Boston, Brookline, Brighton and Brooklyn Broccolos

This morning the Brooklyn Broccolos called to find out where I used to live in Boston. Apparently having exhausted things to see in New York, they decided to go to Boston.

Both having been to Holy Hill, they thought maybe my Boston residence had been similarly gorgeous, but that is not the case. Holy Hill is in a class all its own.

The beautiful old Cabot mansion I lived in when the Carmelites were in the Brookline part of Boston was bought from the friars back in 1989. The property had cost $27,000 when purchased and given to the friars in 1942. It sold for a little over $6 million in 1989. Although it was on the state and national registers of historic places, the new owner had it torn down to put in a subdivision. Part of the irony is that he originally bought the property claiming he wanted to prevent someone else from putting in something that would not fit in with all the large surrounding estates. But, as one of my college roommates said, money talks, nobody walks. (If you can understand that, explain it to me sometime.)

Ray and Christine visited me there in the early 1980's and must be the only other Dodds to see it. I was unable to find a picture of it online, but this is a picture of what had been the cupola on the house. Before the house was razed, all the valuable paneling, the fifteen fireplaces with elaborately carved mantles, stained glass and such architectural elements were removed and resold. The main rooms had beautifully carved plaster ceilings, but these could not be saved. Someone found this cupola with its domed roof in a salvage yard, and bought it for $1,200. The cupola was restored and reinstalled as a gazebo or tea house in the garden of former Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody's farm house. When that house was sold after his death, the tea house was given to the Shirley-Eustis House, built around 1750 to be the residence of the British Royal Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It has been part of that museum site since September 2001.

I was not able to find a picture of the Brighton house where I lived my last time in Boston, but Mama and Daddy visited me there. They have a small watercolor of it hanging in their living room. The watercolor was done by one of my postulants. Unlike the stately mansion in Brookline -- which had over forty rooms, a carriage house, sunken garden and so on -- the Brighton house looks like a 1950's Catholic high school. Not so much to look at, and quite plain inside, although much more functional for a monastery than the old mansion had been.