Brooks Estate

Early History of the Brooks Estate

Brooks Estate
View to the east side from the lawn of Acorn Hill
c. 1890. By Sarah L. Brooks. Courtesy Medford Brooks Estate Land Trust

The Brooks Estate has been a part of Medford history and the city's landscape for over 330 years. In 1660, the original 400 acres of the Brooks Estate were acquired by Thomas Brooks, one of the first Puritan settlers of Boston. The property was a working farm for over 250 years and served as the family's "summer place" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1853, the need for additional cemetery space became apparent. Medford selectmen appointed a committee to purchase land for a cemetery. After examining several locations, they finally recommended 12 acres owned by Edward Brooks, son of Peter C. Brooks. The committee purchased the parcel from Mr. Brooks for $5,000. The City's cemetery became known as Oak Grove Cemetery. In 1875 Medford purchased an additional twenty-two acres of land from Edward Brooks (Usher, 1885 p.340-342). All this acreage was adjacent to the Brooks family holdings.

The Brooks Estate has been a part of Medford history and the city's landscape for over 330 years.

Peter Chardon and Shepherd Brooks actively developed their properties between 1859 and 1922. They commissioned the eminent architects Calver Vaux and Peabody and Stems to design their summer homes. The nineteen century tradition of the "gentleman landscape architect" enhanced the unique qualities of the Brooks Estates with beautifully designed and situated mansions (Peabody and Sterns financial records).

Also on the property is Brooks Pond, a large man made body of water that was completed in 1889. Brooks Pond is really an aggregation of three smaller ponds commonly known as the west, middle and east ponds. In fact, it is one pond which is most clear when the water level is at its highest seasonal point.

Native trees, shrubs and flowers predominated, although some non- native specimen trees, such as European beeches, were added. In 1910, the magazine, Country Life in America, stressed the fact that Shepherd Brooks was his own landscape architect. As the article is written:

It is the easiest thing in the world to create a country estate with great beauty and lavish splendor-if you have money enough. Hire the best landscape architects and put your case into their hands, and you may have broad lawns and terraces, rolling links shady roadways, masses of rhododendrons and spiral hedges, clumps of evergreens, fountains waterfalls, lakes, islands, ravines, fountains, formal gardens, wild gardens, water gardens, flowers in thin lines and flowers in masses, aisles, vistas, views, hidden nooks- almost anything you can imagine. Almost; but not quite. For where is that landscape architect who can imitate nature so closely as to simulate the softening effect of great age?

If, therefore, you are so fortunate as to possess an estate that has been an estate for so long that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary ... you have something that money cannot buy nor the wisest skill produce. And don't try to change its character. Don't try to modernize it...

To allow an old estate to follow its own course, however, is to permit it to go to rack and ruin at no late date. Nature needs to be helped a bit, and the solution of the problem is that type of naturalistic gardening which leaves as they are until they grow ugly.

Apparently, the estate never had a controversial flower Garden. The 1910 article continues: "Nowhere on the estate are the extremes of cultivated flowers to be seen: such as are not actually wild are the most simple varieties." Shepherd Brooks also preferred native shrubs. He naturalized mountain laurel under the trees at the edges of the pond and lined the main drives with blackberries, wild roses, and barberry.

The Childs Land Use. Master Plan Report noted that because the landscape had not been heavily designed it could be cleaned up relatively easily.

As years passed, the Brooks family donated land to Medford for public roads and open recreational land. In 1926, Clara Brooks, the widow of Shepherd Brooks, deeded the property to the Federation of Bird Clubs of New England for use as a wildlife sanctuary. However, the Federation was unable to maintain the property and it reverted back to the Brooks' heirs in 1939 (Daily Evening Mercury, October 31, 1939).

In 1941, the children of Shepherd and Clara Brooks sold the Winchester portion of the property to the Town of Winchester for open space.

That 28 acres of forest is under the jurisdiction of the Town Forest Committee, a board appointed by the Winchester Town Selectmen. The town acquired this property from the owner Richard Parkhurst. This land is now known as the Brooks- Parkhurst Town Forest (Winchester Star, July 7, 1950).

A path behind the Shepherd Brooks Carriage House leads into the Winchester woods. Between the Medford and Winchester woods, about 88 acres of original Brooks land remains in its natural state. By itself the Winchester forest is relatively small, but combined with the adjoining Medford woods it makes up a substantial habitat of plants and wildlife not often seen in an urban setting (Tom Lincoln, 1994).

From the bachelors thesis: Case Study of the Brooks Estate, by Linda M. Penta. American Studies Program, Leslie College