsey's, who in turn gave the square its name. The block is in three sections each increasing in size and grandeur as the proceeds from one fueled the building of the next. The 1891 bird’s eye view of Jamaica Plain shows this block as #20, and lists the occupants as H.H. Nelson, grocer; C.H. Cilley, news depot; L.L.P. Atwood & Co., real estate; and A. Haxton, dry goods. All are seen easily in the original photo. Also in the building were L. Vogel, bolts and shoes; B.L. Page, insurance; and Dr. Swett, dentist.

Such was the commercial cluster around the Jamaica Plain Railroad Station that led up Green Street. Green Street too contained storefronts, usually attached to houses – all gone now – and onto a less bustling and cluttered Centre Street than we have today. Progress has its problems too.


Memories of Green Street in the 1920’s
By Mary Glynn

Although Green Street was subdivided as early as 1851 for stores, factories and houses it was not extensively developed until the late 1870’s with construction continuing until the early 1900’s. The Bowditch School was completed in 1892 and early in the 20th century the United States Post Office moved from its location on Call Street at Woolsey Square to its new location at the corner of Green and Cheshire Streets. With the construction of the Boston Elevated Railway to Forest Hills with a stop at Green Street and Woolsey Square, and the surface cars out of Park and Dudley Streets, Green Street flourished as a commercial center for the at home residents and for commuters as well.

The word “shopping” in the early days of the present century was used almost exclusively to designate a trip to Boston to the big stores for clothing, furniture, etc. Locally one went to the store or with the children they did the errands. Food for big families was bought on a daily basis. Mothers took over early in the day, wheeling their baby carriages to the market. When school closed at 3:30 pm the children did the errands for mothers, grandmothers and neighbors. There were some enterprising young boys who took phone orders for meats and groceries and delivered them. The truck that carried the supplies was often loaded at home and for $3.00 or $3.50 a week the boys made deliveries after school and on Saturdays.

The residents of Jamaica Plain were served by many businesses on Green Street in the 1920’s. There were:
5 Barbers, 3 Tailors, 4 Cobblers, 2 Chinese Laundries, 3 Independent Grocers, 6 Chain Grocery Stores, 2 Garages, 2 Real Estate Offices, 2 Bakers, 2 Florists, 1 Painter, 1 Carpenter, 1 Electrical Contractor, 1 Music Teacher, 1 Tea and Coffee Shop, 1 Drug Store, 4 Meat Markets, 2 Delicatessens, 2 Fruit Stores & Ice Cream Parlors, 1 Hardware Store, 2 Dry Goods Stores, 1 Fish Market, 2 Auto Repair Shops, 1 Plumber, 1 Dentist, 1 Dress Shop, 1 Dress Manufacturer, Jamaica Plain Floor Co., Buff & Buff, and Surveyor Instruments.

The labor movement had been well established in Boston and unity was the in thing. However in the 1920’s we see a shift to businessmen as Michael O’Keefe, John T. Connors and Ginter, all three with stores on Green Street merged and became the First National Stores. This made it easier for them to compete with the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P).

It was fun to do the errands as a child, and one became friends with the shopkeepers and could call them by their first names. Also one became knowledgeable and knew which shopkeepers had built a reputation for quality products. We knew that Nr. McNutt at # 81, who worked in his store in a wheelchair, had the best beans and brown bread in the area. Mrs. Oswald at #177 ran a delicatessen and catered to the German trade. Her potato salad was uniquely her own and she could not keep up with the demand. It would be some years before the secret of German potato salad would make it into the American cookbooks.

The A&P at #111 did a flourishing business, due in large part to “Blondie,” the manager. He had a pleasant outgoing manner, was quick and efficient. When he would say pleasantly, “Now YOU are next” the first three or four items of the order would be given to him. While the coffee was grinding he would get items from other parts of the store, quickly. Sometimes they would be on shelves eight feet high and could be lowered only with the use of a long handled hook, which deposited the item directly onto his hand. When the order was assembled he would get a brown bag and the cost of each item was listed on it. He could add faster than any person I have ever met in my life. Customers watching it stood in awe of his speed and accuracy.

Early on Saturday morning rabbits, fur and all, would be on display at the Manhattan Market at #122. Henry, the handsome young butcher, would appear wearing a straw hat and long white coat, his outfit the year round. He would carry a pail of water with flour mixed in it and also a brush. The specials of the day would be listed on the window of the market in his beautiful script. Some of those watching were interested in the price of the specials, but many others marveled at this talent, and the attractive appearance of the window when he was finished.

Immigrants who opened business on Green Street were of tremendous interest to the residents. Karl Brown, from Bohemia, now Czechoslovakia, opened a show repair shop at #120 and did very well. He was joined a little later by a fellow countryman, Paul Sivaceck, who opened a tailor shop at #116A. Both spent their entire working lives in the area.

Men wore stiff collars and shirts that had to be washed, starched and ironed at the Chinese laundry. Yee Sam at #125 knew only a few words of English, but was a good businessman. Once you delivered the shirts and collars to him he would give you a slip with Chinese characters on it. He evidently made a similar slip for himself and when you called for the laundry he would match the slips. Looking back on it now I realize Yee Sam had it all together. There was never a mix up. My father always got his own collars back.

Albert Hesseleschwerdt had a tea & coffee shop at #95 and he also made deliveries of fresh eggs and butter to his customers. Ethel, his daughter, opened a music studio at the same address and brought her musical talents and culture to the community.

In 1874 Joseph Mao began business as a tinsmith at Centre, corner of Green under the firm name of Thomas Mayo & Co. In 1886, Thomas Mayo with Sewall D. Balkam advertised their hardware store at 149 Green Street. Balkam dropped from the name in 1891 and Mayo continued the business alone. The store served the needs of the carriage industry, blacksmiths, builders, homeowners and everyday citizens. It had everything to delight a child; i.e. sleds, skates, hockey sticks, bikes, express wagons, etc. It remained at the same location under the same name until 1969 serving the community longer than any other retail store on Green Street.

Mrs. Doroff’s dry goods store was at #160, at the corner Brookside Avenue. Children’s clothing and adult’s clothing were available. Many of the simple little gifts given by children at Christmas were bought there. Gone from the scene are the caps we bought for mother and grandmother to wear as they prepared breakfast. Also, the pretty arm garters we bought for father, grandfather and uncles to keep their shirtsleeves in place are no longer in vogue.

The delicatessen at #201 was owned by Mr. William Glazer. The great attraction in this store for children was the 25 or 30 lb. pig, head and all, that was displayed in the window each week. It was a puzzle to children with no German background why the pig who was not alive had an apple in its mouth, which it could not eat.

Change on Green Street manifested itself early. The passage of the Prohibition Act took its toll on some businesses. The Jamaica Plain Trust Co. opened at 675 Centre Street in 1911 and Woolworth’s opened at 678 a few years later. The Post Office moved again to new quarters on Centre Street at the corner of Myrtle about 1919, and little by little Centre Street in the vicinity of Green Street began to grow.

The well-established A&P had vacated the street by 1930 due perhaps to the establishment of two First National Stores on Green Street. The Bowditch School closed in 1981. The closing of Mayo’s removed the last vestige of Green Street’s importance as a commercial area.

Sources: Boston Directory Boston Landmark’s Commission, Phil Bergen, Bostonian Society, Isabel Martino, Roslindale Branch, Boston Public Library, Henry Keaveney, Jamaica Plain Historical Society, Rita O’Brien, Jamaica Plain Historical Society, Frank Hanafan, Roche Brothers, Thomas Flemming, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

Reprinted from From the Archives, Fall 1990, a newsletter once published by the Archive Committee of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. Copyright © 1990-2003 Jamaica Plain Historical Society.



History of the Development of Green Street, 1836-1900
By Elaine Stiles

The Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain has long served as a research model for patterns of urban expansion. Over a period of seventy years in the later nineteenth century, the neighborhood was transformed from an agricultural region peppered with the country estates of wealthy Bostonians to a "streetcar suburb," densely populated with middle class commuters. The suburbanization of Jamaica Plain dramatically changed patterns of land division, architecture, and the neighborhood's overall character of place in the late nineteenth century as living and production patterns shifted.

The development history of Green Street in Jamaica Plain provides a unique window through which to observe the patterns of change that took place in the community over the last three quarters of the nineteenth century. Just under a mile long, Green Street was laid out in 1836 by a private real estate speculator. The street played a pioneering and central role in Jamaica Plain's development history, functioning as a residential, commercial, and transportation conduit in the local lives of the district's residents. When it was built, Green Street was one of the first roads to connect Jamaica Plain's two main thoroughfares, Centre and Washington streets. Green Street additionally linked these important roads to major commuter and freight lines operated by the Boston & Providence Railroad and the area's oldest industrial zone along the Stony Brook). The development of residential and commercial lots along Green Street was also one of the first speculative real estate ventures in an area that would see a tremendous increase in such activity within a few decades.

Green Street's creation and growth exhibited many of the patterns seen on a larger scale across Jamaica Plain in the nineteenth century, but the street could never be categorized as typical for the area. While neighborhoods to the north, south and west of Green Street were consistent with the ideal of the residential, upper-middle class, garden suburb, Green Street's pivotal role as a connector for the neighborhood's major transportation routes made it a heterogeneous mix of social classes and uses. The street's essential function in the neighborhood makes it a unique opportunity to observe locally oriented commercial and residential suburban development rather than development geared solely towards a new commuter population.

To fully understand the development patterns present on Green Street, one must be familiar with the forces that reshaped Jamaica Plain as a whole. The neighborhood of Jamaica Plain is roughly bounded by Heath Street on the north, Neponset Avenue and the Arnold Arboretum on the south, Columbus Avenue and Forest Hills Street on the east, and Brookline on the west.Jamaica Plain was part of the town of Roxbury until 1851 when the western half of the township formed its own municipality, West Roxbury. Until West Roxbury's annexation to Boston in 1874, Jamaica Plain was the town's dominant neighborhood, hosting the seat of town government and serving as home to many of the town's prominent citizens.

Jamaica Plain was primarily an agricultural community through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. Like many areas on Boston's urban periphery, Jamaica Plain's economy was geared towards exploiting the market opportunities available at the entryway to a growing city, providing Boston markets with large quantities of farm products, water, and ice.[1] Farmers, innkeepers, wholesale merchants, and proprietors of noxious or land-intensive manufactures like tanneries or brickyards made up Jamaica Plain's business community in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Most industrial sites in the district were located in the Stony Brook valley because of its remote location and access to waterpower.

Although farmers were the majority of Jamaica Plain's population in its early stages, wealthy country estate owners made up a small, but significant portion of Jamaica Plain's residents. John Hancock and provincial governor Francis Bernard were just two of the notable part-time residents of Jamaica Plain in the eighteenth century.[2] The rural and genteel country character of the area persisted well into the nineteenth century.

The middle years of the nineteenth century brought a new demographic to Jamaica Plain: the urban commuter. With the building of the Boston & Providence Railroad lines through eastern Jamaica Plain in 1834, the horse streetcar service that began in the area in the 1850s, and the electric trolley service that took over in the 1890s, the neighborhood had continuous public transportation to downtown Boston in the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century.[3] Easy transportation combined with crowding in Boston and the rising popularity of the rural ideal among the middle class encouraged many urbanites to move outward from the city center during this time period.[4]

Between 1850 and 1900, Jamaica Plain's population increased from 2,730 to 32,750.[5] The rising demand for real estate in Jamaica Plain created a robust market in land sales and construction in the area. Most of this development was privately funded and unregulated by any governing body or public agency and Jamaica Plain's surface gradually became a complex arrangement of streets, avenues, and rights-of-way (Figure 2).

The early history of Green Street is representative of the development pattern of much of the land in Jamaica Plain over the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. The land now occupied by Green Street began its European settlement history as agricultural property. In the eighteenth century, the land extending from Centre Street to the Stony Brook was described as "a marsh with a cow-path and bars at the head of it."[6] In the later years of the eighteenth century, as wealthy Bostonians began building their country estates in Jamaica Plain, the land that is now Green Street passed through the hands of several affluent families. In 1828, Samuel G. Goodrich, a popular children's author, purchased a large vacant parcel of a former estate to the north of present-day Green Street. Goodrich built a sizeable home and several servants' cottages on his estate and cultivated elaborate gardens in the rocky, wooded hollow surrounding his house.[7]

It was under Goodrich's ownership that the land surrounding Green Street entered its first concentrated development phase. Less than ten years after purchasing his estate, Goodrich fell on hard financial times and was forced to sell his mansion and 38 acres of land along the southern border of his property. Instead of selling it as one large parcel to another wealthy family, however, Goodrich privately financed the construction of two roads and subdivided the land along them into 32 lots.

The plan Goodrich commissioned for the project in 1836 shows a subdivision design mixing small, narrow lots with larger tracts. Lots ranged in size from a third of an acre to roughly six and a half acres. A parallel road we recognize today as Starr Lane runs behind the lots on the southern side of Green Street to provide a right of way for the residents through the Greenough land. The variety of lot sizes was probably designed to attract a variety of buyers. Builders or individual homeowners could purchase small, less expensive lots for constructing houses, while real estate investors could purchase and subdivide the larger tracts to sell in turn to builders or homeowners. In the course of three months in 1837, Goodrich sold 21 of the 30 lots to local real estate investors. With one exception, Goodrich's buyers were all local residents and listed their occupation as "gentleman." Nearly every buyer bought multiple lots and soon sold them off to builders or others rather than build on them for personal use.[8]

Goodrich's plan and the initial purchasing patterns for the lots on Green Street demonstrate that a market for modest-sized, individual home lots existed in Jamaica Plain before convenient or inexpensive public transportation brought large numbers of middle class commuters. In the early 1840s, irregular rail service via the Boston & Providence line and horse-drawn omnibuses were citizens' only public commuting options.[9] Green Street's initial form also shows that a dense settlement pattern along Green Street was planned from its conception, a development pattern distinctly different from Jamaica Plain's earlier agricultural and genteel country character.

Without conducting significant title research, there is little evidence by which to determine the first residents or earliest buildings on Green Street. Directory information, residential atlases, and insurance maps are not available for the area until after 1868. The evidence that does exist suggests that Green Street began as a diverse neighborhood of modest, freestanding single-family homes and businesses. The Boston Landmark Commission's historic resource survey for Green Street dates two extant houses to the early 1840s. The first is a two-story, double pile Greek Revival house with front porch and two rear ells creating an overall U shape (Figure 4). It was owned by John and George Williams whose harness and carriage shop sat on the corner of Centre and Green streets by 1868. The Williams House held two units, presumably one for each brother and his family. The second house is a one and half story, double pile Greek Revival "cottage," originally owned by a widow (Figure 5).[10] Similar modest, Federal and Greek Revival houses are assumed to have characterized the first phase of residential development on the street.[11]

Although Green Street was predominantly residential for most of its history, the street was perfectly poised to become a business district because of its central location and connection to major transportation routes for goods and people. Only one commercial building from Green Street's early days survives into the twenty-first century: a modest, two-story shop with Italianate styling. The shop was owned by John and George Williams, but is unlikely to have been their harness and carriage operation. The building later served as a plumbing and carpentry shop. Its scale is similar to that of the houses on the street, and visually Green Street in the 1840s and 1850s may have been a street of primarily two-story, wooden commercial and residential structures.

Subdivision on Green Street continued well past 1840. An 1849 map of the lots along the Boston & Providence rail lines shows a new street laid across lot #28 on the original Goodrich plan with the land on either side subdivided into sixteen parcels of various sizes (Figure 7). An 1856 parcel map advertising 41 lots along Green and a new intersecting road shows that lots on the eastern side of the railroad tracks had also been subdivided into smaller, very narrow parcels. These lots were advertised for sale for use as "stores, factories, and houses," showing mixed residential and commercial development from the onset. The plan also shows two locally oriented commercial ventures in place near the tracks, D.A. Brown's grocery store, and another unknown retail shop across the street).[12] Based on such evidence, it is clear that by 1850, development on Green Street had completely obliterated the rural garden setting the southern portion of Goodrich's estate. The early evidence of Green Street's development, particularly the retail shops serving a local market and the residents who owned businesses close to their place of residence, seems to indicate that this section of Jamaica Plain began as a locally oriented sub-district rather than a suburban community for Boston commuters.

When map evidence becomes available again for Green Street in 1874, twenty years have passed and much has changed in the larger Jamaica Plain community. The neighborhood had been annexed to Boston that same year. Streetcar service that would take commuters to Boston every half-hour for five cents now went down Centre and Washington streets (Figure 9). The neighborhood's population had tripled since 1850, rising to just over 9,000 residents and its demographic had changed, favoring middling professionals and variously skilled workers instead of farmers and major proprietors. The percentage of foreign-born residents also rose to one third.[13]

Map evidence from 1874 shows that the changes in Green Street's landscape since its development were significant, but did not obliterate its early subdivision pattern.[14] Some of the original 1836 subdivision boundaries are still visible, particularly for the small, individual house lots on the southern side of the street near Centre Street. Most lots from the 1836 plan, however, have been subdivided by their purchasers, resulting in parcels ranging in size from just shy of two acres to less than a tenth of an acre, significantly smaller than the original lot sizes of one third of an acre to two acres on divided lots. Seven new intersecting and parallel streets now give access to the new lots subdivided from the original 32 Goodrich lots and to industrial sites along the Stony Brook (Figure 10). Green Street in 1874 was still predominantly residential with house lots outnumbering commercial or light industrial lots three to one.

Green Street's inhabitants during this time period were primarily central middle class merchants and artisans. Carpenters, painters, assessors, bookkeepers, widows, gardeners, teachers, policemen, and even a curled hair manufacturer all had homes on the street. Real estate speculation was still happening along Green Street, but speculators tended to be Green Street residents rather than gentlemen investors. Many, like the Williamses, had homes, businesses, and investment property on the street. Absentee landlords owned about one fifth of the residential property, and were almost all middle class. Most landlords lived elsewhere on Green Street or in other parts of Jamaica Plain.[15]

Green Street's early physical history was one of agriculture and gentlemanly horticulture and the first building development along Green Street tried to keep in tune with its early character in several ways. Although lot sizes were small, attempts were made by developers to create an artificial suburban ideal: the freestanding house in a garden setting. Virtually every residential building on the street built before 1885 sits several feet above the road line and has stone retaining walls running along the road frontage to form a grassy terrace for the house lot (Figure 11).

Houses varied in their orientation on their lots depending on location and lot character. When both lot and house were large in size, the house tended to face away from Green Street, reinforcing a garden-type setting. The Evans house on Lamartine Street faced the side street, as did the J. Alba Davis house on the corner of Chestnut and Green. Alexander Dickson's large home did not have any side streets surrounding the property, but its entrance facade was still oriented away from Green Street. (See Figure 10.) Smaller houses on smaller lots tended to face Green Street, with the exception of those on lots between Green Street and Starr Lane. Many of these houses fronted on Starr Lane, perhaps because of the stables and artisans' shops located across Green Street. Setback distance from the street on each lot varies, but each home was situated on its lot so as to create a yard.

Based on surviving examples, all domestic architecture on Green Street was of wooden construction. Brick was reserved for commercial architecture. Whether this was because fire was not a major concern for residents or because brick construction was too "urban" and out of step with the overall character of the neighborhood is unknown.

The most elaborate homes on Green Street sat on the largest lots during this time period. Leather merchant J. Alba Davis built an ornate two-story neoclassical home for his family on his large garden lot (Figure 12). Just next door, blacksmith and carriage builder Alexander Dickson's home was also neoclassical in style, complete with ionic columns supporting his porches (Figure 13). Green Street's inhabitants were not all well to do, however. Directory evidence shows that most residents were central middle class artisans working in trades like carpentry and painting, or employed as bookkeepers, teachers, policemen, and gardeners. A row of four modest two-story homes towards the center of Green Street probably characterizes the housing norm during this time period (Figure 14).

As seen with the Williams house, multi-family housing was present on Green Street from the very beginning, but it was in a distinct minority on the street. Other than the Williams House, there was only one other multi-family unit on Green Street by 1875 (Figure 15). Its form was similar to the Williams House: two stories, double pile, and split down the center into two units. It is interesting to note that multi-family housing in this era tended to be similar to single-family domestic architecture in scale and styling. The differences are formal; single-family housing tended to be more vertically oriented and multi-family housing tended to be more horizontally oriented.

Commercial locations along Green Street in the 1870s clustered near major transportation corridors like the rail lines, Stony Brook, Centre Street, and Washington Street. Most of the commercial lots were densely packed with buildings set flush with the road line. There does not appear to have been a strict segregation of commercial or light industrial use and residential use in the neighborhood. Several people who lived on Green Street also had their businesses there. Paul Lincoln, a carpenter owned a shop near Centre Street and lived in a house near the rail lines and Alexander Dickson, a blacksmith and carriage builder his shops near Centre Street, his home on a spacious lot next door, and a rental unit in between.[16]

Commercial activity on Green Street saw tremendous growth between the 1840s and the late 1860s when the first business directories become available for Jamaica Plain. The directories show a remarkable number of businesses, with retail shops selling clothing, groceries, hardware, crockery and glassware, dry goods, fish, woodenware, millinery goods, and stoves and tin ware as largest category of commercial activity on Green Street. The most common services on Green Street were related to transportation. Five blacksmiths, carriage smiths, carriage trimmers, carriage builders, and wheelwrights had shops along the street. Other common occupations for residents and commercial owners on Green Street were carpenters and builders, sign and house painters, and boot and shoemakers.

Although it is not a wholly reliable statistic, three times as many businesses were listed in the 1874 directory as in that of 1868. Most occupations and services remained the same, but a greater specialization in trades and a trend towards professional services began to appear. Upholsterers, cabinetmakers, a grainer and glazer, tailors, and watch and clockmakers moved into shops on Green Street. Lawyers, civil engineers, real estate agents, and a female obstetrician also took offices there. The first saloon and restaurant opened near the rail station. In contrast to the agricultural economy of thirty years previous, most of the commercial activity along Green Street in 1874 is geared towards serving the needs of the local market rather than production for Boston.

With the increased commercial activity on Green Street through the 1870s, a new type of commercial architecture appeared. Where small-scale, wooden shop buildings might have been the norm thirty years previous, now large brick commercial blocks began to take the stage. Alden Bartlett, a real estate, insurance, and mortgaging agent, owned the majority of the commercial land on Green Street, clustered on the southwestern edge of the rail lines. Bartlett built a three-story, mansard-roofed commercial block building near the railroad, attracting many business tenants who wanted to capitalize on the commuter traffic. (Figure 16) Competitors soon followed suit on the opposite side of the rail lines, and the Woolsey and Elson Blocks sprung up there within a few years, creating a rather urban feel to the streets near the railroad. (Figure 17) These new developments indicate that Green Street was becoming a central location for business in Jamaica Plain.

Other developments in the 1870s reflect Green Street's important place in the local community. Sometime between 1850 and 1875, the town built a wood frame primary school on Green Street, providing education to students through the third grade. The unnamed primary school undoubtedly reflects the population growth in the area and the need for a conveniently located school in the sub-district.

The years between 1885 and 1900 brought significant change to Green Street and Jamaica Plain as a whole. The neighborhood's population more than doubled during that time with skilled and semiskilled workers and clerks and salesmen dominating the work force living in the area.[17] Through the 1870s, Green Street's physical development appeared to be somewhat immune to the influx of commuters and immigrants coming to Jamaica Plain. There were few verifiable commuters living on the street in that era. As Jamaica Plain's population ballooned in the 1880s, however, Green Street began to show more conventional patterns of suburban development. The street became more densely settled with increased subdivisions of large lots for the purpose of constructing sizeable multi-family rental dwellings (Figure 18). A bird's eye view of Jamaica Plain in 1890 shows a Green Street with very few open spaces and most buildings very close to the road line. The streetscape near the railroad tracks in particular evokes an urban feeling, with four and five-story buildings lining the street (Figure 19).

By 1890, residential lot sizes on Green Street shrunk to a quarter of an acre on average, with few measuring larger than a half acre and many lots at only one tenth of an acre. Single-family houses enjoy more lot space, whereas multi-family dwellings were densely packed on small lots. Because lot sizes were so small, most houses fronted on the nearest road and sat very close to the street. The sizeable lots with ample yard space of fifteen years previous were gone.

Most residential property owners still occupied their parcels in the mid 1880s, but the absentee landlord rate rose considerably as construction of speculative housing grew. According to residential atlases, renters occupied one third of the residential properties on Green Street in 1884, but by 1900, absentee landlords outnumbered owner occupied residential properties by a large margin. Out of nineteen verifiable residential property owners on Green Street in 1905, only three were listed in the directory as residing at that property address. All three owner-occupied properties also had an additional dwelling on their lot that could have served as rental property. Most of the residents on Green Street who owned their own homes continued to be lower middle class artisans: painters, contractors, grocers, gardeners, sheriff's keepers, teachers. Tax records reveal that residents occupying multi-family and renter-occupied houses on Green Street in this era were a varied group. Coachmen, electricians, carpenters, machinists, and painters lived in large apartment buildings near the rail lines, whereas bookkeepers, lawyers, salesmen, tailors, apothecaries, and artists lived in smaller-scale multi-family units on the western end of Green Street.[18]

The years between 1885 and 1900 saw more building of multi-family dwellings than any other type of domestic architecture. Multi-family dwellings made up nearly half of all residential property on Green Street in 1898 whereas in 1874, there were only two multi-family dwellings on the entire street.[19]

Two of the most dramatic subdivisions and multi-unit developments on Green Street in this era took place on Alexander Dickson and J. Alba Davis's former garden parcels. Alexander Dickson split his lot into six parcels and built seven two-story, two-family homes surrounding his own house (Figure 20). Dickson's spacious rental units mark the first sign of urban architectural influences in domestic buildings on Green Street. The units' side-hall and bay window design mimics the urban town house. On the interior, the buildings are split vertically into units, which take the form of end houses in plan. Interior finishes are stylish, with heavy moldings and carved marble fireplace surrounds.[20] This rich interior finish was characteristic of early suburban multi-unit dwellings as builders tried to achieve parity with the freestanding single-family house.[21] Dickson's elaborate rental units show that multi-family housing set in close quarters was not necessarily the second-rate living situation we might associate with them today and that the garden setting was becoming less and less important to home buyers in the area.

J. Alba Davis, who left Green Street in the 1880s, subdivided his lot and sold parcels to speculators who constructed four multi-family units, two of which are connected (Figure 21). The style of multi-family housing being built in the 1890s was much different from the small-scale variety seen in the street's early days and units like Alexander Dickson's "townhouses." For the first time, multi-family units broke the two-story, two-family threshold and were divided horizontally into units rather than vertically. The homes built on the Davis lot were also much more urban in feel, sitting directly on the road line and connected like true city townhouses. It is not clear how many units were in these buildings, but they were certainly built to house larger numbers of people. This style of multi-family housing appeared elsewhere on the street in the 1890s, and not always on lots left behind by their wealthy owners. Smith Cofran built a three story multi-family unit right next to his own home, capitalizing on the influx of immigrants and workers coming to the area (Figure 22).

It is interesting to note that the connected row houses built on the Davis lot each had a name: Malvern, Courtland, Waldenmere, and Rockview. Naming apartment buildings was a common convention in the late nineteenth century when they first began to appear in cities. Although the connected row houses we looked at might not really qualify as full-fledged apartment buildings, Green Street was not long without its first true apartment "hotels," located between the rail lines and Washington Street (Figure 23). Local investor and entrepreneur Patrick Meehan built the Hotels Morse and McKinley shortly after 1890. These four-story, brick apartment blocks had retail space on the first floor and four units per floor above the ground level. Each unit featured two chambers, a kitchen, parlor, dining room, and bath.[22] Meehan's apartment hotels were the first brick residential buildings on Green Street as well as the first multi-family dwellings of their size. It is interesting that both buildings were located in what, by 1885 was primarily a commercial and light industrial area. Part of the explanation for the hotels' setting is that Meehan owned most of the land east of the railroad tracks and naturally would have built there. The hotels may also have been in the commercial district because of their great size and many nineteenth-century homeowners' dislike for the form in general.[23] Overall, Meehan's apartment buildings and the other multi-family units built on Green Street in the 1890s indicate that the early suburban ideal of a garden setting was completely eroded as population pressures increased.

Commercial development on Green Street increased one and a half times over the ten years between 1875 and 1885, taking over most of the land on the eastern side of the rail lines. There were only a handful of residential properties east of Lamartine Street by 1900. In fact, the number of commercial buildings east of the rail lines almost equaled all residential buildings on Green Street during this period. Boston business directories for these years are too voluminous to search for specific business listings, but livery, carriage building, and retail were still the most common commercial enterprises on Green Street according to the occupations of known property owners.[24] Heavy industry had also extended to Green Street from further up the Stony Brook valley. Benjamin Sturtevant built a large industrial fan manufacturing plant just south of Bartlett's Block in 1878 (Figure 24).[25]

Most commercial and industrial architecture on Green Street was smaller in scale, however. Canadian immigrant Alfred Pappineau constructed an impressive four-story, mansard-roofed carriage factory and livery stable in 1879 (Figure 25).[26] Diagonally across the street were even plainer two-story commercial buildings with shops on the ground floors and office and storage space above (Figure 26). Commercial activity on Green Street near the close of the nineteenth century changed little from what it had been ten years previous, however there was much more mixing of residential and commercial use within individual buildings. By 1898, Peter Kolb's former shoemaker's shop held four shops in the front block and a dwelling in the two blocks to the rear (Figure 27).[27]

Civic life on Green Street also saw marked change in the 1890s. In 1890, the City of Boston replaced the small primary school with the three-story, yellow brick Bowditch School (Figure 28). This new school was at least four times the size of the small, frame schoolhouse from a decade earlier. Secondly, the Jamaica Club built a clubhouse and bowling alley on the corner of Green and Rockview streets where they hosted minstrel shows, mock trials, concerts, and prize military drills for the public (Figure 29). These two late nineteenth century construction projects on Green Street signal the central role the street played in Jamaica Plain, offering not just residential and commercial uses, but also community services and meeting places.

The transformation of Green Street from an agrarian parcel to a complex landscape of residential, commercial, industrial, and community uses occurred decisively and rapidly over a seventy-year period. The street's increasingly dense development and decreasingly central middle class population over time follow traditional suburban growth patterns set forth by scholars such as Sam Warner. Green Street's unique location in Jamaica Plain as a connector for the neighborhood's major transportation conduits influenced the street's development away from the typical nineteenth-century suburban growth pattern, however. The street's central location attracted resident businessmen and artisans who served the local market rather than bringing their labor and services to Boston as residents of many other parts of Jamaica Plain did.

Green Street's early heterogeneity created a landscape displaying distinct patterns of social hierarchy in its architecture and division patterns. Elaborate homes on spacious lots like J. Alba Davis's were situated only a block or so from very plain multi-family housing. Handsome factory spaces like Alfred Pappineau's carriage company sat across the road from unremarkable wooden shops. The disparity of resources in terms of styling, setting, and manner of use served to reinforce social hierarchies on a diverse street by segmenting owners with visual symbols into social classes. Over time however, new construction on Green Street became more uniform in style, use, and siting as the residents' social class became more homogeneous.

Beginning with Samuel Goodrich himself, it was always Jamaica Plain residents, if not residents of the Green Street itself who developed property along the street. Many property owners on the Green Street capitalized on its prime location and built speculative housing, purchased additional shops or homes for rental use, or chose to locate their business on the street. Building inspection reports from the 1880s and 1890s also show that many of the builders with shops on Green Street were the same people who built much of the multi-family housing that sprang up there during those decades.[28] This entrepreneurial spirit and response to market changes signals that the suburbanization and increasing urbanization of parts of Jamaica Plain was not a negative, but rather a positive opportunity for local residents.

In this sense, Green Street illustrates scholar Henry Binford's point that Boston's suburbs were created by the people who lived there.[29] Population pressures and the presence of convenient transportation to Boston were catalysts for change in Jamaica Plain, but not the sole agents of the area's transformation. As evidenced by Green Street's early development, Jamaica Plain was already a thriving community complete with its own industry, commerce, educational systems, and social organizations. It was the neighborhood's original residents responding to new living patterns who created the densely settled, semi-urban landscape we see on Green Street today.

1. Francis S. Drake, The Town of Roxbury, its Memorable Persons and Places (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980), 406.
2. Alexander von Hoffman, Local Attachments: The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 9.
3. Sam Bass Warner Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 22, 49.
4. Warner, 11.
5. von Hoffman, 36.
6. von Hoffman, 15. Harriet Manning Whitcomb, Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1897), 26.
7. Harriet Manning Whitcomb, Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1897), 26.
8. Reference Norfolk County Registry of Deeds135:68, 115:226, 115:227, 115:240, 115:261, 115:307, 131:116.
9. von Hoffman, 13-14.
10. Rosalind Pollan, Carolyn Kennedy, and Edward Gordon. Jamaica Plain Preservation Study (Boston: Boston Landmarks Commission, Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1983), survey form 121 for 33 and 35 Green Street and survey form 120 for rear of 43 Green Street.
11. Pollan et als, 24.
12. Pollan et als, survey form 707 for 172-174 Green Street.
13. von Hoffman, 34-38.
14. George W. Bromley, Atlas of the City of Boston vol. 5, West Roxbury (Philadelphia: George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, 1874.
15. Boston City Directory, 1874. This information, and all information like it in this paper, was compiled by comparing names on Bromley residential atlases to the city directory address and occupation for the same person.
16. Bromley, 1874.
17. von Hoffman, 34.
18. Boston City Directories, 1885, 1895, and 1900.
19. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Massachusetts, 1898 (Teaneck, NJ: Chadwyck-Healey, 1983)
20. This evidence is based on a visit by the author to one unit in the Dickson development which had been changed little over time according to its owner.
21. Douglass Shand-Tucci, Built in Boston, City and Suburb, 1800-2000 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 114
22. Boston Building Department. Building Inspection Report for building on corner of Green Street and Union Avenue, Jamaica Plain, MA owned by Patrick Meehan, 1890, 37:39.
23. Shand-Tucci, 119, 128
    
24. Bromley, 1884.
25. von Hoffman, 56.
26. Pollan et als, survey form 708 for 180 Green Street.
27. Sanborn, 1898.
28. Boston Building Department, Building Inspection Reports (Boston: Boston Building Department, various dates)
29. Binford, 2.

Sources:

• Binford, Henry C. The First Suburbs: Residential Communities on the Boston Periphery 1815- 1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
• Blouin, Francis X. Jr. The Boston Region, 1810-1850. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980.
• Boston 200 Neighborhood History Series. Boston: Boston 200 Corporation, 1976.
• Drake, Francis S. The Town of Roxbury, its Memorable Persons and Places. Boston: Municipal Printing Office, 1905.
• Ellis, Charles M. The History of Roxbury Town. Boston: Samuel G. Drake, 1847.
• Gray, Thomas. Half century sermon : delivered on Sunday morning, April 24, 1842, at Jamaica Plain. Boston: I.R. Butts, 1842. Text fiche.
• Pollan, Rosalind, Carolyn Kennedy, and Edward Gordon. Jamaica Plain Preservation Study, prepared by Rosalind Pollan, Carolyn Kennedy, and Edward Gordon for the Boston Landmarks Commission. Boston: Boston Landmarks Commission: Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1983.
• Shand-Tucci, Douglas. Built in Boston, City and Suburb 1800-2000. Revised and expanded edition. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.
• von Hoffman, Alexander. Local Attachments: The Making of and American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
• Whitcomb, Harriet Manning. Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1897.
• Whitehill, Walter Muir, and Lawrence Kennedy. Boston, a Topographical History. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2000.
• Warner, Sam Bass Jr. Streetcar Suburbs The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.
• Map and Atlas Sources
• Bailey, Oakley H. View of Jamaica Plain, MA, Ward 2, City of Boston. Boston: O. H. Bailey & Co., ca. 1890.
• Boston & Providence Railroad. Plan of lots in West Roxbury, MA along Boston & Providence Railroad. Publication place unknown, 1849.
• Bromley, George Washington. Atlas of the City of Boston. Vol. 5, West Roxbury. Philadelphia: George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, 1884.
• ________. Atlas of the City of Boston. Vol. 6, 2d ed., West Roxbury. Philadelphia: George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, 1896.
• ________. Atlas of the City of Boston, West Roxbury. Philadelphia: George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, 1905.
• City of Boston Directories.
• Hopkins, Griffith Morgan. Atlas of the County of Suffolk, MA. Vol. 5, West Roxbury, now Ward 17, Boston. Philadelphia: G.M. Hopkins & Co., 1874.
• Map of Dorchester, Roxbury, and West Roxbury. Boston: George H. Walker, 1897.
• Map of Boston and Suburbs, 1905. Boston: George H. Walker, 1906.
• Richards Map Company. Atlas of Dorchester, West Roxbury, and Brighton, City of Boston, in one Volume. Boston: L.J. Richards & Co., 1860.
• Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Massachusetts, 1898. Microform. Teaneck, NJ: Chadwyck-Healey, 1983.

Copyright © Elaine Stiles 2001

By Jenn Russo

Some residents on Germania Street know that Samuel Adams beer and other products are made in the industrial complex on their street. But few seem to know the history behind the smokestack that stands at the end of the street, just beyond a maze of red brick buildings.

In the late 1980s the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, which owns the complex, had the top of the stack removed for safety reasons, leaving only the letters “NREFFER.” It is short for Haffenreffer, a brewery that was built over 125 years ago.

During its glory days, over 100 trucks moved in and out of the brewery yard each day, carrying lager, sparkling ale, stock ale and porter to the taverns of Boston.

Frank Coarr, 59, now a resident of Hyde Park, grew up half a mile from the brewery. He remembers when the Haffenreffer Brewery was the focal point of his Jamaica Plain neighborhood, especially to the kids. He and his buddies would steal bottles of beer from the backs of the trucks as they drove slowly through town. “We didn’t think anything of it and just hopped on the back of the trucks,” said Coarr.

But what Coarr remembers most is what happened every Thursday at noon. That was when the beer tanks were steamed-cleaned, and neighbors blocks away could smell the beer-filled mist that permeated the neighborhood. It was more than the noses of the small creatures could handle. According to Frank, the mist had an adverse effect on the pets in the neighborhood. “By noon we would see the cats and dogs teetering along the streets. They appeared to be drunk.”

The brewery, on five sprawling acres at the end of Germania Street, employed scores of German immigrants, one of whom was Wellesley resident Hal Knapp’s grandfather, George Hoerrner. Hoerrner was a fixture at the brewery for over 40 years, working his way up to chief engineer. The Haffenreffers and the employees nicknamed George “Oil Can” Hoerrner, because one of his duties was to roam the brewery to make sure all of the equipment was running smoothly.

As chief engineer, Hoerrner needed to be close by, so the Haffenreffers allowed him to live on the grounds in one its houses. It was there that Hoerrner died in 1978, joined at his bedside by his family and August Haffenreffer, one of the owners of the brewery.

Knapp told his grandfather’s story while sitting in his Wellesley home at an old bar that once was used at the brewery to entertain Haffenreffer’s wholesale customers. In the mid-1940s, the company offered George a gold watch upon retirement, but he asked for the bar instead.

“It was my grandfather’s when they retired it from the brewery,” said Knapp. “This is how much he meant to that family.”

That same bar, pulled apart and reassembled twice, made its way from Knapp’s uncle’s house on Dunster Street in Jamaica Plain to its current home in Wellesley, where Knapp reminisces about visiting the brewery as a boy. He remembers his uncle picking him up at his Eliot Street home and accompanying him on the walk to the brewery.

“I was in awe of the place because of the mountains of malt, sugar, and barley,” said Knapp.

Knapp’s memories, however, outlived the Haffenreffers’, whose fortunes began to wane in the 1950s. Like many small breweries in post-war America, it came under pressure from large national companies, and in 1965 Haffenreffer & Co. closed its Jamaica Plain landmark, marking the end of what was once one of Boston’s most vital industries.

In 1979, the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC) purchased the complex and began the arduous task of raising funds and rehabilitating the many mostly abandoned buildings for more modern light industrial uses that would provide neighborhood employment. The Brewery is now home to more than twenty local businesses as well as the JPNDC offices.

In the early 1980s, Jim Koch, the sixth oldest son of the sixth generation of Koch family brew masters from Germany, decided to try out a family recipe and start his own brewery. In 1984, after three years of renovation, the brewery that makes Samuel Adams opened its doors in the Brewery complex. Today, one of the main attractions of the brewery is its historical tours. Since the tours began in 1989, over 100,000 Boston residents and visitors have toured the Boston Beer Company facility, learning about the sweetness of fine barley, the Haffenreffer legacy, and the revitalization of the brewing industry in Jamaica Plain.

It is this revitalization that Dave Nathan, Jamaica Plain Historical Society officer and assistant archivist for the City of Boston, speaks about. According to Nathan, Jamaica Plain was created for manufacturing and brewing. At one time, brewing was the biggest industry in the area, using the Stony Brook, now underground in a culvert, as a source of water.

“Brewing at the Haffenreffer brewery once served as an anchor in the neighborhood,” said Nathan. “That is why the Haffenreffer brewery remained in Jamaica Plain for over 125 years.”

Nathan said that Jamaica Plain, specifically the Brookside area where the Haffenreffer Brewery was, is an example of a neighborhood that has not lost touch with its historical roots. Our Lady of Lourdes Church, where the German immigrants attended services, still holds mass. The modest white Victorian house where George Hoerrner once lived currently awaits new tenants. The red-brick buildings of the brewery still form a complex at the end of Germania Street. And the old smokestack, or what’s left of it, remains.

This article originally appeared in the December 3, 1999 issue of the Jamaica Plain Gazette and is used with permission.

This article is based on a talk sponsored by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society and presented by Charlie Rosenberg on November 27, 2007 at the First Church in Jamaica Plain. 

As early as 400 BC, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of storing ice throughout the summer months.  The ice was brought in from the mountains during the winter and stored in large, specially designed, naturally cooled underground “refrigerators” with six-foot thick walls of special insulating mortar.  This ancient practice of harvesting ice was the beginning of what was to become, during the 19th century, a major commercial enterprise here in New England.

Before the 19th century, ice was a commodity available only to the very rich and to those who could harvest it themselves.  All that changed as the ice harvesting industry became increasingly mechanized and new technologies were developed that allowed more people to enjoy the benefits of ice year round.

In North America, ice harvested from rivers and ponds was originally stored in underground vaults similar to root cellars.  Nathaniel Wyeth, who was the director of ice operations for ice magnate Frederic Tudor at Fresh Pond in Cambridge, is credited with inventing the ice plow, and in 1825 he conceived the idea of erecting insulated buildings above ground to store ice.  These wood buildings were double-walled and insulated with straw or sawdust.  A properly constructed and insulated icehouse was thus able to preserve ice throughout the summer and into the following ice harvesting season.

Before the appearance of the industrial engine, hauling ice into storage was a slow and laborious process that required the use of horses, heavy ropes and pulleys.  By the middle of the 19th century, stationary industrial steam engines were being used to drive ice conveyors at a rapid pace, greatly improving the efficiency of hauling the heavy cakes of ice up to the icehouses on the shore.

The first evidence of a commercial ice operation on Jamaica Pond is found on an inset of an 1855 map of Suffolk County showing the E.M. Stoddard and Company Ice Company owning a row of icehouses near the modern day rotary at Jamaicaway and Prince Street. 


1855 map showing the E.M. Stoddard & Co. ice house.

By 1874, Stoddard’s business was operating as the Jamaica Pond Ice Company.  The Boston Globe reported in February of that year that the Jamaica Pond Ice Company was employing about 350 men harvesting ice on Jamaica Pond, packing the ice into the icehouses, and delivering ice to wholesale and retail customers.  The Globe reported that the men were being paid, on average, $1.75 per day.

Little is known about Mr. Stoddard, but we do know that Phineas B. Smith was active in the ice business as early as 1855 and was a partner with E.M. Stoddard.  Smith was later the president of the Jamaica Pond Ice Company.

 

1874 Hopkins map showing Jamaica Pond Ice Company ice houses on Jamaica Pond.

By 1880, the Jamaica Pond Ice Company had 22 icehouses on Jamaica Pond with a storage capacity of 30,000 tons.  The company supplied ice to customers in Brookline, West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, South End, Roxbury and Dorchester.  At the peak of the harvesting season the company employed more than 600 men with 75 men being employed during the summer.  The company had a special brewery department with 100 teams of horses that were used to supply ice to 25 breweries in the area.

The Dean Dudley & Company Boston Directory, published in 1873-74, lists the Jamaica Pond Ice Company as having offices at 2389 Washington Street.  This building, no longer extant, was located one block from Dudley Square.  The same directory shows that Phineas B. Smith, who owned the Jamaica Plain Ice Company, lived at 30 Marcella Street, near the present Jackson Square.

By the 1850’s it was common for those with moderate incomes to store ice in the home.  In 1856, a system was patented based on ice being placed in the top of a wooden box with natural draft air circulating around it.  During the late 1800’s dozens of companies entered the market for these devices that came to be known as “iceboxes.”  Like any business, the ice industry responded to competition and consumer demands.  In 1880, the Boston Globe reported that the standards in the ice delivery business had changed significantly in the past few years; “Previously, one man was employed to drive the ice wagon and dump dirty blocks of ice on the customer’s doorstep or sidewalk.  Now it is the practice to have two men on each wagon.  One of those men will drive the wagon.  He will be experienced, trustworthy and well dressed.  The other man is known as the “striker.”  He will carry the ice from the wagon into the house and place it in the icebox.  Before doing so, he will insure that the block of ice is cleaned and dressed.”  

Two Jamaica Pond Ice Company employees pose with their wagon and team.

In February of 1874, the Boston Globe reported that the Jamaica Plain Ice Company was cutting about 5,000 tons of ice a day and, “will probably fill all of their ice houses by next week.  The ice is ten inches thick and crystal clear.  The pond will be cleared by the end of this season.” 

The Globe also reported on the wholesale price of ice in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston as ranging from $5 to $12 per ton, ” … reduced to round numbers, the cost of ice to consumers in these four cities is twenty millions of dollars.  Add to this amount all that is consumed in the other large cities of the Union, to say nothing of the lesser cities and towns, and one can realize the amount of the ice traffic of the country. .”

How Ice is Harvested
The first step in harvesting ice involved removing the accumulated snow on top of the ice.  In the early years of the ice industry, snow was considered a hindrance but over time it was learned that the snow acted as an insulator, and by blocking the sunlight, the blanket of snow promoted deeper freezing.  The preferred thickness of ice was 15 inches, although 12 inches was considered acceptable.  The thicker ice was selected for export because up to half the thickness could be lost during long shipboard voyages.  When ready for harvesting, the snow was removed using heavy scrapers pulled by teams of horses.  Another method was known as “sinking the pond.”  This latter method involved boring a series of large holes in the ice to allow water to flow up through the holes and melt the snow, thus bonding the freshly melted snow to the ice and increasing the yield of harvested ice.

After removing the snow, the next step was to survey a six hundred square foot area of the ice, marking out the boundary lines with a hand cutter.  After the survey, a cutter with two runners forty-four inches apart was used to score the surface of the ice.

One of the runners of the cutter was a guide, the other had a large-toothed cutting edge designed to make a preliminary groove two inches deep in the ice.  This implement traced a grid pattern on the surface.  Then, a twin-bladed cutter followed the pattern laid out by the initial single-blade cutter.  Next, an iron ice plow pulled by a team of horses cut down through the ice to within four inches of the bottom.
 
The final cutting of the ice was done with hand tools.  These included long-bladed saws with long-handled spades and fork bars.  Large sections of the six hundred foot square were cut away, and these floats were ridden like rafts.  The larger floats were divided into smaller pieces as it was floated toward the icehouse.  The small pieces were then pushed onto a conveyor for a trip to the icehouse 70 feet above the pond surface.

Jamaica Pond Ice Company employees with iron horse-drawn ice plows. An ice house and conveyor is seen in the background.

Exporting Ice
The first cargo of ice to be exported from America was a shipment of 130 tons shipped on the brig Favorite in August of 1805.  The Favorite sailed from Boston to the West Indies and her voyage was organized by 21-year-old Frederic Tudor, a Boston Latin High School dropout, in response to an outbreak of yellow fever in the West Indies.  Mr. Tudor, who went on to build an empire in ice, and who became known as the Ice King, harvested 200 tons of ice from a pond in Saugus and hauled it with teams to Charlestown, where it was loaded onto the Favorite and sailed to Martinique.  While Mr. Tudor’s ice exporting venture initially faced widespread ridicule, by 1812 he had developed a thriving export trade and had built a series of icehouses in Kingston, Jamaica.  Soon thereafter he established a monopoly on ice trade in Havana, Cuba.

In addition to finding and developing markets for the ice, Tudor had to build a far-flung business organization while inventing efficient shipping and storage techniques. He faced a number of other obstacles in his campaign to expand the ice export market including the Embargo Act, in effect from 1807 to 1809, which restricted foreign exports and, following the repeal of the Embargo Act, the War of 1812 which severely curtailed American shipping of all kinds.

F.H. Forbes wrote in Scribner’s Monthly Magazine in 1875 that, “The loading of ships at Charlestown is, perhaps, one of the most interesting features connected with the ice trade.  As the cars pass down the track from the main road to the wharf, where the ships are waiting, they are separately weighed; then the car is moved to a position opposite the gangway of the ship; a long platform, rigged with iron or steel rails, is placed between the car and the gangway of the ship. Over this platform the ice is slid from the car door to the ship’s rail … The average amount of ice loaded on board ship in one day is three hundred tons, but, upon an emergency, five hundred tons can easily be disposed of.”

After establishing a thriving export business, Tudor then turned his attention to domestic markets and, in 1817; he established an ice business in Charleston, South Carolina.  Mr. Tudor moved on to set up trade with New Orleans in 1820 and soon New Orleans became the largest consumer of ice south of Philadelphia.  

In 1833, Mr. Tudor began supplying ice to Calcutta, India, some 16,000 miles from Boston.  The voyage to Calcutta took nearly four months and served mostly ex-patriot British and other colonialists.  Modern day travelers to Madras, India, may still visit the very icehouses that were built by Mr. Tudor’s company.  The following year, Mr. Tudor sent the first shipment of ice to Rio de Janeiro as he aggressively expanded his growing ice empire.

Other entrepreneurs harvested ice in Wenham, Massachusetts, and attempted experimental shipments of ice to England (probably shipping it from Beverly) but ultimately they were not successful, as England had begun to import ice from Norway.  As late as 1880, signs offering “Boston Ice” still appeared in the ice markets even though the Boston ice trade to England had long since been abandoned.

The ice market in New York was so strong that is was supplied locally by harvesting operations on the Hudson River and Rockland Lake, as well as by ice sent from Boston and other cities.

Export of ice from Boston gradually declined as harvesting operations in Maine began to dominate the export market.  Large ice operations were established on the Kennebec River and at other locations in Maine.  Maine ice operators held several advantages over Boston.  Ice could be harvested from the Kennebec River and loaded directly onto ships so middleman transport costs were eliminated.  Additionally, Maine had a longer harvesting season due to its colder climate.  


A section of a bird’s-eye view of Jamaica Plain showing ice houses on Jamaica Pond.

The Decline of the Industry
The decline of the ice industry on Jamaica Pond was fueled by the conflict between commercial and recreational use of the pond.  Large numbers of horses were used to harvest the ice and their waste led to pollution of both the water and the shoreline.  A movement to incorporate the pond with the Emerald Necklace park system was also gaining currency.  Further, starting in the 1850’s, Jamaica Plain began to be heavily subdivided into housing lots when a number of large estates were broken up.  Jamaica Plain was losing its rural character and becoming a community of well-heeled homeowners who wielded considerable political and economic clout.  The noise, pollution and congestion associated with the ice industry became a thorn in the side of the newly arrived gentry.

There were other reasons for the decline that went beyond the local resistance of the newly settled residents of Jamaica Plain.  By 1868, the first ice manufacturing plant was opened by the Louisiana Ice Manufacturing Company.  And as time went on, the electric refrigerator made the ice company obsolete.  By 1913 electric refrigerators were being marketed for household use although both natural and artificial ice continued to be delivered to homes through the end of World War II.  After the war, home refrigerators quickly came to displace the icebox in most North American homes and the ice harvesting industry quietly came to an end.

Charlie Rosenberg
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
November 2007

Sources
Maps:
City of Boston, Ward 23, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, O.H. Bailey & Co., 1891

West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain & Roslindale, Massachusetts, G.M. Hopkins & Co., 1874

Jamaica Plain/West Roxbury inset of an 1855 map of Suffolk County held by the Boston Public Library.

Newspapers:
Boston Daily Globe, February 6, 1874, pg. 8

Boston Daily Globe, January 19, 1879, pg. 2

Boston Daily Globe, February 15, 1880, pg. 2

Boston Daily Globe, February 8, 1885, pg. 9

Boston Daily Globe, February 21, 1889, pg. 4

Books and Periodicals:
Scribner’s Monthly Magazine, Vol 10, No 4, Aug. 1875

Allston-Brighton in Transition:  From Cattle Town to Streetcar Suburb  by Dr. William P. Marchione, The History Press, 2007

The Ice King: Frederic Tudor and His Circle, by Carl Seabury, Boston; Massachusetts Historical Society, and Mystic,   Connecticut; Mystic Seaport, 2003

Ancient Inventions, by Peter James and Nick Thorpe, Ballantine Books, 1994, ISBN 0345401026

The Frozen Water Trade, by Gavin Weightman, Hyperion Books, 2003, ISBN 078686740X

In a recent history of Hellenic Hill, which overlooks Jamaica Pond, it was noted that the Goddard family had acquired the Hill's crown and down to the Pond's edge by 1807. The homestead-marked by a plaque on the road named for the Goddard's connects Jamaica Plain with West Roxbury and Newton.

In 1846, the piano manufacturer, Chickering, purchased five of their shore lots where he built a summerhouse "Sunnyside." Francis Parkman bought the house and land in 1854, and the consequent story has been chronicled before. With the Jamaica Plain connection, the Goddard tale itself deserves retelling.


Chickering & Sons Piano Forte Manufactory built in 1853, at 791 Tremont St. Hand colored steel engraving published by Lowell & Co., Boston, 1870.

The first of the family came to America from London in 1665 and settled in Watertown where the patriarch began teaching. His English-born son Joseph settled in Brookline and built a farmhouse in 1680. On this site descendants lived some three centuries later, as the town seal still proclaims. Brookline was then known as Muddy River and was part of Boston. Joseph and others succeeded in the creation of a town in 1708 and established a family tradition of performing a variety of public functions such as constable and selectman. His son John carried on at the farm until 1753 when he moved to Worcester, leaving it to his son, also named John.

The young member of the third generation to live on the ancestral land took down the first house, possibly incorporating its elements into his new home. This occurred in 1767 and explains the second date on the chimney, easily seen when passing, as the house is set down from the street. The house is one of the oldest buildings still standing in Brookline.

John Goddard completed his house before the storm of revolution broke in Massachusetts and, not surprisingly, was involved with the local Committee of Correspondence from the start. His great barn (since removed) was used as a supply depot, and on the night before Paul Revere rode, he hauled some cannon and ammunition to Concord for the colonists' use. He was an eyewitness to the Lexington fight and loaned his gun to a Brookline man. It was lost that day but recovered years later at the Wayside Inn. Somehow the British had missed the cache 80 near them, and after the events of April and June 1775 they were besieged in low-lying Boston.

Goddard's teenage son, Joseph, always remembered helping his father, who had 300 teams placed under his command by newly arrived General Washington. Determined to create a ring of fortified points around downtown Boston, Joseph and the other teamsters hauled artillery that had just arrived from Fort Ticonderoga, and other material to make the fortification at Dorchester Heights. That finally broke any British determination, and they evacuated Boston in March 1776. Washington had named John Goddard Wagon master General of the American Army, but when the war moved south to New York City, Goddard felt it his duty to stay with his farm on the home front.

John had also compiled a list of houses standing in the town. John and Hannah Goddard had 16 children. The oldest was a doctor, graduating in the Harvard class of 1777, which had been obliged to move to Concord for a time to make room for the American soldiers. Of the other sons, Nathaniel became a famed Boston merchant, whose memoir was published. Benjamin has left a diary (partially reprinted by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society), and his eulogy was printed. Like his father, the wagon master general moved out of the farm in 1797 and left it to teamster Joseph, who brought the place to its maximum 80 acres.

Joseph's son, Samuel, lived in England and continued the Goddard penchant for writing: letters both on the American Civil War for an English audience and on his memories of the town of Brookline-all from Birmingham, England.

In the 20th century, Miss Julia Goddard wrote for the Brookline Historical Society and got the plaque erected before the ancestral home in 1929. This is a still-existing family of duration, public service, and self record-ideal, all good reasons for telling their worthy tale.

Sources: R. Heath, "Hellenic Hill", Discover, Boston Urban Wilds, fall 1991. "The Goddard Homestead" in The Brookline Transcript, c. 1898. J. G. Curtis, History of the Town of Brookline, Boston, 1933. H. G. Pickering, Nathaniel Goddard: Boston Merchant, 1906. N. Little, Some Old Brookline Houses, Brookline HS, 1949. Brookline Public Library catalogue entries under Goddard.

By Walter H. Marx. Reprinted with permission from the October 4, 1991 Jamaica Plain Gazette.
Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.

By Richard Heath

FOREST HILLS is the most complex area of Jamaica Plain. Transformed by transportation over two centuries of time, Forest Hills challenges the definition of neighborhood. About a mile long and a half-mile across, Forest Hills has been shaped by geography more than any other part of Jamaica Plain. It sits in a valley at the confluence of two streams flanked by two hills on which have been landscaped two Boston landmarks and American institutions: the Arnold Arboretum and Forest Hills Cemetery. The hills that channeled the streams also channeled transportation routes, beginning in 1806 with the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike (today Washington Street).

Read the complete article here.

Click here for a gallery of images that accompany this article 

 

Hopkins Road – Home to a Boston Mayor, a Massachusetts Governor, and a U.S. Secretary of Labor. - - - and they all lived in one of the houses on the street! Based on a 2011 interview with Edmund A. Weiss of Ashland, Massachusetts.

By Peter O’Brien, January, 2011

Jamaica Plain’s Western Hill Country
Clay Center ObservatoryPerched on the shady side of Moss Hill, one of Jamaica Plain’s highest hills, Hopkins Road is surrounded by world-famous landmarks including Larz Anderson Park, The Clay Center Observatory at Dexter School, Showa Institute on the former Nazareth Home site, and The British School of Boston. Hopkins Road was named for Sabina Hopkins McCourt, mother of Francis M. McCourt who developed the street in 1926. *

26 Hopkins Rd. circa 1930sSituated along Jamaica Plain’s western border with Brookline at St. Paul’s Avenue, several Brookline estates had working farms with cows and other domestic animals when Ed Weiss and his three brothers, William, Paul and Donald lived at 26 Hopkins Road from 1927-1938. Nearby Allandale Farm, Boston’s last working farm, produces organic crops in its 250th year of operation. But Slocum farm where Ed learned to milk a cow and the Sears farm where he pitched hay for a dollar-a-day in 1935 are now long gone. Ed also remembers a Maryknoll Seminary which was (later) located on St. Paul’s Avenue.

26 Hopkins Rd. 2011Located off Pond Street, near the entrance to Larz Anderson Park, the other end of the ‘L’ shaped street joins St. Paul’s Avenue, Brookline, opposite the entrance to the renowned Dexter School with its state-of-the-art Clay Center astronomical observatory. With only five houses in 1930 (there are 14 now), Hopkins Road was home to a Boston Mayor, a Massachusetts Governor, and a U.S. Secretary of Labor, all of whom lived in the same house!

Hopkins Road isn’t Jamaica Plain’s highest point at elevation 250’ but it easily tops the famous Dorchester Heights (95’) and Bunker Hill (110’), and it is only 80’ below Boston’s highest elevation of 330’ on Bellevue Hill, West Roxbury.

Ed Weiss, at 92, remembers all the neighbors during the ten years he lived there and can list them and their occupations with extraordinarily sharp recall. The World War II veteran and former New England Telephone engineer can even recall his 1937 phone number: Jamaica 3631 — a private line, rather than a party line, for those who can remember that interesting phone-sharing arrangement.

Ed also remembers a little mom-and-pop store that was located about opposite the entrance to the Country Club at Brookline on Clyde Street, Brookline. He also remembers with pleasing olfactory recall a wonderful delicatessen at 744 Centre Street owned by Henry Schober.

Edmund A. Weiss Remembers
Edmund A. Weiss was born September 13, 1919 at Paul Gore Street in Jamaica Plain. His parents were William R. and Clara M. Weiss. William was Sales Manager for the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corporation which many years later became American Standard. William managed to stay fully employed during the Depression so that the four Weiss kids noticed only one lean year in Santa’s deliveries.

Leaving Paul Gore Street, the family moved to East Boston where his parents had lived earlier. A few years later they returned to Jamaica Plain, living at 6 St. John Street. Ed remembers a neighbor named Murray on St. John Street who was a prominent Jamaica Plain resident but he can’t recall how or why Mr. Murray was famous. In 1927 the Weiss family moved to the house they bought at 26 Hopkins Road. Ed’s maternal grandparents, Michael and Christine Moran of Nova Scotia, lived in their house next door at 30 Hopkins Road. Michael was a retired ship’s carpenter.

While they were at Hopkins Road, Ed remembers neighbors Mark Russo at #10 who was a teacher, William F. Riley at #15 who was in real estate, Charles E. Herlihy at #22 who owned Herlihy’s Milk Co. in Somerville and who hired Ed at $5 a day for summer work, John F. Cray at #25 who taught at Boston Latin School, Francis M. McCourt at #34 who had developed the street, and a Mr. Lynch who was the golf pro at the nearby Country Club.

Ed attended Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Thomas Grammar Schools, Mission High School Class of 1937 and graduated from Boston College in the class of 1942 with a Liberal Arts degree. Ed walked to Our Lady of Lourdes from his house on St. John Street and later, at Hopkins Road, his mother drove him to St.Thomas Aquinas School and his altar boy assignments there, in their Graham-Paige automobile. Graham-Paige was a beautiful, but not-too-well-known car of the 30’s which went through several financial crises and reorganizations, ending its corporate life as part of Kaiser-Frazer, who built some interesting but unreliable cars for a few years after WWII. Kaiser-Frazer then morphed into Willys Motors and finally ended as American Motors. Ed played baseball in high school but claims only modest skill at the game and he enjoyed hockey on the shallow Larz Anderson lagoon.

Enter Maurice J. Tobin
30 Hopkins Rd. 2011The Weiss family tradition is that in 1938 they had to quickly vacate their house at 26 Hopkins Road. While not discussed by Ed’s parents, it’s thought that the bank called the mortgage. Ed’s grandparents at #30 also had to quickly vacate at the same time. They’ve always believed that Maurice J. Tobin moved into #26 shortly after they left, but contrary to the family legend, the Boston City Directory for 1949 shows Maurice J. Tobin at #30.

Maurice J. Tobin, born on Mission Hill in 1901, entered politics very young. At 25 he became a State Representative serving from 1927-29, then a Boston School Committeeman from 1931-37. Next, he became Boston’s 47th Mayor from 1938-45, and then Massachusetts’ 56th Governor from 1945-47. President Harry Truman appointed him to serve as the sixth U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1948-53. During his single term as Governor, he created Massport, the independent public authority responsible for the Commonwealth’s airports and the Port of Boston terminals and waterfront facilities. He died very suddenly in 1953 and the Mystic River Bridge was named for him in 1967.

While on Hopkins Road the Tobins were communicants at St. Thomas Aquinas parish on South Street. A tall, very handsome man, Tobin would stride down the center aisle at the 11 o’clock mass at St. Thomas’ Church beautifully dressed in a black Chesterfield overcoat with his perfectly-blocked Homburg hat tucked under his arm. His entrance was an event that turned all heads and awed those of us serving as altar boys at that “big” Sunday mass.

Monsignor William J. Casey, namesake of the now-doomed Forest Hills overpass, often said that Mass. Monsignor Casey, born in 1871, was a bit shaky on his feet and was very likely to fall over when arising from a kneeling position, which he did often. So we really earned the 10-cent tip he awarded each of us after Mass for keeping him upright.

While entering through the massive front doors of the church, Maurice would exit at the St. Joseph Street side and pick up his Globe, Post, and Herald newspapers from Joe and John Patterson, later proprietors of Patterson’s Market and liquor store on South Street, who held the St. Thomas “side door” Sunday-newspaper franchise at the time. Tobin was not a big tipper, but the 45-cent sale for the three papers was always welcomed.

Following their abrupt departure from Hopkins Road, the Weisses lived at 361 Weld Street, 19 Parklane Road, and 109 Bellevue Street, all in West Roxbury. Ed’s parents later retired to a condo in Hancock Village, West Roxbury.

The War Years
After college, Ed went to work in Hawaii for a year as a civilian Technician for the U.S. Army Signal Corps prepping bombers at the famous Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor. Ed doesn’t recall any internment of Japanese-Americans during the war, as was done on the west coast, but he does remember that they were prohibited from owning short-wave radios. Ed remembers his shop disabling the short-wave function on the radios the Japanese-Americans were ordered to bring in for modification.

Ed then entered the Merchant Marine and served from 1944-46 in the north Atlantic with 15 crossings to France, England, India, Morocco, and South America aboard a C2, 16-knot freighter. Ed served as the Radio Operator aboard the freighter. The U.S. Navy 5-inch gun crew on the ship often shot at submarines lurking near the convoys that were transporting vital wartime materiel, food, and fuel. The ships dropped depth charges at night at subs the crew knew were present but cruising unseen beneath the surface. Ed remembers the major challenges of the north-Atlantic crossings were the severe weather and the submarines.

Back to Civilian Life
After the war Ed worked for 33 years in the Transmission Department of New England Telephone in the Television circuit division that was responsible for TV-show transmissions. Ed is a Massachusetts Registered Professional Engineer and since 1941 he has held an FCC Amateur Radio Extra Class license. In addition, for 32 years he has been the Head Radio Instructor for the Framingham Radio Club.

In 1956 he married Mary J. (Casella) of Framingham. They had four girls who entered medicine, teaching, and engineering. The Weisses have 13 grandchildren and have for many years enjoyed retirement in Ashland, Massachusetts.

Sources and References:
* Remember Jamaica Plain? by Mark Bulger.

As the 20th century dawned, it was said that within a mile of Roxbury Crossing there were twenty-five breweries. Now, as this 100-year era begins to bow out, none are still running, though a new one is about to start up.

Many of these necessarily big brick hulks still survive, doing yeoman duty as storage warehouses, mostly in the Highland section of old Roxbury. Even in their altered forms, the old breweries display keen attention to decoration of all sorts. The arched gates leading to a central court, as seen in the American Brewing Company on Heath St., take the imaginative viewer to cobblestone streets with horse-drawn beer wagons (like the famed Anheuser-Busch wagon drawn by Clydesdales moving out to unload barreled products.)

Beer has been made all over the world since earliest times, and is first mentioned in Egyptian texts of the 22nd century B.C. Thus, just as soon as they were established, the Pilgrims and Puritans established malt-houses, and in keeping with English university practice, Harvard students had a malt-house on campus.

Jamaica Plain's newest brewer, the Boston Beer Company at the old Haffenreffer brewery, takes its label from patriot leader Sam Adams, who inherited a malt-house from his father in 1748. But as his revolutionary ardor grew, the business fell apart according to biographers, and after the British left Boston; nothing was left on Adams' South End property near Fort Point Channel.

When the flood of European immigration began in the early 19th century, Boston was a natural port for those from the famed beer brewing countries of Ireland and Germany. By 1846, the Roseole Brewery was established on upper Columbus Ave., because the railroad was needed for receiving hops and other ingredients.

More Germans came with beer recipes brought from the homeland (in beer steins, by some accounts) and favored our area (though some beer was brewed in South Boston and Charlestown). Brewery addresses focused on Heath, Terrace, Parker, Station, and Tremont Streets, along with Columbus Ave., while another core grew up by Egleston Square on Germania and Washington Sts.

Perusal of city directories of 1890-1950 indeed reveals twenty-five breweries in the immediate area within a mile of Roxbury Crossing.

The pre-eminent beer barons were Rueter, Haffenreffer, Burkhardt, Roesoje, Pfaff, and Souther. Like other barons, the Rueters lived in Jamaica Plain, where the Jamaica Towers now stand, in large mansard-roofed Victorian houses that were later abandoned. National prohibition (1919-1933) was disastrous for the local beer industry (though some kept going by making near beer) and, if not knocked out by the Depression, the majority was gone by World War II.

In addition to the brick ghosts, the brewers left a legacy of Germanic street names in the area where their employees lived. Today a new minority who hope to prosper here, as did my grandfather and mother, who lived here in their first days in America in the 1920s, people these streets.

Many of the old German clubs are gone (like the Schwaben, Turnverein, and Arbeiter) or have been recycled (like the Schulverein on Danforth St., now home to a health club) and the large brick, former Trinity Lutheran Church building (1892) at Parker and Gore Streets on Parker Hill was built with beer money. This might also be true for Mission Church. One wonders how many other traces of their existence these sources of heady suds left behind.

Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology

An industry in the Stony Brook valley of Jamaica Plain provided the initial wherewithal for a transported Boston beer baron to secure a fine seaside estate along Mount Hope Bay in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Everyone in our area at some time gets to know the old Haffenreffer Brewery behind Amory and Boylston Streets, now a center for light industry, owned and managed by the non-profit Neighborhood Development Corporation. It is also the New England home of Jim Koch's Boston Beer Company. The old brewery's yellow-brick chimney, depleted of its top three identifying letters is visible for blocks. A Saturday noontime visit will yield not only a sprawling complex of brewery buildings of various dates but also a tour of the Koch operations complete with its own ratskellar.

Rudolph Haffenreffer arrived in Boston after the Civil War, intent on starting a brewery in an area teeming with German immigrants and already thick with Yankee breweries (as a drive along Heath and Terrace Streets will quickly show). After buying the old Peter's Brewery, Haffenreffer began operation in 1870, tapping into the aquifers of Stony Brook (now buried under the railroad bed). In addition, he built many neighboring row houses for his employees and other workers. Anyone just off a boat from the old country could work there.

Many people today can tell brewery stories featuring their parents or grandparents, for Haffenreffer was the last of all the thirty breweries in Roxbury to survive. The operation closed in 1965 after 95 years. Legends abound about the spigot where one could always get a beer and about the employees' own biergarten for lunch hours.

Son Theodore, married to a President of Wellesley College, early on lived in the house by the brewery at Brookside and Germania. Son Rudolph Frederick left the Boston area after learning the business and set out for the Narragansett Bay area, where he established a brewery that produced a beer named after the Bay. He lived in Fall River and also owned a mine in Utah and receivership for the Mount Hope Toll Bridge. These non-brewery interests led the beer baron to collect American Indian artifacts from both the West and New England.

In 1916 he bought land alongside the Bay that included "the throne of King Philip," the son of the famous Massasoit of Plymouth Colony fame, which had been turned into an amusement park named for the chief, who had tried to drive the English out of New England in the war named after him (1676-78). Haffenreffer converted it into a fine dairy farm with choice Guernsey cattle. Fire two years later brought disaster and left only a shed and a barn.

At that point he decided in favor of his growing aborigine collection. By 1928 major additions to the site were completed, and the place became known as the King Philip Museum. It was beautifully enhanced by display cases of mahogany wood built by the nearby Herreshoff Shipyard.

The Haffenreffer summer home, a converted 18th century inn, was nearby for easy access to the collection. Haffenreffer hired a Wampanoag Indian from Nantucket as his advisor and opened it to Boy Scouts and those who expressed and interest in it.

The Haffenreffer collection's reputation grew, and by trading and discussion Rudolph Haffenreffer became a major player and expanded into the Eskimo culture. Upon his death in 1954, his family gave the land and collection to Brown University and the lovely place is now known as the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. It is well worth a visit south of the lovely Rhode Island town of Bristol off Route 136.

Written by Walter H. Marx. Source: Haffenreffer Museum Notes #11, Jamaica Plain Historical Society Archives

Two Grand Breweries

Locally produced beer and ale has become a rare commodity for most Americans - but not so here in Jamaica Plain. Because of the Boston Beer Company's Samuel Adams Brewery, set up in the old Haffenreffer Brewery on Germania Street, beverages brewed in our neighborhood are once more for sale at the corner market and saloon.

Before Prohibition, there were 31 breweries in Boston, largely concentrated in the Stony Brook corridor of Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill. Haffenreffer became the last remaining brewery in Boston. It closed in 1964, and Jamaica Plain produced no beer until 1988 when Jim Koch started up his local company whose beer distribution has radiated outward from Boston year by year, spreading the name of Sam Adams.

Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill had no fewer than twelve separate breweries, because of the concentration of German and Irish immigrants in the area. Local distribution of ale, and later German-style lager beer, was the rule before refrigeration and modern roads. While local production ended in 1964, many brewery buildings still stand in our neighborhood. The two most beautiful breweries are along Heath Street - a legacy for locally-produced beer, a reminder of the rich manufacturing heritage in the valley between Mission Hill and the plateau of Jamaica Plain, and a glimpse of beauty in industrial architecture.

At 249A Heath Street on the corner of Lawn Street, the American Brewing Company is the most elaborately designed brewery still standing in Boston. The three-building complex is wrapped around a hidden cobblestone courtyard, and the access through a double-arched granite block doorway is watched over by three carved terra cotta heads. At the Lawn Street corner building, a tall conical metal roof sits on the round tower and reveals to a careful viewer several decorative clocks. Set at 7 and 5, they proclaimed to the brewery workers their daily work times. The light that came through the stained glass transoms still gracing the arched windows must have warmed second floor office workers. Who had built such an elaborate industrial building?

Designed by architect Frederick Footman of Cambridge in 1891, the American Brewing Company was just one establishment of James W. Kenney, an Irish immigrant to America in 1863. Mr. Kenney had already founded the Amory Brewery on Amory Street (1877) and the Park Brewery on Terrace Street (1882). He would later start the Union Brewery on Terrace Street in 1893.

By 1900, the alphabetically named American Brewing Company (ABC can still be seen posted above the great double arches) became the largest branch of the great ten-brewery consortium, Massachusetts Breweries Company, and was producing 100,000 barrels a year. The family members of Gottlieb Rothfuss ran the brewery and could walk to work from their houses on Zamora Street and Wyman Street in Jamaica Plain. During Prohibition (1920-1933), the buildings were used for wool and cotton storage under the American Storage Warehouse Company name. Our local Haffenreffer Brewing Company later bought the plant for storage of its own beer and bottles. From 1958 until recently, lowly storage was still the function of the complex, when Fraser & Walker Movers used the old brewery as a furniture and moving warehouse.

A short glide down Heath Street to numbers 123-125 brings us under the shadow of the imposing old Eblana Brewery. Started in 1885 by Dublin expatriate John R. Alley, Eblana brewed ale and porter in this distinctive building designed by brewery architect Otto Wolf who was imported from Philadelphia to work on the complex. The building is dominated along the Heath Street facade by a great three-story central bay front, made of brick supported by huge granite braces and topped by a metal-arched balcony. The brewery's central entrance still has its original wrought iron gate and beautiful granite block arches.

On the right side of the facade's second floor, a mysterious granite block with the letters "J.R.A." probably refer to the brewery's founder, John R. Alley. He lived in Jamaica Plain from the late 1880s to his death in 1898 at 3 Revere Street on Sumner Hill. He passed this grand brewery on to his sons Frederick, Arthur and George. The sons ran the business as the Alley branch of the previously mentioned Massachusetts Breweries Company. They produced 80,000 barrels of Jamaica Plain ale annually until Prohibition.

Wool warehousing and medical manufacturing occupied the building during "The Great Experiment". After that, Canada Dry bottled soft drinks in the plant. Since 1960, the Hampden Automotive Manufacturing Company has manufactured automobile repair machinery in this beautiful building.

These buildings are the silent giants of an industrial era shuttered by changing tastes in beer, temperance crusades, and economic consolidation. The smell of beer brewing no longer wafts from these two grand industrial buildings, nor from the ten or so others that used to produce it in the Stony Brook corridor of Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill. Only our lone Samuel Adams Brewery can lay claim to continuing the neighborhood tradition.

Copyright 1995 © Jamaica Plain Historical Society Sources: Baron, Brewed In America; Boston Landmarks Commission, Parker Hill/Mission Hill Inventory. Photograph of the American Brewing Company, 325 Heath Street, Boston, courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photograph Division.

By Richard Heath

STONY BROOK divided Roxbury into east and west for over 250 years. During that time the principle highway between the business and civic district of Dudley Square and the village center of Jamaica Plain was Centre Street.  Since at least 1662 Centre St crossed Stony Brook over a wooden plank bridge near Heath Lane (a cart path to the Heath Farm; in 1825 it became Heath Street).  That junction was called Central Bridge but most people until the turn of the 20^th century called it Hog’s Bridge.[i]

That intersection is today known as Jackson Square, a familiar crossroads at Columbus Ave. and Centre Street, but no public record has been found to determine who the Square was named after.  Hog’s Bridge was used up to end of the 19^th century so it is a 20^th century appellation.

It may be that the Square was named for General Henry Jackson, one of the three Revolutionary War military leaders from Boston[ii].  General William Heath defended Roxbury during the Siege of Boston and afterwards was ordered to the strategic Hudson River command after Benedict Arnold defected to guard that crucial waterway from 1777 to 1783. Heath Square at the nearby junction of Heath St and Parker Street is named after the general on land he once owned. General Joseph Warren was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. A statue of him stood at Warren and Regent Streets for 62 years[iii]. So it would seem appropriate that when Columbus Avenue was extended to Franklin Park in 1895 that the new crossroad would be named after General Henry Jackson.

II.

Henry Jackson. Courtesy of New England Historic Genealogical Society. Engraved from a pastel drawing done in 1777. Appeared in the April 1892 edition of New England Historical and Genealogical Register.HENRY JACKSON was born a British subject and died an American citizen.[iv] His life was in two parts: soldier and civic leader who participated in the rebuilding of Boston after the war. Jackson was born on Oct 19. 1747. His father Joseph was a distiller and his home was more than likely on Essex Street. The center of the distillery business in 18^th century Boston was at Essex and South Streets. In 1794 there were thirty distilleries on Essex and South Streets. Ships tied up at the South Street wharf to unload grain and barrels of West Indian molasses.[v]  Henry Knox’s father William mastered one of those ships.  Henry Knox was Jackson’s lifelong friend. Knox was born 1750; his house was on Sea Street (today Atlantic Avenue) at the foot of Essex directly overlooking the South Bay[vi].      

Jackson’s father was a life- long military man. In 1738 Joseph joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in which he served until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. (He was on duty with William Heath of Roxbury who joined the Ancients at the age of 17 in 1754). Joseph died at the age of 84 in 1790. The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company gave him a military funeral; he was buried at Kings Chapel burial ground.

Henry Jackson was an officer in the First Corp Cadets. The First Corps of Cadets was formed in 1741 as bodyguards for the Royal Governor (the first was Gov William Shirley). After the tumult and in the vacuum of the British evacuation, Jackson reorganized the remaining members and recruited other soldiers to form the 16^th Massachusetts Regiment called the Boston Regiment in May of 1777. He was appointed colonel of the regiment and ordered by General Washington to join his army outside Philadelphia. The Boston Regiment fought in the battle of Monmouth (1778), Quaker Hill, RI (1778) and Springfield NJ in 1780. The Regiment was at Yorktown and then joined General Henry Knox in recovering New York City from British occupation after the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Jackson retired from active duty when the Continental Army was dissolved on June 29, 1784.

In June of 1783 at Newburgh New York he was among the group of army officers including Major General Heath to form the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati; he was treasurer of it until his death. Criticized by some in the young nation as a new aristocracy in America, the Society was largely fraternal and benevolent in helping veterans and their families.

In the summer of 1784 Jackson, a lifelong bachelor, returned to Boston to stay at Mrs. Hatch’s fashionable boarding house at Common (Tremont) and Winter Streets, then a fairly rural part of the city opposite the Boston Common.  He was called back into active duty in 1786 to suppress Shays Rebellion, a revolt by farmers, mechanics and small landowners hard hit by post war financial difficulties who sought state assistance for their debts.  Jackson found the task unpleasant, had difficulty raising troops but considered the rebellion a noisy mob. After the revolt was quelled, came home and hung up his uniform.  Jackson seemed to have played no active or ceremonial role in the celebrations of George Washington’s triumphant Boston visit from October 24 through October 28, 1789.[vii]  He and Generals Knox and Heath were certainly at the great banquet held at Faneuil Hall on the Washington’s last night in the city.  Washington stayed at Mrs. Ingersol’s boarding house at Common and Court Street a few short blocks from Jackson’s rooms; it could very well have been that he and his friend Henry Knox paid a quiet visit with their former commanding officer.

After the war Jackson managed the business and financial affairs of his close friend Henry Knox[viii] whom President Washington appointed as the first Secretary of War in 1785. This included lumber and shipping businesses but mainly the construction of Montpelier Knox’s’ grand hilltop mansion at Thomaston, Maine. In 1794 Congress authorized construction of six new frigates and Secretary of War Knox directed that Henry Jackson be appointed the government’s agent for the construction of the Constitution at Hartt’s Shipyard in Charlestown. Working with Edmund Hartt Jackson approved and signed off on all payments that totaled $302,000.  The oak for the famed iron side hull came from Georgia and the masts from Windsor, Maine just east of Augusta. The ship was launched on Oct 27, 1797.

III.

Henry Jackson’s closest personal and professional relationship after the war until the end of his life was with the fascinating family of James and Hepzibah Swan.[ix]

Born Hepzibah Clarke in 1757 her father was a prosperous merchant. In spring of 1776 during the siege of Boston when many families fled the city[x], Henry Jackson and Henry Knox lived at her home on Rawson’s Lane (Bromfield Street) before both went off to the front lines: Knox directed construction of battlements and breastworks at Roxbury defended by General Heath’s troops before going on to become artillery commander of the Continental Army. Jackson raised a regiment that he commanded for the duration of the war.

In 1775 Hepzibah Clarke married James Swan one of the most colorful rogues of wartime and postwar Boston. Swan was born in Scotland and arrived in Boston in 1765 at the age of 34 and became friends with Henry Knox. Active with the Sons of Liberty he participated in the Boson Tea Party and served in the artillery with Knox when the British were driven out of Boston. During the war he took over government positions vacated by the British; he was secretary of the board of war for Massachusetts, adjutant general and legislator. With his wife’s wealth he bought the confiscated house and grounds of Stephen Greenleaf the last Royal High Sheriff on Common Street between West and Winter Streets.  (On April 30, 1779 The General court passed the Conspiracy and Confiscation Act in which all property of “certain notorious conspirators” was seized and sold to benefit the Commonwealth. The Act listed each one by name.)  Three daughters were born to the Swans between 1777 and 1782 and in 1783 a son was born. Swan was allegedly a privateer during the war; ship owners and masters authorized by Congress to harass, seize and profit from the captured cargo of British supply ships on the high seas.

Swan squandered his wife’s wealth from gambling and poor land investments and in 1788 he went to France to rebuild his fortune.  Hepzibah and James Swan were both pro French; Mrs. Swan in particular was a devout Francophile all her life. During the war and they entertained French naval officers stationed at Newport who brought their ships to Boston for repair, refitting and supplies.  It was these French officers, often noblemen, whom James Swan asked for assistance and political access in Paris. A remarkable financier, he reorganized French debt after the collapse of the monarchy and set up a lucrative trading company to purchase food, munitions and merchandise in America. His trusted American agent in Boston was Henry Jackson. Swan made a huge fortune and returned triumphantly to America in 1795. He landed at Philadelphia and was joined by Hepzibah who arranged to have his portrait painted by her new protégé Gilbert Stuart.

On his return to Boston James Swan sought to impress the merchant oligarchy by building a grand countryseat on Dudley Street in Dorchester not far from Royal Governor Shirley’s mansion. Swan had purchased the land in 1781 when he was adjutant general of the Commonwealth. It was a 60-acre estate with a house near the road that the State of Massachusetts had confiscated from Loyalist Nathaniel Hatch. Hatch and 1000 other Tories had fled with the British army to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1776. The house and land was confiscated under the enabling legislation of 1779 and Swan bought the property for 18,000 pounds.  Planned in large part in the French style by Mrs. Swan, she consulted with another protégé the architect Charles Bulfinch who is given attribution for the design of the most remarkable house of its time in the region.  The mansion was set on a high earth berm facing east across Dorchester Bay.  Completed in 1796, its signature architectural feature was a two story circular drawing room 32 feet in circumference with a domed ceiling. The bow was pulled out from two traditional Federal style wings and surrounded by a colonnade. Everyone called it the Round House and Mrs. Swan filled it with French furnishings; much of it appropriated by the republican French government from royal palaces and sold to Swan’s import company.[xi]

James Swan didn’t live in his great house long. His marriage was deteriorating (even the cosmopolitan Hepzibah Swan was tired of his infidelities), his fortune reduced and his merchant company was in trouble; in he returned to France in 1798 to rebuild his company and restore his finances. He never returned. Arrested in 1808 for non-payment of debts to his principle investor, he spent the remainder of his life in a very comfortable Paris prison. Almost under house arrest, James Swan was in no hurry to return home to the aristocratic Hepzibah and prison kept him away from creditors. He lived well, ate well and entertained the ladies in style for the next 22 years. The Marquis de Lafayette, however, refused to visit him. One wonders about the conversation he had with Mrs. Swan when he called on her at Dorchester in 1825. James Swan was freed in 1830 after a change in government but he was disoriented and apparently unable to adjust. He died in a Paris street a year later.

Henry Jackson was Mrs. Swan’s closest friend and confidant after 1798. His boarding house was a block away from Mrs. Swan’s house but he was one of the family there and at the Dorchester mansion. After 1798 Mrs. Swan settled into a luxurious and cosmopolitan life of the Boston merchant and political elite in which she played a prominent role for the rest of her life; leaving her city address for her country home in Dorchester on May 1^st.  Even before James Swan returned to Paris, Jackson was handling her business and financial affairs, something she could not depend on her husband to do.

Acting on behalf of the Swan family, in 1795, Jackson bought the town granary at Park St and Common Street from the town of Boston for $8366.  Mrs. Swan deeded the land to her daughters who sold the corner lot to the Trustees of the Park St.  Church in 1809.[xii]

Mrs. Swan bought out two of the original investors in the largest and most far reaching real estate venture in postwar Boston when she became the only female member of the four person Mt Vernon Proprietors that acquired the John Singleton Copley pasture in 1796.  It was subdivided into townhouse lots that became very valuable when the State House opened in 1798. Mrs. Swan built three houses on the land for her daughters at 13, 15 + 17 Chestnut Street (built in 1805 and 1807) and her own townhouse at 16 Chestnut Street in 1817. Jackson assessed the property and handled all financial transactions on all four homes each designed by Charles Bulfinch, who seemed now to be among the members of her salon.

Jackson managed the household affairs as well. He was very close to the daughters.  He organized and managed the marriage of oldest daughter Hepzibah to Dr. John Howard in 1800 and in 1802 the wedding of Sarah Swan to William Sullivan. Mrs. Swan disapproved of her middle daughters fiancé John Turner Sargent (of the Roxbury Sargents; Lucious Manlius Sargent was his brother). Yet despite that Christiana –obviously as strong willed as her mother- married him anyway in 1806 and Mrs. Swan built them a townhouse on Chestnut Street. (John and Christiana named their second son Henry Jackson Sargent,)

Her son James Keadie Swan married Caroline Knox, the daughter of Henry Knox, in 1808. At the time of the wedding Mrs. Swan commissioned Gilbert Stuart to paint a portrait of her son and also of herself. [xiii]

Henry Jackson was also involved in three major post war civic improvement projects. Jackson was one of six members of the West Boston Bridge Proprietors incorporated by Governor Hancock in 1792 and authorized to collect tolls for 40 years. It was completed in 1793 (replaced by the Longfellow Bridge).

In 1791 no doubt at the urging of Mrs. Swan, Jackson and others helped pass legislation which repealed the 1750 law against theater performances. Roxbury state senator William Heath was probably helpful. Jackson was trustee of the Boston Theatre – Boston’s first - designed by Charles Bulfinch at the corner Federal and Franklin Street that opened in 1793.

The third was the huge India Wharf project begun in 1803 Jackson. Henry Knox and other investors organized to replace the ramshackle jumble of wooden wharf buildings built on the old dock. Planned by the incorporators to make Boston a competitive international port, the long granite warehouse was designed by Charles Bulfinch with tall gable front entrance facing the city.  The wharf was built in 1804 and the brick warehouse with 32 stores opened in 1808.[xiv]

Henry Knox traveled frequently to Boston with his wife Lucy and their daughter Caroline (Swan) Knox to visit Mrs., Swan. March 1805 marked the 30^th anniversary of the British surrender of Boston made possible by the artillery brought down from Fort Ticonderoga by General Knox’s troops that he strategically placed on hilltops facing the city. There were certainly festivities and dinners at which Knox and his old friend Henry Jackson participated. In 1805, probably at this time, Mrs. Swan commissioned two portraits from Gilbert Stuart of Henry Knox and Henry Jackson. Two portraits could not be more different.[xv]Knox is in full uniform (which suggests he was at the Evacuation Day program) his right hand resting on the barrel of a canon with the smoke of battle behind him. He looks confident but not smug. Jackson is painted more intimately in business suit and ruffled collar. He is painted closer to the frame and his head is cocked back with a slight smile. It’s the face of a kind man.[xvi] Completed in 1806 they joined the earlier Stuart paintings of James and Hepzibah in her drawing room[xvii].

This was probably the last time the two old friends saw each other. Knox died the next year and Henry Jackson died suddenly on January 7, 1809. A notice went out that day from the Society of the Cincinnati which notified members of the death of their

“brother and friend”. Unlike his father, he was not given a military funeral[xviii]; a service was held at his boarding house. Mrs. Swan was in shock. He loyal friend was gone. The one who never fawned over her but treated her like anyone else. The imperious grande dame of wealth, fine tastes and love of French culture respected the old bachelor because he provided the stability and companionship that James Swan forfeited.

Hepzibah Swan had General Jackson interred in a tomb she built in her back garden. The tomb was raised on an earth berm surrounded by a hedge of lilacs and surmounted by an obelisk of blue marble probably quarried and made in Italy. On it was carved “Henry Jackson. Soldier, Patriot, Friend’. [xix] A lane of lilacs led from the house to the tomb that Mrs. Swan often visited and pointed out to guests.  One of them was the Marquis de Lafayette in June of 1825 on his triumphal visit to Boston, for the 50^th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.  He visited Mrs. Swan on his way to Quincy to see John Adams. The Marquis and Mrs. Swan talked in French for over an hour and no doubt Mrs. Swan walked him out to look at the tomb of Revolutionary War General Henry Jackson.

Henry Jackson’s obelisk at the Swan lot Forest Hills Cemetery. Photo by Richard Heath

Hepzibah Swan died two months later probably of cholera on August 14, 1825. She was buried in General Jackson’s tomb. [xx] The house and grounds were left to Christiana Sargent who lived there until her death in 1867 at the age of 89.

The neighborhood then was changing.  Howard Avenue was built through the property in 1869 and in 1872 the owners subdivided it again and Harlow Street was built through the garden.  It was at that time that the Swan-Sargent family -probably John T. Sargent- had the grave removed to Forest Hills Cemetery. On Oct 21, 1872 the remains of General Henry Jackson, Hepzibah Swan, John T Sargent, Christiana Sargent and Mary Cochran were transferred to a lot on Lilac Path at Forest Hills Cemetery. In the center of the lot on the edge of the earth terrace was placed the blue marble obelisk dedicated to General Jackson.[xxi]

The great country house was torn down in 1891 and the two-acre site sat vacant for almost fifty years until the Boston Parks Dept built the Mary Hannon Playground on the land in 1945.

Hog’s Bridge in 1873. Atlas of the County of Suffolk Vol 2. G, M, Hopkins, Philadelphia 1873

At the time of General Jackson’s death, Hog’s Bridge was the site of Samuel Heath’s tannery established about 1760 adjacent o the farm of his bother William Heath. The Heath tannery was an extension of industry in the Stony brook Valley centered at Pierpont’s Village (Roxbury crossing). Heath’s Tannery was bought and expanded to become the Guild & White Tannery that opened in 1847. It specialized in calfskin gloves and tanned about 10,000 skins annually. Guild and White was located on the right of way of the Boston + Providence Railroad, a 40 mile passenger train route that opened on June 11, 1834 from Park Square through Pierpont’s Village and Hog’s Bridge to the seacoast city of Providence. Rhode Island. The railroad extended straight across the mudflats and marshes of the Back Bay on an earth and wood causeway; in 1850 a stop was added at Pierpont’s Village. The biggest change came in 1866 when freight service was added on additional track. Heath Street Station was added about this time. Also a second bridge was built to carry Centre Street over the railroad. An incline was graded and a wooden bridge carried wagons and carriages to and from Jamaica Plain.

In 1872 Hog’s Bridge was a busy crossroads in which was nestled a business district of wood frame and occasional brick buildings of shopkeepers, blacksmiths and mechanics servicing the tan yard, breweries and the railroad; meandering through was Stony Brook – by then contained in a stone channel- crossed by a wooden bridge at Centre and Heath Streets.

The New York New Haven and Hartford Railroad announced in 1893 its plan to eliminate the many unsafe grade crossings in the Stony Brook Valley. Beginning at Cumberland Street in the South End and extending four miles to Forest Hills a massive stone viaduct would carry passenger and freights trains over busy cross-town roads. Hundreds of wooden bridges over Stony Brook (many through factories) would be taken down and the entire length of Stony Brook placed in a brick culvert. The $3 million project was the largest public works project ever seen in Roxbury; it coincided with the control of both Stony Brook and Muddy River in the just completed new park called the Back Bay Fens. The project included eight new bridges and the construction of new passenger stations designed by Samuel Shaw chief engineer of the Old Colony Railroad the owner of that portion of the NYNH &H[xxii].

Work began in May of 1895.[xxiii] A gravel berm was laid across the old right of way supported by granite walls twenty feet high built to create a multi track viaduct that rose gently at Cumberland Street adjacent to the baseball grounds (near present-day Carter Playground) to Forest Hills. Centre Street was widened to eighty feet and depressed nineteen feet in grade to run under an iron plate bridge about one hundred feet long including abutments.  New electric car tracks were also built on a reconfigured Centre Street as it dropped down the Fort Hill slope.  A fifty-foot iron plate bridge was over Heath Street that included in- bound and outbound passenger waiting rooms.  By the end of 1897 a solid wall of masonry twenty feet high carrying passenger and freight trains extended across the Stony Brook Valley floor[xxiv].

Hog’s Bridge in 1890. Atlas of the City Of Boston Proper and Roxbury GW Bromley, Philadelphia 1890.

This was not the only change for Hog’s Bridge.  In 1894 the State legislature established the Boston Board of Street Commissioners and also passed the Special Legislation Act for Great Avenues designed to extend roads out to the new districts of Boston.  That bill authorized the extension of Columbus Avenue from Northampton Street to Franklin Park.  Three hundred men were put to work to take down existing structures and build the Avenue that included electric streetcar tracks.  Completed at the end of 1895, the new Columbus Avenue created a great X street pattern as old Centre Street crossed at an angle with the new boulevard. Columbus Avenue was built concurrently with the railroad viaduct. Centre Street was straightened and traffic went in a direct line to the underpass. It was now possible to drive – or take an electric car - from the old Park Square railroad station on a straight and smooth avenue to Egleston Square and Franklin Park.

Great improvements were also taking place at the other end of Columbus Avenue in the 1890’s. On October 19, 1891 Lt Col. Thomas Edmunds, commanding officer of the First Corps of Cadets laid the cornerstone for their great new armory at Columbus Ave. and Ferdinand St (later extended and named Arlington Street)[xxv]. It was the 150th anniversary of the fabled First Corp of Cadets that moved into its new armory in February and March 1897.

Josiah Quincy was mayor of the city, the third Josiah Quincy to hold that office in the 19^th century. His grandfather had built Quincy Market in 1826 and his father opened the city to Cochituate water with a groundbreaking in 1846.  He himself would cut the ribbon for the great South Station from which trains rolled over the Roxbury viaduct across Centre Street on its way to New York City.

It may have been that Lt Col Edmunds had a word with Mayor Quincy as the cadets hung up the pastel drawing of General Jackson done in 1777 in their new head house library. General Jackson was the man who reorganized the First Corp of Cadets in the turmoil of the British Evacuation and he commanded it as an effective fighting force for the duration of the conflict. Mayor Quincy would have been interested. His grandfather, the first Mayor Quincy (born in 1772), was an attorney and state legislator before becoming a Congressman in 1805, so he knew General Jackson.

Lt Col Edmunds may have gone on to note that 1897 was the 150^th anniversary of the birth of General Jackson. The intersection created by the new Columbus Avenue might be named Jackson Square in his honor; after all the great investment it certainly deserved a better name than Hog’s Bridge.  It was also near General Heath Square. Mayor Quincy may have agreed.

Richard Heath October 10, 2011

 Jackson Square in 1978.

Jackson Square Centre St. bridge circa 1960. Courtesy of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation

Notes:
[i] It got its name from an incident that occurred about 1750. A farm girl found her way blocked at the bridge by a drove of pigs. When the herdsman refused to let her pass, she picked up and tossed one of the pigs into Stony Brook and threatened to heave in another unless she was allowed to pass.  Drake, Francis A. The Town of Roxbury. Page 386.

[ii] General Henry Knox was born in Boston, but he and his wife were far more invested in his huge land holdings and great mansion in Maine, which was part of Massachusetts until 1820

[iii] Paul Barrett sculptor.  Dedicated June 17, 1904. Temporarily removed for street widening in 1966, it was taken by the Roxbury Latin School, of which Warren was an alumnus, in 1969.

[iv] For Jackson’s biography see.

1.“ The Swan Commissions” by Eleanor Pearson DeLorme, Winterthur Portfolio Vol 14, No 4, Winter 1979. Pg 389.

2. Drake, Francis A., Memorials of the Society of the Cincinnati of Massachusetts, Boston, 1873. page 360.  (General William Heath biography page 329.)/

3. New England Historic and Genealogical Register, “Henry Jackson”. April 1892 page 111.

[v] Is it just a coincidence that Hogs Bridge was the center of the Boston brewery business?

[vi] Drake, Memorials of the Cincinnati, page 91.

[vii] Two sources consulted each with detailed descriptions of the four-day event make no reference to General Jackson or Major General Heath. Both veteran officers apparently passed on the honors to younger active duty officers: The Massachusetts Centinel. October 28, 1789. “Some recollections of George Washington’s Visit to Boston” by General William H. Sumner.  New England Historic + Genealogical Register, April 1860.

[viii]  Knox named his son born in 1780 Henry Jackson Knox and all his life Jackson was close to the boy. 

[ix] “The Swan Commissions” By Eleanor Pearson DeLorme, Winterthur Portfolio, Vol 14, No 4. Winter 1979. The Downcast Dilettante blog. “Obelisks, Regrets, Debts, Swans, Bulfinch…”  June 4, 2011.

[x] The father and mother in law of Henry Knox were among the Loyalists who took British ships to Halifax that month and then to England. Knox acquired for a nominal sum huge tracts of land owned by the Fluckers in coastal Maine that had been confiscated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Not for nothing was the Revolutionary War called the first American Civil War. “The fact is that, as far as the Americans were in it, the war of the revolution was a civil war.” The Loyalists of Massachusetts, James H Stark, Boston, 1910.  Pg 61. + Pg 403.

[xi] For details on the furnishings, many of which are in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, see de Lorme. Page 374. For the house, the definitive source is Kirker, Harold. The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, Harvard University Press. 1969. Pages 128-131.  Bulfinch had just completed plans for Montpelier the great house for Henry Knox at Thomaston, Maine

[xii] Lawrence, Robert M, Old Park Street and Its vicinity, HMCo, Boston, 1922.  page 115.

[xiii] For Hepzibahs portrait with detailed commentary see de Lorme page 370. James Keadie’s portrait is on page 378. Both Hepzibah’s portrait and James Swan’s were given to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts by her great granddaughter in 1927. The Henry Knox House, Thomaston, Maine, owns James Keadie Swan’s portrait.

[xiv] Henry Knox did not live to see it completed. He died in 1806. Half of the wharf was destroyed for the widening of Atlantic Avenue in 1869 and the remainder was razed in 1962. The Aquarium was built on the 1804 wharf in 1969

[xv]The famous Henry Knox portrait is illustrated in deLorme page 38. It is at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Henry Jackson portrait is shown on page 388. It is privately owned.

[xvi] Writing in 1876 Francis S Drake described Jackson as “a large man full of wit and gallantry. a gentleman.”

[xvii] Did she hang them at her Chestnut Street home and then take them with her to Dorchester?  More than likely.  The Henry Knox painting was given to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts by the City of Boston in 1876.

[xviii] The answer might lie in the Stuart painting: Henry Jackson had hung up his uniform with the epaulets, gold braid and stripes over 20 earlier. He died as Mr. Jackson and as Mr. Jackson he was paid respects.

[xix] It may have looked somewhat like the John Codman tomb at the Dorchester Second Church Cemetery at Codman Square. It’s a brick vault crowned with earth from the excavation with a dressed stone front and an arch door to the interior crypt.  This was built about 1847,

[xx] She joined her son in law John Turner Sargent. When he died in 1813, she had him buried in the Jackson tomb.

[xxi] Files of Forest Hills Cemetery. Thank you to Elise Ciregna for her help and the site visit.  There are five graves on the lot today. The first one has General Jackson, Hepzibah Swan and Mary Cochran. Mary Cochran – who was perhaps a house servant to Mrs. Swan -died at the age of 91 in 1830. The engraved inscriptions on the obelisk are eroded away and difficult to read.

-Orcutt, Dana. Good Old Dorchester, Cambridge, 1894. Page 398, Also pg 397. For a photo of the house taken just before demolition see page 25.

-See also Find a Grave .Com; Forest Hills Cemetery: Henry Jackson.  Created by Jen Smoots. The biography is by Bill McKern. Included is an engraving of the 1777 pastel drawing of Colonel Jackson when he commanded the Boston Regiment reproduced in the April 1892 NEHGR biography.

Also see de Lorme page 390 for the illustration of the original pastel drawing held at the first Corp Cadets Museum.

All three Boston Revolutionary War leaders were removed to Forest Hills Cemetery General Warren was removed from a crypt at St Paul’s Church to the family tomb in 1855. General Heath was taken from the family tomb at the Heath farm a placed beneath a splendid pink granite monument at Eliot Hill in 1860.

[xxii] A considerable amount of property was taken for this project including the Heath Street freight yard that was given up for the new Heath Street Station and bridge. To satisfy the brewers who had long received grain shipments there, a new one was regraded at Lamartine and Centre Street.

[xxiii] For stories on construction see: 
Boston Globe July 7, 1893.

Boston Globe July 10, 1895.
Boston Herald, March 22, 1896. 
The Herald noted that the work was done largely by Italian laborers but had to be replaced in the cold winter months by French Canadians.

[xxiv] Train service was never discontinued for the three years of construction. A two track right of way was laid parallel to the construction site for passenger service

[xxv] Boston Globe Oct 10, 1891. The Armory was designed by William G. Preston.

By Walter H. Marx

Some years ago when the old Jamaica Plain High School was being redone for housing, a photograph of the school appeared in the Citizen showing an ivy-crowned metal plaque with the words “West Roxbury High School” over the door. Puzzled persons asked about this seemingly misplaced sign, but the marker was retained from the predecessor when the Tudor-style school was built in 1901.

Boston did not acquire its present boundaries until the annexation of Hyde Park in 1912. In colonial times Boston was a peninsula leading out of Roxbury at the Neck (the present Washington and E. Berkeley Sts.), which was later tripled by landfill. Tourists to historical Boston view only the area we consider “downtown.” Directly south of Boston two towns were established at the same time in1630: Roxbury and Dorchester. All three municipalities had their own identities until Dorchester joined Boston in 1870 as Roxbury had two years earlier.

The industrialized and populous City of Roxbury that joined Boston had been stripped of three-quarters of its former area when its southwesterly section broke away and, by permission of the Legislature, became the Town of West Roxbury in May, 1851 – an effort dating back to 1705. The chief reasons given were to preserve the bucolic nature of the region and to prevent exploitation from officials more concerned with Roxbury’s center. The Town of West Roxbury survived annexation to Boston until January 1874.
Thus from 1851 to 1874 the area of Roslindale, West Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain had to see to their own town functions. The West Roxbury/Roxbury line ran from Seaver St. to Columbus Ave. from Egleston Square to behind Hyde Square down to Willow Pond (between Ward’s and Leverett’s). Though West Roxbury and Roslindale had main roads with some houses, most side-roads led to farms; Jamaica Plain was more developed, though it still had many country estates.

The town government grew up around the ancient junction of Centre and South Streets, first called Eliot Square from its first owner, the Rev. John Eliot, that unique Apostle to the Indians. The name changed to Monument Square when the town (like so many others) built its striking temple to its Civil War dead in 1871.

Town government was first housed in the former wooden building on Thomas St. that later served the Civil War vets association, the Grand Army of the Republic. The more fitting Curtis Hall was built in 1868 largely by a member of that old Jamaica Plain family in those days before income tax provided funding for public works. Curtis Hall also served as the town library. A transcript of the speech given at the dedication of the municipal building is available in the Sedgwick St. Library.

Towards the end of the town’s existence the fire brigade was housed in the same building on Centre St. just vacated by its successor, while the police continued to work out of the Precinct 13 building on Seaverns Ave. The Town of West Roxbury built these sturdy buildings purposely to be sure of the excellent service once taken over by a more distant City Hall. The wheels of justice grind slowly but surely. Our latest courthouse, built in 1922 and now in Forest Hills, retains the name of our former town, West Roxbury.

The granite shaft serving as a boundary stone with Brookline at the end of Perkins St. next to a gate to the Hellenic College has WR and the B inscribed on its eastern side. These are the more easily seen traces of the Town of West Roxbury in Jamaica Plain. Readers may be able to think of more.

By Walter H. Marx

I wrote previously about a series of Paul Dudley milestones in the area. Now it’s time to look at similar but smaller inscribed granite shafts about waist high that mark Jamaica Plain’s boundaries.

As the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council formed in 1985 and in 1987 when the Jamaica Plain Historical Society was founded, the location of Jamaica Plain’s boundaries became a subject of discussion.  From time to time, especially at the edges of the neighborhood, residents wonder where Jamaica Plain begins and ends.

One of the problems is that Jamaica Plain was never a political entity in and of itself.  Between 1630 and May 1851, Jamaica Plain was within the bounds of the City of Roxbury.  Then it was part of the Town of West Roxbury until January 1874, when all were annexed to the City of Boston.  During that period all communities took great care, for reasons of collecting revenue, to make sure that their boundaries were carefully delineated.

Small wonder that the infant Town of West Roxbury included among its officials, as had the City of Roxbury, a “Perambulator of the Bounds,” who was kept very busy making sure that the old limits of Roxbury were preserved as Boston swallowed up old Roxbury in 1868 and Dorchester in 1870.

Our neighborhood’s incorporation within the City of Roxbury is still marked on a West Roxbury/Roxbury granite boundary stone marked “WR” and “R” at the corner of School and Amory Streets.  Somehow the stone has escaped removal over the years.  When Roxbury joined Boston in January 1868, the “R” was fittingly altered to “B.”  Similar stones in Jamaica Plain are known to have existed in Egleston Square and at Hyde Square. 

A 1953 letter in the archives of the West Roxbury Historical Society also reports the existence of a triple town marker at Willow Pond on the Muddy River chain between Jamaica Way and Riverdale Rd.  It showed the corporate limits of Roxbury, West Roxbury, and Brookline (itself set off from Boston in 1703).  When the parent and daughter neighborhood of Roxbury joined Boston in 1874, the old marker was removed and replaced by a solid Boston/Brookline marker still visible on the non-water end of Willow Pond Road. 

Brookline has guarded its boundaries from any threats of reunification with Boston, and, appropriately, all the bridges over the Muddy River in Olmstead Park have a BR/B sign inscribed on their stone parapets.  Once Riverdale Road ends at Jamaica Pond, it heads out to South Brookline as Perkins and Goddard Streets.  Opposite the initial gates of the Hellenic College is another BR/B stone marker.  And if the light is right, one can see that WR was chipped out before the B was added.

On the eastern side of the Town of West Roxbury, where it bordered on the Town of Hyde Park (not annexed to Boston until January 1912), triple markers showing the limits of West Roxbury, Hyde Park, and Dedham and Boston, West Roxbury, and Hyde Park are still visible.  No one knows how many of these stones still stand in backyards as the land was developed or how many in later construction were simply tossed aside.

The Perambulator of the Bounds may have originated with those old logical Romans, who fittingly made Terminus their god of bounds and held a feast for him on February 21.  Then neighbors walked their bounds, mended stone fences, and concluded by jointly putting garlands on posts and placing products of their fields on a common cairn.  We can only hope that our local Perambulator of Bounds did his job on a more comfortable date.  Or perhaps we know now why the position no longer exists.

1988
Jamaica Plain, MA

A person who wanders across Allandale Road with care will pass into the Allandale Woods, a vast natural tract of public land with ancient farm roads and newer bridle paths that extend to the valley of Saw Mill Brook and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Parkway.

Located on hilly ground between Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, the Woods surround two ponds and are scattered with Roxbury puddingstone.

One wonders how the Williams family was able to farm it for two centuries, beginning in the 1700's. By the 20th century most of the land was in the hands of Mrs. Mary Pratt Brandegee, who built the vast Georgian Revival mansion that still dominates Allandale Farm. When the city of Boston decided to add the Saw Mill Brook Valley to its Park System in the 1890's as a connector to a projected parkway leading to the Blue Hills south of the city, it bought some of Mrs. Brandegee's tract and developed bridle paths through the area. The parkway was finally developed through the vast public works programs of the Depression.

As part of the deal, the city agreed to build a low stone wall 18 inches wide and two-and-a-half feet high to mark the Brandegee border. The Roman Emperor Hadrian's Wall on England's northern border was originally built to mark the edge of Roman territory. Later, Hadrian's Wall served as protection from Scottish attacks.

The Boston/Brandegee wall, finally built in the Depression, may be only a mile in length, easily walked or followed within a hour, but in different seasons it has views just as good as those from Hadrian's Wall. The Emperor's Wall has been robbed over the years but is easily traceable. Our local wall has weathered its New England winters well. Here and there the wall's top strip of concrete is gone. But, like Hadrian's Wall it still has some fine straight runs and turns.

The wall begins just beyond the Recuperative Center at the VFW Parkway and Centre Street, starting at the sidewalk to the right of the newly-installed Allandale Woods sign.

A walk on the wall is easy since there is little overgrowth to maneuver around. Moss often covers the wall's smooth cement top.

Walking back atop this masonry's delight one wonders how its builders got the stones and supplies into place to build this chain of uniform quality. They surely had some tricky moments at the turns, dips and inclines.

Once past the view into the abyss of the Recuperative Center, a splendid straight run of wall appears behind the Orthodox Church on the VFW in the distance on the left. Here at one of the fifteen openings in the wall (unfortunately never narrow enough for stepping across) the Allandale Trail passes through toward its namesake road. Any wall traveler has already noticed the frequent steep angles of ascent and decent, but it is easy enough to hop down to Mother Earth for a while and get back on the wall once one feels more confident.

After passing along Elephant Pond and the Allandale condominiums, the wall bridges two brooks connecting the Elephant to the Saw Mill ponds in the valley. This is an ideal spot to look for signs of spring after a bleak winter.

After crossing the brooks, the wall climbs Roxbury puddingstone to touch an old farm road at the height, turns and follows it downhill, and stops to let that road enter the old Brandegee Estate in the valley of another stream.

Beyond the arches, traces of wooden fencing put up by later owners of the southern Brandegee tract lie strewn about as victims of harsh weather, but the wall remains. From the highest point in this wooded area, there is a fine southern view of the Blue Hills. Having gotten used to the breaks in the wall, the steep inclines, and the rare growth next to it, one must look for five generous indentations left in the wall by its builders for neighboring trees to pass through.

The wall soon makes its final turn after the high point and has another fine straight run up and down a valley with a freshlet at the bottom. All around are nature's quiet sounds. The presence of mankind is minimal here and held at a distance. But that changes after the last rise! Properties along Crehore Road near Brookline's southern border strike the wall with their backyards, and Neoland Road ends right at it!

The wall becomes a back fence until it terminates at the circle where the VFW and West Roxbury Parkways cross and again ends at a sidewalk.

By Walter H. Marx. Reprinted with permission from the December 4, 1992 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.

Under the spreading chestnut tree the mighty smithy stands. - Longfellow

Jamaica Plain has two streets named after the Chestnut tree with its distinctive leaves and blossoms. They probably got their names from these prominent trees that years ago grew on location here. Fine chestnut specimens (aesculus hippocastanum) can be seen in the Arnold Arboretum or the Public Garden, America's first botanical area.

The name is popular in the City of Boston for streets, named from trees growing long before downtown Boston annexed other neighboring areas unto itself, and is to be seen in Brighton, South Boston, Charlestown, and Hyde Park in addition to Beacon Hill's candidate. Yet rare is the municipality with two streets of the same name!

Chestnut Avenue
To a Jamaica Plain resident, Chestnut Avenue, paralleling the railroad and Lamartine Street between Centre and Green, is the first to come to mind. It is in the densely populated portion of our area and is the older of the two Jamaica Plain Chestnuts. Laid out early in the 19th century, it is seen already developed in our first real estate atlas (1872). At one period it was called Curtis from the pioneer Roxbury family (through whose lands it passed) and also Nebraska Street, when that state made history in the 1850's as a slave state vs. Kansas as a free state.

A walk today along this up-and-down, sometimes one-way street reveals a wide array of older dwellings that tell the street's story: originally a rail commuter suburban street of wooden residences. Many of these (14 in all) are included in the 1978 Jamaica Plain Inventory issued by the Boston Landmarks Commission that speaks of especially prominent architectural edifices. Chestnut Avenue near the railroad is a kaleidoscope of dwellings for people of all social classes and means and is entirely residential. Only the building at #145 was originally a primary school building (1872)-a rare extant frame schoolhouse in the city!

The terminus at Green Street is tree-shaded and immediately sweeps upward along the back of Sumner Hill. One can't fail to notice #305/7 with its Greek Revival temple form with Ionic columns. The house was built in the 1840's for the ship carving Fowle family of Roxbury and until 1884 (when moved) stood on larger acreage facing Green Street with barn and pond. In typical fashion the owners needed money and sold off their land, so that the house is now surrounded by later housing, including three-deckers.

This Chestnut Avenue is fairly narrow, but eyes are easily diverted to other notables on the 1978 Inventory. Most prominent are the Victorian mansard and Italian villa manses on the street's crown, sitting far back from the street in solitary splendor as they were intended to be. No difficulty with snow removal since the lay of the land helped greatly in that regard! One wonders if any of these were the homes of owners that overlooked their businesses in the Stony Brook Valley below as on Centre Street in the Roxbury Highlands.

There is a steep incline down the back of Sumner Hill, and the grander houses of the concluding part of the last century with its gross materialism in New England disappear. They are replaced by a different array of middle-class housing, built near the street and close together. Snow removal was a problem in this flat area. Luckily fire was not, and this type of housing is preserved on the rest of Chestnut Avenue with some of the most recent housing in Jamaica Plain filling the lots near Centre Street.

The architecture is seemingly humbler as one approaches Centre Street at Jackson Square; it once housed the poorer immigrants of Jamaica Plain. These places were built by the Irish and Germans who worked the breweries of Stony Brook Valley. Their descendants, churches, social clubs and shops moved out in several decades into all areas of America. Now it serves as the living quarters for yet another tide of first generation Americans who in time will move out from this nursery of immigration and democracy.

Chestnut Street by the Pond is one street in a web of streets in that area of Brookline that are named for trees. The Brookline section came first and then the connector from the rotary to Perkins Street by the Cabot Estate high up on its hill above. For in early Jamaica Plain the park land was inaccessible by road on the Brookline side, being all private land, dating back to land grants made to the early Roxbury settlers as Brookline was then called Boston Plantation.

Chestnut Street
Chestnut Street on the Jamaica Plain/Brookline border has a different tone. Park land abuts it as it turns at the borderline rotary. The recent removal of the Brookline Hospital at the edge of the Cabot Estate has added to the green space. Then apartment houses spring into view in this Chestnut Street that few Jamaica Plain residents ever see. Upon swinging past High and Cypress, the street takes on characteristics of its counterpart by the railroad.

Private residences of all dates and types abound, and the street becomes one way against its terminus on Walnut Street. It becomes more exclusive with older houses set back on large lots. For the traveler is approaching the former epicenter of Brookline as attested by the First Church, an ancient cemetery, and a memorial-a sure sign of former prominence.

Thus our area's unique similarly-named streets act as mirror images, both revealing the social and economic history of their environments. Both have been spared catastrophe and so show themselves almost as a museum. Even if excess development had occurred, these byways would tell a story in records, if not houses. The discerning eye will see much architectural taste and history beyond a streetscape but especially here.

By Walter H. Marx. Sources: A Forbes, Town Seals of Massachusetts; Boston Landmarks Commission, Jamaica Plain Inventory, 1978

Reprinted with permission from the July 15, 1994 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.

Old winter pleasures on Jamaica Pond
By Walter H. Marx

It would be highly appropriate for anyone by an ice - covered Jamaica Pond to hear echoes of the famous Skaters' Waltz from Meyerbeer's ballet, The Skater. Older residents can recall lengthy skating periods on the Pond, and their parents would have mentioned ice being cut for local distribution for the family icebox. One enterprising Massachusetts Yankee, Frederick Tudor, organized rural ice cutters so well that the product was sent to Boston and sent around the world after being packed in insulating sawdust.


Skating on Jamaica Pond. Winslow Homer, 1859.

Skating was the activity focused upon by Mrs. Samuel Cabot of the Pond's north shore in a 1940 lecture. Her text, along with some of the originals of the slides she used, is preserved in the JP Branch Library and has been published by the JP Historical Society. Mrs. Cabot began her collection of Pond materials when she moved into what is now the Cabot Estate in 1919. She quotes from the 1855 - 59 diary of Elizabeth R. Mason (later Mrs. Walter Cabot, which in part has recently been published by the Beacon Press. Here are her quotes, which show a far different Jamaica Pond than the one readers know at present:

January 26, 1855 - A new amusement has arisen on the Boston horizon: skating. Last Wednesday, having heard of the performances of some of the ladies who live on Jamaica Pond, we determined to go out in the omnibus to see them. The weather was fine, and we proceeded to the omnibus on Park Street corner. Arriving at Green Street in little more than half an hour, we walked onto the Pond, where we found a crowd of people skating.

I put on skates and was able to stand on them very well and to be pulled around; that I by taking the arm of someone who skated well, I could follow, making no motion myself but without losing my balance.

In coming home it snowed hard, and the walk to the cars, which is more than half a mile was by no mean delightful. Neither can I say much for the walk from the Providence Depot through Charles Street.

January 30, 1855 - Good skating again. I was glad to arrive at the omnibus. The Pond was covered with people amounting to 500 or 600. The afternoon was brilliant, and I enjoyed it excessively.

January 31, 1855 - I raced down at 10 to the Providence Depot. The weather was brilliant, the skating splendid. We met a good many people on the pond. We all had a very grand time; one sees people in such an easy, pleading way. Returned by the omnibus at 1 p.m.

February 1, 1855 - I proceeded in the omnibus to Jamaica Pond. I enjoyed the afternoon more than ever before. The sun had checked the wind; it was mild and good skating. I crossed the pond several times. We were pushed in a sleigh belonging to the Bacons. Altogether it was splendid. I never felt a sensation of cold even in my feet and was in high spirit. I had my first real fall: I came suddenly to very rough ice without perceiving it and measured my length without injury except to my bonnet and in getting very wet from the snow.

February 27, 1858 - Went out to Jamaica Pond this morning, but the ice was very poor.

March 4, 1858 - Went out to Jamaica Pond today, but the skating was poor excepting a little patch 20 feet long.

March 5, 1858 - Went to Jamaica Pond, but it was so bitterly cold that I was perfectly exhausted when I got home.

January 25, 1859 - Went out coating to Jamaica.

January 26, 1859 - Went out today to some meadows near Jamaica Pond. Perfect ice and hot weather.

January 31, 1859 - Went to Jamaica Pond to skate after dinner.

February 1, 1859 - Went out this morning to Jamaica.

February 6, 1859 - A snowstorm came on Thursday and buried the skating, rather to my relief, for one cannot stay at home when it is good.

Reprinted with permission from the Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright, Gazette Publications, Inc.


Diary tells of skating on Jamaica Pond
By Cynthia Foster

The article about Jamaica Pond in the February 14 Gazette renewed old memories. My first husband, Carl Anthonsen, and his family bought a little house on Spring Park Avenue in 1922. I came to live here in 1938 when we were married. The pond was one of our favorite haunts, summer and winter. I remember skiing around and across the pond when winters were cold and snowy. Before we were married I lived in the Fenway on Park Drive. We did a lot of skiing through the park between JP and the Fenway.

Carl kept a diary. The reference in the article to the carnival in 1925 reminded me of his account of that event. He was there. I enclose two excerpts from his diary relating to the skating carnivals. It boggles my mind to think of 50,000 people at Jamaica Pond!

Excerpts from the Journal of Carl Anthonsen, February 8, 1923:
Tonight I fulfilled my vow to go skating. The weather being ideal, skated for several hours on Jamaica Pond. Only a small part, however, due to yesterday's snow, was available In addition the ice was rough and cracked in places, and several times, in trying to display my speed, came close to breaking a bone or two. It was uncomfortably crowded, too, it being the night of the annual municipal carnival. Paid little attention to the festivities and was quite oblivious of the 50,000 gathering. I distinctly recall a similar occasion about six years ago. That was when, for what reason my creator only knows, I was breaking away from acquaintances and keeping more and more to myself. Not that I was happy in my own thoughts. For they were rather dismal to say the least. That night, it seems to me, was the first time I had that aching, lonely, bitter feeling, which has so often possesses me since. If only there had been some experienced person to guide me, how different things might have been!

Excerpts from the Journal of Carl Anthonsen, January 8, 1925:
This eve, skating on Jamaica Pond, which was in holiday garb for annual municipal skating carnival. An elaborate program was laid out. But carrying it out was another matter. The fireworks and band concert went off without a hitch, and a couple of races were held. But then the ice, already weakened by a thaw of several days, cracked under the burden of tens of thousands of skaters and water flowed freely above the surface, thus putting a decided dampener on the festivities. This has been the case with all of these carnivals in past years. There are too many people in the world.

Reprinted with permission from the Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright, Gazette Publications, Inc.


Where did it come from? The true story of the Island in the Pond.
By Walter H. Marx

Five years ago on June 8, 1987, a multitude of JP citizens convened at First Church by the Monument to discuss and ultimately establish a historical society. During the summer interested volunteers set the wheels in motion.

The need for a seal for the society was expressed at that time. To enhance the early l9th century description of JP as "the Eden of America," artist Marsden Lore of the Christian Science Monitor was commissioned to feature the island in Jamaica Pond.

A view of the island in Jamiaca Pond taken from Perkins Street in 1938. Photograph by Walter H. Marx from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society archives.

Though this choice was hooted by some, as the island was allegedly "man - made", there is no doubt that the seal's feature drawn from the 1938 photograph shown here became historic on August 19, 1991, when Hurricane Bob blew over (but not out) the last of the seven willow trees that once had been planted there.

The island is now a sad sight with a prone but surviving old willow and will require years to correct, no matter how swiftly any human agency acts. The Jamaica Pond Project has already planted a companion willow, but in order to sustain more, the isle itself must be rebuilt for the soil to take on other willows.

Five years have produced much study of our area, and the full story of Jamaica Pond's island can now be told. Remarks made about the isle at the first birthday meeting of the JP Historical Society at the Boathouse in June, 1988 confirmed stories heard in childhood that it was a floating island. In the earliest days of the Park, the Parks Department indeed had made an isle each year, planted with vegetation and floated on oil drums!

The willow - covered area we knew until recently is no chance event at all. It was built upon a promontory in the Pond itself, which consists of two glacier - made bowls of two very different depths.

This was first shown graphically on a map produced by two civil engineers to accompany the case of the Jamaica Pond Aquaduct Corp. vs. the Brookline Land Co., tried before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in November 1880 and reported two years later. A copy exists among the papers of Pond abutter Francis Parkman, in the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Not seen during high water in the spring, the island was exposed when the engineers did their survey on July 9, 1880 (see plan), providing an aerial view of the pond. On this base of watery earth and rock the isle we know was built up with never a suggestion from Emerald Necklace jeweler, Frederick Law Olmsted. Tradition has it that that the Indians had arranged the rocks about the isle as a fish trap.

The entire Park has always been a place favored by the Parks department, and the vast majority of local postcards from 1890 to 1940 prove this. Thus, in the pre - World War I days, Perkins' Cove below Pinebank was filled in to create another Sugar Bowl and the isle was created. Credit for this goes to Mrs. Sargent, wife of the first Director of the Arnold arboretum and mistress of the former Holmes estate of Perkins Street backing into Brookline. When summers were long and hot, Mrs. Sargent would see the promontory appear as the Pond lowered like the fabled isle of Britanny.

Why not build a permanent isle out of this base that would forever remove its temporary, unsightly quality to enhance the Pond's unbroken expanse of water forever? She mentioned this to James V. Shea of the Parks Department. The project was approved, and that summer planks were nailed together, boated out to the island and positioned as caissons to shape and secure the island base. These are probably in as good shape today as in 1915, as fresh water preserves wood well.

Heartier winters then made the next stage of getting anchoring rocks across easy. During the autumn rocks were piled up on shore by the Hancock Stairs. When the ice in the cove was thick enough, horse - drawn sleds brought them to the point above the promontory (now submerged), and the stones, set in frames, were carefully positioned. The spring thaw dropped them into place. It took two winters to get enough rocks across to form a proper "Shea's Island."

Soil was then added by ferrying it out in a benign season. Then the half - dozen willow trees were planted. It is regrettable that they were not immediately replaced whenever one fell after 1918. It will take beyond our lifetimes to restore what was taken for granted.

Shea's Island needs to be rebuilt again despite our warmer winters just as the isle in the lagoon on the Public Garden in the Back Bay was just rebuilt and replanted. So our isle is not an artificial isle but rather a man - enhanced isle with quite a tale of daring - do.

Sources: JP Citizen April 2, 1965 and June 16, 1988
Reprinted with permission from the November 5, 1992 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright, Gazette Publications, Inc.

Excerpts from an illustrated lecture given to the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club at the Loring-Greenough House on December 2, 1952

Nancy Graves Cabot (Mrs. Samuel) was born in Newburyport MA, the daughter of Edmund P. Graves, in 1890. She moved with her family to Argentina when she was 9, returning to attend Miss Winsor's School (now, The Winsor School), from which she was graduated in 1908. On October 16, 1909, she married Samuel Cabot (Harvard class of 1906) an industrial chemist, who became president of his family's firm, Samual Cabot, Inc. Mrs. Cabot first became a member of the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club in 1925. She left the rolls for a time and returned in 1944, remaining a member until her death in 1969.

Mrs. Cabot was known as an expert on historic textiles. She compiled data for the Textile Department of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the British Museum. She wrote several articles on textiles and gave an illustrated lecture to the New England Historical and Genealogical Society on "New England Embroidered Pictures" in 1944.

Mrs. Cabot had four children and 13 grandchildren She died on January 14, 1969, at 79, at her home in Longwood Towers. Her beloved estate on the pond has since become the Cabot Estate Condominiums.

On December 2, 1952, Mrs. Cabot presented a lecture, illustrated with lantern slides to the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club, entitled: Historic Pictures of Jamaica Pond. Later she gave many pieces of her unique collection to the Club, along with the lantern slides.

That Mrs. Cabot refers to herself in the third person through most of this talk could well be explained if the typescript, from which this pamphlet was produced, was transcribed after the fact. It was sent to Mrs. Dorothy Winkfield, Club President, in 1953. The memorialist is unknown.

The Jamaica Pond collection of pictures was begun soon after the First World War when Mr. and Mrs. Cabot moved into the old Quincy Shaw house on Perkins Street on the northern shore of the Pond, near the Brookline line.

From their house on the top of the hill, we have a lovely view of the pond, and overlook the rooftops and spires of Jamaica Plain. On clear days you can see to the Blue Hill range and beyond.

In Antiques Magazine for February 1925 there was an article entitled: "Skating Prints" by Aaron Davis, Showing a Lithograph by J. H. Bufford of Jamaica Pond in 1858. It is the same scene that you have here in the Loring-Greenough House in the downstairs hall.

It occurred to Mrs. Cabot then that it would be of interest to acquire an original of the Bufford lithograph if possible, and to collect any other pictures and material relating to the Pond that could be found.

Thanks to the help of many kind friends, the collection grew steadily. It now consists of pictures, maps, photographs, letters and journals, all of the 19th century. Previous to 1800 the Pond seems to have been taken for granted: its charms and beauties did not burst into woodcut and illustrations until after the movement of the fashionable world to its shores, for fine residences and recreation.

Of its earlier history there are a few meager gleanings of interest. You know of course that geologically it is a glacial kettle hole of great size, similar to the smaller cup-like dry hollows near the old Children's Museum on Pine Bank.

Its area comprises about 70 acres. Authorities differ as to its greatest depth somewhere between 50 and 65 feet roughly, in the center. There are some who claim it has no bottom at all.

Originally it was called The Great Pond, and the Plain contiguous to it The Pond Plain, but by 1677 both had received the name of Jamaica probably in compliment to Cromwell in commemoration of his valuable conquest of the Island of Jamaica from Spain. A description of Roxbury at the close of the Revolution says: "It has several high hills, which afford an agreeable prospect of the town and harbor of Boston, and one large pond covering about 120 acres, near which is a Plain of a mile in length, known by the name of Jamaica Plain, remarkable for the pleasantness of its situation and the number of gentlemen's houses upon it. "

This is one of the maps in the collection showing the Pond and its surroundings in 1874. The Loring-Greenough House is not shown but would be at the bottom, just to the left of the title, West Roxbury. From Centre Street, (formerly Old Dedham Road) running horizontally from the bottom on the right the two roads that lead to the pond and skirt it are Pond Street below it on the south, and Perkins Street above it on the north.

Perkins Street, originally Connecticut Lane, was named for William Perkins who settled in Roxbury in 1632, not for the Perkins Family who built on Pine Bank in 1802, and who have lived in its neighborhood ever since.

Starting at Pine Bank, Edward Perkins's place, the point that juts out into the Pond from the right, I should like to take you for a quick trip around the Pond, naming the different places on the shore at this period.

Adjoining it and just below Pine Bank are the large Curtis lands, farms that had been continuously in the Curtis family since 1689. The Curtis orchards were famous for their apples, which were shipped to foreign ports in great quantity.

Next we come to five small rectangular properties with the names first Adams, then Winslow, Spaulding, Gorham and Munson. Then, following along Pond Street, near the water passing by the foot of Burroughs Street, just opposite Eliot Street we come to the great storehouse of the Jamaica Pond Ice Co. , the main source of supply of ice for Boston for over 50 years.

Just beside the icehouse lived a Mrs. Dyman on a small lot, then the almost square Frothingham place that had its entrance on Prince Street, which connects Pond with Perkins.

Prince Street at this end was laid through the property that had belonged to the Royal Governor, Sir Francis Barnard, from 1760-1769. It was he, you will remember, who was recalled to England by urgent Colonial request. Sir William Pepperel then occupied the house for a few years, until in 1779 the property was confiscated by the State and sold to Martin Brimmer of Boston who lived here until his death in 1804. Capt. John Prince then purchased the place where he developed fine orchards, famous for their variety, of pears, plums, apricots, grapes and apples.

Beyond the Frothingham land is the long and narrow property of Robert M. Morse, and next to it another ice House of the Jamaica Pond Ice Co. This icehouse is of later construction than the one by Eliot. It is not shown on the map of 1858.

We then come to the property of Francis Parkman, the historian, which today is marked with a granite memorial on the site of his house. He spent his summers here from 1852 until his death in 1893.

On the corner where Prince and Perkins Streets meet, and running back to the Pond is "Lochstead" the home of David Wallace.

Across Perkins Street there is quite a settlement of small places encroaching on the lands of Ignatius Sargent. Gradually these small houses were acquired by Mr. Sargent and his son Charles, and demolished for the improvement of the entrance from the Pond to "Holmlea" the famous Sargent Estate.

Then comes the Cabot place, the house built by Quincy Shaw in the 1860s and next to it the land of Mrs. Henry Cleveland and Charles Perkins, sister and brother of Edward Perkins of Pine Bank.

Just across Perkins Street, behind Pine Bank, is Ward's Pond, another lovely, but quite small glacial kettle hole.

Here you have one of the means of transportation between Boston and Jamaica Plain around 1855. It is an illustration from the popular weekly, "Ballou's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion". Can you read the sign, "Boston and Jamaica Plain" in large letters on the side?

As early as 1826 there was a service of coaches running on the hour between Boston and Roxbury. They were called "Hourlies. " And, by 1834, the Providence R. R. had laid a single-track line, for the express convenience of commuters. Access to the Pond, until well on in the 19th century was from the Jamaica Plain side there was no road connecting the Pond with Brookline. Augustine Shurtleff in the "Sagemore", the Brookline High School paper for 1895, describes memories of reaching it from Brookline about 1839.

Here you have a woodcut by Winslow Homer entitled, "Skating on Jamaica Pond, near Boston". It appeared in Ballou's Pictorial for Jan. 29, 1859. You can see Homer's signature on the small sled on the right.

The paper describes it thus:

The graceful picture below was drawn expressly for us by Mr. Homer, and faithfully represents the favorite winter sport on Jamaica Pond.

The larger figures in the foreground were sketched from life, as their spirited and natural action indicates, and are likenesses of individuals, which will be readily recognized by their friends. The topography of the distant shore of the pond is accurately sketched, as any resident of the locality will testify and the whole is an expressive record of winter amusements at one of the most popular end fashionable places in the vicinity of Boston. The companionship of ladies on the skating field, and their earnest participation in the sport is a pleasing novelty.

A larger and perhaps less aristocratic scene was published in Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in 1858. Here you can plainly see, in the background, the ice House at Eliot Street and on the left, buildings that, by comparison with a map of the same date seem to be Farrington [and] Amory houses. In the figures there is verve and elan, there is feminine dash and there is conjugal devotion. Three on the extreme left find warmth in the bottle rather than in exercise. There is a small iceboat in the distance and a line of figures as rhythmic as Rockettes, executing "Snap the Whip. "

And here is the Bufford Lithograph of 1858 that appeared in Antiques Magazine in 1925, the start of the collection. On the extreme left in the background are the trees of Pine Bank. The Farrington, Amory and Curtis houses must be there but have not been identified. There is a grace and style here, ermine and silk top hats, the mood gay, but more restrained than in the past picture.

In her diary for the years 1855 to 1859, Elizabeth Rogers Mason of Boston, who later married Walter Cabot of Brookline, has a description that fits the scene before you.

On Jan. 26, 1855 she writes: (Extract from the diary of Elizabeth Rogers Mason, (Mrs. Walter Cabot) owned by Charles C. Cabot. )

Jan. 26, 1855
I failed to mention a new amusement which has arisen on the Boston horizon, skating. Last Wednesday, having heard of the performances of some of the ladies who live on Jamaica Pond, the two Mrs. Bacons (nee Low) and many others, a party of girls determined to go out to the omnibus to see them. The weather was fine, and having had an early dinner, and borrowed Fanny Cary's skates, Willy and I proceeded to the omnibus on Park Street corner, at quarter of three where we found Mrs. Sam Hooper and Annie, Lucy Sturgis, Nelly Hooper, and the Grays a Mr. Lord and his sister of New York and Mr. John Hanson, Mr. Joe Gardner etc. Arriving at Green's corner in little more than half an hour, we walked onto the Pond, where we found crowds of people skating, or learning, sliding, laughing, etc. I put on Fanny's skates, and was able to stand on them very well and to be pulled about, that is by taking the arm of some one who skated well, I could follow, taking no motions myself, but without losing my balance. Mr. Fay was very polite, and carried me many times over the ice, also Mr. Edward Perkins, Mr. Gardner, and others. In coming home, it snowed hard, and the walk to the cars by which we returned, which is more than half a mile, was by no means delightful. Neither can I say much for the walk from the Providence depot through Charles Street, which was wet, cold and horrid.

Jan 30, 1855
Good skating again. . . . I was glad to arrive at length at the omnibus. Our party, which was very large, soon more than filled it, so that some of the gentlemen got a carriage, and invited Mrs. Hooper and myself to ride in it. We, making ourselves small rode on the back seat with Willy and Mr. Lord, Frank Palfrey and Mr. John Higginson occupied the front one. The pond was covered with people amounting to five or six hundred, the afternoon was brilliant and I enjoyed it excessively.

Jan. 31, 1855
This morning called for Lucy Sturgis and raced down at ten to the Providence depot. Here we found Willy Amory, Mr. Higginson, the Grays, Mr. Lord, Mary Quincy, George Dexter, and others. The weather was brilliant, the skating splendid, and to our great surprise, we met a good many people on the pond. We all had a very grand time; one sees people in such an easy, pleasant way. Altogether we passed a very gay morning, and returned by the omnibus at one, in very high spirits.

Feb. 1, 1855
. . . notwithstanding the snow, which fell fast, called for the Hoopers, and with them proceeded to the omnibus for Jamaica Pond. Mrs. Hooper, Annie, Suzy Welles, Charlotte Gray, Lizzie Winthrop and myself, with Mr. Higginson, Mr. Gardner and Willy formed our party. We thought ourselves very energetic, and were mutually surprised to find each other. Lucy Sturgis rode out with Mr. John Reed Arrived at the pond and we found Mr. Willy Otis, Mr. Peabody, Mr. Palfrey, and all the world. Sheltons, Mary Coolidge, Mr. Dixon, Mr. Brimmer, an assembly in fact. Mr. Otis was in great distress, because having promised to carry Mattie Parker out in his wagon, he had thought her in jest and had driven out without even calling for her, while Charlotte Gray left her at half after ten, waiting with all her things on. I enjoyed the afternoon more than ever before. The sun had checked the wind. It was mild; good skating and I felt remarkably well. I crossed the pond with Lucy Howard, who does not skate better than myself, several times, we found long lines of a dozen all taking hold of hands, we were pushed in a sleigh belonging to the Bacons, and in a kind of high chair on runners, which Mr. Joe Gardner had made expressly for the purpose; and altogether it was splendid. I never felt a sensation of cold, even in my feet, which generally suffer horribly, and was in high spirits. In crossing the pond on our return I had my first real fall, for being behind the others, and dragged very rapidly by a long stick, I came suddenly to very rough ice without perceiving it, and measured my length, without injury, however, except to my bonnet, and in getting very wet from the snow. We rode in sitting in each other's laps, the omnibus being perfectly crowded, and at home found Aunt Ellen and Uncle John to tea.

Mon. Feb. 8, 1858
A fine dry day though windy. Skating as a matter of course. We tried a little pond called Ward's near Jamaica but found it terribly windy, and crossed over to Jamaica where under the lee of the shore we had a very nice place.

Sat. Feb. 27, 1858
Went out to Jamaica Pond this morning. The ice rather poor. Lewis Cabot was there and very pleasant.

Thurs. Mar. 4, 1858
Went out to Jamaica Pond today, but the skating was poor excepting a little patch twenty feet long, where I tried the outer edge alone, and did not get it.

Fri. Mar. 5, 1858
Went to Jamaica Pond but it was so bitterly cold that I was perfectly exhausted when I got home.

Jan. 25, 1859
Went out skating with Nellie Hooper to Jamaica.

Jan. 26, 1859
Went today to some meadows near Jamaica Pond. Perfect ice and hot weather.

Jan. 31 1859
Went to Jamaica Pond to skate after dinner.

Feb. 1, 1859
Went out this morning to Jamaica. A snowstorm came Thursday.

Feb. 6, 1859
Buried the skating, rather to my relief for one cannot stay at home when it is good.

By March 5, 1858 perhaps thrill and enthusiasm had waned a bit for she records "Went to Jamaica Pond today but it was so bitterly cold that I was perfectly exhausted when I got home. "

Although the skating scene on this sheet of music is entitled: "View on Jamaica Pond", it does not show in the slide. The very same Skating Polka can be found dedicated to other bodies of water Central Park, for instance. However, this may be the original one, and it does look like Pine Bank in the background. It serves to show you the last word in fashion for the period on the young lady in the foreground, who has discarded the bonnet for the daring new hat, known as the "Tom and Jerry. " And you get a good view here of the skates that James DeWolf Lovett has described so graphically in his reminiscences Old Boston Boys.

Ice skates in those days were clumsy affairs, the front end piece curling back over the foot in a large scroll usually ornamented with a brass acorn fixed upon its tip. A simple straight spike fitted a hole bored in the boot heel and the skate was held on to the boot by straps, necessarily drawn up almost to the breaking point and crossing over the top of the foot, thus most effectively stopping all circulation and causing an excruciatingly painful coldness in that member.

This appeared in Ballou's Pictorial 1855. It was taken from the shore near Burroughs Street and looks toward Pine Bank, beyond to the slope on which Quincy Shaw built his house about ten years later.

The popular weekly Ballou's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion originated in 1851 as Gleason's Pictorial. In 1854 it had changed to Ballou's. On the under side of this print is the editorial page of the paper with an item or two of interest. In the letter column a subscriber from Hartford, Conn. had written:

"Mr. Ballou, Dear Sir-
In renewing my subscription for your illustrated paper, I cannot refrain from expressing my satisfaction at its increased excellence and my hearty approval of its character. Its weekly visits are looked forward to by my family with much interest and while its admirable reading matter has amused and instructed my children, its elegant illustrations have created among them a taste for drawing and designing which has elicited a talent that would otherwise remain dormant. The pure moral tone of your columns is beyond praise. I do not fear to place the Pictorial in my daughter's hands, because I know that you never sully its fair pages by even a word that good taste and propriety may question. Such a journal is a valuable aid to intelligence and art, and is a national good. Your obedient servant. . .

And in another column there was reference to a recent performance of "The Opera of Don Giovanni. "

We sincerely trust, for decency's sake that this obscene composition may never again be produced in Boston. Captivating and superb as the music is-it cannot in the least degree atone for so objectionable a libretto.

Is it not regrettable that so aggressive a moral influence ceased publication in 1859?

Here is practically the same view of the Pond on a summer's day (In 1878, 23 years later). The Quincy Shaw house has been built on the slope beyond Pine Bank. On the extreme left are Lochstead and its boathouse and behind the cluster of small houses, later demolished, that mark the entrance to the Sargent estate.

Three houses have succeeded each other on Pine Bank. James Perkins of Boston who married Sarah Paine of Worcester built the first in 1802 for a summer home. He died there in 1822. Their granddaughter, Sarah Perkins Cleveland has left many descriptions of life and events at Pine Bank in her family letters. She had spent most of her youth there, with her grandmother, and it was her home after her marriage to Henry Cleveland, in 1838. In a foreword to the letters, Miss Eliza Cleveland, her daughter, who had them typewritten, wrote.

I have often heard my mother describe the summers at Pine Bank, the boating on the Lake, the long rides on horseback, the four hours spent each day reading to her grandmother, the visits of the large family circle, and the boys coming back from school and college. Once a year Sarah drove with her grandmother, in stately fashion, in the chariot with yellow wheels, the pair of roan horses, and Calvin Swallow, the American coachman, to Worcester, on a visit to the Paine relations. My great-grandmother sat erect and never leaned back once, all the 50 miles.

She was a grand lady of the times and a witty friend once said that if Madam Perkins was approaching the Gates of Heaven, she would say to her coachman, 'Drive right in, Calvin. '

My mother had a love for Pine Bank that amounted to a passion.

After her husband's death Mrs. Cleveland relinquished her share in Pine Bank to her brother Edward, on his marriage, and he tore down the old house and in 1848 built a grander one on its foundations, from plans of a French architect, Le Monier "not, to my taste, becoming to the place", wrote Mrs. Cleveland, "French, square and heavy. "

To her brother in Europe she wrote poignantly of the destruction of the old house.

Charley dear, our own dear Pine Bank house is no more-the old house nearly level. I have not looked upon its murder, though when I was the other day on your land I heard the dear old boards and planks sighing and screaming as they were rent asunder it seemed to me that they told, one by one, the years in succession that had been numbered since it stood 1804 with a shriek, 1805 with a scream, 1806, a shudder, it ripped apart.

In 1868, twenty years later on the 10th of February, the second house, "French, square and heavy" was completely destroyed by fire.

She wrote:
The fire originated in a chimney which caught and burned furiously at 4 P. M. It was when the housemaid kindled the fire in Mary's bedroom to be ready for her return from Boston. It is now ascertained that the brick-work of the chimney was cracked and open during its burning, and thus fire must have dropped into the woodwork.

Mary and Edward returned in the afternoon and hearing from the servants what had occurred, made very thorough examination in the rooms where the chimney passed and all seemed perfectly right, no smell or smoke or undue heat to be anywhere, and the poor darlings being tired after a town day, took a little repose on the sofa, and Edward fell asleep. He was roused by a muffled explosion, and rushing to the window as he rushed upstairs, the glare of a large glow shone out from the burning roof and was reflected on the white lawn of snow. Within 10 minutes all hope of saving the house had vanished. It was 7: 30 P. M. and the neighbors all were at their various homes and came so promptly, rich and poor, that all the furniture of second and lower stories, and all the books, pictures bas-reliefs, even the chandeliers and several marble fire places were saved by their friendly energy and kindness.

The night was very cold and very slippery. Later some bad and rowdy men came as they always will and stole some things and many clothes and broke into a wine cellar and drank up a quantity of choice wine.

We had to watch the great leaping flames which painted the outline of the beloved home against the sky.

In 1870, two years later Edward Perkins built another house, the one we know still standing on Pine Bank. It was of red brick, this time with ornamental courses of moulded white tiles that were ordered from England 11, 000 of them. "My aunt called them the 11, 000 virgins of St. Ursula, " wrote Miss Cleveland. And Mrs. Cleveland wrote, "The Pine Bank house is truly a beauty, a benefit to the public as it is an introduction of bricks of various colors, such as have never been seen here before. " Mrs. Cleveland had built her own final home on the land adjoining the Quincy Shaw place, happy to be so near her beloved Pine Bank.

This is a summer view from the Cabot side of the pond, an illustration from the magazine Picturesque America about 1875. A bit of Pine Bank on the left, both ice houses in the background and on the extreme right the Parkman place.

Mr. J. Templeman Coolidge of Boston married Mr. Parkman's daughter Katherine. As a very old gentleman he sat, one day, on the Cabot's terrace overlooking the pond and told how, in his courting days, he would come out to Jamaica Plain by train and walk to the edge of the Pond, and how this lovely girl would row across to meet him and bring him back to her house

Exhausted from his great literary labors, Mr. Parkman suffered a severe mental breakdown. As a change of occupation he took up horticulture with noteworthy success. He had a greenhouse here and made a specialty of roses, having 1000 varieties, and the hybridization of lilies. The Lilium Parkmana he sold to an English florist for $1000.

His constitutional was an hour's row daily on The Pond, which he never omitted or shortened. To overcome boredom he would name the points of land after famous capes, one was the Cape of Good Hope and one cove was Bering Sea. He was taking his usual row one Sunday in 1893 when he became ill with appendicitis and died a few days later of peritonitis.

Here you have the Jamaica Pond Ice Co. at work, and can see the checkered surface where the blocks have been measured and marked for cutting. Mrs. Robert Stone used to say that it was a thrill and excitement of her youth to try to slip undetected up the long chute and climb about in the gables of the icehouse roof.

Besides being the source of Boston's ice supply, the Pond was the first source of water supply for Boston. The Jamaica Plain Aqueduct Co. incorporated in 1795, laid about 45 miles of pipes, made of pitch pine logs but in trenches only 3 to 3

In the Victorian era Jamaica Plains' 200 acre Moss Hill was also known as Bowditch Hill, named for one branch of the Bowditch family of Salem fame, who lived there. Grandfather Jonathan Bowditch brought his family to Moss Hill in the mid-19th century. In 1885 his son Alfred built a house, still standing, for his family on the hill's northern side. In 1950 Rosamond Bowditch Loring wrote a brief memoir of Moss Hill, which has been republished by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. A few years ago her older sister wrote a lengthy memoir, complete with photographs. Both texts are now at the Massachusetts Historical Society. From the latter text is reprinted Miss Mary Orne Bowditch's postscript to her memoir. - Walter H. Marx

On a lovely May afternoon in 1950 an impulse to see our old house (now 32 Woodland Rd.) took me to the very door to ask permission to wander around the place. A friendly couple with two children were at home and asked me to come in. They had just bought the house with its now small piece of land and some of the trees that I had known as a girl, and they seemed overjoyed with their new ownership. Going indoors was hard. No wallpaper nor any piece of furniture remained of the old days, and for a moment it seemed that I couldn't go through with the visit.

But if a friend were old and ill, it would be unthinkable to turn one's back, and an overwhelming sense of home won the battle. I went in and suddenly felt and saw something far beyond the changed surface of it all. There was a fire in the library - a cozy late afternoon welcome. I could see and touch the familiar woodwork with its fine carving around the mantelpiece and bookcase mouldings. I fed my eyes on the familiar views from the windows and seized as many memories as possible, clutching greedily at each.

One rapturous moment came from finding the old silver safe with its odd embossed white metal doorknob and the curious thin key, which I had loved as a child. There was the lacy metalwork around the keyholes and handles of the dining room cupboard, the smooth white painted chimney breast in the parlor, the thin wooden discs and diamond shapes above the parlor and library doors. I saw through all the present shabbiness and reconstructed the world of childhood. Above all, I knew that the house still held its place among all houses, for it was still giving shelter and happiness to children, and for this I was grateful.

I went out-of-doors and down the bank to the present Bowditch Street, where only a few flagstones remained to mark the path to Mamma's garden. It was blocked and overgrown, but over the tops of bushes I spied the little wooden platform, where the sundial had been. It was the only landmark. I walked away like a lonely ghost. I had made the most of the illusion while it lasted, and the visit was an experience never to be repeated. It was stolen time, a moment relived in a dead past, and only imagination made it real. They were dream moments, calling back our family life with its peace and safety.

Then I said good-bye and turned up the driveway toward Grandpa Bowditch's. All Moss Hill is now girdled by new roads and small developments. Grandpapa's and Uncle Charles' houses have been torn down. The bowling alley, pig sty, tilt, swing and woodpile are all gone, and our old playground is a wilderness. The well-kept lawns and the gardens had grown up to be almost unrecognizable, but the new buildings were not yet in sight from the hilltop. The spring was there, and, though uncared for, it is still the most beautiful place in the world.

I retraced the familiar path to Grandpapa's garden. It was like a maze growing about the sleeping beauty and symbolic of the life of past generations - the paths overgrown and the unpruned shrubs flowering wildly, careless of neglect. I wanted to pick armfuls of the lovely white blossoms, which no one but me would ever see again, but something stopped me. I picked only a tiny bunch, which not even the tree itself could miss. There was an unseen guardian. It was still and will be forever Grandpapa's garden.

By Mary Orne Bowditch

An old Jamaica Plain homestead is best known by the name of the former estate, over which it once presided: Pinebank, so called from its pine-surrounded rise on the north shore of Jamaica Pond. Now surrounded by a high chain-link fence, entirely overgrown with lofty weeds, and in ruinous state, the Ruskinian Gothic brick house hardly shows any trace of its former graciousness.

One claim to glory is that it is now the only house left of those that were taken by the City of Boston in 1892, when it was decided to create Jamaica (now Olmsted) Park. Taken for use as a refectory for those visiting the park (but only briefly used thus), the house's downfall began when the last Perkins was allowed to remove fireplace mantels and stained-glass windows.

Pinebank I was built in 1802 by China trade merchant James Perkins (1761-1822) as a Federal country house on the banks of Jamaica Pond. Photograph courtesy of Anthony Mitchell Sammarco.

Pinebank's name is often linked to the illustrious Perkins family of China merchants and philanthropists, who owned the area throughout the 19th century. Hence the name of the street that connects Roxbury, JP, Brookline, Newton and West Roxbury. This was the first Perkins county home in our vicinity. Brothers Samuel and Thomas had fancier ones reaching into Brookline.

The present remnants of the Ruskinian Gothic house seen today are of the third Perkins residence on the site, as attested by the three dates in tan terracotta work above the driveway entrance-something worth preservation. Fortunately, photographs of all three homes remain. Pinebank I, a 21/2 story wooden Federal style home with shutters and porch (more in the spirit of Holbrook Farm), was built in 1806 as a summer house by the scholarly James Perkins (1761-1822), senior member of the China trading firm.

His grandson, Edward N. Perkins, tore Pinebank I down in 1848 and built a year-round house. Pinebank II was a substantial three-storied affair with mansard roof by a French architect, Jean Lemoulnier, who worked in Boston in the 1840's. It faced the Pond with a small terrace and balconied front entrance with fancy grillwork along the roofline.

When Pinebank II burned out in 1868, Perkins started all over again on the still useable foundation. Sturgis & Brigham designed the once-glorious Pinebank III, Gothic in red brick and imported English tan terracotta-a theme they developed in their next project, the first home of the Museum of Fine Arts at Copley Square where the Copley Plaza Hotel now stands.

Pinebank II was built in 1848 on the site of the original house by Edward Newton Perkins. Photograph courtesy of Anthony Mitchell Sammarco.

The driveway entrance was made to commemorate all the Perkins homes with the dates they were built worked into the terracotta over the door, while the Pond entrance retained the prior balcony porch concept. Pinebank III seems not as elegant as its predecessor, but life there must have been pleasant. To the east the family had easy access to the Pond via their cove in the adjacent vale, filled in by the Park Commissioners early in this century.

To the west, easy access was had to the Pond via a set of sandstone steps installed in 1864 and purchased from the auction of the former John Hancock Mansion on Beacon Hill. Notable also were the giant cottonwood trees on either side of the house and its ivy, brought from England by the family.

After the Perkins family moved out, Pinebank III became the property of the Parks Department of the City of Boston. Fire visited the site in 1895, destroying the roof and much of the interior. Noted City architect Edmund Wheelwright designed a new roof, remodelled the interior, and added the present large terrace, perhaps inspired by the elegant look of Pinebank II.

Until July, 1913 the remodeled Pinebank served as headquarters for the Park Department, when it granted Pinebank's free use for ten years to the newly founded Children's Museum. The natural history and ethnological lectures and exhibits so well recalled by older JP residents were given here.

Nominal rent was arranged with the City, and the Museum prospered with the help of its neighbor, Mayor Curley. In 1935 came the end of the second ten-year lease, and the Museum Trustees confronted the question of renewal. Pinebank needed major repairs and was growing smaller day by day with every spaced pressed to the utmost. Automobiles were denied access.

Fortunately the Museum was able to purchase the former Morse/Milton estate on the Jamaicaway in January 1936 and after a gala program in March left Pinebank. On July 15 it was completely empty and officially returned to the Parks Department, which used it to store records. Henceforth it was a white elephant.

In the 1970's it became a center for arts courses in an Arts in the Park series run by the Parks Department, but a fire in 1978 gutted the interior, preventing any further use. A roof was hurriedly thrown up, but the house, standing secluded off the Jamaicaway, invited trouble. In 1982 another fire finished off any wood in the interior. Yet again another crude roof was hurriedly installed, and for good measure a chain link fence erected all around it. Thus the sorry picture at the present time.

Sources: Seaburg & Paterson, Merchant Prince of Boston, Cambridge, 1971 C. Zaitzevsky, "Pinebank: the History of a Site and a Building" in R. White, Feasibility Study- Pinebank Recreational Building, BRA, 1979 A. B. Sayles, The Story of the Children's Museum. Boston, 1937.

Reprinted with permission from the September 20, 1991 Jamaica Plain Gazette.Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.

By John Ruch

Pinebank, the decaying, abandoned mansion overlooking Jamaica Pond,
will be gone by the end of the month.

Its existence spanned three centuries. Failed attempts to preserve it
spanned three decades.

When the house was built in 1870, Jamaica Plain wasn’t a part of
Boston and the Emerald Necklace park system hadn’t been thought of
yet. By 2005, its dangerously crumbling remains could be safely
explored only by an engineer’s Space Age robot.

When perhaps the most promising preservation attempt was made in the
early 1990s, Margaret Dyson was president of Historic Massachusetts,
Inc. and a leading member of a Pinebank citizens advisory committee.
Now, she’s the city’s director of historic parks, fated to oversee the
mansion’s demolition.

Times have changed during Pinebank’s lifetime. Now, its time is up.

On Jan. 3, exactly 51 weeks after announcing that Pinebank was too
weather- and fire-ravaged to save, the city began demolishing it.

It’s a slow-motion demolition that involves salvaging some of the
imported English brick and terra cotta decorations, possibly for use
in a rebuilt Pinebank, and more likely in a modest memorial the city
is planning on the site. Memorial construction could start this
spring.

The only active advocate for rebuilding the mansion is the
Brookline-based Friends of Pinebank, which envisions it as an arts
center. But the group needs to add a couple of zeroes to the $40,000
bottom line of its bank account to approach the realm of financial
feasibility.

A week into the demolition, most of the decorative elements had been
removed, along with all of the exterior brick from the western wall.
The rear portico was gone. Dyson told the Gazette last week that the
building was in such bad shape, workers were able to simply yank
bricks out of the wall.

“It’s relatively rare to be able to dismantle a building with your
bare hands,” she said.

History
The current Pinebank is the last of three mansions with that name
built on the site by the wealthy Perkins family, for whom the nearby
street is named. The first went up in 1806, then was demolished to
make way for a fancier second Pinebank in 1848.

Pinebank II burned in 1868. The current version was built on its foundation.

The site is atop the high embankment along the north side of the pond.
Conifers still grow in the area, which is presumably the origin of the
Pinebank name.

The city took over the property in the 1890s. Frederick Law Olmsted
intended the mansion to be a “refectory,” or a place to get light
refreshments, in his Emerald Necklace design, but that never happened.
A fire, one of Pinebank’s many, gutted the building in 1895.

From about 1914 to 1936, the mansion was the home of the Boston
Children’s Museum. Mostly, it served various Boston Parks and
Recreation Department uses, including providing arts courses and a
theater program that staged productions in the dell outside the
mansion’s front door.

Pinebank was boarded up and abandoned in 1978 after another huge fire.
Reuse proposals were numerous, but all foundered on a lack of money
and many complex site issues, including a lack of parking and park
impact concerns. The 1990s process culminated in a nationwide request
for proposals that only drew an infeasible idea for a wine bar.

Meanwhile, the mansion found unofficial reuse as a graffiti billboard
and “haunted house” for thrill-seeking kids.

Memorials
As Pinebank became a fenced-off eyesore in the park, many activists
gradually and grudgingly came to believe that it should go.

Last year, the parks department announced that there is no way to save
the building, and the city’s Inspectional Services Department ordered
its demolition for safety reasons. The building was crumbling rapidly.
On Jan. 1, the Gazette observed what appeared to be a recent fall of
bricks from the west facade, and an existing hole that had recently
become much larger.

The parks department and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy held a long
string of meetings about planning some kind of memorial to replace
Pinebank. The city’s general idea involves rebuilding low walls and
some kind of informational displays. That would also leave open the
possibility of reconstruction.

The Boston Landmarks Commission (BLC), which authorized the
demolition, continues to oversee the entire process. It heard the
latest update last week.

Workers are salvaging all of the white terra cotta decorations; all of
the west side exterior brick, which is the wall in the best shape; and
as many carved stone pieces as possible, according to Dyson.

That includes the “date stone,” a stone above the mansion’s door that
bears the dates of all three Pinebanks. The date stone is especially
desirable for a memorial, she said.

But, Dyson warned, even the salvaged material may fall apart, as old
masonry sometimes does when it’s no longer held together by the weight
of the building. The date stone is going to a conservator for special
examination, she said.

“In some ways, we need to do the deconstruction piece to even know
what we have to work with,” Dyson said.

Dyson said it’s already known that none of the decorative yellow brick
can be used in an outdoor memorial, because it will continue to
crumble.

She also acknowledged that reusing any of the material in a memorial
is controversial to Friends of Pinebank, which argues that it would
reduce the amount of original material available for a reconstruction.

After the salvaged materials are examined, a memorial plan will be
presented to the BLC, Dyson said, adding that if there is a
significant new problem with reusing materials or the site itself,
another round of public meetings might come first.

A memorial isn’t the only place for salvaged material. The city will
archive samples of the materials along with “study packets”—CDs
containing detailed plans, photos and other information about
Pinebank. Samples would go to city and state archives, and possibly
the Jamaica Plain Historical Society.

“[Someone] could, with that information, possibly rebuild the
building,” Dyson said. That would involve recasting the bricks and
decorations to match the surviving samples.

Boston Children’s Museum curators were on the site last week,
attempting to examine and perhaps acquire some salvaged material for
its archives, according to spokesperson Rick Stockwood. The idea, he
said, is for the museum to keep a sample in its permanent collection
and possibly use it somehow in the museum’s 100th anniversary
celebration in 2013.

The material is not being handed out that way on the fenced-off site,
and Dyson said she was unaware of the museum’s interest. But, she
added, “I think it’s a great idea.” Stockwood said the museum is now
in discussion with the parks department about acquiring a sample.

Archiving samples still leaves the vast majority of salvaged material.
Dyson said the city still hopes to bury it on the site as a
preservation measure.

“The goal is to keep [salvaged materials] on the property in the
foundation so if
reconstruction was going to happen the material will still be on
site,” she said. BLC commissioners have expressed mixed opinions about
the idea.

In the short term, salvaged material is being stored in a locked
container on the site, which was also guarded during a recent Gazette
visit.

Reprinted with permission from the January 19, 2007 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.

 

Some Reflections of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish 50 Years Ago
By Joseph Galeota

Founded in 1908, Our Lady of Lourdes Parish was exactly half way to its 100th Anniversary in 1958, when I was privileged to graduate from its school.

Like Caesar’s Gaul, all of Jamaica Plain at that time was divided in tres partes: Blessed Sacrament, St. Thomas (Aquinas) and Lourdes. (Because it straddled Jamaica Plain and Roslindale, St. Andrew’s was not formally part of The Big Three; because it included only a few Jamaica Plain streets – Dalrymple and Boylston come quickly to mind – and it did not have a school, St. Mary of the Angels also was not considered part of The Big Three.)

Though no longer attending Lourdes in the 1950s, Mayor Curley was referenced reverentially by elders as “James Michael.” The urban myth was that the borders of Lourdes had been gerrymandered to include his mansion on the distant Jamaicaway.

The 1950s were truly remarkable days for Our Lady of Lourdes. Monsignors Kelly and then Desmond oversaw three or more curates – nowadays called “parochial vicars” – at the same time. Sunday masses were on the half hour every hour, starting at 6:30 and extending to 11:30, the children’s Mass being at 8:30, when they had to sit up front. The parish school was teeming with the children of Irish immigrants, for the most part, while at least eighteen Sisters of St. Joseph staffed the school, two assigned to each grade from first to eighth.

The smell of barley and oats from the Haffenreffer Brewery (“H-A-double-F-E-N-R-E-double-F-E-R,” which produced, as locals who drank a tad too much called it the next day, “Green Death”) wafted over much of the parish, depending on which way the wind was blowing. Speeding diesel locomotives pulling The Merchants Limited, The Yankee Clipper, The Colonial, and The Night Owl to and from New York and Washington bisected the parish virtually every hour.

In the days before photocopying machines, the veiled nuns risked purple hands from Rexograph machines as they sought to provide stimulating work for thirty or more students in each class. The nuns taught all subjects, with the task of disciplining uncooperative students falling to the principal of the school. The cook took care of the nuns’ culinary needs as students departed school at noon each day for lunch and had to be back at one o’clock.

At the risk of offending any of the hundreds of saintly and dedicated nuns who served our parish, I have to mention a few: Sister Clarissa was an aged, holy nun who taught 50 or so third graders year after year. What made her distinctive was not her wrinkled face between the starched linen; nor was it her wonderful classroom management of cherubic 9-year olds. Rather, it was the fact that she told a joke each day that her students anticipated so eagerly – this, mind you, in an era when “laughter and religion” were not mentioned in the same sense. Sister Mariterese, a young nun teaching 8th grade, was keenly interested in sports. Not having access to The Boston Post and The Boston Traveller, she was interested in any tidbits about the Red Sox and her teenage charges’ athletic accomplishments. And then there was Sister Jamesina, not even trained as a music teacher, who, mirabile dictu, taught her 5th graders, sitting in six rows, to sing “Beautiful Dreamer” in stunning, three-part harmony.

Not unlike so many others who were given a wonderful education gratis, I take pride in recalling all the CSJ’s who taught me: Sisters Melrherese in the 1st, Honorius in the 2nd, Margaret Mary in the 4th, Petrus in the 6th, and Annunciata in the 7th, under the principalships of Aniceta and Joanita.

There was no gymnasium at the school, so the walk back and forth to home was the mid-day exercise, nowadays called physical education. Students who could not reach home in time to come back for the afternoon session ate lunch at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood House on Amory Street, run by Charlie Flaherty. For the most part, stay-at-home mothers were the rule, and it was a good time to get soup and a sandwich. On Wednesday afternoons, Father Manton radio-broadcast his novena at noontime from Mission Church, listening to which was de rigeur in my home.

The parish school had two lines filing out twice a day: the Brookside Avenue line and the Washington Street one. The students from the former passed under the mainline of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad through a tunnel; the other students crossed under the noisy overhead of the MTA’s Forest Hills-Everett line. Even though we attended the same school, there was a feeling of wariness if one were to go on the “wrong” side of the New Haven Railroad tracks. (Note: there was no socio-economic difference as triple-deckers existed on both sides.)

On one occasion, unbeknownst to the nuns, the boys from both sides of the tracks decided to play a tackle football game against each other outside White Stadium (where the students of Boston Tech, Roxbury Memorial, Jamaica Plain High, and Roslindale High competed in double-headers inside). No adults were there on an autumn Saturday morning to supervise our game, because all sports in those days were pick-up games. I can’t remember who won, but an 8th grader broke his leg in this “unauthorized” game, and to quote Forrest Gump, “that was the end of that.”

The church held many activities. My parents spoke of card parties before I came along, but these fund-raisers did not exist in the fifties, which saw a vibrant Sodality, Holy Name, Drum-and Bugle-Corps, altar boys, CYO baseball and basketball (using the Carolina Playground and the Mary Curley School gym, respectively). The St. Vincent de Paul Society functioned with home visits below the radar, lest anyone’s privacy be violated. Separate missions for men and women were conducted at night. A large parish carnival was held in the summer outside in the good weather in the parking lot of the “old” church.

Three places were off-limits. Nobody was allowed on the grassy plot on both sides of the church. Nor were kids allowed on the convent lawn. Entering the fenced-off area where the nuns hung their clothes to dry on the line was equally verboten.

To serve as an altar boy at a funeral was a reputable way to get out of school for an hour. But any joy was offset by the somber way the priests at Solemn High Mass would recite, “May the angels lead thee into Paradise; may the martyrs welcome thee…” before grieving loved ones.

Lighting the candles for High Mass was an altar boy’s worst nightmare. As bad as lighting the incense for Sunday afternoon Benediction, igniting the unreasonably high candles with a long taper tested even a priest’s patience when the time for beginning Mass/benediction was imminent.

Attending morning Mass during Advent and Lent was expected of pupils. One curate, Father McDevitt, did not own a car, and he could be seen in his priestly attire, understandably devoid of his usual friendliness, walking the streets of the parish bringing Holy Communion to shut-ins.

Most of the parish did their shopping at one of the First National stores, a small one at Green and Washington streets, a large one in Egleston Square, and another large one on Centre Street near the Monument. The Mohican Market at Green and Centre offered an alternative to the Finast products.

There were no movie theaters in the parish; parishioners had the choice of the Egleston, the Jamaica in Hyde Square, and the Franklin and Oriental both on Blue Hill Avenue. Two fire stations served the parish, one in Egleston Square and the other on Centre Street (now JP licks). The police station was Station 13, where a no-nonsense motorcycle police officer named McGowan enforced law and order for OLOL kids crossing streets.

A number of bar-rooms and liquor stores (euphemistically called “package stores”) dotted the parish, but virtually no restaurants. Howard Johnson’s at the Forest Hills Rotary, just beyond the parish boundary, was the destination of 8th grade classes on graduation night, with its 28 flavors of ice cream. Doyle’s had not achieved any citywide fame yet. Kilgariff’s, near Mayo’s Hardware Store on Green Street, provided musical entertainment at night. On the Fourth of July free Hoodsies and gimp were given out at the Margaret Fuller School, while Jamaica Pond was the site of fireworks after dusk, long before the Hatch Shell became the popular venue for Arthur Fiedler.

Marriages, baptisms, Holy Communion, Confirmation, and funerals were performed numerous times for our family in the church that honors the appearance of the Blessed Mother to Bernadette Soubiroux in a French village. If only every child and family had the discipline, training, and love – from the Sisters of St. Joseph, the priests, family, and classmates – that those of us who grew up in the fifties in Lourdes experienced, to quote Louis Armstrong, “What a wonderful world it would be!”