OWNERSHIP
CONDITIONS
CONTEXT
HISTORY
DESIGN ISSUES
SOCIAL ISSUES
PLANNING PROCESSES
TESTIMONIES

Click here for map and orthophoto

Click here for data from census tract 1203. (from U.S. Census 2000).

OWNERSHIP:
-- Brookside Community Garden: Boston Natural Areas Network
-- The Brewery Small Business Center: Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation
-- Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church and School: Roman Catholic Church Archdiocese of Boston
-- Flaherty Park: City of Boston Department of Parks and Recreation

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CONDITIONS:
The Brookside neighborhood in Jamaica Plain is so named because the Stony Brook once flowed through the area. Today, the brook flows underground through a culvert, but the neighborhood has retained its name and much of the character that came with being an industrial area along a water source beginning in the 1800s.

Former and current industry:
The neighborhood retains remnants of former industrial activity such as the Haffenrefer Brewery buildings, which are now home to The Brewery, a small-business incubator that was established and is owned and administered by the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation. Some warehouse and former industrial space in the neighborhood is used by artists seeking large open spaces for their work. Other warehouse space has been razed and replaced by new, upscale condominiums in recent years, with one set of condos completed in 2003.

Fewer than ten buildings in the neighborhood are still zoned for industrial uses between Green Street and Boylston Street, but these include a range of small businesses near Green Street, such as Carlisle Engineering Inc and Eldorado Charters Inc, as well as The Brewery.

Housing:
In recent years new loft apartments have been constructed in a style that resembles artists lofts, particularly on Brookside Avenue and Cornwall Street. Older, more traditional multi-family housing remains in the neighborhood as well and covers a range of sizes and ages, from single-family to small apartment buildings, with the majority of housing being closely-spaced two- and three-family buildings.

Flaherty Park:
The 1.31 acre Flaherty Park on Cornwell and Brookside Streets is a significant neighborhood park in the Brookside neighborhood. Although in poor condition in recent years, the park was renovated in 2002, with bright new playground equipment on its southern side. There is a naturalistic sitting area in the midst of vegetation, which overlooks a large, paved, passive area in the center. Neighborhood children often use the paved area in the park for sports such as baseball, for which the park is not designed. The park is bordered by a sturdy, black, waist-high chainlink fence.

Brookside Community Garden:
The Brookside Community Garden is located Minton Street off of Amory Street near the Southwest Corridor Park. The 6,000-square-foot garden was established in 1995 and includes 25 plots used by community members. The garden features a handsome black steel fence and gate and an arbor that is alive with vines and flowers in the growing months.

The Brookside garden was developed with a $59,000 grant from the City's Public Facilities Department and matching funds from local residents and businesses. The Boston Natural Areas Fund (now Network), worked in partnership with the Brookside Neighborhood Association and other local, City, and State groups to establish the garden, which received a Community Garden Award from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and continues to be diligently cared for by neighbors.

Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church and School:
This church was started in 1896 by the pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Church, Thomas Magennis. Three buildings comprise the church, with one enormous sanctuary and a school building across the street. The church was originally a lower-middle class Irish-American parish, and today the school and parish are extremely racially diverse, with a particularly large H
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CONTEXT:
In 2000, the census tract that includes the Brookside and Parkside neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain (tract 1203) had 43.9% white residents, 27.2% black or African American residents, and 50.7% Latino residents (people can be from one or more ethnic groups). Almost 66% of residents rent their homes, and 27% are under the age of 18. Twenty-three percent of individuals live below the poverty line, and the median household income in this area is $37,040. Almost 40% of the employed population depends on public transportation to get to work.

The Brookside neighborhood is very close to the Orange Line. Brookside residents are, on the whole, more transit dependent than the community just west of the Orange Line in Central Jamaica Plain (Otake, 2002).

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HISTORY:
Stony Brook industry and worker housing:
In the early to mid-1800s, tanneries and breweries sprang up between Roxbury Crossing and Forest Hills Station along the Stony Brook. These industrial businesses quickly spurred on development of the Brookside neighborhood.

Amory Street was developed by 1820 with Mansard-style worker cottages for German and Irish workers. The influence of the German workers who developed this area in the late 1800s is reflected in the names of streets such as Germania, Bismark, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schiller. In the mid-1830s, Green Street lots were sub-divided and homes were built on the lots for wheelwrights, builders, and harness makers. Between 1870 and 1910, carriage factories, rubber mills, and breweries were established along Green Street, Brookside Avenue, and Amory Street (Jamaica Plain Preservation Study, 1982).

The breweries, tanneries, and other industries served as the nucleus for community life. For the most part, the hundreds of workers employed by these industries between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s walked to work. The old Haffenreffer brewery alone employed as many as 300 people before it closed in 1965.

1950s through 1980s:
The neighborhood went through a period of decline in the late 1960s. The decline was partially a result of the closing of the Stony Brook industries, but also a result of the neighborhood's proximity to what is now the Southwest Corridor Park. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts developed plans to run eight-lane Interstate I-95 through the southwest corridor. The state acquired the strip of land and demolished 300 businesses and 700 households along the corridor. Community protest halted the construction of the highway, but the southwest corridor languished for more than a decade while the State's plans were uncertain. Sam Bass Warner called the corridor "a wide, unattended scab." The Brookside neighborhood was devastated, and became a haven for arson, drug deals, and dumping. Only a few neighborhood institutions, such as Our Lady of Lourdes parish and school, remained strong.

Period of revitalization:
When the Orange Line and the Southwest Corridor Park were completed in 1987, a period of revitalization of the Brookside neighborhood began. New housing, a rehabilitated park, a popular community garden, and The Brewery Small Business Center have all been part of this revitalization. The Brookside Neighborhood Association has been instrumental in this process.

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DESIGN ISSUES:
The presence of industrial land uses near a rapid transit station is not consistent with the Boston Redevelopment Authority's strategy of transit-oriented community development. Also, the coexistence of companies such as the Boston Brewing Company and residential housing has at times been problematic for residents.

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SOCIAL ISSUES:
The displacement of artists living in the neighborhood's former factories has been a major issue, as former industrial spaces have been torn down or purchased and renovated by developers. One example was the 1999 conflict between 25 artists who lived and worked in a 100-year-old former rubber factory building on 57-67 Brookside Avenue. A new owner threatened to evict the residents and tear down the building to construct new housing. However, with the help of the City of Boston, the artists were able to purchase the building from the landlord. Most of the original residential tenants have chosen to buy affordable artists live/work spaces in the building, which is currently being rehabilitated. The surplus units will be sold as subsidized mixed-use spaces for other artists.

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PLANNING PROCESSES:
A group called Jamaica Plain Co-Housing proposed a 30-unit intentional residential community in the Brookside neighborhood in partnership with Watermark Development & Construction Inc., which developed Cornwall Studios. In 2001, the Brookside Neighborhood Association was not supportive of the plan. The proposed location of the facility is 65 Cornwall Street.  Nick Haney is the Boston Redevelopment Authority planner assigned to this planning process.

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TESTIMONIES:
"We went through hell in the '70s. It was, 'burn, baby, burn.' Easy money. Insurance money. I was ready to go. My mother said, 'Look, you buy that house up there, the three-family, and it'll feed you from rent for the rest of your life.' [I said] "Aw, Ma, I'm sick of JP. You can't sleep at night with the sirens. You watch the fires light up the sky" (Richie Harris, president of the Brookside Neighborhood Association in 1995, from an article by Alan Lupo, "Going to seed in Jamaica Plain," The Boston Globe, June 11, 1995).

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