Article on Longwood Mall

The Brookline GreenSpace Alliance (BGSA) asked me to write an article about Longwood Mall for the 2023 Spring/Summer issue of Place, their bi-annual publication. 

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Please save the date for July 26 at 7pm, when we will meet on Longwood Mall for a BGSA event. We'll have more details about the event in Late June, early July. 

Preserving Longwood Mall: An Urban Oasis in Brookline

Here long before any of us were born and hopefully remaining long after we are all gone, Longwood Mall stands as one of Brookline’s most treasured landmarks. Located less than half a mile from Coolidge Corner, this 2.5 acre linear park serves as an urban oasis that both beautifies the neighborhood and unifies our community.

In the 1840s, David Sears brought European Beech trees (Fagus sylvatica) back from England and planted them on the land that would eventually become Longwood Mall. This picturesque grove is considered by many to be the oldest collection of European Beech trees in North America. In 1902, the family of David Sears generously deeded Longwood Mall and three other parcels of land to Brookline, ensuring their preservation as public parks.

Eighty years later in 1982, Longwood Mall was not in good condition. Cuts to the forestry budget had resulted in the trees being neglected for over two decades, leaving them in desperate need of pruning and cultivation. Led by Ellen Golde, a group of dedicated Brookline citizens raised $20,000 (equivalent to $62,000 in 2023!) to revitalize the trees and establish an annual maintenance program. This initiative marked the birth of the Friends of Longwood Mall, who later received a Massachusetts Historical Commission Preservation Award in 1984. Since then, Ellen has been working closely with the Brookline Parks Department to ensure that the trees survive and thrive.

Fast forward forty more years, and Longwood Mall is facing a new threat. A new tree disease, Beech Leaf Disease (BLD), has been decimating Beech trees from Ohio to Maine in recent years. Last year, BLD tragically took the life of a historic Beech tree on Freeman St. (by the former St. Aidan’s church). Fortunately, none of Longwood Mall’s trees have shown symptoms of BLD yet, but community intervention may be the key to preventing an outbreak.

Thankfully, scientists and arborists recently have made significant progress in understanding BLD and have developed a new treatment. Last year, Friends of Longwood Mall raised money from the neighborhood to administer this treatment to the trees. Additionally, we received an $8500 grant to treat the trees from the Brookline GreenSpace Alliance, as part of the Park Initiative Program. Although it is too early to know how effective the treatments have been, there is reason for optimism. Unfortunately, the Parks Department did need to remove two of the park’s trees in February. These trees were not infected by BLD but were suffering from other maladies and had become a safety hazard for visitors and the other trees. These removals are not done lightly and only done after a thorough assessment by the Tree Warden in consultation with other experts. In the spring, Friends of Longwood Mall will raise money to plant new trees. It is sad to see the old trees removed and each tree is a living thing that we will strive to protect, but sometimes it can be helpful to take a longer-term perspective. We can think of Longwood Mall as an interconnected whole, where all the trees will eventually die (European Beeches typically live for around 200 years), but new trees will be planted and cared for. With this approach, we can hope to preserve Longwood Mall indefinitely, so that many future generations of Brookline residents can enjoy the park as we have.