|
Newton Park and Conservation Lands
|
26
|
|
Brook Farm Historic Site |
LONGEST WALK : 3 miles, on this walk including Charles River Path and Millennium Park (a longer walk that includes this park)
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:
DCR website for the park
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.
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.
 Brook Farm, by Josiah Wolcott, an 1846 painting in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society
Wikipedia entry
A blogger visits Brook Farm
|
