The annual Newton House Tour this Oct. 17 & 18 won’t include in-person tours but has been adapted through video to bring you into four homes designed by Maud Brodrick, who built and sold hundreds of homes in Newton and Wellesley during the 1920s and 1930s. An online panel discussion will shed more light on Brodrick, one of the few women in the field during her career.
A professionally-produced video tour will take you inside three Newton homes, and a Wellesley home in the Cliff Estates area –an area that Brodrick largely developed.
The videos will be released for viewing on Saturday, Oct. 17, and the panel discussion will take place at 3pm on Sunday, Oct. 18.
According to Historic Newton, Brodrick and her husband Walter launched Brodrick Bros., a real estate agency and design-build firm. Brodrick built some of the first houses on her own street, Randlett Park in West Newton. She boasted that their houses were “Woman-Planned, Woman-Designed and Woman Built,” and the Brodricks built about 200 homes overall in Newton, Wellesley, and beyond.
The Cliff Estates homes were considered Maud Brodrick’s finest, featuring copper fireplaces, wrought iron decoration, and themed basements with commissioned murals. Generously sized lots boasted terraces, ponds, and tennis courts.
The Brodricks built 14 magnificent homes in the Cliff Estates area in the mid-1930s, fresh off the Great Depression. But after a bank foreclosed on Pondbrook, a baronial estate Maud had developed, the business was forced into bankruptcy.
Tickets:
- $15: Individual ticket (video tour only for 1 attendee, same price for Historic Newton members
and non-members) - $25: Household ticket with access to the panel discussion and Q&A about Brodrick’s life and
work (multiple attendees welcome) - $20: Member price for household ticket
To purchase tickets visit newtonma.gov/HouseTour or call 617-796-1450.
Tour videos will be released at 10 a.m. on Oct. 17. Ticket sales end on Oct. 18 at noon. The panel discussion takes place at 3 p.m. on Oct. 18.
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