Belmont, Massachusetts
A Short History of Belmont
Belmont was invented on purpose, out of parts, by people who wanted to be somewhere else. Here is the record.
A Town Built From Three Others
Belmont was incorporated on March 18, 1859, from land taken from the neighboring towns of Watertown, Waltham, and West Cambridge, which is now Arlington. The new town took its name from Bellmont, the hilltop estate of the China-trade merchant John Perkins Cushing, the largest donor to its founding. His name still lives on the map: Cushing Square is named for him. Most towns grow into their borders over centuries. Belmont drew its own, on purpose, and then had to build a government to match.
McLean Hospital Moves In
In 1895, McLean Hospital, the Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital, relocated to Belmont onto grounds laid out by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. The hospital did more than treat patients. From roughly 1895 until World War II it farmed the land now known as the Rock Meadow Conservation Area to feed its patients and staff, which is why some of the most open land in a town of homes is a former hospital farm.
The Town of Homes
Belmont is widely nicknamed the Town of Homes for its almost entirely residential character. The nickname is also a budget. With almost no industry and little commercial tax base, the money for schools, streets, and public safety comes overwhelmingly from residential property taxes, which means the spending votes at Town Meeting each spring land directly on the people who cast them. Few towns make the link between a tax bill and a classroom as visible as Belmont does.
Gardens That Never Stopped
During World War II, Belmont residents planted Victory Gardens to grow food for the home front. Most towns let theirs go when the war ended. Belmont’s kept growing, moved to Rock Meadow in 1969, and the Belmont Victory Gardens are now among the oldest continuously active community gardens in the Boston area.
Belmont Today
Modern Belmont is still the town the founders drew: residential, deliberate, and self-governing. A representative Town Meeting elected by precinct votes the budget every spring, a three-member Select Board sets policy, and an appointed Town Administrator runs the day-to-day. Around the neighborhoods runs a surprising amount of protected open space, from Rock Meadow and Lone Tree Hill to the Beaver Brook reservations, Clay Pit Pond, and the Western Greenway corridor.
Sources: Town of Belmont; Belmont Citizens Forum; Wikipedia.