Electric cars are growing in popularity and charging stations to serve them (like the one at left, in Coolidge Corner) are sprouting in Brookline. But did you know that there were electric cars and places to charge them in town more than 100 years ago? The Boston Globe in December 1911 listed all of the locations in Massachusetts for charging electric vehicles. Brookline, with eight stations, was second only to Boston in the number of them. The picture on the right, from 1915, shows one of these, at the Corey Hill Garage on Winchester Street (now condominiums).
Ken Liss is president of the Brookline Historical Society.