Brookline Avenue is a principal urban artery in the city of
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
. It runs from
Kenmore Square
Kenmore Square is a square in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, consisting of the intersection of several main avenues (including Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue) as well as several other cross streets, and Kenmore station, an MBTA ...
in the
Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood, forming a 1.5-mile straight line to its other terminus at Washington Street in the
Brookline Village
Brookline Village is one of the major commercial and retail centers of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts. Located just north of Massachusetts Route 9 and west of the Muddy River, it is the historic center of the town and includes its major c ...
neighborhood of
Brookline, Massachusetts
Brookline is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, in the United States, and part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area. Brookline borders six of Boston's neighborhoods: Brighton, Boston, Brighton, A ...
. The
Landmark Center,
Fenway Park
Fenway Park is a baseball stadium located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, near Kenmore Square. Since 1912, it has been the home of the Boston Red Sox, the city's American League baseball team, and since 1953, its only Major League Base ...
,
Emmanuel College,
Longwood Medical and Academic Area
The Longwood Medical and Academic Area (also known as Longwood Medical Area, LMA, or simply Longwood) is a medical campus in Boston, Massachusetts. Flanking Longwood Avenue, LMA is adjacent to the Fenway–Kenmore, Audubon Circle, and Mission H ...
and Kenmore Square are sites along its length.
Along its way, the street intersects (from east to west)
Boylston Street,
Park Drive,
the Fenway
Fenway, commonly referred to as The Fenway, is a mostly one-way, one- to three-lane parkway that runs along the southern and eastern edges of the Back Bay Fens in the Fenway–Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, in the east-central part of the U.S. ...
, and
the Riverway
Riverway, also referred to as "the Riverway," is a parkway in Boston, Massachusetts. The parkway is a link in the Emerald Necklace system of parks and parkways designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1890s. Starting at the Landmark Center end ...
, crossing the
Emerald Necklace
The Emerald Necklace consists of a chain of parks linked by parkways and waterways in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts. It was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and gets its name from the way the planned chain appears ...
twice; the street ends at Brookline Avenue's westernmost crossing of the Necklace.
The road was laid out between 1818 and 1821 during the construction of the
Boston & Roxbury Mill Dam
The Boston & Roxbury Mill Dam was an engineering project in Boston's Back Bay. Commissioned in 1814, the project intended to enclose the Back Bay basin and utilize the flowing tidal waters for industrial production. Constructing the dam would allow ...
across Boston's
Back Bay
Back Bay is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, built on reclaimed land in the Charles River basin. Construction began in 1859, as the demand for luxury housing exceeded the availability in the city at the time, and t ...
. It led from the western end of the dam at Sewall's Point (now Kenmore Square) to the Punch Bowl Tavern on Washington Street in Brookline. The road was known by various names, including the Punch Bowl Road, the Mill Dam Road, and Western Avenue. (Mill Dam Road and Western Avenue were also used for the road that crossed the dam (now
Beacon Street
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and its western suburbs Brookline and Newton. It passes through many of Boston's central and western neighborhoods, including Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway–Kenmore, the Boston Uni ...
) and for its extension west to Brighton. "Brookline Branch" was sometimes used to distinguish this road from the others.) The name Brookline Avenue was officially adopted in 1868.
References
External links
*
Streets in Boston
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