A few weeks back, I stumbled onto the 1889 King’s Handbook of Newton on-line and was enchanted. It’s not a history book, rather its a guide book to all of the fifteen! Newton villages as they were in 1889. It’s written in a slightly goofy, sometimes funny, mock poetic style of a 19th century city booster. It’s full of drawings, poems, anecdotes and curiosities about each of the villages.
The book is organized around a section for each village including the villages of “Riverside” and “Elliot”. The book is available for free on-line via Google books but I’ve produced a printed 340 page paperback version that we’ll be selling as a fundraiser to help with the rebuilding of the Emerson Playground in Upper Falls. This is a straight ahead reprint with the original fonts, drawings, ads, etc.
Two proof copies arrived today. The productions copies of the book will be available in about two weeks but we’re starting to take orders now. It will sell for $19.95. It will be available for sale on-line but we’d rather sell it to you direct. You’ll save the shipping cost and we’ll make a few dollars more per copy. 100% of the proceeds will go to the playground fund.
If you’d like a copy (or ten) send me an email ([email protected]) with your name, address and phone#. Once they arrive we’ll deliver them to your door.
As it says in the Foreword – “You will be contributing to a civic good in today’s Newton – something your 19th century Newton predecessors would certainly approve of.”
And as the 1890 Introduction says:
“The publishers, too, have their acknowledgments to make to those well-to-do and generous citizens by means of whose pecuniary aid it is possible to offer this large and costly volume, with its one hundred and fifty illustrations, at a prices so low that each and every resident can easily afford to own one copy at home and perhaps send one or many copies to distant friends, or to present to guests, as a memento of their visits, or to place in the hands of acquaintances who are seeking suburban homes.”
Sign me up, Jerry. Good book and a wicked good cause!
Aye.
Maybe you can have some available at the Tuesday indoor Farmers Market at the Hyde Community Center?
Sign me up for a copy, Jerry. Thanks for making this available!
Great idea Max. We’ll look into it.
Traffic Report Circa 1889 – “The roads and streets that connect Newton’s hills and plains are among the finest in the world, having been carefully constructed on scientific principles, and macadamized with the finest and most durable materials. It therefore follows that driving or riding here is a positive pleasure, which appears to be participated in by a large proportion of the citizens….
Here also are scores of the silent and swift bicycles and many tricycles, which are used by the younger ladies of the city. There are 110 miles of accepted streets within the municipal limit s, and also a great extent of practicable but as yet unaccepted roadways.”
Sign me up, too. What a great idea to do this. I don’t know how you find time to do work-work.
I wondered what the term “driving” meant in the paragraph above. Apparently it is used to refer to someone controlling a horse carriage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_%28horse%29
Great story …. This morning, like most mornings, I stopped in the Upper Falls Variety store for a cup of coffee and I brought the proof copy of the Kings Handbook of Newton with me. Tom O’Shaugnessy, who owns the shop, grabbed the book and started flipping through it. After a minute or two he found what he was looking for.
It was an account, written by a very flowery poet, of emerging in Chestnut Hill, after riding for two hours in a boat inside the Sudbury Aqueduct from Echo Bridge. (Unlike a more recent account of that boat ride, this one was not an April Fools joke).
Tom read aloud in a booming voice –
The man running the boat that day was Tom’s great grandfather who worked for the Boston Water Works.
I think I need a copy! Thank you for getting them printed.
So, in the paragraph posted by Jerry Reilly, what could I “calcium” mean?
Good question Hoss. See limelight
Thanks Jerry, fascinating.
This is fascinating! I want a copy.
BTW – the back of the books is ads for local businesses including one for “George W Bush Boarding Livery and Hack Stable.
G.W. also appears to have talents in funerals and undertaking according to the ad, not just manure.
The King’s Handbook is now available at Newtonville Books in Newton Centre.
You can also order it on-line at PowerOfUpperFalls.org.
You can also send an email to [email protected] with your address and phone# and we’ll deliver it to your door.
The shameless huckster never rests … here’s a piece on NewTV’s weekly news show about the King’s Handbook of Newton.
Jerry, I bought a copy for my valentine at Newtonville Books this week – such a nice surprise to find it there!
Newtonville Books keeps running out of stock … but I just delivered 40 more copies there yesterday … or send me an email ([email protected]) and we’ll deliver one to your house.
I have the 1889 print. Although in California I found this amazing for the information, the great condition it’s in for being so old and the ads in the back incl. George w Bush livery hack stable etc….
The book was signed by RC Whitford Holliston, mass. 1890
The was is a newspaper clipping in it as well TV radio notes.