The diminutive former Brookline Savings Bank building on Washington Street in Brookline Village is in stark contrast in scale and design from the 1965 Brookline Town Hall down the street. The building committee hired Franz Joseph Untersee, a Swiss-born architect who settled in Brookline, to furnish designs for their new bank, which opened in November 1898. Covered in Indiana limestone, the Beaux Arts style bank building features a modest, three-bay facade that is adorned by large round arched windows surrounded by an egg-and-dart motif, and an elaborate pediment with acanthus leaf and a central eagle in copper. Like many local banks, the Brookline Savings Bank saw a series of acquisitions and mergers throughout the 20th century, and this small bank building was sold. Today, the former Brookline Savings Bank on Washington Street is occupied by a church.
The modernist Brookline Town Hall building stands in stark contrast to the many historic buildings in Brookline Village, and even more-so from the town’s third Town Hall, a Victorian Gothic design by architect Samuel J. F. Thayer. Completed in 1965 as a six-story municipal “skyscraper”, the structure was designed by Anderson, Beckwith, and Haible, architects who specialized in sleek, clean, Modernist designs, primarily in office parks and college campuses. The unadorned box is broken up only by the rows of identical windows and slightly projecting fins, which break up the bays in their own monotony. Like many such municipal and office buildings of the time, the structure is set back from the street and surrounded by landscaping, with surface parking behind. While the building was lauded when it opened in 1965, tastes shifted and like in many communities, a majority of the public (and likely the employees who work here) would have preferred its predecessor.
The Edward Stanwood House at 76 High Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, is one of the finest and exuberant examples of the English Victorian Queen Anne style, notable for its varied wall textures and materials, unique form, and applied ornament. The house was built in 1879-1880 for Edward Stanwood, who was for many years the editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser, and a children’s magazine, The Youth’s Companion. The ornate residence was designed by Clarence Sumner Luce, with interiors by Thomas Dewing. The Stanwood House features a well-preserved exterior and period-appropriate paint scheme, highlighting the bas-relief sunflower ornament and gargoyles. Of particular note is the use of hung tile siding, overlaid to give the appearance of fish scales and the roof cresting.
This shingle and brick Queen Anne style house at 112 High Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, was built in 1884 for Charles Storrow and his wife, Martha Cabot Storrow from plans by architect, Edward C. Cabot, Martha’s father. The lot here is said to have been gifted to Charles from his father, Charles Storer Storrow, a prominent civil engineer and industrialist, who is known for designing and building the dam and textile mill complex in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Besides the Victorian main house, the property included a historic stable and a detached house on an adjacent lot, which appears to have been rented by Mr. and Mrs. Storrow. The property was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted’s firm, with rustic rock walls, natural topography, and large, mature plantings. The Storrow House originally had stained glass windows designed by John LaFarge, which were sold in the 1970s.
The Charles Torrey House at 36 Edgehill Road in Brookline, Massachusetts, is a great example of a Queen Anne style residence in the Boston suburbs. The stately home was constructed in 1889 for Charles Torrey, an artist who specialized in nautical scenes. The house is unique for its brick first floor, shingled second and stucco with half-timbering in the gable, a feature that suggests the renewed interest in English medieval motifs. The architect for the Queen Anne style home could not be located, but it appears to be from a more prominent Boston-area firm of the late-19th century. The house is currently (2025) undergoing a renovation.
The house at 44 Edgehill Road in Brookline, is a brick Queen Anne style residence built for Moorfield Storey (1845-1929) by architect and neighbor, Robert Swain Peabody, who was Moorfield’s friend and college roommate. Both Peabody and Storey would later move in the early 20th century to the Fenway in neighboring houses, also designed by Robert S. Peabody. Moorfield Storey was a president of the American Bar Association and the president, for most of its existence, of the Anti-Imperialist League, an organization founded to oppose the annexation of the Philippines as a colony and to support free trade and the gold standard. Storey consistently and aggressively championed civil rights, not only for African Americans, but also for Native Americans and immigrants. He opposed immigration restrictions, and supported racial equality and self-determination. He would become the first president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), from its founding in 1909 until his death in 1929. The Storey House in Brookline is a well-preserved and early example of the Queen Anne style, that would dominate architectural tastes for the following decades.
This handsome shingled Queen Anne style home on Allerton Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, is part of the reason why the “Pill Hill” neighborhood gets its name. The residence was built in 1888 for Mr. Sumner Flagg, likely as an investment property as the neighborhood developed into one of the finest in the Boston area. An early resident here was Judith Motley Low (1841-1933), founder of the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture, which was the first school intended solely to prepare women as landscape professionals in a field dominated by men. In 1945, the Lowthorpe School merged into the Rhode Island School of Design and became the basis of RISD’s Landscape Architecture Department. Another prominent resident of the house in the 20th century was Dr. John Rock (1890-1984), a physician and scientist who worked nearby at the Massachusetts Hospital for Women. As a Catholic doctor, John Rock is best-known for two groundbreaking medical discoveries in women’s health: the birth control pill and in-vitro fertilization. Dr. John Rock and his lab technician, Miriam Menkin, were the first researchers to fertilize a human egg outside of a human body in February of 1944, this research was compounded and later led to in-vitro fertilization as we know it today. Additionally, while running his clinic, Dr. Rock encountered a number of women bearing unwanted children that they could neither afford financially nor handle physically. Rock observed numerous women who, after giving birth to multiple children, had prolapsed uteri, malfunctioning kidneys, and were prematurely aging. In 1952, Rock was recruited to investigate the clinical use of progesterone to prevent ovulation. Enovid, the brand name of the first pill, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and put on the market in 1957 as a menstrual regulator. In 1960, Enovid gained approval from the FDA for contraceptive use.
Located behind the former Boston Free Hospital for Women in Brookline, this charming yellow brick building employs materials and design elements of its neighbor, but was designed and built by different architects nearly a decade later. Built in 1908 as a nurse’s residence this handsome building was crucial to the expansion and growth of the women’s hospital here, providing much-needed living space for employees of the hospital who worked around the clock to provide some of the highest-quality medical care in the Boston area. Designed by the firm of Coolidge & Carlson, the nurse’s residence employs intricate limestone detail
This handsome yellow brick building, designed by architects, Shaw and Hunnewell, was completed in 1895 as the Boston Free Hospital for Women. The hospital was organized in 1875 in a converted rowhouse in Boston’s South End, and after relocating once, it was decided that a purpose-built hospital was needed for the growing demands of the institution. A site in Brookline on the Muddy River, overlooking Frederick Law Olmsted’sRiverway and Olmsted Park, was purchased and the hospital was opened in 1895. The brick and limestone hospital building is somewhat Chateauesque in style and when opened, had no electricity and no telephone. The hospital is historically significant as the first teaching hospital for Harvard and as the first hospital in the country to apply radiation treatment for cancer, along with being a major research facility in fertility, especially the work of Dr. John Rock (who lived nearby) on the development of the birth control pill and research on in-vitro fertilization. The Free Hospital for Women merged with the Boston Lying In Hospital (now part of Brigham & Women’s), which closed its Brookline Campus in the 1960s. In 1984, the firm of Childs, Bertman and Tseckares oversaw the conversion of the buildings to condominiums, called The Park, with sympathetic new construction.
Buildings of New England 