Newton Park and Conservation Lands

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

Photo Gallery

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.