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My Pinebank story: 
I was an energetic teenager who stumbled upon that mansion and thought it would be a cool place to bring my gang to hang out. Get us off the street burn -- energy playing hard. I considered myself a bridge of the two worlds. I wanted to show my friends the fun of the woods as opposed to the grind of the streets. The building was used for some type of office and there was an old man named Abe, who was the janitor who worked there; he saw us singing and dancing on the veranda and told me I could bring my record player there if I had one, and he would hook it up so we could dance to our music.

We spent a lot of our summer there -- dancing, playing -- no drugs, no booze. Clean fun. I used to sit on the wall and wish the place could be a kind of ballroom. I even had a name for it -- The Rainbow Room. Years went by, we all moved away. I moved back to J.P. and went for a walk to visit my building.  It looked like an old soldier no one cared about anymore. Broken bruised, used. The stench of burn everywhere. I sat down and I cried. I was that 13 year old kid again.

I saw an article in The Citizen regarding Pinebank and went to its website. I was horrified to hear that the City, which could have fixed her up as it had the funding, did nothing to help her. So here I am with Friends of Pinebank who love it for different reasons but all have a common bond. We think she is beautiful and deserves better than the nothing she got, we will go to the wall for her. She still has the music in her.

I can feel it.

Sharon LaValley

Edwina: "A Memoir of Childhood Through the Eyes of a Woman" (contributed by Kay Mathew)
Chapter 42:  "Jamaica Pond and Ward's Pond" (pages 207-209)

Two other places my friends and I liked to visit were Jamaica Pond and another smaller pond called Ward's Pond.  It was a short walk from where we lived on Paul Gore Street to the ponds. We would take along our lunch and a thermos bottle of lemonade and head for the ponds to spend the day. There were about four or five of us that went.  Sometimes we would meet other groups of children, but we usually had the whole area to ourselves.

To reach Ward's Pond you climbed down a steep flight of steps from the street. Today the street is called Jamaica Way. The pond was surrounded by heavy shrubbery and tress, and was like going into another world.  There was a spring that fell into a little pool where goldfish swam. The pond was supposed to be bottomless and very dangerous.  We were all warned not to go near the edge because anyone who fell into it sank at once. There were tales that the place was haunted and we would make up scary stories but we liked to go there just the same.  We used to eat our lunch on the rocks around the spring where the water was cold and delightful.

Jamaica Pond, which was nearby, was a much larger body of water and after playing at Wards' Pond we wandered over there.  It was drilled into us that Jamaica Pond was dangerous and was always thought to have no bottom either. There was a refectory building at Jamaica Pond where we could buy ice cream cones and soft drinks, and we always kept our five cents for one, wrapped up in a handkerchief. We could use the facilities there too, if we needed.

At one side of the pond was a statue of the architect Frederick Law Olmsted with seats around three sides.  This was a favorite spot where we played guessing games, did mental arithmetic problems and stretched out on the stone benches to talk.

Our last place to go before we headed home was the Children’s Museum, which was located in an old brick house. The museum was started with a few stuffed animals sitting around on tables and a huge stuffed bear standing by a fireplace.  No one ever thought of taking any of the items but we could touch and handle the animals, and we were always careful.  Upstairs was a donated dollhouse under glass.  We would crawl around on the floor and spend a long time looking at the miniature furniture.  I think today that same dollhouse is in the new Children’s Museum in Boston.

Notebooks and diaries about growing up in Jamaica Plain in the first decades of the 20th century.  Edwina McNeill Connell lived on Paul Gore Street and Centre Street.  Born in 1901, she is writing here about Jamaica Pond and Ward's Pond before her high school years, so probably it was1912 or 1914.