This fall, the Town of Brookline is kicking off a plan to restore a historic landscape design by Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the town's most famous residents, by bringing back the Beacon Street Bridle Path, a 2.25-mile pathway that once spanned the town.
Beacon Street is a broad, tree-lined boulevard that connects the most densely populated neighborhoods of Brookline, from Cleveland Circle in the west to Park Drive in Boston's Fenway neighborhood to the east. Along the way, it also connects busy neighborhood commercial districts like Washington Square and Coolidge Corner.
Olmsted's 19th-century design for the boulevard included a 20 foot "bridle way" for leisurely horseback riding next to the Green Line tracks in the shade of the street's abundant trees (see below).
While Beacon Street still retains most aspects of Olmsted's design, the bridle path was lost at some point during the 20th century. As with many other parks throughout the region, car owners expropriated the space to use it as a parking lot.
In the late 2010s, though, several Brookline residents began organizing to convince the town to restore the historic design as a protected pathway for bikes and pedestrians.
One weekend in the spring of 2019, the group set up a two-block demonstration project to show how there was plenty of room to accommodate parking alongside a new, protected pathway.
"We don't need to get into arguments over parking here," Jules Milner-Brage, one of the founders of the Friends of the Beacon Street Bridleway, told StreetsblogMASS in 2019. "There's plenty of room for both."
During the pandemic, the town commissioned a feasibility study. That report provided a rough sketch of where the path could run, but also acknowledged that more work needed to be done to redesign numerous intersections and crosswalks along the route.
Now, with a $2 million earmark from U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss and $1 million in matching funds from the Town of Brookline, town officials have retained Toole Design Group to produce a more detailed design that will eventually make the project eligible for construction funding in the state's infrastructure work plan.
Meeting in the middle
To kick off the next phase of design, consultants from Toole have been joining Brookline town officials for a series of introductory "neighborhood walk and talk" events for the project this month.
Participants at the Coolidge Corner neighborhood meeting last Thursday (pictured at the top of this article) were generally supportive of the proposal.
"It's green for climate resiliency, it's creating green infrastructure that can absorb stormwater, and it's green transportation," enthused Sean Lynn-Jones, President of the Brookline Greenspace Alliance.
"I don't bike to work (in downtown Boston) because it's not safe," meeting participant Nacia Goldberg told StreetsblogMASS. "Having a dedicated bike path that crosses the entire town on Beacon would be great."
While Thursday's meeting was very well attended, the attendees did not appear to reflect the town's actual demographics.
The median age for all Brookline residents is 35, making the town slightly younger than Massachusetts as a whole, and one in three residents are not white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Goldberg couldn't help but notice that she was one of the few participants who didn't have grey hair.
"I don't want to be ageist, but I do know there are lots of people under 50 who live here, and care about the climate and creating more spaces that are safe from cars," she said.
More meetings, preliminary design in 2026
The design team gave participants an overview of the project's history and the 2021 feasibility study, but they stressed that they were still collecting feedback from neighbors and details about the street's existing conditions before they begin drawing up specific design proposals in early 2026.
The project team is also coordinating its plans for the path with the MBTA, which is planning its own construction project in the Beacon Street median to upgrade and consolidate Green Line platforms between Cleveland Circle and Kenmore Square.
In addition to the neighborhood meetings, the project will also have a dedicated Design Review Committee with representatives from business groups, town committees, and neighborhoods. That group's meetings are also public. The committee met for the first time earlier this month, and will meet again this winter.
The third and final "neighborhood walk and talk" event will be this Wednesday, from 5 to 7:30 p.m., in the Driscoll School Multipurpose Room at 725 Washington Street).
