Concerns... Preservation of Village Physical Character
The Concern:
Newton's villages face over-development. Newton has a city form of government, but is actually a collection of 13 villages with deep historical roots. Our village centers and elementary schools are the heart of the surrounding neighborhoods. Each village has a unique character and charm, but all are suburban in character and most offer buildings of only one to three stories in height. These small villages are what make Newton what it is - one of the best places to live in the country.
What You Can Do:
Sign up to receive email updates from the Newton Villages Alliance. Pay attention to how your city councilors are voting on development issues that affect the scale and character of our villages and neighborhoods. Write letters to the Boston Globe and Fig City News. Tell your Newton friends and neighbors why it's important to preserve the physical character and scale of Newton's villages and neighborhoods.
More About This:
The Story Behind Newton's Villages
Newton in its early days was a part of what was originally identified as Cambridge or as it was known until 1638, as Newtowne. What we know today as Newton was called then, "The South Side of Charles River ". In 1645 there were 135 persons, 90 houses, 551 cattle, 40 horses, 37 sheep, 62 swine and 58 goats living on this side of the river. In 1654, frustrated by taxation and having to cross back and forth by ferry to Cambridge on the sabbath for services, in a variety of weather conditions, these farming folks decided they wanted their own church, and this was the inspiration for becoming independent from Cambridge. After many years of taxation, argument and negotiation the General Court christened this part of Cambridge 'Newtown' in 1687. By 1766 it it was officially modified to 'Newton'. 10 years later there were counted 1,400 inhabitants and villages began forming apart from farms.
An 1831 map of Newton shows the first rail line proximal to the current day MBTA line that runs thru Newton Corner, Newtonville, West Newton and Auburndale. This had been the route west to Worcester and beyond for wagon trains shipping goods each way to and from Boston. There are several well marked plains and plateaus that, together with views from Newtons fabled Seven Hills ( as in Rome ) and numerous streams and ponds, must have afforded well the locations of the various villages.
In 1889 the population burgeoned to 23,000. There were, by then, 110 miles of accepted streets, and an additional 30 miles of streets proposed and cut but 'not accepted'. This compares today with 310 miles of roadway. The sunny hills and broad plains connecting these roadways, such as they must have been, were in their day compared to Bar Harbor, Newport or even the Bois de Boulogne. By this time as well, the original 10 Villages, were formed: Newton, Newtonville, Nonantum (or North Village), West Newton, Auburndale, Riverside, Newton Lower Falls, Newton Upper Falls, Newton Highlands and Newton Centre. Populous neighborhoods around Nonantum Hill and Chestnut Hill and rural regions about Waban, Eliot and Oak Hill were yet to be developed. In days of yore, villages were recognized at Thompsonville, and nearby Johnsonville as well. The connection to Boston and away, by the Boston and Albany Rail Road, called by some at one time the Circuit Rail Road which ran locally in a circuit from Boston to Newton Corner, Newtonville, West Newton, Auburndale, Riverside, and return to Woodland, Waban, Eliot, Newton Highlands, Newton Center and Chestnut Hill back to Boston, guaranteed those stops to be ideal for attracting newcomers.
Newton was a truly gorgeous place in its day, its fresh air, material prosperity and manifold beauty, attracting thousands of health-seeking settlers and commuters from the city, primarily via the railroads, to live and build self expressions in their homes. With the wealthy came those who lived in service to the community, the teamsters, bakers, grocers and blacksmiths who also built, but more modest homes. The Garden City has from its earliest days always been so. From farms to orchards to grand open estate grounds to landscaped yards and home gardens, the city of Newton was and is to a large extent still, a suburban refuge.
Kings Handbook of Newton, from 1889, the reference for much of this discussion, talks of...
So the villages came and went until today they number 13 in Newton. At the turn of the 20th century there was much feverish development of the city, roads were cut and paved, land was subdivided and sold and thousands of people built and moved west from Boston for the bucolic, fresh air of suburban life. It was green, open and forested, hilly with marvelous views, and was bounding with wildlife, waterways, ponds and the Charles River encircling it on three sides. The key to Newton's development was the railroad system which today still serves to move commuters back and forth from Boston. As Newton's rural areas gradually transitioned to a network of villages and tree-lined roads, and automobiles replaced street trolleys and railroads, Newton maintained its suburban, garden character.
Newton Today
Newton is more than 97% built out. As a mature community, Newton has little vacant land upon which to build. To maintain some semblance of the bucolic environment that attracted people to locate here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and still attracts residents today, it is important to preserve our villages and maintain, to the extent possible, the spacious, tree-filled verdancy of years gone by. Future growth should be viewed with caution rather than embraced without question.
Newton has an active political contingent advocating for urban development similar to Boston; the very sorts of environments we had hoped to escape by moving to Newton. The intellectual origins of this view stem from images of Italian hill towns, so valued as models for urban development in the 60's and 70's. This European-style cluster development would be their preferred model for denser development of all of our village centers.
Newton Corner has already lost whatever village character it once had, to four-story office and commercial blocks and a high rise air rights hotel over the turnpike. Riverside has a major urban development underway. Newtonville is slated for massive five-story housing blocks, that by urbanizing the area is hoped to "enliven" the the already lively village. Zoning "Re-Design threatens to eliminate the trees, green spaces, scale and physical character of our villages and residential neighborhoods.
The primary unrecognized problem with this urbanizing of our villages is the increased automobile traffic that will be introduced and the consequent increase in parking problems sought to be alleviated. More high-density residential development brings more cars, more traffic, and a need for more parking. European-style residential cluster development densifying a village center adds to parking problems, and restricts access to the center by others.
The answer to environmental improvement in our suburban neighborhoods is to install controls on development. Some of our current zoning regulations are too generous. The current floor area ratios allow too large a house to be built on any given lot. The setback regulations currently allow new construction to grow too large as well, locating new construction too close to neighboring properties, casting too long a shadow onto adjacent lots and gardens.
In an effort to try and restore the green canopy we have historically enjoyed, tree cutting regulations need further strengthening so as to restrict wholesale tree removal by developers. This currently is done to enable the over-sized house building that inadequate zoning regulations and lax enforcement facilitate. In addition to loss of private tree canopy, village physical character has been adversely affected by the dwindling number of street trees, which has declined from an estimated 40,000 in the early 1970s, to about 23,000 in 2014, with losses at a rate of about 650 trees per year. The city's current plan to plant 9,500 trees over a 15-year period, while a great improvement over the recent past, is not adequate to restore these lost trees; it will only stabilize the street tree population at its current level. And some people with empty spots on their berm today would not see trees planted until 2028. Some may be in the ground themselves before their new street trees are planted.
A key message of the Newton Villages Alliance (NVA) is that increasing density is a problem, and coming to grips with issues of density, in their many forms and manifestations, is what we should be working toward and must address.
Newton's villages face over-development. Newton has a city form of government, but is actually a collection of 13 villages with deep historical roots. Our village centers and elementary schools are the heart of the surrounding neighborhoods. Each village has a unique character and charm, but all are suburban in character and most offer buildings of only one to three stories in height. These small villages are what make Newton what it is - one of the best places to live in the country.
What You Can Do:
Sign up to receive email updates from the Newton Villages Alliance. Pay attention to how your city councilors are voting on development issues that affect the scale and character of our villages and neighborhoods. Write letters to the Boston Globe and Fig City News. Tell your Newton friends and neighbors why it's important to preserve the physical character and scale of Newton's villages and neighborhoods.
More About This:
The Story Behind Newton's Villages
Newton in its early days was a part of what was originally identified as Cambridge or as it was known until 1638, as Newtowne. What we know today as Newton was called then, "The South Side of Charles River ". In 1645 there were 135 persons, 90 houses, 551 cattle, 40 horses, 37 sheep, 62 swine and 58 goats living on this side of the river. In 1654, frustrated by taxation and having to cross back and forth by ferry to Cambridge on the sabbath for services, in a variety of weather conditions, these farming folks decided they wanted their own church, and this was the inspiration for becoming independent from Cambridge. After many years of taxation, argument and negotiation the General Court christened this part of Cambridge 'Newtown' in 1687. By 1766 it it was officially modified to 'Newton'. 10 years later there were counted 1,400 inhabitants and villages began forming apart from farms.
An 1831 map of Newton shows the first rail line proximal to the current day MBTA line that runs thru Newton Corner, Newtonville, West Newton and Auburndale. This had been the route west to Worcester and beyond for wagon trains shipping goods each way to and from Boston. There are several well marked plains and plateaus that, together with views from Newtons fabled Seven Hills ( as in Rome ) and numerous streams and ponds, must have afforded well the locations of the various villages.
In 1889 the population burgeoned to 23,000. There were, by then, 110 miles of accepted streets, and an additional 30 miles of streets proposed and cut but 'not accepted'. This compares today with 310 miles of roadway. The sunny hills and broad plains connecting these roadways, such as they must have been, were in their day compared to Bar Harbor, Newport or even the Bois de Boulogne. By this time as well, the original 10 Villages, were formed: Newton, Newtonville, Nonantum (or North Village), West Newton, Auburndale, Riverside, Newton Lower Falls, Newton Upper Falls, Newton Highlands and Newton Centre. Populous neighborhoods around Nonantum Hill and Chestnut Hill and rural regions about Waban, Eliot and Oak Hill were yet to be developed. In days of yore, villages were recognized at Thompsonville, and nearby Johnsonville as well. The connection to Boston and away, by the Boston and Albany Rail Road, called by some at one time the Circuit Rail Road which ran locally in a circuit from Boston to Newton Corner, Newtonville, West Newton, Auburndale, Riverside, and return to Woodland, Waban, Eliot, Newton Highlands, Newton Center and Chestnut Hill back to Boston, guaranteed those stops to be ideal for attracting newcomers.
Newton was a truly gorgeous place in its day, its fresh air, material prosperity and manifold beauty, attracting thousands of health-seeking settlers and commuters from the city, primarily via the railroads, to live and build self expressions in their homes. With the wealthy came those who lived in service to the community, the teamsters, bakers, grocers and blacksmiths who also built, but more modest homes. The Garden City has from its earliest days always been so. From farms to orchards to grand open estate grounds to landscaped yards and home gardens, the city of Newton was and is to a large extent still, a suburban refuge.
Kings Handbook of Newton, from 1889, the reference for much of this discussion, talks of...
- Newton Corner ('Corner' - a resented provincialism), as a place of homes with few local shops perhaps because of its proximity to Boston.
- Nonantum, accessed with some difficulty by railroad commuters prospered by it manufacturing base.
- Newtonville and West Newton were developed primarily as commuter stops that afforded inexpensive land and much space for new homes by the city's wealthy.
- Auburndale was known as "one of the loveliest villages in America".
- Riverside was considered a pleasant port village featuring recreational boat houses and some river traffic.
- Lower Falls was simply known for its quiet and tranquility in spite of its hydraulic water power dams feeding local industry.
- Woodland, a train stop featuring a resort hotel was, for a time, also recognized as one of up to fifteen villages making up Newton proper.
- Waban with 35 trains daily, was one of the last villages to develop. It had a great new H.H. Richardson train station, was beautifully forested, and home to orchards and small farms, before becoming a booming commuter settlement.
- Upper Falls, separate from the Circuit Railroad, developed independently due to its reliance on its manufacturing base at the water powered falls and dam.
- Eliot, another separate village, was noted for its new and highly finished station. Newton Highlands described as a bright 'modern village' developed on a breezy plateau half way between Upper Falls and Newton Center.
- Newton Centre, another bucolic stop on the railroad, was known as the geographic center of Newton, with initially a city hall, numerous churches and a lovely wooded common. The City Hall was traded in location with West Newton, until it was reestablished at its current location, after a threatened city division.
- Chestnut Hill also had "a gem of a station" by H.H. Richardson, with landscaped grounds by Frederick Law Olmstead, which attracted the famous Lee, Saltonstall and Lowell families to settle the nearby Hill, which to this day is helped to be preserved by the Chestnut Hill Historic District.
- Oak Hill, the last village, but not least in area, is a former farming area, which was perhaps the slowest to develop as it was not close to the rail system. The automobile was its genesis.
So the villages came and went until today they number 13 in Newton. At the turn of the 20th century there was much feverish development of the city, roads were cut and paved, land was subdivided and sold and thousands of people built and moved west from Boston for the bucolic, fresh air of suburban life. It was green, open and forested, hilly with marvelous views, and was bounding with wildlife, waterways, ponds and the Charles River encircling it on three sides. The key to Newton's development was the railroad system which today still serves to move commuters back and forth from Boston. As Newton's rural areas gradually transitioned to a network of villages and tree-lined roads, and automobiles replaced street trolleys and railroads, Newton maintained its suburban, garden character.
Newton Today
Newton is more than 97% built out. As a mature community, Newton has little vacant land upon which to build. To maintain some semblance of the bucolic environment that attracted people to locate here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and still attracts residents today, it is important to preserve our villages and maintain, to the extent possible, the spacious, tree-filled verdancy of years gone by. Future growth should be viewed with caution rather than embraced without question.
Newton has an active political contingent advocating for urban development similar to Boston; the very sorts of environments we had hoped to escape by moving to Newton. The intellectual origins of this view stem from images of Italian hill towns, so valued as models for urban development in the 60's and 70's. This European-style cluster development would be their preferred model for denser development of all of our village centers.
Newton Corner has already lost whatever village character it once had, to four-story office and commercial blocks and a high rise air rights hotel over the turnpike. Riverside has a major urban development underway. Newtonville is slated for massive five-story housing blocks, that by urbanizing the area is hoped to "enliven" the the already lively village. Zoning "Re-Design threatens to eliminate the trees, green spaces, scale and physical character of our villages and residential neighborhoods.
The primary unrecognized problem with this urbanizing of our villages is the increased automobile traffic that will be introduced and the consequent increase in parking problems sought to be alleviated. More high-density residential development brings more cars, more traffic, and a need for more parking. European-style residential cluster development densifying a village center adds to parking problems, and restricts access to the center by others.
The answer to environmental improvement in our suburban neighborhoods is to install controls on development. Some of our current zoning regulations are too generous. The current floor area ratios allow too large a house to be built on any given lot. The setback regulations currently allow new construction to grow too large as well, locating new construction too close to neighboring properties, casting too long a shadow onto adjacent lots and gardens.
In an effort to try and restore the green canopy we have historically enjoyed, tree cutting regulations need further strengthening so as to restrict wholesale tree removal by developers. This currently is done to enable the over-sized house building that inadequate zoning regulations and lax enforcement facilitate. In addition to loss of private tree canopy, village physical character has been adversely affected by the dwindling number of street trees, which has declined from an estimated 40,000 in the early 1970s, to about 23,000 in 2014, with losses at a rate of about 650 trees per year. The city's current plan to plant 9,500 trees over a 15-year period, while a great improvement over the recent past, is not adequate to restore these lost trees; it will only stabilize the street tree population at its current level. And some people with empty spots on their berm today would not see trees planted until 2028. Some may be in the ground themselves before their new street trees are planted.
A key message of the Newton Villages Alliance (NVA) is that increasing density is a problem, and coming to grips with issues of density, in their many forms and manifestations, is what we should be working toward and must address.