USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 28
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41
356
HISTORY OF NEWTON
panded to include kindergarten and manual training, bookkeeping, geometry, foreign languages, natural science, ethics and civics, either optional or prescribed, somewhere along the child's progress through the schools. The ninth grade was in process of elimination from the grammar schools. In 1905 athletics was substituted for military drill. The Newton schools were being modernized thor- oughly.
The Newton High School was requiring more room and equipment. Eight hundred and fifty pupils were in attendance, and nearly one hundred of them were going to college or normal school every year. Three courses of study were open to them, the general, the college preparatory, and the scientific. The increasing emphasis on scientific subjects, with the popularity of the engineering profession, called for a technical training which few existing high schools could give. The Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology was attracting students from all over the country, including many Newton boys. Here and there a city was organizing a technical high school; Springfield was a con- spicuous example. The city authorities in Newton con- sidered the advisability of providing such a school, and sent representatives to Springfield to investigate. Their report was so favorable that it was decided to organize and construct a technical high school on the site of the former Claflin mansion.
Begun in 1907, the new school opened in September, 1909, with five hundred pupils enrolled. The building was of three stories and basement, designed to accommodate as many as eight hundred, while the Classical High could take care of nine hundred. Besides classrooms and labo- ratories the new school contained shops and foundry, arts and crafts room, dressmaking and millinery rooms, tool rooms, accommodations for woodworking, an office and bank, and a lecture hall capable of seating five hundred
3 57
INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
people. There were commercial and domestic science de- partments, besides the technical. The main entrance to the building was from Walnut Street by a court eighty- eight feet wide. In the rear was Claflin Field, equipped for organized sports, while behind the Classical High building was a double gymnasium for both boys and girls for the use of both schools.
The Technical High absorbed the commercial courses from the old school and it admitted students from the Classical High to certain of its courses. It was not a trade school, for its training was general, not specialized in prep- aration for, the trades. It gave academic instruction along with modern industrial and household training. It pre- pared for normal and technical schools of higher grade, and had courses in the fine arts and in commercial subjects. An extra technical course prepared directly for high-grade occupations. The whole system was planned by Charles L. Kirchner, who was called from New Haven as head- master, but in 1910 he was succeeded by Irving O. Palmer.
The early years of the century brought several new private schools into existence. From the eighteenth cen- tury Newton had been prolific of such schools. The city was in the midst of an environment of culture and beauty, was convenient to Boston, and included many citizens who could afford to give the best educational advantages to their children. Under these favorable conditions it was a fruitful soil for the planting of schools. The Allen School for boys at West Newton still profited from the reputation which had been given to it by its founder, and under new management and with a new building for its classes it had a large attendance.
The daughters of Nathaniel T. Allen decided to found the Misses Allen School for girls in 1904. Into their spa- cious colonial residence at West Newton they gathered both boarding and day pupils, aiming primarily to develop
358
HISTORY OF NEWTON
character in the girls who came to them. They arranged courses which would prepare for college, take care of handi- capped girls by individual training, give advanced instruc- tion in art, literature, history, and music, for those who did not plan to go to college, and provide for city girls whose parents wished them to live in the country. After twenty years as principal Miss Lucy E. Allen was the director of forty girls, with six teachers assisting.
A third school at West Newton was the Fessenden School. This was opened in 1903 by Frank J. Fessenden with twelve boys in residence. At the beginning there was a single house with nine acres of land. The purpose of the School was to prepare young boys for such large schools as Phillips Andover, St. Marks, and Groton. With the growth of the school came the necessity for new buildings. Lane Hall was built for classrooms and dormitory, and two years later a gymnasium was added. Then in succession came three more buildings, tennis courts, a concrete hockey rink, and the Cottage with ten additional acres of land. During war times a library was provided, a larger athletic field constructed, and Memorial Hall built with ten class- rooms and a dormitory. By this time it might have seemed as if any further enlargement would surely tempt fortune, for most private schools have their ups and downs and their ultimate decline, but no limit appeared to the pros- perity of the school. New buildings were added and old structures improved, some of them twice and three times. At the twentieth anniversary of the school in 1929 the physical equipment consisted of thirty-five acres of land, twelve school buildings, six houses, and four garages, repre- senting an investment of about three-quarters of a million dollars. The faculty of twenty-seven men and women, with the assistance of seventy other persons, takes care of two hundred pupils. The Fessenden School thus has taken an enviable position among schools of its grade in the
359
INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
United States, and has begun its second quarter century with confidence in its future. Recently the school was placed under the permanent control of a board of trustees.
The village of Newton with its sightly hills and un- crowded streets supplied a favorable setting for school life, and was selected within the next two decades by several organizers of private schools. It was in 1902 that Mr. and Mrs. George Jewett bought the property at the corner of Bellevue and Summit Avenues and on that elevated site established the Mount Ida School. With high ideals of character and attainment the school was able to attract seventy-five girls from twenty-five states of the Union within the next five years. Four large sunny buildings were in use, attractive courses were being given, and frequent excursions to Boston enlarged the cultural horizon of the pupils. The purpose of the school was to foster self-reliance and to cultivate personality rather than to aim at conven- tional attainments. As years passed courses were expanded until some of the girls were completing high school studies in preparation for college, while others were pursuing courses of junior college grade; home economics, business problems, and dramatic art were occupying the attention of others; and complete secretarial courses made possible an entrance into active life in business and commerce. When not engaged with their studies the girls were enjoy- ing the musical, dramatic, and historical advantages of Boston, or were playing tennis or golf, riding horseback or exercising in the gymnasium or swimming pool. It proved to be a school with an atmosphere of home life and good fellowship.
On Nonantum Hill Shirley K. Kerns, a graduate of Harvard College, started a school for boys in 1906. He secured the old Brown estate on the border between New- ton and Boston, where he had the use of fifteen acres of countryside. He enlarged the house for students and named
360
HISTORY OF NEWTON
the place the Country Day School. It was a time when certain parents were questioning whether the old acade- mies that were located in the country did not possess rural advantages which outweighed the value of city surround- ings. A high-grade private school outside the city but near enough to permit pupils to go back and forth from home daily made a distinct appeal. Stress was laid on the value of a knowledge of nature and of music, and much time was given to well-directed recreation. Within twenty years the school had more than one hundred and seventy- five pupils and twelve or more teachers.
The service rendered by the Public Library was being extended through the branches in the different villages. The largest branch circulation was at Newton Centre, where nearly 26,000 books were exchanged in 1903. West Newton circulated 14,400, Auburndale 10,343, and Upper Falls 3,006. Branches were added four years later at New- tonville and Nonantum. Twenty thousand volumes were circulating through the schools, more than two thousand at the Peirce School alone. The public was served at smaller centres at schools and stores. At the main library the circulation was about 150,000 a year, sixty per cent of which was fiction. There were almost 63,000 books on the shelves. At Newton Centre the experiment was tried of loaning new books at the rate of two cents a day, thus mak- ing it possible for duplicate copies of new and popular books to pay for themselves. The experiment worked so well that it was extended elsewhere generally.
In one respect the city was saving money. A few years earlier Newton had lodged 3,375 vagrants in the course of a year. But when the authorities began to make them work at screening gravel as compensation for lodging and breakfast, the "happy hooligans" began to disappear at a rapid rate. The tramp then as now did not consider the labor problem as coming within his horizon. A dif-
361
INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
ferent sort of vagrants visiting the city were flocks of white-winged crossbills, rare winter birds from the North, which were noted by the local ornithologists not long after a bald eagle had visited Newton.
The city was fortunate in securing John W. Weeks as mayor for 1902. Trained at Annapolis for the Navy, he had served in the Spanish War, and since then had been an alderman. With his foot on this first rung of the ladder he began to climb towards the top through Congress to the United States Senate and the Cabinet and to be talked about for President. Municipal affairs were in efficient hands during his administration. The police department received a shaking up and Frederick M. Mitchell succeeded Chief Tarbox. A new police station was built at Newton, and the police held their first ball. The fire department was strengthened by the remodelling of the station at Nonantum and the addition of a new building at Chestnut Hill. Veteran firemen won musters at Nantasket and Framingham. The old handtub Nonantum had a way of surpassing the records of other engines. Originally it had been a part of the fire fighting machinery of Waterville, Maine, but it went on the market when the Maine town bought a steam engine, and was brought to Newton. The veteran firemen of the city became very proud of the old machine, for it proved itself consistently a winner.
Street railway men and letter carriers indulged in balls in spite of tired muscles. Public service men seemed to have a sudden zest for the dance, even if they trudged the streets or stood on the street cars or patrolled the streets all day. Another public convenience was the con- struction of a well-equipped telephone exchange at West Newton.
In spite of changes that were taking place it was not easy to realize that the twentieth century was altering already the habits and customs of Newton people. They
362
HISTORY OF NEWTON
were leaving behind the provincialism of earlier years, feel- ing the currents of new ideas and changing fashions. Their houses were different. Mansard roofs, towers and cupolas, "gingerbread" ornamentation, and a motley collection of wings and ells were passing out of vogue. The Queen Anne style was giving way to a new liking for the American colonial. Simplicity was preferred to ornate structures. Iron dogs and deer came off the lawns, as the painted Indian figure retired from in front of cigar stores. Fash- ions in live dogs changed. The pug with his ugly face and curled tail and the dachshund with his elongated but squat body must vanish to make way for the airedale, the chow and police dog, while other favored breeds found welcome in the laps and boudoirs of the ladies.
The interiors of the houses began to look differently. Hair wreaths and Rogers statuary were followed to the garret by glass cases with stuffed birds and preserved flow- ers. Carpets came up and rugs went down. Vacuum cleaners guaranteed dustless floors and furniture. But the old stuffed furniture was following the haircloth sofa and the marble mantel, and Edward Bok in the Ladies Home Journal was educating the whole country to simple, straight lines in furniture and to a better class of pictures on the walls. Mottoes and chromos hung by moth-eaten cords disappeared, and in their places were prints and etchings and water colors which were worthy of study, and photo- graphs of masterpieces were available, if one could not afford the best in art.
People still sat on verandas in summer or took to the lawn on sultry evenings. Girls still learned to play the piano, and sang plaintive songs of chaste sentiment or joined the boys in their college ragtime, and passers-by liked to pause and listen as the melody came through the window. It was still fashionable to wear silk hats and frock coats to church on Sunday and at afternoon teas and
I
363
INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
social calls. A man might buy a three-dollar pair of trou- sers for daily business wear, and one's best derby hat cost the same. Other parts of his clothing were not expensive, unless he was particular about the quality of goods or the tailoring. Women's clothes were voluminous. Various articles changed with the fashions, but bargain sales made even a meagre purse sufficient for reasonable demands. The shirt waist remained so long in vogue that it seemed likely to defy the laws of changing styles, but eventually it had to go. Rats and puffs made large hats possible, and mutton-leg sleeves were large enough to preserve propor- tions, but tight gloves and shoes were evidences of gentil- ity. Diminutive feet peeped out from under long skirts, and even tennis and bicycle and wet days found it difficult to recommend the "rainydaisies." It required the general advent of steam and hot water heat, with their suggestion of the tropics even in the winter, to induce the custom of light-weight clothing, and radical changes waited for the war.
The years brought better health to most people. Medical and surgical skill, coupled with improved sanita- tion and more hygienic habits, was lowering the death rate, and people were spending more time out-of-doors, even before the motor car. Greater variety of food was enjoyed with the invention of methods of refrigeration in transportation. The South was shipping its fruits and veg- etables earlier in the season. The banana was ubiquitous and sometimes cheap. Plenty of milk could be bought at five and six cents a quart, good beefsteak for less than twenty cents a pound. Cereals were advertised for break- fast food, so that it was no longer necessary to make hasty pudding or coax Scotch oatmeal to a softness consistent with good digestion. Lurid advertisements with appro- priate rhymes pictured "Sunny Jim" as profiting in health and disposition and efficiency from a morning dish of Force.
364
HISTORY OF NEWTON
If a person wished to indulge in a restaurant meal it was possible in Boston to get a table d'hote dinner with wine for thirty-five cents at a French or Italian restaurant, or by means of a meal ticket in an American café.
Popular fancy was caught and held by one book and play after another. Everybody wanted to read or see what attracted others. Stories of rural America, like "David Harum," delighted the more sophisticated folk who had left the farm behind them. They flocked to see Denman Thompson in the "Old Homestead " for a similar reason. Stories of early American history, such as "Janice Mere- dith," shared popularitywith "Ben Hur" and "Quo Vadis," and Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry were in competition with Floradora girls and Sherlock Holmes. Sousa's marches would get a response from any audience, and Harry Lauder's nonsense was relished along with Kipling's rhymes and stories. Perhaps no one was enjoyed more by the general reader of the newspapers and magazines than Mr. Dooley. His delicious humor and his homely philosophy set off against the simple Hennessy as a foil was as good as a tonic, and it was effective in shaping public opinion, like the popular cartoons which increased in favor. The Sun- day papers were finding sales increased by comic supple- ments. Magazines featured the short story and began to bulge with advertisements, which made it possible to sell them at a nominal price. McClure's, Munsey's, Every- body's, and the Ladies Home Journal found entrance into many homes where Harpers, Century, and the Atlantic Monthly never had come.
One pocket magazine, the Philistine, was symptomatic of the critical, iconoclastic age that was at hand. Elbert Hubbard liked to say things differently and to shock people by his utterances. He cultivated the unconven- tional and the irreverent attitude. From his lair in East Aurora he roared against the old fogies and made fun of
365
INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
the traditional and the commonplace with the pique and pother of the American Mercury. His preachments ended only with the wreck of the Titanic in which he perished, but he had stimulated a spirit of criticism which became characteristic of the period and which stopped at nothing.
People found their recreation indoors in the winter and outdoors in the summer. Tennis preserved its popu- larity, and the Longwood Cricket Club, which procured new grounds at Chestnut Hill, built a substantial structure adapted to the indoor game. The Squash Tennis Club was organized at Newton Centre to interest business men in athletic sports. The Club built a club house forty by sixty feet in size on Chestnut Terrace near Commonwealth Avenue, after fifty citizens contributed five thousand dol- lars to the capital of the Club. The house was two stories in height with lounging room, billiard, pool, and ping pong tables, and carefully laid out tennis courts furnished sport out-of-doors. Tennis suggested ping pong, a craze which swept the country in 1902 with as great a furore as mah jong and crossword puzzles twenty years later. Devotees of the game developed a skill almost as uncanny as that of the billiard expert. But the craze soon passed. Baseball interest did not wane. Fans went to Boston daily during the season to root for the local league team, and Newton High School or the Athletic Association staged games nearer home. Boys and girls were equally loyal to skating as the winters recurred, but older young people made the sport the chief feature of carnivals on the Cedar Street grounds or at Braeburn. That country club bought a pond for skating, and not content with that built a unique rink raised on a platform that skating and hockey might be enjoyed on a smooth, level surface. The Club also extended its golf links to eighteen holes. Once a year the children of Newton had a picnic at the expense of the Read Fund. In 1908 a thousand of them were given an outing at Lexing-
366
HISTORY OF NEWTON
ton Park. The Catholic parishes held annual field days when hundreds gathered to fraternize and enjoy the sports. At Nonantum a bowling league with nine teams in the schedule had a flourishing season in 1905. The next year Norumbega Park celebrated its tenth anniversary, invit- ing mayors of neighboring cities as well as the common people.
This variety of outdoor sports was an indication of the larger place which they had come to fill. They were balanced by the pleasures of the winter season. Then the clubs held their meetings and featured their entertain- ments. The first decade of the century was marked by the activity of several musical organizations. The Newton Choral Association gave a number of concerts. Newton Centre had an orchestral club of thirty-six which gave a spring concert in Bray Hall. Minstrel shows were of never- failing interest. The Masons offered more than one such, and the aristocratic Hunnewell Club performed in the same season. Not to be outdone, the Nonantum boys followed their example. A military concert band of sixty pieces was proposed.
The Highland Glee Club became a favorite organiza- tion in the city almost as soon as it was organized in 1908. A genuine interest in music, coupled with a spirit of soci- ability, brought together twenty-three men of the south side for rehearsals in the Congregational church of Newton Highlands, under the direction of Edgar J. Smith. At each rehearsal they took time for refreshments and conversa- tion, and the Club proved so popular that the numbers increased steadily. The Club gave concerts for the benefit of the churches and the Newton Hospital, organized an orchestra of sixteen pieces during the third year, and a year later had established the custom of giving regular concerts to a select body of patrons, with soloists of national reputation to assist, and it was still singing on occasion for
367
INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
the benefit of philanthropic and religious organizations. It adopted the custom of carol singing early Christmas morn- ing in different parts of the city, including the Hospital, and won unlimited popularity. The members of the Club have been men who were occupied with business and pro- fessional cares and used their music as a diversion, but they compared favorably with professional singers, and under several successive directors the Club acquired a technique which won it prizes at contests of glee clubs of New Eng- land.
The Newtonville Improvement Association was or- ganized in 1904 to get rid of the unsightly buildings at the corner of Lowell Avenue, Walnut and Watertown Streets. It raised thirteen thousand dollars for that purpose and transformed the nuisance into Lowell Park. Charles F. Avery was its first president. From this small beginning the Association grew to a membership of more than seven hundred. Besides aiming to beautify the village the Asso- ciation hoped to stimulate its growth, and to take an active interest in the movements which lead to the constant bet- terment of educational, social, and other civic conditions. An executive committee, elected each year, consists of twenty or more men selected from the several districts of Newtonville who meet once a month or on special occa- sions as a clearing-house for ideas on village betterment, and as a medium for putting those ideas to work through subcommittees. The committee has initiated improve- ments and cooperated with the city government in its activities. At the annual business meeting of the Asso- ciation an address is given by a speaker of authority on a subject of civic interest.
The achievements to the credit of the Association are the triangular Linwood and Lowell Parks, revival of inter- est in a former project for a reading room and branch of the Public Library, leading the effort to acquire the Claflin
368
HISTORY OF NEWTON
estate, making Bullough's Pond an attractive feature of the park system, getting an improved lighting equipment for the Square and the adjacent streets, planning traffic regulations with the Chamber of Commerce, and procur- ing the instalment of an illuminated clock in the tower of the Methodist church. The Association helped to prevent the adoption of a cross-city route for the Grand Trunk Railway and the granting of junk licenses on the imme- diate border of the community, and was a pioneer in test- ing the anti-billboard act. It has also been active in recent years in securing a single residence zone for a large part of Ward Two. Finally, it was through the initiative of the Newtonville Association that the improvement societies of the city united in the organization of the Newton Civic Federation.
The Village Improvement Society of Upper Falls was organized in 1901, and became active at once. It reminded the city and street railway authorities of their obligations to the village, erected bulletin and signboards, improved the Wade School hall by fitting it up for public entertain- ments, and offered prizes for the best kept lawns and yards.
Older associations were enlarging their programs. The Auburndale Improvement Association, for example, ar- ranged for winter entertainments, cooperation with the new forestry commission of the city, cleaning up cam- paigns, the improvement of parks, public meetings, and an annual banquet.
The burning of the rustic theatre at Norumbega Park in 1909 threatened a summer's loss to recreation, with a financial loss to the owners of twenty-five thousand dol- lars, but it was rebuilt in time for summer outings.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.