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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 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>
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:
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 ![]() 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
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 ![]() Upcoming Event: Ride of William Dawes
Patriot's Day at the Edward Devotion House
Monday, April 21, 2025
Annual Ride of William Dawes 9:30-10:30 AM Edward Devotion House, 347 Harvard St. ![]() 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
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. 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 ... |