Lowell Road

Lowell Road was laid out near the bottom of the hill where the Blake stables and other outbuildings were located. Some of these buildings can be seen in the 1919 atlas map below, between the new road and the houses on Greenough Street. Two of these buildings -- it's not clear which -- were moved to Greenough Street around 1921 and converted to be used as residences. They are still there today. (See 53 Greenough Street and 55-57 Greenough Street.)

The two houses farthest to the right on the map are today's 8-10 and 12-14 Lowell Road. They remained Blake property until after Frances Blake's death in 1939. From at least 1910 they were home to various Blake family employees at different times (among them a butler, a coachman, and a chauffeur) as well as relatives of the Blakes. Their addresses were shown in the street list as "off Greenough Street" and then "Greenough Street within" until 1922 when they were first listed as Lowell Street. (See 8-10 Lowell Road and 12-14 Lowell Road for more.)

Lowell initially ran from Tappan Street (at the left edge of the map) to Greenough Street North (previously called Cypress Place and now Stanton Road.) The Tappan end, which seems to have been a pathway from Tappan to the stables before Blake Park was developed, was eliminated after land was given to the Town of Brookline for an extension to the high school in 1919. Lowell Road then assumed its present L-shaped configuration, running from Greenough Street to Stanton Road. 

Name Origin: It's uncertain where the name Lowell Road comes from, though the Lowells -- including poet Amy Lowell and Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell -- were a prominent family in Brookline.