This photo might be better represented in a section entitled "Heating Brookline." Up until the mid-20th Century the vast majority of Brookline homes were heated with coal furnaces. Conversion to natural gas was implemented in many homes in the 1940s and 1950s, but there were still coal furnaces in operation as late as 1970.

In the old days, near the turn of the century, heating coal could be obtained near Stetson Street from the Paul Coal Mining Company. Residents had to haul the coal home on a horse-drawn wagon or on foot by the bucketload. As time went on home deliverys by truck made the process of obtaining coal a little easier, but getting it into the home was another matter entirely.

The photo above ahows Richard Dunn (left) and Donald Fornear, taken around 1943 near 1407 Woodbourne Avenue, just a little beyond Freedom Avenue. The coal trucks couldn’t dump the coal in the alley, so the coal was dumped on the front street in front of the houses. The first 5 or 6 houses on the odd side of Woodbourne had many steps up to the house and the coal had to be carried in buckets then dumped in the coal cellar in back of the houses. It was a back breaking, filthy job, repeated every week: winter, spring, summer and fall.

The legacy of the coal furnace, for those who live in an older Brookline home, is soot. Lot's of black toner-like soot. It makes itself evident mostly during remodeling. Another thought, back in the old days, the chimney-sweep was a common site on the rooftops of Brookline.

* Photo provided by Brian Fornear *