RATTLE AND HUSH: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF BROCKTON, MASSACHUSETTS
© Mike Mellor, 2005
A TALE OF TWO BROCKTONS
Kids in the tenement district, 1941. Jack Delano.
Despite the prior century's historical pizzazz, The 1950s turned out to be the most important era in defining what Brockton is today. Teeming with squalor and high unemployment and lacking the tax base to accommodate improvements, the model for the industrial city failed. A lack of public and private financing meant few industrial properties were built and, as a result, small light manufacturing firms came to town but larger firms left when they ran out of room. The poorest citizens and immigrants moved into the tenement districts hugging the ribbon of steel, but the working and middle-class families moved away. As the decade went on, the physical, economic, social and spiritual center of the city crumbled.
Warren Avenue, 1941. Jack Delano.
Meanwhile, something entirely different happened along the outskirts of the city. When the state constructed Route 24 to connect Boston and the burgeoning Route 128 technology belt to Brockton and New Bedford, the Brockton Redevelopment Authority reported that "something akin to a suburban explosion took place so that by 1963, much of what was vacant or farmland in 1950 was developed with numerous single family homes." Suddenly the growing number of employees of Route 128 companies like Polaroid and Raytheon were able to move to the South Shore and raise their families.
Brockton was again the fastest growing city in Massachusetts. Population increased by 10,000 people, 40% of whom were transplants from other cities and towns. To accommodate for this influx, three regional shopping centers sprung up across the city; one on the east side on Crescent Street, one on the southwest side past the fairgrounds and one on the northwest side adjacent to Route 24 that is now the Westgate Mall. Each location had department stores, five-and-dimes and food markets much closer to where the population was growing than downtown. In fact, many establishments like Sears and Gilchrist's relocated from downtown to one of the new shopping centers.
This meant great news for real estate developers, but it was the death bell tolling for a way of life in Brockton. Although it was technically the fastest growing city in the state, it was growing into a bedroom community instead of a city. The population was no longer one of Brocktonians, but carpetbaggers(8) who linked their lives economically and socially to Greater Boston. Their Brockton lives represented the individualistic car culture of raised ranches and strip malls, not the streetcar polis of social progression. They worked near Boston, they played near Boston, and all the money and time they spent in Brockton was on the bucolic borders of Easton, Stoughton and Whitman.
Jack Delano
With the shoes and the gainfully employed people gone, the next logical institution on the list of urban exodus was commuter train service. In 1944 the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Corporation (hereafter referred to as the New Haven), which leased the right of way to the Old Colony lines for ninety-nine years in 1893, reorganized under new terms. Under these terms, they purchased the lines outright and could legally discontinue service if losses on the Boston Group (Boston to Middleboro, Boston to Plymouth, and Boston to Greenbush) exceeded certain limits. If this occurred, the Commonwealth had the opportunity to purchase the Boston to Braintree section of the rails in a game of economic hot potato.
This was a shrewd and forward-thinking corporate decision on the part of the New Haven because according to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Legislative Research Council, "the post-war increase in commuting by automobile depressed passenger traffic and revenue on the Old Colony division from 1947 to 1951." By purchasing the right of way they effectively killed a ninety-nine year lease after only fifty-three years while simultaneously eliminating the risk of ownership by assuring they could jump town when the going got tough.
Throwing a crimp into their long-term plans to slash and burn was the fact that passenger traffic and revenue increased from 1952 to 1957, due largely to the population growth of the entire South Shore and the fast expanding economy of Boston and the Route 128 belt. Many of the new residents along the Plymouth and Greenbush lines as well as the initial new comers to Brockton, without Route 24 completed, found the commuter service to be the most effective way to work.
To counteract the growth they didn't want the New Haven instituted a substantial fare increase in late 1957, which predictably dwindled passenger numbers. The Old Colony lines combined attracted 14,520 weekday passengers in 1958, as opposed to 21,280 passengers in 1957, a reduction of thirty-two percent. Of course, a large-scale reduction in passengers meant a mid-scale reduction in revenue and (surprise) the Boston Group exceeded the loss limit the company needed to legally discontinue service, which it did on June 1, 1958. The state legislature passed a one-year subsidy to keep the commuter service running, but failed to subsidize it further and the trains were permanently discontinued on June 30, 1959.
This meant no South Shore commuters on trains and a glut of commuters on the roads, which lead the State Department of Public Works to report in 1961 that, "the termination of the Old Colony train service resulted in a noticeable increase in traffic congestion on Boston streets and on roads leading to the city from the southeast, particularly the new Southeast Expressway." More commuters on the roads and no public transit offering made it less feasible for the Boston economy to expand its influence southward and Brockton was left on the outside looking in. In the late '60s Penn Central acquired the New Haven, the MBTA purchased the Boston to Braintree right of way and in 1972 opened red line service that far.
Brockton had its chances to be linked to the rapid transit line, but as the Legislative Research Council reported,
"The South Shore communities repeatedly blocked attempts to implement rapid transit because the costs were considered prohibitive, the proposed operating agency-the M(B)TA-was viewed with distrust, and the local bus companies were fearful of the long-term effect on their businesses."
Once again neglect and small-mindedness prevented the natural course of progress from sweeping Brockton up, for the self-interested cronies, thieves and lawyers who left downtown for dead left it to retreat to the suburbs.
The National Association of Real Estate Boards commented in 1963 that,
"Had Brockton been prodded to update community facilities as they became obsolete over the last 40 years, the tremendous demands for public improvement now straining municipal resources would have been spread out and the city would have been in a better position to cope with the accelerated growth which has taken place in recent years."
In fact they were prodded, by Willard Jackson and the City Planning Board, the National Resources Planning Board, the City Manager, the Massachusetts Department of Commerce, and Homer Hoyt Associates, just to name a few. They all stated at various times between 1915 and 1960 that the major problem was the city government's lack of cooperation with business and their patent neglect of improvements needed in the tenement districts. All agencies pleaded that action taken at the present time would do wonders to correct the errors of the city's past. But City Hall didn't listen, not in the teens, not in the sixties and nowhere in between.
Rising populations of poor people and minorities, increased unemployment and the loss of manufacturing jobs across the board marked the second half of the sixties. By 1972, the population was above ninety thousand and unemployment was at 11.9%. The hallowed ground of teetotaling workaday idealism of the prior century forever gave way to abandonment, blight and sad men in bars. The industrial history of Brockton became just that-history.
Notes:
8 In the interest of full disclosure, my family moved to Brockton in 1973. However, we moved into a series of dilapidated rental units within a mile of City Hall until settling into a modest house on Green Street in 1976. We are not suburban and we are not carpetbaggers.
