There are a couple of interesting used-to-bes about this frame duplex in Brookline. First, it used to be St. Mark’s English Lutheran Church: it was built before 1910, when the neighborhood was first being developed. In 1929, the church moved several blocks away to a new stone building designed by O. M. Topp, and this was converted to a double house.
Second, although the building stands on Bodkin Street now, it used to be on Brookline Boulevard. It was not the building that moved, however: the street moved out from under it. Brookline Boulevard used to go down toward West Liberty Avenue in a straight line from the top of the hill, but the grade was too steep for streetcars, which were routed in their own right-of-way that made a long curve down the hill. When the streetcar line to Brookline was abandoned, the western section of Brookline Boulevard, from Pioneer to West Liberty Avenues, was routed over the abandoned streetcar right-of-way, and the old Brookline Boulevard was renamed Bodkin Street.
