article by Allston-Brighton historian Dr. William P. Marchione appeared
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
articles are copyrighted in the name of the author.
Researchers should, however, feel free to quote from the material, with
History of Allston-Brighton
- Allston-Brighton has a long and
distinguished history. For its first 160 years it formed part of
- 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.
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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.
Harvard Ave near Cambridge St
- 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
- 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
Early 1900's Trolley Car in
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
Chestnut Hill Fire Station