What’s in a Name?
An article by Don Hafner posted in the Lincoln Squirrel.
Ballfield Road History
Who Was Joseph Brooks, Anyway?
History of the Ball Field
“In 1932…an anonymous Lincoln resident generously donated to the Town about 7.25 acres to be used as a Town Ball field. Costs to prepare the field and an access road were estimated at $4950, but all but $1000 of those expenses were also donated by residents.
Lincoln was a baseball town. That same year, the Lincoln Mohawks Baseball Team won their first league championship. Later, they became a semi-professional team, competing against teams from Waltham, Cambridge, and other larger communities. Smith School was being constructed next door when the Mohawks repeated as league champions from 1947 to 1951. As they played on the Town Ball field, the community came together, sharing in sport and fun. Watching the Mohawks was an indisputable Fourth of July tradition.”
– Jack MacLean, Town Historian
To read more of Jack’s history of the Lincoln Ball Field, click here.
Evolution of the Lincoln School Campus: 1948 – 1994
Modernist Architecture
Lincoln has a rich history of modernist architecture. Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School, and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, built his home, “The Gropius House,” in Lincoln in 1938.
Lincoln resident Lawrence B. Anderson was the Dean of Architecture at MIT, and an early proponent of modernism. His firm Anderson and Beckwith designed the original Smith School (1947-48) and the Hartwell Building (1957-58) on the Lincoln School campus. You can read an article about the Smith School that was published in Architectural Forum in August 1950. Architectural Forum August 1950. See pages 126-129.
The original Brooks School (1963-64) and the buildings known as “the Pods” (1959-63) are further examples of modernism in Lincoln. They were designed by Lincoln architect Henry Hoover and his firm Hoover and Hill.
To read more about the history of the buildings, click here.
.pdf version of the article from Architectural Forum, August 1950 can be viewed at the link below:
Smith School Article Archtectural Forum Magazine August 1950
The entire magazine can be found at https://usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1950-08.PDF
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