Rim Shot
Brighton's Automotive Row Comes to a Dead End
Boston Magazine
July 2001
By David J. Wallace
Family-owned business landmark Ellis the Rim Man has quietly closed after 84 years and three generations on Commonwealth Avenue, hastening the transformation of Brighton's once-bustling "automotive mile" from car sales, parts, and service retailers into the housing developments and other uses.
The three-story red brick building, with its distinctive Ellis the Rim Man billboard, is to be converted into the Media and Technology Charter High School, with the deal expected to be closed this summer. Housing developments are also sprouting up all over the neighborhood near the Brookline border, including 32 apartments planned for the former state police crime lab.
The Ellis building has a grand central central staircase and terra cotta detailing from the time it was built in 1918 as the New England headquarters for Lincoln automobiles, says owner Ed Ellis of Newton, who's worked there since 1959. Ellis wistfully lists accessories he once sold that now are standard equiptment - air-conditioning, seatbelts, side mirrors, turn signals. His son, Steve, will remain in the wholesale parts business, supplying dealers and repair shops.
"When I started in the business in 1960, you could buy any car or truck made in the United States wiithin a two-mile radius of here," says Ellis, 64. He can recall the fanfare on washington's birthday every year when visitors paraded down the street to shop for new cars.
Now, the old Chevrolet dealership is a supermarket, and the former home of Foreign Motors sells wireless phones. Some echoes remain: There's a Buick Street a few blocks away, and trolley drivers still announce "Packard's Corner," where the fabled car company had its showplace at the intersection of Brighton and Commonwealth avenues.
Ellis jokes that he may set up a kiosk at the corner of Babcock Street and Commonwealth Avenue and make a new career doing what he's always done: giving directions and providing change for parking meters and the T.
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