This
article
by Allston-Brighton historian Dr. William P.
Marchione appeared
in
the Allston-Brighton Tab or Boston Tab newspapers
in the period from
July 1998 to late 2001, and supplement information
in his books The
Bull in the Garden (1986) and Images of America:
Allston-Brighton
(1996).
These
articles are copyrighted in the name of the
author.
Researchers should, however, feel free to quote
from the material, with
proper attribution.
History of Allston-Brighton
- Allston-Brighton has a long and
distinguished history. For its first 160 years
it formed part of Cambridge.
-
- In 1646, the Reverend John
Eliot, the "Apostle to the Indians," converted
the local natives to Christianity and
established a "Praying Indian" village,
Nonantum, on the present Newton-Brighton
boundary.
-
- The first Englishmen to locate
here permanently - the families of Richard
Champney, Richard Dana and Nathaniel Sparhawk -
crossed the Charles River from Cambridge a short
time later, establishing the community of little
Cambridge, as Allston-Brighton was known before
1807.
-
-
Washington St in Brighton
Center in 1832 with the original Cattle Fair
Hotel on the left, the 1808 First Parish
Church at the center, and Washington St
looking east in front of the Church
- Before the Revolution, Little
Cambridge was a prosperous farming community of
fewer than 300 residents. Its habitants included
such distinguished figures as Nathaniel
Cunningham, Benjamin Faneuil and Charles
Apthorp. Cunningham and Faneuil were wealthy
Boston merchants. Apthorp was paymaster of
British land forces in North America. All three
maintained elaborated country estates here in
the 1740 to '75 period.
-
- Little Cambridge contributed
Colonel Thomas Gardner to the Revolutionary
cause. An important political figure in the
years just before the Revolution, Gardner was
killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. The town of
Gardner, Massachusetts was named in his memory.
-
- The establishment in 1775 in
Little Cambridge of a cattle market to supply
the Continental Army, then headquartered across
the Charles River in Harvard Square, was a key
event in the history of this community. John
Winship I and II, father and son, initiated the
enterprise. The cattle trade experienced rapid
growth in the post-war period. By 1790, the
Winships were the biggest meat packers in
Massachusetts.
-
- When Cambridge's town government
failed to repair the Great Bridge that linked
Little Cambridge to Harvard Square and points
north, and made other decisions that threatened
the well-being of the local cattle industry, the
residents of Little Cambridge resolved to secede
from the parent town. They won legislative
approval of separation in 1807, choosing the
name Brighton for the new corporate entity.
-
- In the decades that followed,
Brighton became a commercial center of the first
magnitude. In 1819,, the Massachusetts Society
for Promoting Agriculture established its
exhibition hall and fair grounds on Agriculture
Hill in Brighton Center. For the next decade and
a half, Brighton was the site of the largest
agricultural fair and cattle show in
Massachusetts, held every October.
- In 1820, another key industry
was introduced into the town - horticulture.
This industry also flourished. By the 1840's,
Brighton was one of the most important
horticultural and market gardening centers in
the Boston area. A partial list of local
nurseries includes the Winship Nursery in North
Brighton, Nonantum Vale Gardens at the corner of
Lake and Washington Streets, Breck Garden's in
Oak Square and Horace Gray's grapery on Nonantum
Hill.
-
- A huge hotel- the Cattle Fair
-and elaborate stockyard facilities were
constructed on the north side of Brighton Center
in 1832. The Cattle Fair was the largest hotel
outside of Boston, containing 100 rooms. The
construction of the Boston & Worcester
Railroad through the town in 1834 reinforced the
community's hold on the cattle trade. By 1847,
the Brighton cattle traders were doing almost $2
million of business a year. By the 1860's, the
town also contained an estimated 50 to 60
slaughterhouses.
-
- With the growth of Boston in the
1850 to 75 period, Brighton's land owners saw
great opportunities for profit making in
residential development. The groundwork for the
transformation of Brighton into the streetcar
suburb was laid in the 1870's and 80's.
-
-
Commonwealth Ave at Lake St
c1900
- In 1872, all slaughtering
activities in the town were consolidated in a
single facility, the Brighton Abattoir, situated
on the banks of the Charles River in North
Brighton, Thus freeing up the valuable land in
the central part of the town for house
construction. A short time later the Brighton
Stockyards also moved to North Brighton.
-
- Most decisively, the town's
leaders convinced the people that annexation to
Boston would foster desirable growth and in 1874
Brighton was absorbed into the City of Boston,
thereby losing political self-determination.
-
- The introduction of electric
powered streetcars in 1889 spurred suburban
development. Allston-Brighton's population grew
tremendously in the next half century, rising
from 6,000 in 1875 to 47,000 in 1925. Much of
the development of these years was of an
extremely high quality. Turn-of-the-century
Allston-Brighton contained many prestige
neighborhoods.
-
The post-World War II period
was a time of great crisis for
Allston-Brighton. A variety of factors
generated mounting frustration - an increase
in the number of motor vehicles, the intrusion
of institutions into the neighborhood and the
pressures they exerted on the local housing
stock, the flight of many long-term residents
to the outer suburbs, high density/low quality
development, and especially (in the absence of
political self determination) the inability to
control undesirable development. In 1990, the
population of Allston-Brighton was 70,000.
-
While Allston-Brighton has not
solved all of
its problems, or even very many of them, it has
organized to speak
out for itself. It was the goal of giving
effective expression to
Allston-Brighton's concerns that the
Allston-Brighton Journal was
founded in 1987 and disbanded in 1995. The
Community Newspaper
Company, Inc. published it first edition of the
Allston-Brighton TAB
in 1996
Chestnut
Hill Fire Station
1902
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