Best Things to Do in Brookline

15/03/2023

Brookline Farmers’ Market

Another great thing about Coolidge Corner is the farmers’ market, held at the Centre Street West Parking Lot from the first Thursday in June to the last Thursday before Thanksgiving.

The Brookline Farmers’ Market has been running since the 1970s, and almost everything sold here has been produced in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The selection changes by the week, but normally includes local fruit and vegetables, meats, fish, cheeses, herbs, dairy goods, flowers, fresh roasted coffee, fermented foods, sauces, gourmet ice cream, fresh breads and a lot of fancy sweet treats.

15/03/2023

Puppet Showplace Theater
Dubbed New England’s favorite puppetry destination, the Puppet Showplace Theater has been running half a century now, and moved to its current location in Brookline Village in 1982.

The theater is managed by a non-profit organization, and stages 300 performances every year. There are family shows for kids, as well as a slew of youth workshops, while the theater also appeals to older audiences with “Puppets at Night” shows and the annual Puppet Slam Camp.

Puppet Showplace Theater was established by Boston teacher Mary Churchill (1930-1997), who found puppets effective for children having trouble learning to read, and later started creating her own shows.

The organization made headlines during the 1980s when several shows by artist in residence Paul Vincent Davis earned Citations of Excellence from UNIMA-USA

15/03/2023

11/03/2023

Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site

In Brookline you can visit Fairsted, the home and office compound for the world’s first full-sized professional firm for landscape design.

Frederick Law Olmsted relocated to Brookline in 1883 to be closer to his frequent collaborator, architect H. H. Richardson (1838-1886), who was based close by.

Fairsted was adapted from a Federal farmhouse and barn from the early 19th century, and used by the Olmsted firm for decades until finally being acquired by the National Park Service in 1980.

A ranger-guided tour takes in the Historic Design Office for an insight into the work of Olmsted and his sons, while the encompassing landscape has been designed to reflect Olmsted’s theories.

09/03/2023

Coolidge Corner

Brookline’s largest and busiest commercial district is at the intersection of Harvard and Beacon streets, and is the kind of downtown area that most towns aspire to.

Coolidge Corner is bustling, attractive and has an interesting food scene, with the densest collection of kosher restaurants in the Boston area.

The mainstay is Zaftigs Delicatessen, for matzo ball soup, latkes, lox, pastrami and the like. The Olmsted-designed Beacon Street is part of Coolidge Corner’s charm, with a stately, tree-lined boulevard sandwiching the C Branch for swift transport links between Brookline and Boston.

For a bit of shopping there’s a surfeit of independent stores here. One local star is the much-loved Brookline Booksmith, dating back to 1961 and with a progressive attitude and an exciting schedule of readings, conversations with authors, children’s events and more.

07/03/2023

Larz Anderson Auto Museum

In 1899 the historic Weld estate was purchased from a family member by the socialite Isabel Weld Perkins (1876-1948),who moved here with her husband, diplomat Larz Anderson (1866-1937).

The estate’s mansion was pulled down after WWII, but a surviving element is the Châteauesque carriage house (1888), which became a repository for the couple’s extensive collection of early automobiles.

This is now an auto museum, with what is billed as “America’s Oldest Car Collection”, offering an opportunity to get close to early cars that are normally hidden away in private collections.

A few notables are the Winton Phaeton that the couple purchased in 1899, a 1903 Gardner-Serpollet, a 1900 Rocket-Schneider, an extremely rare 1905 Electromobile and a 1910 Panhard et Levassor.

The museum stages a variety of shows for European and American cars on the lawn in summer.