Newton has a Wikipedia page! I guess this is useful for anyone thinking of moving to Newton and right now the real estate in Newton, MA is a hot market.
Villages
Newton is a suburban city approximately seven miles from downtown Boston. Rather than having a single city center, Newton is a patchwork of thirteen “villages”, many boasting small “downtown” areas of their own. The 13 villages are:Auburndale, Chestnut Hill, Newton Centre, Newton Corner, Newton Highlands, Newton Lower Falls, Newton Upper Falls (both on the Charles River, and both once small industrial sites), Newtonville, Nonantum (also called “The Lake”), Oak Hill,Thompsonville, Waban and West Newton. Oak Hill Park is a place within the village of Oak Hill that itself is shown as a separate and distinct village on some city maps, (including a map dated 2010 on the official City of Newton website) and Four Corners is also shown as a village on some city maps. Although most of the villages have a post office, they have no legal definition and no firmly defined borders. This village-based system often causes some confusion with addresses and for first time visitors.
History
Newton was settled in 1630 as part of “the newe towne”, which was renamed Cambridge in 1638. It was incorporated as a separate town, known as Cambridge Village, in 1688, then renamed Newtown in 1691, and finally Newton in 1766.[3] It became a city in 1873. Newton is known as The Garden City.
In Reflections in Bullough’s Pond, Newton historian Diana Muir describes the early industries that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in a series of mills built to take advantage of the water power available at Newton Upper Fallsand Newton Lower Falls. Snuff, chocolate, glue, paper and other products were produced in these small mills but, according to Muir, the water power available in Newton was not sufficient to turn Newton into a manufacturing city.
Newton, according to Muir, became one of America’s earliest commuter suburbs. The Boston and Worcester, one of America’s earliest railroads, reached West Newton in 1834. Gracious homes sprang up almost instantly on erstwhile farmland on West Newton hill, as men wealthy enough to afford a country seat, but whose business demanded that they be in their downtown Boston offices during the business day, took advantage of the new commuting opportunity offered by the railroad. Muir points out that these early commuters needed sufficient wealth to employ a groom and keep horses, to drive them from their hilltop homes to the station.
Further suburbanization came in waves. One wave began with the streetcar lines that made many parts of Newton accessible for commuters in the late nineteenth century, the next wave came in the 1920s when automobiles became affordable to a growing upper middle class. Even then, however, Oak Hill continued to be farmed, mostly market gardening, until the prosperity of the 1950s made all of Newton more densely settled. Newton is not a typical “commuter suburb” since many people who live in Newton do not work in downtown Boston. Most Newtonites work in Newton and other surrounding cities and towns.
The city has two symphony orchestras, the New Philharmonia Orchestra of Massachusetts and the Newton Symphony Orchestra.
The Newton Free Library possesses more than 500,000 volumes of print materials (2004), as well as art, both original and prints, sound recordings and videos: the largest collection in the Minuteman Library Network.[citation needed]
Each April on Patriots Day, the Boston Marathon is run through the city, entering from Wellesley on Route 16 (Washington Street) where runners encounter the first of the four infamous Newton Hills. It then turns right onto Route 30 (Commonwealth Avenue) for the long haul into Boston. There are two more hills before reaching Centre Street, and then the fourth and most infamous of all, Heartbreak Hill, rises shortly after Centre Street. Residents and visitors line the race route along Washington Street and Commonwealth Avenue to cheer the runners.
Here’s an except of our schools:
Preschools
- Rosenshine Nursery School, Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street
- Presbyterian Church Nursery School 75 Vernon Street
- Temple Beth Avodah Nursery School, 45 Puddingstone Lane
- Beth-El Pre-School, 561 Ward St.
- Burr Cooperative Nursery School [1], 64 Hancock St., Auburndale
- The Teddy Bear Club Preschool, 1466 Commonwealth Ave, West Newton.
- Bernice B. Godine JCC Early Learning Center [2], Leventhal-Sidman JCC, 333 Nahanton St.
- The Children’s Cooperative Nursery School, 848 Beacon St.
- Temple Shalom Nursery School, 175 Temple St.
- Walnut PK Montessori School [3], 47 Walnut Park
- Auburndale Community Nursery School, 230 Central St.
- Rockwell Nursery School at Lasell College [4], 70 Studio Road
- Newton Community Service Center, 492 Waltham Street
- Parkside Preschool, 474 Centre Street, Newton Corner
- Preschool Experience, Centre Street
- Upper Falls Nursery School, 45 Pettee St, Newton Upper Falls
- Bilingual Beginnings at Pine Village Preschool 1326 Washington Street, West Newton
- West Newton Children’s Center Washington ST, West Newton
- Little Red Wagon Playschool 50 Winchester Street, Newton Highlands
This list was not comprehensive so we did another post
here that has pretty much every preschool we’ve ever heard of in Newton, MA.
[edit]Primary and secondary education
Public: Newton Public Schools
Public Elementary Schools include:
- Angier
- Bowen
- Burr
- Cabot School
- Countryside
- Franklin
- Horace Mann
- Lincoln Eliot
- Mason Rice
- Memorial Spaulding
- Peirce
- Underwood
- Ward
- Williams
- Zervas
Newton has four public middle schools:
- Bigelow
- Brown
- Oak Hill
- Day
Brown Middle School and Oak Hill Middle School graduates go on to Newton South while Frank A. Day Middle School and Bigelow Middle School graduates go on to Newton North. There are exceptions based on exact location of the student’s home.
Newton has two public high schools:
- Private
- Fessenden School [5], A K-9 day and 5-9 boarding school for boys at 250 Waltham Street in West Newton
- Jackson School [6], Jackson School is a private, Catholic, elementary school sponsored by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston.
- Newton Country Day School [7], 785 Centre St
- Trinity Catholic High School, 575 Washington Street. See also: Trinity Catholic High School Website
- The Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston [8], A K-8 Conservative Jewish dayschool
- The Newton Montessori School [9] 80 Crescent Ave.
- The Rashi school 18 Walnut Park(now in Dedham)
- Clearway School 61 Chestnut Street. Clearway is a small, private school specializing in educating gifted children suffering from learning disabilities.
- Mt. Alvernia High School [10], a private girls’ school for grades 7-12 located at 790 Centre Street.
Five off-leash dog parks were just created in Newton. I haven’t been to all of them. I heard that Cabot Woods is great but there can be a lot of ticks. The same can be said for Weston Reservoir which is my dog’s favorite haunt. Be sure to check for ticks after these outings. If you need information about ticks and Lyme disease, I have a link below from my dermatologist. Capability:Mom likes to exercise her dog on the carriage lane down Commonwealth Avenue at the foot of Heartbreak Hill. She has a walking group that meets religiously with or without dogs and they trek up to Walnut Street and back. Whether you walk your dog on or off-leash, there’s no doubt about it. Newton is a dog friendly city with plenty of local dog parks!
