USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 19
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This dam was constructed so as to provide a good and sub- stantial road and the proprietors were to be allowed to charge tolls, as soon as another dam, with roadway, should be built from the end of the main dam at Sewall's Point to the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline Village. Tolls were not to be charged, however, until the sides were railed and the road was furnished with lamps, all to the satisfaction of the selectmen.
Another roadway was built from Sewall's Point, easterly, through Brookline to Brighton Church, intersecting the old road to the colleges at the point [now marked by a tablet] where the Colonel Thomas Gardner house stood [at what is now the corner of Harvard and Brighton Avenues in Allston], and later this road was continued as a turnpike to Water- town, by the arsenal grounds.
John G. Hales, writing in 1821, says of this Mill Dam Road: 'The different roads to Brighton are generally good, and the country through which they pass agreeably pleasant, but the one just completed from the Mill-dam will be far the most preferable, not only in point of distance, but the pro- jectors seem to have spared neither pains or expense in cut- ting through the acclivities and filling up the hollows, mak- ing the plane nearly level, and the best and hardest materials that could be obtained hath been used in forming the surface thereof.'
THE MILL DAM ROAD
The Mill Dam was completed in 1821 and was opened to public travel with a grand procession and similar features of celebration.
But there was much opposition to this project. For in- stance one remonstrant wrote a letter which was published in the Daily Advertiser of June 14, 1814, with these words: 'Citi- zens of Boston! Have you ever visited the Mall? Have you ever inhaled the Western Breeze fragrant with perfume, re- freshing in every sense and invigorating every nerve? What think you of converting that beautiful sheet of water which skirts the Common into an empty mud basin, reeking with
BEACON HOUSE.
BEACON HOUSE ON THE MILL DAM Where Beacon Street, Brookline Avenue, and Brighton Street (now Commonwealth Avenue) diverged
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filth, abhorrent to the smell, and disgusting to the eye? By all the Gods of sea, or lake or fountain, it is incredible!'
Although it was many years before this direful prophecy was verified, at last it became only too true, and it was be- cause the Back Bay, the basin of the confined tide waters, with its flats and other menaces to the public health, became such an intolerable nuisance that finally by state authority and under state ownership, the Back Bay was filled in with clean gravel, and this clean gravel was brought there train- load after train-load from the distant gravel hills in Needham - which completes the truth of the paradox.I
The roads over the Mill Dam continued as toll roads until, under authority of the legislature, they were laid out as public highways. In November, 1868, the town of Brookline ac- cepted so much of the main dam as lay within the town limits, as a public street called Beacon Street; the easterly fork was accepted as Brighton Avenue, and the westerly fork as Brookline Avenue. The town of Brighton took like action in regard to the easterly fork and at last we have the closing chapter in the story of that corner where the bronze tablet marks the site of the old house of Colonel Thomas Gardner.2
Mr. Baker's account of the Mill Dam, however, scarcely touches upon the two-year controversy that raged around the laying out and building of the road from the Mill Dam to Washington Street, the Beacon Street of today. George Griggs first urged it, but there was strong remonstrance by other citi- zens, presumably on the ground of expense, and in the town meeting of March 4, 1850, his motion was lost by a vote of 50 to 42. The next month, his efforts to have the town withdraw its opposition to the county commissioners' laying out the road, were defeated by a vote of 81 to 73.
The town was almost equally divided on the subject, and the rival factions became very bitter. However, in October of the same year, a committee was appointed to find out what the road might be expected to cost, and how much the mill com-
I It is curious to find in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Chapter XCIX, this sen- tence: 'And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cart- load, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.' -J. G. C.
2 This concludes Mr. Baker's manuscript.
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pany might be induced to contribute. Finally, in December, on the petition of Daniel Sanderson and others, it was de- cided to go ahead with the project, and a committee was named to superintend the matter.
When George Griggs as chairman made the committee's report to the special meeting of October 15, 1851, he com- mented on the fact that public projects of the kind invariably cost more than had been estimated. Added expense had re- sulted in the instant case, he said, from the fact that the mill corporation's contribution of two thousand dollars had been made contingent on completion of the work within one year from October 8, 1850.
The difference between having only 90 days to do the work in and having nearly a year [said the report] made the cost undoubtedly more, as the inconvenience of working on the marsh when it was not frozen, and of not allowing the con- tractors so much time as they wanted, undoubtedly added very considerably to the expense. This difficulty would have been avoided if those who remonstrated against the laying out of the road had not opposed its laying out till the very last, and induced the commissioners to postpone their de- cision until they could be fully heard. It certainly must be a satisfaction to all those who opposed the laying out of the Road to know that by their efforts the objections against the Road were fully and ably stated to the Commissioners, and that they did not act hastily, rashly, nor without due deliberation and a pretty thorough and full examination of the merits of the question before them. If in consequence of this delay the additional cost of the Road does not cause others to complain, the committee do not think that it will become those who caused this additional cost to be either very loud or bitter in their complaints.
That these harsh words carried a sting is borne out by the fact that
On motion of Marshal Stearns, seconded by J. Davenport, it was-
Voted, That all that part of said report which relates to the remonstrants against the laying out of the Road be struck out.
The report as thus amended was then accepted.
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Then there was the aftermath of a controversy over the claims of the principal contractor for the construction of the road, a matter finally settled by arbitration. Meanwhile the committee reported again, at the meeting of March 8, 1852, when chairman Griggs seems to have been in mellower mood, for with the tabulation of expenditures he included this some- what poetic prose:
The committee would earnestly recommend to the pro- prietors of land abutting on the new road ... that, where it has not already been done, trees should be set out this spring on both sides of the road from the end of the Mill Dam to the line of the town of Brighton, as they serve both as a grateful shade to man and beast who have occasion to travel the road during the heat of summer, and objects of ornament to the way and beauty to the taste at all seasons of the year. And though all who may [act] on this recommendation of the committee, and place ornamental and shade trees by the wayside, may not themselves live to enjoy a walk or drive along this broad avenue when the trees which they have planted shall have spread their leafy branches o'er the traveler's head, yet they may take to themselves the happy reflection that a grateful posterity will owe to them also a part of the grateful honour, thanks and blessings with which this committee and the friends of the road have been so lib- erally and even profusely overwhelmed by our intelligent publick-spirited and appreciative community.
This report, incidentally, indicates what sort of citizens, in Mr. Griggs' opinion, had been in sympathy with the project. It is not hard to discern what, by implication, he thought of the others.
Several years later there was trouble when tidewaters over- flowed the road, and steps were taken to provide culverts and flood-gates by way of protection. With the elimination of this difficulty, the new road began to demonstrate that substantial value to the community which has grown, even to the present time.
As has been indicated, this development of improved means of contact with more distant places was accompanied by an extensive program of street betterment within the town. It
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would serve no purpose to elaborate upon the widening, straightening, and relocating of various streets, the lowering of grades, construction of retaining walls, and other changes which made travel within the town limits at once easier and safer. But that all these things were done reflected the growing intercourse within as well as without the village limits, and the importance of facilities for getting about.1
THE UNWELCOME RAILROADS
However, from the beginning, Brookline's official attitude toward that dirty, noisy innovation, the railroad, was char- acterized by a marked lack of hospitality. In 1846, when Eb- enezer D. Ammidown and others were seeking a charter for a corporation to operate a railroad from Boston through Brook- line to Southbridge or Sturbridge, the town voted to refer the petition 'to the Committee having in charge the petition of George R. Russell and others; and that said Committee is hereby directed to resist in behalf of the Town the passage of this or any other Rail Road through the Town, which now is, or may hereafter be petitioned for during the present session of the Legislature.' Russell a fortnight earlier, had sought the approval of the town for a line to pass through its limits from Boston to Woonsocket Falls, Rhode Island.
In a community such as Brookline, and at a time when solid citizens seriously debated the relative merits of horse-drawn and steam-propelled transportation, the underlying causes of this opposition are not far to seek. The town government was dominated by men of comfortable personal fortune, who for the most part had their own carriages and were quite inde- pendent of anything so vulgar as a common carrier. Spared the pressure of inconvenience in this respect, they were not disposed to impair the charm of their village residence by
I Even as late as 1862, Brookline was apparently regarded as by no means par- ticularly accessible to Boston. In that year Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, bringing home his son, wounded in a Civil War engagement, stopped in New York and went to see Central Park for the first time. He described it as 'an expanse of wild country well crumpled so as to form ridges which will give views and hollows that will hold water ... but it cost me four dollars to get there, so far was it beyond the Pillars of Hercules of the fashionable quarter. What it will be by and by depends on circumstances; but at present it is as much central to New York as Brookline is to Boston.'
BROOKLINE
L
FIRST LOCOMOTIVE TO RUN ON THE BROOKLINE BRANCH RAILROAD Built in Liverpool in 1835
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acknowledging dependence on an unpleasant mechanism of unproved worth.
The attitude of such citizens is perhaps adequately char- acterized by an anonymous diarist of the time, who has de- scribed his reactions to a trip by rail from Boston to New York:
July 22, 1835. - This morning at nine o'clock I took pas- sage in a railroad car for Providence. Five or six other cars were attached to the locomotive, and uglier boxes I do not wish to travel in. They were made to stow away some thirty human beings, who sit cheek by jowl as best they can. Two poor fellows, who were not much in the habit of making their toilet, squeezed me into a corner, while the hot sun drew from their garments a villainous compound of smells made up of salt fish, tar and molasses. By and by, just twelve, -only twelve, -bouncing factory girls were intro- duced, who were going on a party of pleasure to Newport. 'Make room for the ladies!' bawled out the superintendent. 'Come, gentlemen, jump up on the top; plenty of room there.' 'I'm afraid of the bridge knocking my brains out,' said a passenger. Some made one excuse and some another. For my part, I flatly told him that since I had belonged to the corps of Silver Grays I had lost my gallantry, and did not intend to, move. The whole twelve were, however, intro- duced, and soon made themselves at home, sucking lemons and eating green apples .... The rich and poor, the edu- cated and the ignorant, the polite and the vulgar, all herd together in this modern improvement in travelling. The consequence is a complete amalgamation. Master and servant sleep heads and points on the cabin floor of the steamer, feed at the same table, sit in each other's laps, as it were, in the cars; and all this for the sake of doing very uncomfortably in two days what would be done delightfully in eight or ten. Shall we be much longer kept by this toil- some fashion of hurrying, hurrying, from starting (those who can afford it) on a journey with our own horses, and moving slowly, surely and profitably through the country, with the power of enjoying its beauty and be the means of creating good inns? Undoubtedly, a line of post-horses and post-chaises would long ago have been established along our great roads had not steam monopolized everything.
There were plenty, however, who could not afford travel
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with their own horses, and who nevertheless found it necessary to get about. Some concession to their convenience was inevitable.
The entering wedge came when the Boston and Worcester line asked permission to fix a gate across the Mill Dam Road at the railroad crossing. Brookline selectmen discussed this with the county commissioners, and the company was finally allowed to station a man at the crossing, 'whose duty it is to step out & wave his flag whenever an Engine passes over the road.'
On April 24, 1847, the Boston and Worcester Railroad was opened between Boston and Brookline, and over two thousand people were treated to free rides on fourteen trains. The affair seems to have gone off with considerable éclat, unlike similar demonstrations of a few years previous, on one of which a party returning from Westboro was delayed by head winds, and on another of which failure of the locomotive resulted in an altogether satisfactory substitution of horse power. It is not so hard, after all, to see why enthusiasm for the railroad could be considerably discounted, though it was doubtless a very remarkable thing when it worked.
The next year George Russell wanted to build a line from West Roxbury to Brookline as a means of communication with Boston, but the town meeting opposed the move, suggesting that passengers from West Roxbury would naturally travel by the Providence line rather than the Boston and Worcester. Furthermore, they said, 'if for no other reason, we are ear- nestly opposed to any road which, like this, thus unnecessarily must make a bad crossing over the principal street in the Town.'
In February, 1849, the question of the Woonsocket line was brought up again, debated in town meeting, 'and finally dis- posed of by laying the whole subject on the table, by a very large majority.' The following year, George B. Blake, Wil- liam I. Bowditch, and John Dane were named a committee to oppose the petition of the Charles River Railroad to the county commissioners for permission to cross Washington Street at grade, and insist that the company be obliged to build a bridge over their road. The same committee was directed to oppose the railroad's crossing Cypress Street or any other public high-
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way in the town at grade. Thus the town of Brookline under- took to prevent at the outset an evil which the state as a whole did not seek to remedy until 1889, when the first general agi- tation for the elimination of grade crossings was felt.
But there was a change of heart by June 16, 1851, on the part of a large section of the community, and in a spirited meeting, in which the names of the legal voters were individually called, a proposal to permit substitution of gates and a flagman for bridges at the proposed Washington Street and Cypress Street crossings, was lost by the narrow margin of 67 to 76. The remonstrance was sustained, and a committee report to the town meeting of March 8, 1852, indicates that the railroad company had been ordered to construct a bridge over Wash- ington Street.
The general feeling seems to have been that one, or at most, two railroads would be wholly adequate to the needs of the community, and the town was not to be cluttered up with superfluous traffic or a lot of dangerous crossings. It is an attitude the more extraordinary in a period when most towns were in favor of all the railroads they could get, and the spirit of untrammeled expansion was strong in the land. But for the exceptional make-up of Brookline's population, such restraint would scarcely have been demonstrated.
Reluctance to make the most of the new means of transpor- tation does not seem to have lingered long, for the town re- peatedly moved to make the Boston and Worcester station as easy of access as possible, and to improve the drainage in its vicinity. The available facilities were to be used to the best advantage.
It may have been sympathy with local enterprise that im- pelled the town, at its meeting of March 22, 1858, to approve the Legislature's incorporation of the Brookline Railroad Com- pany which, however, is not thereafter mentioned in the town records.
POST OFFICE AND TELEGRAPH
The exigencies of business had given rise to a postal service when the mail was still carried by mounted messenger or in stage-coaches. In the latter part of the third decade of the
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nineteenth century, a post office was established for Brookline, in the tailor shop of a Mr. Phippen in Roxbury. A few years later Oliver Whyte, a native of Brookline who had returned home after a successful business career in the south, was named postmaster, and the office was transferred to the store of Whyte and Sumner, March 3, 1829. Mr. Whyte served in this office until his resignation in 1842, the year which also terminated his town clerkship of nearly three decades.
A meticulous man, he kept the most precise accounts, which show receipts of $69.0914 for the Brookline office between July I and October 1, 1829, of which the postmaster's share, figured at thirty per cent of letter postage and half of the news- paper rates, amounted to $24.04 12. At the time of his resig- nation, the receipts had nearly doubled.
Something of the formalities of the postal service of those days may be gathered from one of Mr. Whyte's last letters to the Postmaster General:
Brookline, Dec. - 1841
Sir. .
Your circular requiring names and certificates of suffi- ciency of sureties was duly received. But, as I am about to resign my office, as soon after the conclusion of the present quarter as I can have a suitable successor recommended by those most interested in the good management of the office, and feeling myself equal to the responsibility for the present quarter, I have not been so prompt in my reply as I other- wise should have been. The sureties which I gave on enter- ing the duties of the office have, I believe, both deceased some years since. But as I have held the office so long (per- haps there is no person in the United States now living who received a commission as post-master so early and continued it so many years and made more prompt quarterly returns and payments), I hope you will excuse my omission to return sureties for the present quarter. I shall feel sufficiently inter- ested to see that the person recommended as my successor is equal to the responsibilities and duties of the office.
My first appointment as post-master was at Petersburg, Georgia, soon after the establishment of a post-office there in 1793 or 94, from Timothy Pickering (when the list of post- offices in the United States was contained on one side of a
HOUSE OF OLIVER WHYTE, HIGH AND WALNUT STREETS The site of the Union Building
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small sheet of paper), and renewed by Joseph Habersham and continued by Gideon Granger. While holding this com- mission I removed from Georgia to this place, and when a post-office was established here I took the appointment which I have held from that time, and my quarterly account has been made out and the balance deposited or payment made agreeable to orders from the department by my own hands. The balance of the present quarter I shall pay over to Mr. McIntosh, the mail contractor, without further orders from the department.
S. S. C. Jones was Mr. Whyte's successor. A few years later the mails were being largely expedited by railroad; an old means of communication was swept forward by the newest means of transportation, and becoming prosperity flourished along the ways of trade.
In 1849 the selectmen issued specifications for the erection of the posts and wires of the Boston & Vermont Telegraph Company, which had been prompt to turn to account the new invention of Samuel F. B. Morse. Thus at last every modern facility of commerce obtained a foothold in Brookline.
COMMERCIAL ASPECTS OF THE TOWN
But Brookline, as has been emphasized, was never itself to become an industrial or commercial center, for all the fact that its prosperity in the main depended on industry and trade. Some slight measure of that dependence may be gleaned from the militia list of 1865, which records the occupations of many of the citizens eligible for military service. There are listed 22 traders, 22 clerks, 19 farmers, 19 merchants, 2 shoemakers, 3 jewelers, 2 druggists, and a manufacturer. Of course trad- ers, merchants, and clerks are not precise terms, though they indicate unmistakably an interest in trade; and the Brookline farmers of this period were largely active in raising produce for market. Lawyers and bankers, furthermore, must be re- garded at least as on the fringe of commerce, and there must surely have been some of these, even if they were not on the military list. So the Brookline stake in this field, however in- direct, was of the first importance.
At times there have been more direct incursions. When
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Miss Woods wrote, in the eighteen-seventies, E. M. Abbott maintained a lumber wharf on the river front, which was also used as a coal and wood yard. During most of the period between 1850 and 1870 Joseph Turner & Sons manufactured woolen knit goods in the town, and in 1868, E. S. Ritchie & Sons moved their scientific instrument factory out from Boston.
That same year Charles William Holtzer, twenty-year-old native of Germany, came to Brookline, and in 1875 he com- menced the manufacture of electrical apparatus. In 1880 he started the telephone exchange in the town, and still later be- came president of the Holtzer-Cabot Electric Company, one of Brookline's very few industries.
There were doubtless minor enterprises which have escaped any mention at all. Probably it is just as well, for Brookline's pride was never in these things. A community of homes it was from the beginning, and a community of homes it determined to remain, clinging to that profession while mansions have given way to apartment houses, and holes in modern cliff dwell- ings masquerade as homes.
At bottom dependent upon industry and commerce for its perfection of charm, it has like a haughty child held aloof from the parents accountable for its very life's blood. So true is this that there recurs the impulse to pervert a little the sense of some verses by Arthur Symons in his London Nights, which conclude with the admonition:
'So only that the obvious be Too obvious for you and me, And the one vulgar, final act Remain an unadmitted fact.'
CHAPTER IX PEACE AND PROSPERITY
BUSY DECADES
THE years after the final struggle with England, down to the Civil War, were a time of flourishing. As the preceding chap- ter has shown, agriculture became very profitable, manufac- turing sprang up, and commerce boomed both at home and abroad. Brookline men had their hands in all these things, and as they prospered, so did the town. Citizens of growing wealth elaborated their own properties, and gave expression to the ideal that all public services should be held to the highest standards. They were not content with Brookline's distinction as the wealthiest town in the United States; it must also be the best governed.
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