Looking West, Pierce Hall is on the left, still standing. It was the first town hall and later the high school. Center is the First Parish Church which was torn down in 1891 and replaced by the current First Parish Unitarian Church.

On the right is the house of Henry Varnum Poor, still standing (although highly modified). Poor was a New York attorney who married Mary Pierce, daughter of the Rev. John Pierce, minister at the First Parish Church across the street. At the time he bought this house, Poor was best known as the editor of the American Railroad Journal. One of the first people to systematically collect, compile, and disseminate reliable business information, he went on to found the Standard and Poor Corporation, publishers of widely read compendiums of business information. The next owner of the house was Olive Higgins Prouty (1882-1974), a novelist most active in the period between the First and Second World Wars.

Image Courtesy the Brookline Preservation Department