Warm controversies at this year’s fall town meeting cooled quickly in a flurry of surprises and compromises. In the afternoon before the first session on Tuesday, November 17, town staff learned that Brookline was no longer in line for a major state grant to assist with Larz Anderson Park. We are too rich a town to qualify.
Article 6: Rejection of the state grant application quashed a dispute over Article 6 on the town meeting warrant, seeking matching funds to improve Larz Anderson Park. To qualify for up to $400,000 in additional state aid, the town meeting would have to restrict Larz Anderson to recreation and conservation uses only, invoking Article 97 of the Massachusetts constitution.
A few weeks earlier, consultants hired by the Board of Selectmen had named Larz Anderson as a potential site for a new elementary school. The 1949 will of Isabella Weld Anderson, leaving the land to the town, required that it be used for educational, recreational or charitable purposes. Agreeing to the state’s conditions would abandon potential uses involving two of those three categories. The town meeting took no action.
Political chatter also started to call out Larz Anderson as a potential site for high-school expansion. Never mind that the park is remote from centers of population and not well served by streets and transit. Park, recreation and conservation enthusiasts sounded flustered, to say the least.
Open space: Over the past 150 years, since the Civil War, the town acquired about 475 acres of usable open space–not counting the traffic islands and cemeteries. The 53 major sites, totaling about three-quarters of a square mile, represent about 11 percent of the town. Only about a tenth of that space is part of school sites. The rest provides recreation facilities, pedestrian parks and conservation areas.
The distribution of usable, public open space became grossly unequal. Each precinct in the town has nearly the same population. However, Precinct 15 has 257 acres of usable, public open space–over half the total. The average amount of usable, public open space is only about 30 acres per precinct. Precincts 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 have less than 10 acres each. Precinct 13, snaking along the Brighton line, has none.
Brookline’s usable, public open space
Year
Acres
Precinct
Source
Site name
2011
10.0
14
purchase
Fisher Hill Reservoir Park
1977
1.6
1
taking
Amory Woods Conservation Area
1975
3.5
1
taking
Halls Pond Conservation Area
1972
0.5
4
purchase
Billy Ward Playground
1970
4.2
5
purchase
Lincoln School Playground
1967
0.4
5
taking
Juniper Street Playground
1961
25.0
16
bequest
Blakely Hoar Conservation Area
1961
1.1
9
purchase
Lawton Playground
1960
9.5
15
purchase
Soule Center
1953
17.2
15
purchase
Dane Park
1951
2.4
7
purchase
Pierce School Playground
1948
61.1
15
bequest
Larz Anderson Park
1946
1.1
12
purchase
Schick Park
1945
30.2
15
purchase
Lost Pond Conservation Area
1945
15.2
15
purchase
Skyline Park
1944
11.1
14
purchase
Warren Field
1941
1.3
15
purchase
Baldwin School Playground
1939
2.4
5
donation
Robinson Playground
1935
11.3
16
donation
Baker School Playground
1915
0.5
4
purchase
Murphy Playground
1914
8.7
5
purchase
Downes Field
1913
0.8
14
purchase
Eliot Little Field Park
1913
1.7
5
purchase
Clark Playground
1910
4.0
11
purchase
Driscoll School Playground
1907
2.1
6
purchase
Emerson Garden
1907
119.9
15
purchase
Putterham Meadows Golf Course
1905
1.7
9
purchase
Coolidge Playground
1903
8.3
1
purchase
Amory Playground
1903
3.1
12
purchase
Runkle School Playground
1902
32.2
14
donation
Brookline Reservoir Park
1902
2.6
1
donation
Longwood Mall
1902
2.8
1
donation
Knyvet Square
1902
1.1
1
donation
Mason Square
1902
1.9
2
purchase
Winthrop Square
1902
6.5
14
purchase
Heath School Playground
1901
5.6
14
purchase
Waldstein Playground
1901
0.3
5
purchase
Philbrick Square
1901
3.3
10
donation
Griggs Park
1900
13.8
1,3
purchase
Riverway Park
1900
4.2
11
purchase
Corey Hill Park
1899
0.3
4
donation
Linden Park
1897
0.4
10
donation
Saint Mark’s Square
1895
0.2
4
donation
Linden Square
1894
12.9
4,5
purchase
Olmsted Park
1891
6.7
8
purchase
Devotion School Playground
1891
5.0
3
purchase
Longwood Playground
1890
2.8
15
purchase
Singletree Hill Reservoir
1871
4.1
4
purchase
Brookline Avenue Playground
1871
5.2
6
purchase
Cypress Street Playground
1871
2.0
4
purchase
Town Hall Square
1868
1.2
6
purchase
Boylston Street Playground
1864
0.2
1
purchase
Monmouth Street Park
1827
0.2
5
donation
Town Green
Source: Open space plan, Town of Brookline, MA, January, 2011
Social justice: Surely Precinct 15–with its giant legacy of usable, public open space–can spare a little for a school site. There are at least three obvious, well qualified candidates:
• Putterham Meadows Golf Course, at 120 acres–a conspicuous luxury. Five acres carved from a corner of this cradle of riches would capably house a three-section elementary school.
• Soule Recreation Center, at 10 acres, a site perennially looking for a gainful occupation. Its rapid churn of personnel has become a community scandal.
• Dane Park, at 17 acres, by far the least used of Brookline’s major parks.
The town has not commissioned a new school site since Baker in 1935. The new Lincoln School, opened in 1994, took over the old, private Park School site–after that school moved away to Goddard Ave. It would take a coldly rigid, greedy set of park, recreation and conservation enthusiasts to find that there is no adequate space they could possibly spare from Precinct 15.
– Craig Bolon, Brookline, MA, December 4, 2015
Open Space Plan, Town of Brookline, MA, January, 2011 (8 MB, uses obsolete precinct numbers)
Precinct Map, Town of Brookline, MA, February, 2012 (1 MB)