Nora's, A Delicious Dish of Southwick History
Dominick Barberi and Wilbur Strong of Springfield, Massachusetts, signed a three-year lease and built a one-story building on Samuel Foster's property west of the county bridge at Great Brook in Southwick, Massachusetts, in 1924. They named their new business Brookside Inn. By 1929, Chester E. Booth took ownership of Brookside, and in 1932, the Town of Southwick granted him a license to store, use, and sell 2,000 gallons of petroleum in underground tanks at Brookside. (It is unclear if Brookside sold gas before this.) When Chester and his wife bought the Rustic Haven in Whately, Massachusetts, in 1936, they sold Brookside to William Pope, who, along with Florence C. Shaw and Charles R. Beardsley, incorporated it as Brookside Inc. The sale included: A beer and wine license A dance hall Living quarters Five acres of land with a picnic grove and trout stream Things got off to a rocky start for Charles, who managed Brookside's day-to-day operations. In 1937, a disagreement