Newton Conservators Logo Newton Conservators

   
 
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

Newton Park and Conservation Lands

26
  Brook Farm Historic Site

LOCATION: West Roxbury .
Enter at 670 Baker Street, 1/3 mile north of VFW Parkway.

Connects to Millennium Park and to Charles River Path - Wells Avenue. Opposite from Cutler Park.

Location map

Trail map (Buy a trail guide)

Aerial photo

A long walk that includes this park

And another

SIZE: 179 acres

ACQUIRED: 1988

ADMINISTERED BY: Division of Urban Parks and Recreation

FEATURES:

This National Historic Landmark is a diverse mix of terraces and knolls covered by fields, forest, and a cemetery whose adjacent marsh and wetlands include a small brook on the south and the Charles River on the west. Once farmland, trails now lead through a mix of wetlands, meadows, fields, and woodland.

HISTORY:

This is the site of the 1840s Brook Farm experimental commune of Transcendentalists including Hawthorne, Dana, Greeley, Ripley, Margaret Fuller, and others. It was used briefly in the 1850s as a poor farm and in 1861 for training at Camp Andrew during the Civil War. A Lutheran orphanage occupied the farm from 1872 through 1943, with a treatment center on site from 1948 through 1974. Gethsemane Cemetery was established in 1873. Land was going to be developed into high-rises, before the MDC took over in 1988.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The story of Brook Farm as reported on Mass Moments, from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1852 novel, The Blithedale Romance, is set in a utopian community and was written after he lived at Brook Farm.

1844 painting of Brook Farm from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia, a history of Brook Farm by Sterling Delano, was published in 2004.

A Season in Utopia is an earlier book about Brook Farm.

My Friends at Brook Farm by John Van Der Zee Sears is published online by Project Gutenberg.

 

Photo of trail markers

   
Top of Page
   Copyright © 2003-7 Newton Conservators, Inc.