Brookline Historical Society
Put On Your Walking Shoes & Step Into the Past:
Spring Walking Tours

165 Years of Shopping in Coolidge Corner
Led by: Ken Liss of the Brookline Historical Society
Date: Sunday, April 13, 2025; 9 am - 10 am
Meet: Coolidge Corner Inbound T-Stop, Brookline
Distance: About 1/2 mile
Register: https://bit.ly/coolidgecorner04132025
Coolidge & Brother Store, 1887
Coolidge & Brother Store, 1887
Coolidge Corner was home to just one store—Coolidge & Brother—from the 1850s to the 1890s. Following the widening of Beacon Street in 1887-88 and the arrival of the S.S. Pierce store a few years later, a major new shopping district took root. Almost all of the existing buildings in this still thriving commercial area were built between 1890 and 1930. Join Brookline Historical Society President Ken Liss for a journey back to the initial development of the Coolidge Corner business district and get a glimpse of local shopping in the early decades of the 20th Century.


Brookline Village Walking Tour
When: Sunday, April 20, 2025; 10 am - 11:30 am
Meet: The Village Works, 220 Washington Street, Brookline
Led by: Ken Liss of the Brookline Historical Society
Distance: 1 1/2 mile
Register: https://bit.ly/brooklinevillage04202025/a>
Brookline Village, Harvard Sq.
Brookline Village, circa 1915
The tour will begin and end at The Village Works, 202 Washington Street, in a 19th century building that began as the shop of a local house painter and has been a fish market, a hardware store, and a series of restaurants (including The Village Coach House and Davios).

Highlights will include:
  • Brookline’s earliest commercial center, featuring brick buildings from the 1870s
  • The Lindens, one of the first planned residential developments in town (1840s)
  • Emerson Garden and the Elijah Emerson House on Davis Avenue (1846)
  • White Place, with one of the largest concentrations of vernacular architecture in Brookline
  • The town’s civic center, site of the Town Hall, the public library, the Pierce School, and other municipal buildings.


The Beaconsfield Terraces:
"An Experiment in Domestic Economy"

When: Sunday, May 4, 2025; 10 am - 11 am
Meet: Star Market, 1717 Beacon Street, Brookline
Led by: Ken Liss of the Brookline Historical Society
Distance: 1 mile
Register: https://bit.ly/beaconsfield05042025
Beaconsfield Terraces
The Beaconsfield Terraces, on the south side of Beacon Street from Dean Road to just beyond Tappan Street, were one of the more unusual developments to follow the creation of the Beacon Street boulevard in the 1880s. Built by Eugene Knapp, a wool merchant, in the early 1890s the terraces were a residential complex in which people owned their units but shared ownership of a 6-acre park, stables, a playhouse (known as the Casino), tennis courts, a playground, and a central heating plant.A bell system connected the houses to the stables so that people could call for their horse and carriage. Today, only the residential buildings (Richter, Frances, Marguerite, Fillmore, Gordon, Bernard, and Parkman Terraces) remain.

Learn more about the Beaconsfield Terraces in this one-hour walking tour led by Brookline Historical Society president Ken Liss.


Blake Park: History of a Neighborhood
Led by: Ken Liss of the Brookline Historical Society
Date: Sunday, May 18, 2025; 2 pm - 3:30 pm
Meet: Brookline High School, 115 Greenough Street
Distance: About one mile
Register: https://bit.ly/blakepark05182025
Blake Map
In 1880, banker Arthur Welland Blake engaged Frederick Law Olmsted to draw plans for the subdivision into roads and lots of the Blake family estate on the lower part of Brookline's Aspinwall Hill. Olmsted's plans were never executed, and the estate remained something of an anomaly; a large tract of open land renowned for its landscaping in the heart of a community rapidly developing as a "streetcar suburb". Join Ken Liss from the Brookline Historical Society to learn how the neighborhood of "Blake Park" finally emerged — despite failed plans, untimely deaths, and financial scandal — four decades after it was first conceived.


The Early Development & Growth of Jewish Brookline
Led by: Ken Liss of the Brookline Historical Society
Date: Sunday, May 25, 2025; 2 pm - 3:30 pm
Meet: Trader Joes, Coolidge Corner, 1317 Beacon Street
Distance: About 1.5 miles
Register: https://bit.ly/blakepark05182025
Jewish Ads
The first half of the 20th century saw dramatic growth in the Jewish population of Brookline and in the institutions, businesses, and activities that helped make the town a center of Boston-area Jewish life. This walking tour tells the story through places, people, and events of the emergence of Jewish Brookline and its continued growth over subsequent decades.
 
Upcoming Event: Ride of William Dawes
Patriot's Day at the Edward Devotion House
Annual Ride of William Dawes
Monday, April 21, 2025
9:30-10:30 AM
Edward Devotion House, 347 Harvard St.
Dawes Riding
Join us at the Devotion House on the morning of Patriots' Day for an open house and the annual visit of "William Dawes" in a recreation of his ride through Brookline on his way to Lexington in 1775 to warn the colonial militia that the British troops were coming.

For more information on the history of the original ride, go to massmoments.org or view our map of the rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes.

Free and open to the public
9:30 AM: Gathering in front of the Edward Devotion House
10:00 AM: Arrival of "William Dawes"! Watch him ride up Harvard Street on horseback to warn citizens of Brookline about the British Regulars' move towards Lexington and Concord.
10:15 AM: The Devotion House will be open for visits immediately after William Dawes' departure.
 
President Ken Liss Blogs on Brookline Past & Present
The Pierce School the Municipal Triangle, Part 1
The map below shows the triangle formed by Harvard Street, Washington Street, and School Street in Brookline Village. It is the location of the Town Hall, the Public Library, the Health Department, and -- for 170 years -- a succession of buildings of the John Pierce School.

You might call it the Municipal Triangle.

The northern part of the triangle was, from 1974 to last year, the location of the fifth building to carry the name Pierce School. It was ...
Our Latest Archive Additions
We are adding new historical photos weekly. Follow our latest additions here:
Station D, 827 Boylston St., December 13, 1930
Station D, 827 Boylston St., December 13, 1930