Interior House Painter Brookline MA

Brookline, Massachusetts
Town
Seal
Location as an exclave of Norfolk County in Massachusetts
Coordinates: 42°19′54″N 71°07′18″W / 42.33167°N 71.12167°W / 42.33167; -71.12167Coordinates: 42°19′54″N 71°07′18″W / 42.33167°N 71.12167°W / 42.33167; -71.12167
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Norfolk
Region	New England
Settled	1638
Incorporated	1705
Government
• Type	Representative town meeting
• Town Administrator	Charles Carey
• Select Board	Heather A. Hamilton (Chair) John VanScoyoc (Vice-Chair) Bernard W. Greene Miriam Aschkenasy Michael Sandman
Area
• Total	6.8 sq mi (17.7 km)
• Land	6.8 sq mi (17.6 km2)
• Water	0.1 sq mi (0.1 km)
Elevation	50 ft (15 m)
Population  (2020)
• Total	63,191
• Density	9,292.8/sq mi (3,590.4/km2)
Time zone	UTC−5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (Eastern)
ZIP Codes	02445–02447, 02467
Area code	617/857
FIPS code	25-09175
GNIS feature ID	0619456
Website	www.brooklinema.gov

Brookline is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, in the United States, and part of the Boston metropolitan area. Brookline borders six of Boston’s neighborhoods: Brighton, Allston, Fenway–Kenmore, Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, and West Roxbury. The city of Newton lies to the west of Brookline. Brookline was first settled in 1638 as a hamlet in Boston, known as Muddy River; it was incorporated as a separate town in 1705.

At the time of the 2020 United States Census, the population of the town was 63,191. It is the most populous municipality in Massachusetts to have a town (rather than city) form of government.

History

Once part of Algonquian territory, Brookline was first settled by European colonists in the early 17th century. The area was an outlying part of the colonial settlement of Boston and known as the hamlet of Muddy River. In 1705, it was incorporated as the independent town of Brookline. The northern and southern borders of the town were marked by two small rivers or brooks, which is the town’s namesake. The northern border with Brighton (which was itself part of Cambridge until 1807) was Smelt Brook. (That name appears on maps starting at least as early as 1852, but sometime between 1888 and 1925 the brook was covered over.) The southern boundary, abutting Boston, was the Muddy River.

The Town of Brighton was merged with Boston in 1874, and the Boston-Brookline border was redrawn to connect the new Back Bay neighborhood with Allston-Brighton. This merger created a narrow strip of land along the Charles River belonging to Boston, cutting Brookline off from the shoreline. It also put certain lands north of the Muddy River on the Boston side, including what are now Kenmore Square and Packard’s Corner. The current northern border follows Commonwealth Avenue, and on the northeast, St. Mary’s Street. When Frederick Law Olmsted designed the Emerald Necklace of parks and parkways for Boston in the 1890s, the Muddy River was integrated into the Riverway and Olmsted Park, creating parkland accessible by both Boston and Brookline residents.

Throughout its history, Brookline has resisted being annexed by Boston, in particular during the Boston–Brookline annexation debate of 1873. The neighboring towns of West Roxbury and Hyde Park connected Brookline to the rest of Norfolk County until they were annexed by Boston in 1874 and 1912, respectively, putting them in Suffolk County. Brookline is now separated from the remainder of Norfolk County.

Brookline has long been regarded as a pleasant and verdant environment. In the 1841 edition of the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Andrew Jackson Downing described the area this way:

Brookline residents were among the first in the country to propose extending the vote to women. Benjamin F. Butler, in his 1882 campaign for Governor, advocated the idea.

In 1843, deeds in Brookline forbade resale of property to “any negro or native of Ireland.”

Transportation history

Two branches of upper Boston Post Road, established in the 1670s, passed through Brookline. Brookline Village was the original center of retail activity. In 1810, the Boston and Worcester Turnpike, now Massachusetts Route 9, was laid out, starting on Huntington Avenue in Boston and passing through the village center on its way west.

Steam railroads came to Brookline in the middle of the 19th century. The Boston and Worcester Railroad was constructed in the early 1830s, and passed through Brookline near the Charles River. The rail line is still in active use, now paralleled by the Massachusetts Turnpike. The Highland branch of the Boston and Albany Railroad was built from Kenmore Square to Brookline Village in 1847, and was extended into Newton in 1852. In the late 1950s, this would become the Green Line D branch.