Buildings of New England

Brookline is pretty great as you can find unique and well-preserved examples of nearly every type of building in almost every architectural style! Staying in Brookline Village, this apartment building stands out as one of the best panel-brick apartments I have seen. The property was developed in the mid-1880s by Thomas W. Clements, who served in the Army during the American Civil War and later settled in the Boston area working as a dentist. Thomas married Lydia R. Clements, who is much more interesting than her husband! She was a graduate of the Boston University School of Medicine and worked locally for years, but wanted more. In the spring of 1898, she set out with a party of men and women, determined to make their fortune in the gold fields of the Klondike. During the months long trek, all of the other women and some of the men in her party left the expedition before reaching their goal, but Lydia Clements persevered and became one of the first white women — possibly the first from the East — to cross the Chilkoot Pass into the Klondike region. She never made a fortune, but upon returning, she was more spiritual, and got involved in the occult philosophy of Prof. Charles H. Mackay and his West Gate School of Philosophy in Boston. She used her new learnings to go back to Alaska to make her fortune, but there is no indication that Clements ever did make her fortune. She did however, remain in Nome and elsewhere in Alaska for more than a decade, hiring men and mining tin and gold. She retained her Brookline residence here on Davis Avenue and travelled back and forth across the continent many times before returning to Brookline, before dying there in February 1927.