The Longwood Historic District is roughly bounded by Chapel, St. Marys, Monmouth, and Kent Sts.

The area was developed in the mid-19th century by David Sears and Amos Adams Lawrence as a fashionable residential area, and retains a number of architecturally distinguished buildings, including the Longwood Towers complex at 20 Chapel Street, Christ's Church Longwood, and Church of Our Saviour, Brookline.

John Hull in his youth lived in Muddy River Hamlet, in a little house which stood near the Sears Memorial Church.

[4] During the early colonial period, the Longwood area of eastern Brookline was part of the large farming estate of Samuel Sewall.

In the first half of the 19th century David Sears and Amos Lawrence, both prominent Boston businessmen, bought up large tracts of what had been Sewall's estate.