USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 24
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Recovering his equanimity and moving on, the man gazes first on the massive library building, and he is tempted to enter. Who would have dreamed of such a col- lection of books outside the British Museum? Browsing among the shelves, he is attracted by titles of geography and travel, and made curious by books of science. If he could read some of them with their tales of discovery, they would make him even more amazed than his experiences with the railway, and others with their daring, upsetting theories about the earth and the universe might well dis- turb his antique thinking. The rows of volumes of fiction make him doubtful about the public taste, but he is reas- sured as he examines the tomes of history and theology.
Out again into the open and resuming his walk south- ward, he is impressed by the stone churches with their tapering spires or solid towers rising on either side of the road. In his day there were no meetinghouses at Newton Corner, and the three at Newton Centre and West New- ton were plain wooden structures. One can imagine him marking the time of day by the clock in the tower of Eliot Church, and beyond across Farlow Park descrying the spire of Channing Church and not far away the beautiful structure of Grace Church.
The new Eliot Church had been dedicated as recently as 1889. Its building had been a work of love; eight hun- dred persons contributed to the cost, and members vied with one another for the privilege of providing memorial windows. One of these was a John Eliot memorial pre- sented by Henry E. Cobb, and another was a gift from the
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choir in memory of their organist and choirmaster for fif- teen years, Joseph P. Cobb, who had died earlier in the year. Reverend Wolcott Calkins, D.D., pastor of the church, was then at the height of his fifteen years ministry, during which he welcomed about five hundred persons into the membership of the church. His salary of five thousand dollars was the largest paid by any church in the city. He was a man of fine presence and liberal culture, and he ably represented his church in a leading position in the com- munity. His resignation in 1894 brought to a close one of the most important periods in the history of the church. In the summer of 1895 the church of seven hundred mem- bers celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with high hopes of a greater half century ahead. Shortly afterward Reverend William H. Davis came from Detroit to give nine years of earnest leadership to the church until his health broke. Near the end of the century Everett E. Truette com- menced his brilliant term of service as organist and choir- master, a period already exceeding thirty years. At the turn of the century he was also conductor of the newly organized Newton Choral Association.
Channing Church had also a notable minister. Rev- erend Francis E. Hornbrooke had been serving the church for ten fruitful years, when the new edifice of the Eliot Church was dedicated. Under his leadership the church had added sixty families to its parish, had erected its stately church building, had maintained a young people's guild, and had been busy with other activities. It gave the larg- est of the gifts made to the Newton Hospital. The min- ister showed his civic patriotism by serving on the school committee, a service which was sure to invite public criti- cism. He was to more than double his term of service before his sudden death on a village street.
Midway of the last decade of the century Dr. Shinn completed twenty years of his ministry at Grace Church,
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and the church celebrated its fortieth anniversary. The rector had come to Newton to find a divided flock, troubled by differences of opinion between High and Low Church. Some had objected, even in recent years, to the participa- tion of a boy choir in worship. Dr. Shinn was determined to be minister neither to party nor faction, but to serve the whole church. He was able to allay party spirit and to build up the organization. The church had had the cour- age to erect its noble edifice in stone, and later to clear away its debt. It had dedicated a choir guild hall as a memorial to Phillips Brooks. In 1895 it built a memorial library in memory of Charles Augustus Townsend of New York, for thirty-five years vestryman of Old Trinity. The library was intended at first for the use of the rector, but later the parish profited from it. The church record of forty years showed eight hundred baptisms, five hundred confirmations, two hundred weddings, and three hundred and twenty-five burials. Four hundred thousand dollars had been raised for all purposes. Dr. Shinn's pastorate lasted until 1906. During those thirty-five years he en- deared himself to the parish, and found time to lead in community enterprises. He promoted the hospital and served on the school committee for a term of years. He furthered the interests of his denomination by helping to establish Episcopal churches in Auburndale, Newton High- lands, and Chestnut Hill. The last of the three buildings was a memorial gift from Mrs. Augustus Lowell of Brook- line.
Some of these churches lost valued men among their constituents during the decade. N. P. Coburn of Eliot Church was among the generous contributors to the new edifice. He presented a clock to the city library. He accu- mulated wealth in partnership with Governor Claflin in the shoe business. Another leader in Eliot Church, dying in 1896, was Joseph N. Bacon. Owner of business blocks at
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Newton Corner and of the Bacon Farm at Waban, one of the founders and president of the Newton and Watertown Gas Light Company, and Nestor of banking in the city, he was proud to be a deacon in the church which he loved and helped to organize. John S. Farlow and Judge R. C. Pit- man were adherents of Channing Church. The East India and China trade was the source of the Farlow prosperity. His gifts of park, cemetery chapel, and library fund made him appreciated in the city, and he represented it in the Legislature. He was a president of the Massachusetts Tariff Reform League. Judge Pitman won his position through his profession and he was active in politics. Gov- ernor Claflin appointed him to the bench of the Superior Court, and at different times he represented Newton in both houses of the Massachusetts Legislature. The Bap- tist Church missed George S. Harwood, who was a pros- perous manufacturer of woolen machinery, was one of the largest givers to his church, and was active in its service.
The Immanuel Baptist Church had built its massive brownstone edifice in 1885 with strong faith in the future possibilities of the church. That faith was strengthened still more during the nine years' ministry of Reverend George E. Merrill, D.D., who became pastor in 1890. Scholarly in habits, progressive in thought, and represent- ative of the highest type of culture and citizenship, he was respected in the community and to his church he gave steady and able leadership. As the decade drew towards its close his talents were recognized in an invitation to become president of Colgate University. A memorial win- dow to Mrs. Pomroy was placed in the church about the same time.
Under the shadow of Mount Ida the Methodists, too, built their new church in 1896 to take the place of the old wooden building, wisely proportioning it to the needs of its constituency. Relatively smaller than certain of the other
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churches, the Methodist organization commanded a loy- alty and cooperation which strengthened it, and a spirit of sociability attracted and held people who were needed for the upbuilding of the parish. So Methodism played its part in the church life of the village.
One can imagine the wayfarer musing over these evi- dences of ecclesiastical prosperity and denominational divergence and comparing them with the sturdy orthodoxy of his more Puritan day. But other matters prick his attention.
Up the slope of Mount Ida he passes the home of Francis E. Stanley, the manufacturer of the new horseless carriage moving by steam power. Electric, steam and gasoline vehicles numbered three hundred in the United States in 1895. At that time the gasoline engine seemed the least likely to be popular, but the difficulties of license and operation coupled with the slow development of the steam car as compared with the gasoline automobile, made the steam car fall behind in the race. But there was demand enough for the steam car to encourage the Stanley Com- pany to build its factory near the river and to produce an increasing number of cars. In the fall of 1899 Freelan O. Stanley and his wife left Newton to attempt to climb Mount Washington in a Stanley car. The undertaking was successful. Reaching the base of the mountain by way of Newburyport, Portsmouth and Ossipee, they climbed over the carriage road in two hours and ten minutes, the first steam car to accomplish the climb.
As the wayfarer leaves the village behind, climbs over the brow of the hill, and faces towards Newton Centre, he comes successively to the Shannon estate, the Edmands place, and the Colby mansion, all of them adorned with an elegance of which his fathers had never dreamed. He views the close-trimmed putting green of the Newton Golf Club, and thinks of the rugged, not to say unkempt farms
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of his Revolutionary boyhood, and again the contrast leads him to wonder and admire.
The single familiar spot of his pilgrimage thus far is the old cemetery where the fathers had their first meeting- house and buried their dead. There he revisits the well- known graves of the first settlers, of John Eliot, Jr., and of others whom in a later period he had known in the flesh. Undisturbed the ashes of their fathers lie, while more than one of the saints reminds him through his epitaph
"As I am now, so you will be, Prepare for death and follow me." 1
The surroundings of the cemetery are little changed. Cot- ton Street is to remain a country lane for another thirty years. On the back side estates have been breaking up. The death of George Hyde in 1892 recalled the old estate of Samuel Hyde with its thriving nursery business, but the demand for building lots made the land too valuable for that purpose. George Hyde had been assessor, selectman, one of the original proprietors of the Newton National Bank and president of the Savings Bank. Edmund N. Converse had lived on Centre Street until his death in 1894. He too served his community as benefactor of the Newton Hospital trustee of the Library, chairman of the school committee, and a member of the boulevard com- mission of the city and of the drainage and sewerage com- mission of the state.
On past less pretentious but attractive homesteads, along a tree-shaded street, the wayfarer makes his way southward until at length he comes to a broad winding avenue and another car track lying athwart his path. As he pauses to look each way an open car bears down upon him, filled with a merry party plainly on its way to an out- ing at Norumbega Park, judging from the sign on the car and the jollity of the crowd. And at the same moment a
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bevy of bicyclists goes bowling along in the opposite direc- tion towards Boston. It would seem as if all the world were awheel and awhirl. Not a farm has he passed in his two- mile walk, not a hoe or a pitchfork in sight, not an ox or a grindstone near, nowhere a gentleman of the old school or a maiden antique, but everywhere evidences of modern luxury and ease and freedom such as the past never had known.
As Rip Van Winkle pursues his way, the only familiar object that he sees is the meetinghouse of the First Church on the old site at the corner of Centre and Homer Streets, but the building is not the same as in his day. Dr. Furber's long pastorate is over. The year 1897 marks the passing of Reverend Amos E. Lawrence, a retired Congregational minister, who for twenty years had worshipped there. Active in the Improvement Association as well as in the church, interested in the hospital and other charities, for a number of years chairman of the school committee, he was a citizen esteemed and mourned. Reverend T. J. Holmes, Dr. Furber's successor, is ending his ten years' ministry, and Reverend E. M. Noyes is commencing his pastorate of thirty-five years on the thirty-first of October, 1894. Before long the old church will be planning for a modern edifice to rank with the Baptist building in the Square and the stone churches at Newton. Meantime the system of church organization was altered. The property of the Congregationalists had been held by the Proprietors of the Meetinghouse in the First Parish in Newton and the pews had been owned by individuals or estates, but by the rec- ommendation of a committee appointed to study into the legal aspects of the matter the more modern method of incorporating the church was adopted in 1895. Thence- forth the church seemed less the chapel of a few privileged owners than a meetinghouse for the worship of the people of the community.
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In the immediate neighborhood of the First Church Trinity Parish has made its home. A few Episcopalians in the village had formed a group in 1889, and had secured the small Associates Hall on Pelham Street as a place of worship. There Reverend Carleton P. Mills of Newton Highlands and later students from the Episcopal Theo- logical School in Cambridge had conducted services on Sunday afternoons until in 1892 Reverend Edward T. Sullivan, a recent graduate of the School, became pastor of the flock. In the same year a wooden chapel was built on Pelham Street, which for five years served as a place of worship. But under the constructive leadership of Dr. Sullivan the small company of Episcopalians was growing larger, more ambitious plans were being cherished, and in 1898 the church was able to buy the corner lot of land on Centre Street on the opposite corner of Homer from the Congregational church, and to that site the Pelham Street chapel was moved, to be replaced within twenty years by the present beautiful stone church and parish house. By 1896 the Trinity Club of Newton Centre was well organ- ized and Dr. Sullivan was the guest of honor at its second dinner. The energetic minister found time for several years to be editor of The Church Militant, the newspaper organ of the diocese, besides attending faithfully to the affairs of his parish.
Proceeding past the Baptist Home for Missionaries' Children on the left and approaching Dr. Smith's old homestead on the right, the wayfarer sees open, unim- proved ground stretching away on the right. Ah! a fit pasture for cattle, where they may roam unhindered and crop the greensward, but though he strains his eyes to see he can discover neither horn nor hoof. And when he in- quires about it he learns that those acres have been reserved for a playground for the children of Newton Centre, secured at a cost of thirty thousand dollars for the purpose of
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recreation. Are people crazy in these days that they waste so much? If children need exercise, where are the saw- horse and the milking stool, the nimble needle and the spinning wheel? And where shall the beast of the field place his foot? One can see him turn his gaze to the other side of the street with a doubtful shake of the head. But the Common is no longer recognizable. The stocks and the noon houses are gone. The old powder house has dis- appeared, replaced by a flagstaff. The Methodist church, enthusiastic over the ministry of Reverend Edwin H. Hughes, has reared a stone structure on the corner of Langley Road, and the ugly old Mason School looms just beyond. And again a bustling Square, and on the left beyond Bray Block another horrific railroad. Degenerate days these, and incomprehensible.
Newton Centre was becoming unmistakably a mod- ern village. The Improvement Association was busy try- ing to secure various advantages for the village. It had gained better advantages for small children in the Rice School, and had obtained from the railroad company better lights in the cars and the addition of two new trains to the schedule. At a single fair the Association had netted eleven hundred dollars for its enterprises. It was hoping to bring about the depression of the railroad tracks, so that grade crossings might be avoided. Already there were bridges at Cypress Street and Institution Avenue. Imme- diately opposite the railroad station the Union Building was erected with seventy-foot frontage for stores, offices and photographic studio.
If the wayfarer had climbed Institution Hill he would have found changes in the old school. The Mansion House which was there in 1820 had given place to the Hills Library, a well-adapted structure of yellow brick and free- stone trimmings one hundred by seventy-five feet in size. It cost forty thousand dollars, and was designed to hold
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fifty thousand volumes with room for expansion. The books had been moved from their dark quarters in Colby Hall, and a spacious, well-lighted reading room provided facilities for study. The library quarters in Colby Hall were remodelled into a chapel and memorial windows were put in. A central heating plant was built on the side of the hill to supply all the buildings. Prof. Oakman S. Stearns, D.D., who had been teacher of the Old Testa- ment for twenty-five years following a pastorate in the Baptist church of the village, died in 1893 and was suc- ceeded by Reverend Charles Rufus Brown. Dr. Hovey retired from the presidency after thirty years in that posi- tion, and his semi-centennial of professorial service was celebrated at the Commencement in 1899.
From the hilltop one could look away to the far dis- tance where Wachusett and Monadnock mountains rose against the horizon, and nearer by the Blue Hills on the south and the city of Boston with its gilt-domed state house were daily sights. In the immediate foreground were the leaf-girt homesteads of the Garden City. Chestnut Hill was the nearest neighbor to the east. The Chestnut Hill Club had been organized there and had opened a club house in 1895. There Judge Lowell and Leverett Salton- stall had lived their lives and had been buried within a few years. Saltonstall had been collector of the port of Bos- ton. Lowell was a judge of United States District and Circuit courts, a leading authority on bankruptcy and insolvency, and regarded as a man of sterling worth. Look- ing off from the hill to the other side of Newton Centre one could see Upper Falls, where two other useful citizens were ending their activities. Otis Pettee preserved the industrial prestige of his father and served the city in vari- ous ways. Isaac Hagar was in the employ of the town for forty-four years, helped to reorganize the school system while he was on the school committee for twenty years,
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was one of the officers of the Newton Savings Bank, sat in the Legislature for several terms, and was vestryman and warden of St. Mary's Episcopal Church at Lower Falls. Immediately below the hill were the neighbors of the Insti- tution, Brewer, Hartshorn, Mills, Bray and Sanborn, occupying houses on Institution Avenue. Around the corner on Chase Street was Hasseltine House, built by the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society as a home for young women who were preparing for missionary serv- ice and studying at the Institution.
Several new organizations had been formed in the vil- lage. The Wednesday Club, a study club, was organized in 1892 by ten women at the invitation of Mrs. Edgar O. Silver. The number of members increased to twenty, but the organization remained simple. Beginning with a study of the poems of James Russell Lowell, the Club continued with subjects covering a wide range, including art, litera- ture, people, countries, such as the members really en- joyed studying. Regular meetings have been held fort- nightly; one meeting a year is for social purposes, when the Club usually entertains guests, with a speaker whose subject is in harmony with the study of the year.
One can imagine the wayfarer returning to the centre of the village and picking up his trail to the southward. A cluster of three churches faces him as he leaves Beacon Street. The Baptist church fronts the Square, and its members face the future with confidence in the place that it will continue to hold in the coming days. Just beyond across the street is the Unitarian church, at which his orthodox head shakes, and less than a stone's throw away a twin-towered Catholic church. Can such things be in Puritan New England? Hard by heaps of black rock appear before him, coal broken into uniform sizes and carted off to be unloaded at houses, to be burned in cellar furnaces and to supply summer heat in zero days. It was
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not so in the good old days of backlogs and chimney nooks. Playgrounds and furnace coal, trolley cars and steam rail- roads, magnificent schools and churches, luxury and pleasure - these are indeed times of material progress. But are they equal in character to the old? And the old man disappears over the railroad towards the Highlands to sit on the bank of Wiswall's Pond and wish again for the days that are gone.
The ancient wayfarer finds Newton Highlands en- tirely changed. A village has come into existence where only farms and a tavern or two used to be. Stevens Block and the Highland Club across the way command his admiration, and he is told that early in 1891 the Lincoln Club had been formed also as a community centre of social life, and that its one hundred members have their head- quarters on the Pevear estate on the corner of Centre and Walnut Streets. James F. C. Hyde died in 1898 and was greatly missed by the whole city. St. Paul's Episcopal parish is bustling with energy; the Congregational church is well established on the corner of Lincoln and Hartford Streets; in the rear is a new Methodist church. The Meth- odists had held their first religious services in 1890 with preaching by Reverend G. S. Butters, then of Newton- ville. On Thanksgiving Day, 1893, they had been able to lay the corner stone of Cline Memorial Church, and during the winter a wooden building with field stone accompani- ments was built, with a seating capacity of two hundred and sixty. It was not a large building, but it served the needs of the denomination in Newton Highlands and cost only eight thousand dollars.
Beyond the village to the south the old road led to Oak Hill and Winchester Street, where the wayfarer might go, if he wished, as far as Kenrick Bridge. Two new insti- tutions recently have been located there. In an oak grove near the river the City Home has been built as the final
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abode of the city's poor. The older villages did not relish the presence of the almshouse, and now that Waban is being developed it is not wanted there. The city therefore purchased about twenty acres of the Thomas Bunney place on Winchester Street, and there by the quiet reaches of the river a building was constructed with four wards, one for men and another for women in each wing. Both men and women were provided with comfortable sitting rooms, where books and magazines were at hand for their reading. Men and women ate separately and each person had his own room. Those who were able were kept busy indoors or outside. The number of inmates varied from sixteen to forty-five. One of these lived in the almshouse for fifty years. The almshouse occupants cost the city $122.58 per capita annually.
A short distance farther on an extensive river front- age was acquired in 1896 for the Working Boys Home Industrial School. It was designed for homeless boys from Massachusetts cities, where they could be prepared for the kind of life which they might be expected to lead. A tow- ering brick building was erected, a printing department was opened, and in various ways the boys were cared for under Catholic administration. Part of the expense of the building was raised by Newton women who organized the Working Boys Friendly Society to aid the enterprise. Each member agreed to collect one dollar a month towards the expense of the forty-thousand-dollar brick home.
Another form of charity found expression at Upper Falls. This was the Stone Institute and Home for Aged People. Joseph L. Stone of West Newton left money to establish a home for aged and indigent men and women, one-half of the bequest to be spent in the purchase of land and the erection of buildings, the other half to serve as an endowment for the maintenance of the home. The trustees of the fund incorporated in 1894 under the name of the
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Stone Institute for the better handling of the funds, and when it was time to start building operations they organ- ized with other citizens a corporation under the name of the Newton Home for Aged People. The Pettee estate on Eliot Street, Upper Falls, was purchased and remodelled, and the Home opened in 1899. In 1911 the Stone Insti- tute conveyed all the property of the Institute to the Home. In 1916 the Corporation undertook to raise funds for the improvement and enlargement of the Home.
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