Community Profile

Brighton once was big into horticultural research, cattle

By Kathleen Howley, Globe Correspondent, 7/31/1999

Brighton at a glance Incorporated: 1807 as a town, annexed to Boston in 1874. Area: 2 square miles. Population: 45,000. Tax rate: $13.44 residential; $37.04 commercial. Median house price: $297,000. Form of government: Mayor, city council. Services: Massachusetts Electric, Boston Gas, city water and sewer. Public schools: Thomas A. Edison and William Howard Taft middle schools, Mary Lyons, Harriet A. Baldwin, James A. Garfield, Alexander Hamilton and Winship elementary schools, Brighton High School. Public transportation: MBTA trolley and buses. Cultural/recreational: Chestnut Hill Reservoir, Gallagher Memorial Park, Chandler Pond, Rogers Park, two MDC pools, one MDC skating rink, Brighton-Allston Historical Society, several playgrounds, 2 branches of the Boston Public Library.

Louise Bonar said that when she digs in the garden behind her home on Nonantum Hill in Brighton, she uncovers evidence of the community's past. [an error occurred while processing this directive]

"I find pieces of greenhouse glass that are worn at the edges, like beach glass. I save them because they are a link to the last century," said Bonar, one of the founders of the Brighton-Allston Historical Society.

Between the 1820s and the 1930s, Brighton was an important center for horticultural research — particularly Nonantum Hill, Bonar said. The last of the old greenhouses were torn down in the 1950s to make way for residential subdivisions.

The famous horticulturists who used Brighton as their testing grounds include Horace Gray, who founded the Boston Public Gardens, known for raising grapes under glass at his home on Nonantum Hill, she said. William Strong, once president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, bought Gray's nursery and grapery in the mid-1800s.

Joseph Breck ran a well-known nursery behind his home in Oak Square. Today, the park in the center of Oak Square is named for him.

"In those days, horticulture wasn't a hobby. It was a very important industry. At a time when most people still grew their own food, it was a matter of life or death," said Bonar.

The community's other major industry was the cattle market held once a week for more than a century in Brighton Center, Bonar said. Many of the slaughter houses were located on what today is called Market Street.

"The brooks ran red on Wednesdays because after you picked out the cow you wanted the men went out to barn in back and slaughtered it, dumping all the mess through a trap door in the floor," she said.

After a cholera outbreak in the 1860s the state Legislature centralized the Brighton slaughterhouses in a large building located on the spot where Martignetti Liquors now stands, on Soldiers Field Road in Brighton. Then, it was the largest facility of its kind.

The town's cattle industry had its roots in the Revolutionary War, said William Marchione, curator of the Brighton-Allston Historical Society and the author of several books on the history of Brighton.

"The cattle market was established initially to provide meat for the Revolutionary Army headquartered across the river in Cambridge.

After the British were driven out, it continued in the same location and grew in significance," he said.

Three families settled the area in 1647, crossing the Charles River from Cambridge. At first, they called the area Little Cambridge, said Marchione.

In 1807, the settlement was incorporated as the town of Brighton. In 1874 it was annexed to Boston, he said.

The area today is divided into two major communities — Brighton and, in the northern part of the old town, Allston.

Allston was established in 1867 as a separate postal code, Marchione said. The intrusion of railway lines and, after World War II, the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike geographically separated the two neighborhoods.

While many people hyphenate the two names to describe the area as Allston-Brighton, the residents of Allston see themselves as a separate neighborhood, said Marchione.

Allston and the southern end of Brighton are dominated by young professionals and students, said Sharren T. Marquis, of Marquis Real Estate Better Homes & Gardens. But, other parts of Brighton have a suburban flavor, she said.

"A lot of people think of Brighton as being the big condominium and apartment buildings along Commonwealth Avenue. That's a major part, but that's not all there is. Brighton is one of the most residential sections of the city. There are many tree-lined streets with single and smaller multi-family homes," she said.

She said that about 50 percent of the residences in Brighton are condominiums, about 30 percent are apartments, and 20 percent are single-family homes.

The area has a large immigrant population, Marquis said. It's not unusual to hear Russian or other Eastern European languages being spoken on the streets. And, many of the small neighborhood businesses, from dry cleaners to grocery stores, are owned by immigrants.

"Brighton has always been a melting pot. It really is a selling point for the community," she said.

Single-family homes tend to sell for between $230,000 and $400,000, she said. On the upper end of that range, the home is likely to be a large Victorian. On the lower end, it may be a six-room bungalow built in the 1930s. Multi-families sell for $280,000 to $400,000, she said.

Condominiums list for between $70,000 for a small one-bedroom to around $300,000 for a large unit in a converted Victorian mansion, she said.