history

Editor’s note: Dana Robbat is a founding member and current president of the Friends of Modern Architecture in Lincoln. She provided this summary of her June 12, 2012 talk titled “As the Twig is Bent, So Goes the Tree… A Shared Philosophy: New England Transcendentalism and European Modernism,” which highlighted the age-old social ideals of New England’s Puritan and Transcendental philosophical heritage that provided fertile ground for the philosophically aligned European Modernists, who arrived at Harvard and MIT in the late 1930s and subsequently had a profound effect on Lincoln’s built and natural environments. Click here to watch a video of the talk.

By Dana Robbat

Lincoln is distinguished as one of America’s most prominent small communities for Modern architecture. Its inventory has a breadth, depth, and character unique in the country. The collection includes the iconic residences of Bauhaus masters Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, as well as those of Harvard and MIT professors and their associates, students, and acolytes who saw Modernism as a force for bringing scientific and economic progress and social justice to the world. But why the town of Lincoln? The answer lies in New England’s social ideals, including a philosophy shared with New England Transcendentalism.

New England’s defining Transcendental heritage was imbued with individual conscience and belief in the importance of a broadly defined community, but leery of overbearing authority. As described by the Transcendentalist Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894), “Transcendentalism belongs to no sect of religion, and no social party. It is the common ground to which all sects may rise and be purified of their narrowness, for it consists of seeking spiritual ground of all manifestations.” Bent on reform, the Transcendentalists helped instigate a change in American thought at a time when the sovereignty of the individual began to eclipse concerns for community.

A similar philosophy gave birth to the Bauhaus, the heartwood of the Modern movement, where a community of artists led by classically educated intellectuals, artists, and architects sought to establish a universal system of values — independent of political, geographical, or social boundaries — to reclaim man’s humanity in an increasingly mechanized, detached, and impersonal world.

Emerson and Gropius epitomized their respective movements. Both leaders were broad-minded, deeply and widely read, and progressive thinkers — qualities woven into the very fabric of each movement. They were inspired by the writings of the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), an important philosophical muse to both movements, who emphasized that nothing was trifling, that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only for the faint-hearted. Goethe charged artists to take courage because it was they who would inspire and redirect society to enlightened moral and truthful ends. His dying words, “Light, more light,” metaphorically represents the Transcendentalist’s divine light within and the Modernist’s belief that the “light” shining within each soul directs one through the darkness and mysteries of human life.

Modernist houses in Lincoln include (top to bottom) the Bogner House designed by Walter Bogner (1939), the Ford house designed by Walter Gropius (1939), and the Gaskell house designed by Quincy Adams (1940).

Light-producing glass became the poetic and symbolic material of the Modern building. Affordable light and space — “immaterial” material — in gravity-defying buildings of uplifting volumes, filled with light and air, proclaiming a new form of architecture, were meant to elevate and inspire people to better action. Transparency was seen as a symbol of truth, and Modern architecture a symbol that would unite people to come together to build a new humane world from the ruins of the old.

European Modernism infused a spirit of renewal and purpose into architectural education in New England in the 1930s. During the Depression, after a soul-searching period, academia opened its doors to international leaders of the Modern movement, to instill scientific and technological knowledge and a sense of purpose and social awareness in the fields of architecture and architectural education.

Over a 30-year period, Lincoln residents participated in a renaissance as architecture professors in Cambridge, Massachusetts, embraced Modernism under the spiritual leadership of Gropius at Harvard and the inspiring leadership of Lincoln resident Lawrence B. Anderson at MIT. Local, regional, and international architects would design over 300 Modern houses in Lincoln, most of which are extant and represent a significant portion of Lincoln’s housing stock.

The Depression was a period of significant social change and constrained resources, and affordable, efficiently designed houses became a hallmark in Lincoln. In this residential, farming, and academic community, Modernism reinvigorated the older Transcendentalism, reflecting renewed vitality and civic commitment in a long list of new structures: Modern houses; unique model neighborhoods; town buildings, including schools and civic and cultural buildings; a commercial center; a low- to moderately priced housing complex; a nationally recognized land conservation program; and a community-centered contemporary art museum.

Alive to New England values, the Lincoln community welcomed the Movement’s idealistic visions reflected in its architecture and town planning policies. Architects from Germany, Hungary, Austria, Russia, and various regions of America designed houses in Lincoln. They were uncommon spirits who believed that Modern design could best address the changed and pressing needs of their times.

“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column from the Lincoln Historical Society.

This Saturday, Lincoln will officially recognize Juneteenth, the annual occasion celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. Federal troops arrived in Texas on June 19, 1865 to announce the end of the Civil War and slavery, and that day is now a state holiday in 45 states including Massachusetts.

The Bemis Lecture Series and the Lincoln Historical Society will host “Slavery in Lincoln, Massachusetts: Reckoning with Our Past, Planning for a More Honest and Inclusive Future” on Saturday, June 19 from 4–5 p.m. The speaker will be Professor Elise Lemire, author of Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts (2009; 2019 with a new preface)

Lemire grew up in Lincoln on land once tended and tilled by men and women enslaved by Lincoln’s wealthiest land owner. She credits Lincoln’s history for sparking her interest in how Lincoln and its neighboring town of Concord were indelibly shaped by slavery. Lemire will recount the history of slavery in Lincoln and Concord and discuss how Lincoln might make this history more visible in the local landscape as a means of beginning to address the complicated truths of our colonial past.

Lemire is professor of literature at Purchase College, the State University of New York, and a two-time fellowship recipient from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also the author of the just-released Battle Green Vietnam: The 1971 March on Concord, Lexington, and Boston.

Click here to register in advance. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. A limited number of the 2019 edition of Black Walden signed by the author will be available through the Lincoln Historical Society following the event. For more information, email bemislectures@gmail.com or president@lincolnhistoricalsociety.org.

The Select Board also recently signed a proclamation officially marking Lincoln’s Juneteenth recognition on June 19 of each year, “to be celebrated at 4:00 p.m. by vigorous ringing of bells throughout the community.”

By Kerry Glass

One way to keep out traffic: Don’t tell travelers where the roads are.

For the first 75 years after Lincoln was founded, the town felt no need for an official road map. The roads ran where Lincoln residents needed them, and new roads were created and old ones were closed by debate and decision in Lincoln’s town meetings. The road “maps” were scrawled descriptions by the town clerk in town records: “beginning at Lexington line, so running southerly over John Headley’s land and through Joseph Brooks’ land, the said Brooks to have liberty to hang a gate on the said way at his southerly bounds.”

Then in 1794, the Great and General Court required all towns to submit “accurate plans” of their borders, rivers, bridges, and roads. But only county roads had to be shown on these maps. So that is all that Samuel Hoar, the town surveyor, included when he drew up the town’s official map—just four county roads, one in north Lincoln and three in south Lincoln. It was not until 1830 that the Commonwealth required towns to submit maps showing all town roads. Lincoln had no choice and finally produced a complete road map. Yet even on this map, no names were shown for the roads (that’s a story for another time!).

Part of an 1830 map of Lincoln by John G. Hales. showing the town center — and the lack of road names. Source: Digital Commonwealth.

The town felt strongly that even these county roads mainly benefited other towns but not Lincoln. And so the town resisted. The Concord/Cambridge Turnpike (now Route 2) was a good example. The path of the turnpike was laid out in 1803, and it plowed through hills and wetlands in Lincoln, just so travelers between Cambridge and Concord would have the shortest and straightest route possible. Lincoln fought unsuccessfully against the turnpike, and later the town also resisted straightening the paths of two other roads through town—the Middle Road (now Trapelo Road) and the North Road (now Route 2A).

Lincoln had more success in preventing a major highway from running north and south through the heart of town. To this day, in contrast to neighboring towns, Lincoln does not have a numbered highway running through its town center.

For more on the history of Lincoln’s roads, see Tracing the History of Lincoln’s Ways, a 2019 manuscript by Kerry Glass, accessible by contacting the Lincoln Historical Society.

“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.

By Don Hafner

The names of Lincoln’s schools are not what you probably think.

The Lincoln school buildings — Smith, Hartwell, and Brooks — are named after Lincoln’s Revolutionary War soldiers, right? William Smith, captain of the Lincoln Minute Men. Samuel Hartwell, sergeant in the Minute Men. Eleazer Brooks, colonel in the Massachusetts Provincial Army.

Well, no. Smith school is named after Charles Sumner Smith (1857–1927), a wealthy Lincoln businessman and investor who gifted $50,000 to the town for the construction of a new school. In his will, Charles Smith “suggested” that the new school be named after himself. The school was finally built in 1949 and was named after Smith during the town’s bicentennial anniversary in 1954.

In August 1950, Architectural Forum magazine spotlighted the Smith School and its advanced design. Click image to download a PDF of the full article (photocopy courtesy of Andrew Glass).

The Hartwell school is named after William Hartwell (1637–1690), who was mistakenly believed to be the first European settler in the part of Concord that became Lincoln in 1754. Hartwell owned land in Lincoln, but he dwelt in Concord and never built a home here. The Hartwell school was built in 1958.

The Brooks school is named after Joseph Brooks (1681–1759), a generous donor who gave the town £388 in 1761 to establish a “Grammar School Fund” for paying Lincoln’s teachers. Among those paid from this fund was young William Smith, soon after he moved to Lincoln and before he became captain of the Lincoln Minute Men. In 1759, the first women teachers paid by the town were also supported by the Fund. (Women were paid, we might note, at exactly one-half the salary paid to the male teachers.) Brooks’ £388 gift was equal to about $110,000 today. The Brooks school was built in 1964. The Lincoln Historical Society proposed that the new school be named after Joseph Brooks, and so it was.

For more on Lincoln’s schools through the centuries, there is no better source than John C. MacLean’s A Rich Harvest, available from the Lincoln Historical Society.

“Lincoln’s History” is a biweekly column about aspects of Lincoln’s past by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.

By Don Hafner

(Editor’s note: Brown’s Wood was designated as Lincoln’s newest Historic District in 2018 to recognize its many examples of Modern architecture.)

Did you know… that Lincoln has a neighborhood originally built as a utopian vision?

That neighborhood is Brown’s Wood, built on a woodlot once owned by Deacon Benjamin Brown (1681-1753). Brown’s Wood began in 1953 as a utopian, cooperative community envisioned by Ranny and Ann Gras, along with a few MIT colleagues and others attracted by MIT bulletin‑board notices and FM radio ads. They invested $3,000 each for the common expenses of buying the raw, rocky woodland and for initial development and infrastructure of the subdivision along the new roads named Laurel Drive and Moccasin Hill Road.

A map showing the owners of the Brown’s Wood development from 1953 to 2003 (click to enlarge).

Two lots were initially designated as common land, intended for community recreation. The first 23 houses were designed, built, and financed by each family under the general supervision of the group, which also collectively oversaw the road construction and town approvals. The group agreed that all the houses would be contemporary style. Traditional colonials, capes, or ranches were not permitted. A few residents tackled interior work themselves, and many of the houses’ interiors were not completely finished for years.

Decisions in the Brown’s Wood community were made by consensus, such as naming the roads after local wildflowers, rejecting a proposal for bulk‑buying of staples like toilet paper or milk, and rejecting a swimming pool and tennis court for the community land. At one point, to avoid the mounting expenses for snowplowing and road maintenance, the residents agreed to sell one of the common lots to finance enough improvements in the roads so the town would accept them as town streets. The general sense of sharing and cooperation continued, including regular meetings to discuss neighborhood concerns, common ownership of chainsaws and other equipment, and a baby-sitting cooperative.

The Gras family (Brown’s Wood founders Ranny and Ann Gras and their sons Seaton and Adrian) in a newspaper photo upon their return in 1975 from their six-year round-the-world sailing trip.

There were lots of kids in the neighborhood. One year, an entire school bus was filled with the Brown’s Wood elementary school children who waited at the intersection of the two roads.

In 1964, the other common lot was sold to purchase shares in the Valley Pond, which were then legally tied to each of the house lots. The pond was a separate project created by the efforts of several Brown’s Wood families (a story for another time). Although the formal Brown’s Wood organization was then dissolved, many residents had strong community spirit and went on to participate actively in the town government and League of Women Voters.

Current and former residents celebrated Brown’s Wood’s 35th anniversary in 1988, and commemorated it with a group memoir and a pear tree planted at the intersection of the two roads to honor Ann and Ranny Gras. Today, many of the houses look much as they did when built, although some have been enlarged. Meandering paths still lead to the shores of Valley Pond, and Brown’s Wood is still a great place to raise children.

One of the Brown’s Wood houses when it was completed in the 1950s, highlighting the neighborhood’s then-revolutionary Modern architecture.

This article is based on an earlier history of Brown’s Wood written by one of the original “settlers,” Ruth Johnstone Wales (1927-2018). It has been edited and updated by Esther and Peter Braun, also early “settlers.” Esther Braun taught in the Lincoln public schools, and her son Peter was one of the kids in the Brown’s Wood neighborhood and babysat for the Wales family.

“Lincoln’s History” is a biweekly column about aspects of Lincoln’s past by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.

By Craig Donaldson, Lincoln Historical Society

(Editor’s note: this piece was first published in LincolnTalk in December 2020 and is republished here as part of the “Lincoln’s History” series.) 

Did you know there’s a Lincoln neighborhood known as “Fertile Valley”?

You won’t find Fertile Valley marked on a map, but you can walk its borders on a pleasant afternoon and smile at a bit of Lincoln history. From the Five Corners watering trough, it extends north on Bedford Road to Bemis Hall, northeast along Old Lexington Road and Lexington Road to the Flint farm, east along Trapelo Road to the DeNormandie farm, and down Weston Road to the Pierce House.

Fertile Valley was the site of two dairy farms and productive backyard gardens, but it earned its reputation (with a wink and a smirk) in the late 1940s and 1950s for its crop of kids.

After World War II, many young families moved to the Valley to raise children, joining the older Lincoln families in long-established houses of the Historic District. The Paul Norton family topped the list with seven children, and the families of Jim DeNormandie, Fred Taylor, and Gordon Donaldson had five apiece. Every household had at least one youngster.

A Fourth of July parade entrant from the “Fertile Valley” era. The truck is an old Chevy from Glendale Farm, the dairy that R.D. Donaldson had on Weston Road until the late 1940s. The driver, dressed up to look like a woman, is Ken Bergen. The kids in the back include Nat Taylor (in the corner facing forward with toes hanging out), Nat’s brother Tim Taylor (still in Lincoln), and Doug MacLean (with the red hair), town historian Jack MacLean’s recently deceased older brother. The others almost certainly include a few Nortons and Bergens, plus a Flint and a DeNormandie or two. (Click image to enlarge)

Typical of American neighborhoods in the post-war era, kids of all ages were raised together by parents in cahoots. Mothers were at home, volunteering their talents to town, school, and church, while their husbands commuted to jobs outside of Lincoln. School was an easy walk or bike ride, first to the Center School (now the Town Office Building) and as the kids grew older, to the new Smith School. Every season in Fertile Valley was tailored to family activities—tobogganing and skating, horse riding, Sunday baseball in the back field, and July 4th parades. 

The entire Valley was open to free range kids. They romped through fields and over fences, teaching one another how to ride bikes, ski and sled, blow bubble gum, and catch pollywogs. Parents were confident that the big kids would keep the little kids out of trouble and that, sooner or later, everyone would re-emerge for meals, as indeed they did!

Lifelong friendships, values, and lessons endured as Valley kids went forth into the wider world.

Times have changed, and the Valley is now home to only a few children. Yet some of the old gang still live in the Valley, a few in the houses where they grew up — two each of DeNormandies, Donaldsons, and Flints, plus a Bergen, a Browne, a Jevon, and a MacLean.

And of course, with each springtime, there are still pollywogs to be caught.

Do you have stories and photos to share about your neighborhood, or do you know more about the people in this photo? Email lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com and join us in exploring the histories of Lincoln’s neighborhoods.