Contemporary Map of Brighton Center #9: Vantage Point: Dighton Street & Chestnut Hill Ave. intersection facing Brighton Square Park Brighton Square Park: This green space on the opposite side of Chestnut Hill Avenue, now known as Brighton Square Park, is the closest thing that Brighton has to a town common, but it was in fact …
Category: Points North
Brighton Center Walking Tour: Part 1
By William P. Marchione The Noah Worcester House, built in the 1680s, one of the oldest houses in Brighton Center, the residence in the 1810 to 1837 period of Dr. Noah Worcester, the founder of the American Peace Movement who also served as Brighton's first postmaster. The year the house was decorated with these flags …
Martin Milmore: Boston’s Great Civil War Sculptor
The last of the more than 100 historical columns that I wrote for the Boston Tab and Allston-Brighton Tab newspapers between 1998 and 2002, this piece on the life and career of the noted Boston Sculptor Martin Milmore never appeared in print, nor was it included in either of my books of collected articles. Only …
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James L. L. F. Warren of Brighton: Horticulturalist. Reformer, the “Father of California Agriculture”
This article first appeared in the Boston Tab newspaper on September 21, 1999. It was subsequently published in my book Allston-Brighton in Transition: From Cattle Town to Streetcar Suburb (2007) - WPM Bostonians have made many significant contributions to the development of California and the Pacific Northwest. In the 1790 to 1792 period a Boston-owned ship, the Columbia, …
John McLane Oral Interview, part 2: Gordon Street, Allston and Vicinity
Bill Marchione: What do you recollect about transportation in your early years? John McLane: Of course, we had the old semi-cars. Some of them turned around at Oak Square. They were a noisy streetcar. Streetcar changing directions at Oak Square, Brighton, with Faneuil Street and Bigelow Hill in the background I’ve seen a lot of …
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John McLane, An Oral Interview Part 1: Recollections of the Historic Lake Street Neighborhood of Allston-Brighton
John McLane, age 89, retired Boston fire fighter and life-long resident of Allston-Brighton John McLane, was 89 years of age in 2001 when I conducted this interview. He had lived in Allston-Brighton his entire life, residing during his first ten years (1912-22) in the Lake Street area of Brighton (the neighborhood in which I also …
Nathaniel J. Bradlee: A Prolific 19th Century Boston Architect
This article made its first appearance in the Boston Tab newspaper on February 9th 2001, and subsequently appeared in my collection of Boston history essays, Boston Miscellany: An Essential History of the Hub (History Press, 2008). I offer it again here, accompanied by many additional illustrations. WPM The Chestnut Hill Reservoir originally contained two basins---the …
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Thomas W. Silloway: Allston-Brighton’s Master Builder
This article first appeared in the Allston-Brighton Tab on February 23, 1999 and several years later in my book Allston-Brighton in Transition: From Cattle Town to Streetcar Suburb (2007). I offer it again here, with slight modifications, and additional illustrations, as the first in a series of articles on aspects of American architectural history. WPM Prolific …
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Daniel Bowen: Boston’s Pioneer Museum Keeper
[This article originally appeared in the Boston Tab newspaper in May 1999] Contemporary Boston is a city of many great museums. The history of museum keeping in Boston had its modest beginnings in 1791, with the arrival from Philadelphia of one Daniel Bowen, age thirty-one, a close friend of the patriot-painter Charles Willson Peale of …
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Correspondence relating to the Italian Immigrant Experience
This interesting and profusely illustrated book traces the history of the four Sandonatese families from which author James Gantilucci descends (the Gentillucis, Cuginis, Quintilianis, and Cedrones).
Local Historian North & South 