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BOSTON: A GUIDE BOOK

I. MODERN BOSTON
HISTORICAL SKETCH

HE town of Boston was founded in 163o by English colonists sent out by the “Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England,” under the lead of John Winthrop, the second governor of the Bay Colony, who arrived at Salem in June of that year with the charter of 1629. It originated in an order passed by the Court of Assistants sitting in the “Governor’s House” in Charlestown, on the opposite side of the Charles River, first selected as their place of settlement. This order was adopted September 17 (7 O. S.), and established three towns at once by the simple dictum, “that Trimountane shalbe called Boston; Mattapan, Dorchester; & ye towne vpon Charles Ryver, Waterton.” “Trimountane” consisted of a peninsula with three hills, the highest (the present Beacon Hill), as seen from Charlestown, presenting three distinct peaks. Hence this name, given it by the colonists from Endicott’s company at Salem, who had preceded the Winthrop colonists in the Charlestown settlement. The Indian name was “Shawmutt,” or “Shaumut,” which signified, according to some authorities, “Living Waters,” but according to others, “Where there is going by boat,” or “Near the neck.” The name of Boston was selected in recognition of the chief men of the company, who had come from Boston in England, and particularly Isaac Johnson, “the greatest furtherer of the Colony,” who died at Charlestown on the day of the naming. The peninsula was chosen for the chief settlement primarily because of its springs, the colonists at Charlestown suffering disastrously from the use of brackish water. The Rev. William Blaxton, the pioneer white settler on the peninsula (coming about 1625), then living alone in his cottage on the highest hill slope, “came and acquainted the governor of an excellent spring there, withal inviting him and soliciting him thither.”

The three-hilled peninsula originally contained only about 783 acres, cut into by deep coves, estuaries, inlets, and creeks. It faced the harbor, at the west end of Massachusetts Bay, into which empty the Charles and Mystic rivers. It was pear-shaped, a little more than a mile wide at its broadest, and less than three miles long, the stem, or neck, connecting it with the mainland (at what became Roxbury) a mile in length, and so low and narrow that parts were not infrequently overflowed by the tides. By the reclamation of the broad marshes and flats from time to time, and the filling of the great coves, the original area of 783 acres has been expanded to 1801 acres; and where it was the narrowest it is now the widest. Additional territory has been acquired by the development of East Boston and South Boston, and by the annexation of adjoining cities and towns. Thus the area of the city has become more than thirty times as large as that of the peninsula on which the town was built. Its bounds now embrace 27-251 acres, or 42.6 square miles. Its extreme length, from north to south, is eleven miles, and its extreme breadth, from east to west, nine miles. While the Colonial town was confined to the little peninsula, its jurisdiction at first extended over a large territory, which embraced the present cities and towns of Chelsea and Revere on the north, and Brookline, Quincy, Braintree, and Randolph on the west and south. So there was quite a respectable “Greater Boston” in those old first days. The metropolitan proportions continued till 1640, and were not entirely reduced to the limits of the peninsula and certain harbor islands till 1739.

East Boston is comprised in two harbor islands: Noddle’s Island, which was “layd to Boston” in 1637, and Breed’s (earlier Hog) Island, annexed in 1635. South Boston was formerly Dorchester Neck, a part of the town of Dorchester, annexed in 1804. The city of Roxbury (named as a town October 8, 1630) was annexed in 1868; the town of Dorchester (named in 1630 in the order naming Boston), in 1870; and in 1874 the city of Charlestown (founded as a town July 4, 1629), the town of Brighton (incorporated 1807), and the town of West Roxbury (incorporated 1851) were by one act added. These annexed municipalities retain their names with the term “ District “ added to each. Boston remained under town government, with a board of selectmen, till 1822. It was incorporated a city, February 23 of that year, after several ineffectual attempts to change the system.

BOSTON PROPER

The term “Boston Proper” is customarily used to designate the original city exclusive of the annexed parts; but for the purposes of this Guide we comprehend in the term the entire municipality, as in business and social relations, but yet independent political corporations. Together with the municipality these allied cities and towns constitute what is colloquially known as Greater Boston. This metropolitan community is officially recognized at present only in two state departments: the Metropolitan Parks and the consolidated Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Departments; and in part in the Boston Postal districts the Metropolitan Parks District is the largest, comprising Boston and thirty-eight cities and towns within a radius of thirteen miles towns; the Metropolitan Sewerage District, twenty-four; and the Boston Postal District, ten. The “Boston Basin,” however, is regarded as constituting the true bounds of “Greater Boston.” This includes a territory of some fifteen miles in width, lying between the bay on the east, distinguished from the allied cities and towns, closely identified with it District established by the Post Office Department. Of these several from the City Hall, having a combined population approximating 1,300,000. The Metropolitan Water District includes seventeen cities and the Blue Hills on the south, and the ridges of the Wellington Hills sweeping from Waltham on the west around toward Cape Ann on the north. It embraces thirty-six cities and towns. The population of Boston alone (census of 1905) is 595,380.

The present city is divided by custom long established into several distinct sections. These are:

The Central District or General Business Quarter
The North End
The West End
The South End
The Back Bay Quarter
The Brighton District, on the west side
The Roxbury District, on the south
The West Roxbury District, on the southwest
The Dorchester District, on the southeast
The Charlestown District, on the north
East Boston on its two islands, on the northeast
South Boston projecting into the harbor, on the east

The Business Quarters now occupy not only the Central District, but extend over most of the North End, parts of the West End and of the South End, and penetrate even the Back Bay Quarter, laid out in comparatively modern times (1860-1886), where the bay had been, as the fairest residential quarter of the city and the place for its finest architectural monuments.

I. THE CENTRAL DISTRICT

The Central District (see Plates II and III) is of first interest to the visitor, for here are most of the older historic landmarks. This small quarter of the present city, together with the North End, embraces that part of the original peninsula to which the historic town Colonial, Provincial, and Revolutionary Boston — was practically confined. The town of 1630 was begun along the irregular water front, the principal houses being placed round about the upper part of what is now State Street, modern Boston’s financial center, and on or near the neighboring Dock Square, back of the present Faneuil Hall, where was the first Town Dock, occupying nearly all of the present North Market Street, in the “Great Cove.” The square originally at the head of State Street (first Market, then King Street), in the middle of which now stands the Old State House, was the first center of town life. At about this point, accordingly, our explorations naturally begin.

State-Street square and the Old State House. Our starting place is the square at the head of State St., which the Old State House faces. This itself is one of the most notable historic spots in Boston. For the first quarter-century of Colony life the entire square, including the space occupied by the Old State House, was the public marketstead. Thursday was market day, — the day also of the “Thursday Lecture” by the ministers. Early (1648) semiannual fairs here, in June and October, were instituted, each holding a market for two or three days. Here were first inflicted the drastic punishments of offenders against the rigorous laws, and here unorthodox literature was burned.

The Stocks, the Whipping Post, and the Pillory were earliest placed here. When the town was a half-century old a Cage, for the confinement and exposure of violators of the rigid Sunday laws, was added to these penal instruments. In the Revolutionary period the Stocks stood near the northeast corner of the Old State House, with the Whipping Post hard by; while the Pillory when used was set in the middle of the square between the present Congress Street (first Leverett’s Lane) on the south side and Exchange Street (first Shrimpton’s Lane, later Royal Exchange Lane) on the north. The Whipping Post lingered here till he opening of the nineteenth century.

This square continued to be the gathering place of the populace from the Colonial through the Province period on occasion of momentous events. It was the rendezvous of the people in the “bloodless revolution” of April, 1689, when the government of Andros was overthrown. In the Stamp Act excitement of 1765 a stamp fixed upon a pole was solemnly brought here by a representative of the “Sons of Liberty” and fastened into the town Stocks, after which it was publicly burned by the “executioner.” On the evening of March 5, 1770, the so-called Boston Massacre, the fatal collision between the populace and the soldiery, occurred here, the site being indicated by a tablet on the building at the Exchange Street corner, northwest.

On the south side of the original marketstead, by the present Devon shire Street (first Pudding Lane), where now is the modern Brazer’s Building (27 State Street), was the first meetinghouse, a rude structure of mud walls and thatched roof. This also served through its existence of eight years for Colonial purposes, as the carved inscription above the entrance of Brazer’s Building relates:

At the upper end of this side of the marketstead, extending to Washington Street (first The High Street), were the house and garden lot of Captain Robert Keayne, charter member and first commander of the first “Military Company of the Massachusetts” (founded 1637, chartered 1638), from which developed the still flourishing “Ancient and Honor able Artillery Company,” the oldest military organization in the country. A century later, on the Washington Street corner, was Daniel Henchman’s bookshop, in which Henry Knox, afterward the Revolutionary general and Washington’s friend, learned his trade and ultimately succeeded to the business. When the British regulars were quartered on the town, in 1768-1770, the Main Guardhouse was on this side, directly opposite the south door of the Old State House, with the two fieldpieces pointed toward this entrance.

On the west side of the marketstead, — the present Washington Street, — nearly opposite Captain Keayne’s lot, was the second meetinghouse, built in 1640, the site now occupied by the Rogers Building (209 Washington Street). This was used for all civic purposes, as well as religious, through eighteen years.

It stood till 1711, when it was destroyed in the “Great Fire” (the eighth “Great Fire” in the young town) of October that year, with one hundred other buildings in the neighborhood. Its successor, on the same spot, was the “Brick Meetinghouse” which remained for almost a century.

North of the second meetinghouse site, where is now the Sears Building (199 Washington Street), was the house of John Leverett, after ward Governor Leverett (1673). On the opposite corner, now covered by the Ames Building (Washington and Court streets), was the home stead of Henry Dunster, first president of Harvard College.

On the north side of the marketstead, near the east corner of the present Devonshire Street, was the glebe of the first minister of the first church, the Rev. John Wilson, with his house, barn, and two gardens. His name was perpetuated in Wilson’s Lane, which was cut through his garden plot in 1640, and which in turn was absorbed in the widened Devonshire Street.

Doorway, Exchange Building

Looking again across to the south side, we see the site of Governor Winthrop’s first house, covered by the expansive Exchange Building (53 State Street). It stood on or close to the ground occupied by the entrance hall of the building. This was the governor’s town house for thirteen years from the settlement. Thence he removed to his last Boston home, the mansion which stood next to the Old South Meetinghouse. The first General Court — the incipient Legislature — ever held in America, October 19, 1630, may have sat in the governor’s first house, the frame of which was brought here from Cambridge, where the governor first proposed building. At the corner of Kilby Street (first Mackerel Lane), where the Exchange Building ends, stood the Bunch-of-Grapes Tavern of Provincial times, with its sign of a gilded carved cluster of grapes, the pop dated from 1711, and was preceded by a Colonial “ordinary,” as taverns were then called, of 1640 date. In the street before the Bunch-of-Grapes’ doors, the lion and unicorn, with other emblems of royalty and signs of Tories that had been torn from their places during the celebration of the news of the Declaration of Independence in July, 1776, At the corner of Kilby Street (first Mackerel Lane), where the popular resort of the High Whigs in the prerevolutionary period. It were burned in a great bonfire.

The Bunch-of-Grapes was a famous tavern of its time. In 1750 Captain Francis Goelet, from England, on a commercial visit to the town, recorded in his diary that it was “noted for the best punch house in Boston, resorted to by most of the gentn merchts and masters vessels.” After the British evacuation, when Washington spent ten days in Boston, he and his officers were entertained here at an “elegant dinner” as part of the official ceremonies of the occasion. The tavern was especially distinguished as the place where in March, 1786, the group of Continental army officers, under the inspiration of General Rufus Putnam of Rutland (cousin of General Israel Putnam), organized the Ohio Company which settled Ohio, begin­ning at Marietta.

State Street, when King Street, practically ended at Kilby Street on the south side and Merchants Row on the north, till the reclamation of the flats beyond, high-water mark being originally at these points. “Mackerel Lane” was a narrow passage by the shore till after the “Great Fire of 1760,” which destroyed much property in the vicinity. Then it was widened and named Kilby Street in recognition of the generous aid which the sufferers by the fire had received from Christopher Kilby, a wealthy Boston merchant, long resident in London as the agent for the town and colony, but then living in New York.

Nearly opposite the Bunch-of-Grapes, at about the present No. 66, stood the British Coffee House, where the British officers principally resorted. It was here in 1769 that James Otis was assaulted by John Robinson, one of the royal commissioners of customs, upon whom the fiery orator had passed some severe strictures, and thus through a deep cut on his head this brilliant intellect was shattered.

At the east corner of Exchange Street was the Royal Customhouse, where the attack upon its sentinel by the little mob of men and boys, with a fusillade of street snow and ice, and taunting shouts, led to the Massacre of 1770. The opposite, or west, corner was occupied by the Royal Exchange Tavern, dating from the early eighteenth century, another resort of the British officers stationed in town. It was here in 1727 that occurred the altercation which resulted in the First Duel fought in Boston (on the Common), when Benjamin Woodbridge was killed by Henry Phillips, both young men well connected with the “gentry” of the town, the latter related by marriage to Peter Faneuil, the giver of Faneuil Hall. Woodbridge’s grave is in the Granary Burying Ground, and can be seen close by the sidewalk fence.

It was this grave which inspired those tender passages in the “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” describing “My First Walk with the Schoolmistress.”

The Old State House dates from 1748. Its outer walls, however, are older, being those of its predecessor, the second Town and Province House, built in 1712-1713. That house was destroyed by fire, all but these walls, in 1747, sharing very nearly the fate of its predecessor, the first Town House and colonial building, which went down in the “Great Fire” of 1711 with the second meetinghouse and neighboring buildings and dwellings. It occupies the identical site in the middle of the market, stead chosen for the first Town House in 1657. It has served as Town House, Court House, Province Court House, State House, and City Hall. As the Province Court House, identified with the succession of prerevolutionary events in Boston, it has a special distinction among the historical buildings of the country. After its abandonment for civic uses it suffered many vicissitudes and indignities, being ruthlessly refashioned, made over, and patched for business purposes, that the city which owns it might wrest the largest possible rentals from it; and in the year 188 its removal was seriously threatened. Then, through the well-directed efforts of a number of worthy citizens, its preservation was secured, and in 1882 the historic structure was restored to much the appearance which it bore in Provincial days. Further restorations were made in 1908-1909.

The restored rooms above the basement are open for public exhibition, with the rare collection of antiquities relating to the early history of the Colony and Province, as well as the State and the Town, brought together by the Bostonian Society, to whose control these rooms passed, through lease by the city, upon the resto­ration of the building. The collection embraces a rich variety of interesting relics: historical manuscripts and papers; quaint paintings, engravings, and prints; numerous portraits of old worthies; and many photographs illustrating Boston in various periods. In the Council Chamber is the old table formerly used by the royal governors and councillors. The Bostonian Society, established here, was incorporated in 1881 “to promote the study of the history of Boston, and the preservation of its antiquities”; and in it was merged the Antiquarian Club, organized in 1879 especially for the promotion of historical research, whose members had been most influential in the campaign for the preservation of this building. It has rendered excellent service in the identification of historic sites and in verifying historical records.

Council Chamber, Old State House

Deep down below the basement of the building is now the State station of the Washington Street Tunnel, and also the State Street station of the East Boston Tunnel, which runs directly under the ancient structure to Scollay Square, where it connects by passageways with the Subway. The first Town House, completed in 1659, was provided for by the will of Captain Keayne, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company’s chief founder (the longest will on record, comprising 158 folio pages in the testator’s own hand, though disposing of only £4000). Captain Keayne left £300 for the purpose, and to this sum was added £100 more, raised by subscription among the townspeople, and paid largely in provisions, merchandise, and labor. It was a small “comely building” of wood, set upon twenty pillars, overhanging the pillars “three feet all around,” and topped by two tall slender turrets. The place inclosed by the pillars was a free public market, and an exchange, or “walk for the merchants.”

Franklin Press, Old State House

It contained the beginnings of the first public library in America, for which provision was made in Captain Keayne’s will. Portions of this library were saved from the fire of 1711 which destroyed the building; but these probably perished later in the burning of the second Town and Province House.

The second house, of brick, completed in 1713, also had an open public exchange on the street floor. Surrounding it were thriving booksellers’ shops, observing which Daniel Neal, visiting the town in 1719, was moved to remark that “the Knowledge of Letters flourishes more here than in all the other English plantations put together; for in the city of New York there is but one book seller’s shop, and in the Plantations of Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, Barbadoes, and the Islands, none at all.” So, it appears, thus early Boston was the “literary center” of the country, a fact calculated to bring almost as great satisfaction to the complacent Bostonian as that later-day saying in the “Autocrat” (in which this stamp of Bostonian declines to recognize any satire), that “Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system”

Down State Street. Following State Street to its end, we shall come upon Long Wharf (originally Boston Pier, dating from 171o), where the formal landings of the royal governors were made, the main landing place of the British soldiers when they came, and the departing place at the Evacuation. At that time it was a long, narrow pier, extending out beyond the other wharves, the tide ebbing and flowing beneath the stores that lined it. Atlantic Avenue, the water-front thoroughfare that now crosses it, and on which the elevated railway runs, follows generally the line of the ancient Barricado, an early harbor defense erected in 1673 between the north and south outer points of the “Great Cove.” It connected the North Battery, where is now Battery Wharf, and the South Battery, or “Boston Sconce,” at the present Rowe’s Wharf, where the steamer for Nantasket is taken. It was provided with openings to allow vessels to pass inside, and so came to be generally called the “Out Wharves.” Its line is so designated on the early maps.

In the short walk down State Street are passed in succession on either side of the way notable modern structures that have almost entirely replaced the varied architecture of different periods, which before gave this street a peculiar distinction and a certain picturesque ness that is now wanting. The Exchange Building takes the place of the first Merchants’ Exchange, a dignified building in its day (1842 1890), covering a very small part of the ground over which the present structure spreads. The Board of Trade Building, at the east corner of Broad Street, is, perhaps, the most attractive in design of the newer architecture. At the India Street corner, its massive granite-pillared front facing that street, is the United States Custom House (dating from 1847), in marked contrast with its younger neighbors. This occupied several years in building, and the transportation of the heavy granite columns, each weighing about forty-two tons, which surround it on all sides, was a great feat for the time. Its site was the head of Long Wharf, and the bowsprits of vessels lying there, stretching across the street, almost touched its eastern side.

Custom House

On India Street, a few rods south of this specimen of a past architecture, is the modern Chamber of Com­merce (built in 1902), also of granite. Viewed from a distance, its rounded front, with turreted dormer windows and conical tower, has a unique appearance. Opposite it opens Custom House Street, only a block in length, where is still standing the Old Custom House, built in 1810, in which Bancroft, the historian, served as collector of the port in 1838-1841, and which was the “darksome dungeon” where Haw­thorne spent his two years as a customs officer, first as a measurer of salt and coal, then as a weigher and gauger.

Faneuil Hall and its Neighborhood. From lower State Street we can pass to Faneuil Hall by way of Commercial Street and the long granite Quincy Market House, — the central piece of the great work of the first Mayor Josiah Quincy, in 1825-1826, in the construction of six new streets over a sweep of flats and docks, — or we may go direct from the Old State House through Exchange Street, a walk of a few minutes.

Faneuil Hall as now seen is the “Cradle of Liberty” of the Revolutionary period doubled in width and a story higher. The enlargement was made in 1805, under the superintendence of Charles Bulfinch, the pioneer Boston architect of enduring fame, whose most characteristic work we shall see in the “Bulfinch Front “of the present State House, The hall was built in 1762-1763, upon the brick walls of the first Faneuil Hall, Peter Faneuil’s gift to the town in 1742, which was consumed, except its walls, in a fire in January, 1762. Bulfinch, in his work of 1805, introduced the galleries resting on Doric columns, and the platform with its extended front, with various interior embellishments. In 1898 the entire building was reconstructed with fireproof material on the Bulfinch plan, iron, steel, and stone being sub­stituted for wood and combus­tible material

Faneuil Hall

Of the fine collection of portraits on the walls many are copies, the originals having been placed in the Museum of Fine Arts for safe-keeping. The great historical painting at the back of the platform, “Webster’s Reply to Hayne,” by G. P. A. Healy, contains one hundred and thirty portraits of senators and other men of distinction at that time. The scene is the old Senate Chamber, now the apartment of the United States Supreme Court. The canvas measures sixteen by thirty feet. The portrait of Peter Faneuil, on one side of this painting, is a copy by Colonel Henry Sargent, from a smaller portrait in the Art Museum, and was given to the city by Samuel Parkman, grandfather of the historian Parkman. It takes the place of a full-length portrait executed by order of the town in 1744, as a “testimony of respect” to the donor of the hall, which disappeared, and was probably destroyed, at the siege of Boston, — the fate also of portraits of George H, Colonel Isaac Barré, and Field Marshal Conway, the last two solicited by the town in gratitude for their defense of Americans on the floor of Parliament. The full-length Washington, on the other side of the great painting, is a Gilbert Stuart. It, also, was presented to the town by Samuel Parkman, in 1806. Of the portraits elsewhere hung, those of Warren, Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and John Quincy Adams are all Copleys. The General Harry Knox and the Commodore Preble are credited to Stuart. The Abraham Lincoln and Rufus Choate are by Ames. The “war governor,” John A. Andrew, is by William M. Hunt. The others — Robert Treat Paine, Caleb Strong, Edward Everett, Admiral Winslow, Wendell Phillips, and Anson Burlingame — are by various American painters. The ornamental clock in the face of the gallery over the main entrance was a gift of Boston school children in 1850. The gilded spread eagle was originally on the façade of the United States Bank which, erected in 1798, preceded the first Merchants’ Exchange on State Street. The gilded grass hopper on the cupola of the building, serving as a weather vane, is the reconstructed, or rejuvenated, original one of 1742, fashioned from sheet copper by the “cunning artificer,” “Deacon” Shem Drowne, immortalized by Hawthorne in “Drowne’s Wooden Image.”

The floors above the public hall have been occupied by the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company for many years. Its armory is a rich museum of relics of Colonial, Provincial, and Revolutionary times, and is hospitably open to appreciative inspection. Among the treasured memorials here are the various banners of the company, the oldest being that carried in 1663. Eighteen silk flags reproduce colonial colors and their various successors. In the London room are mementos of the visit of a section of the company to England in the summer of 1896, as guests of the Honourable Artillery Company of London. On the walls of the main hall are portraits of one hundred and fourteen captains of the company. On the street floor of the building is the market, which has continued from its establishment with the first Faneuil Hall in 1742. John Smibert, the Scotch painter, long resident and celebrated in Boston from 1729, was the architect of the first building.

Faneuil Hall was instituted primarily as a market house, the inclusion of a public town hall in the scheme being an afterthought of the donor. Peter Faneuil’s offer to provide a suitable building at his own expense upon condition only that the town should legalize and maintain it, was at a time of controversy over the town market houses then existing. Three had been set up seven years before, one close to this site, in Dock Square; one at the North End, in North Square; the third at the then South End, by the south corner of the present Boylston and Washington streets. The Dock Square market was the principal one, and this had recently been demolished by a mob “disguised as clergymen.” The contention was over the market system. One faction demanded a return to the method of service at the home of the townspeople, as before the setting up of these market houses; the others insisted upon the fixed market-house system. So high did the feeling run that Faneuil’s gift was accepted by the town by the narrow margin of seven votes.

The building was completed in September, 1742. It was only one hundred feet in length and forty feet wide. But it was of brick, and substantial. The hall, calculated to hold only one thousand persons, was pronounced in the vote of the first town meeting held in it as “spacious and beautiful.” In the same vote it was named Faneuil Hall, “to be at all times hereafter called and known by that name,” in testimony of the town’s gratitude to its giver and to perpetuate his memory. Then his full-length portrait was ordered for the hall; and a year and a half later the Faneuil arms, “elegantly carved and gilt” by Moses Deshon, the same who later carved the Colony seal for the Town House, were added at the town’s expense.

The first public gathering in the hall, other than a town meeting, was, singularly, to commemorate Faneuil, he having died suddenly, March 3, 1743, but a few months after the completion of the building. On this occasion the eulogist was John Lovell, master of the Latin School, who in the subsequent prerevolutionary controversies was a Loyalist, and at the Evacuation went off to Halifax. The Faneuils who succeeded Peter, his nephews, were also Loyalists, and left the country with the Evacuation.

The second Faneuil Hall, embraced in the present structure, was built by the town, and the building fund was largely obtained through a lottery authorized by the General Court. The first public meeting in this hall was on March 14, 1763, when the patriot James Otis was the orator, and by him the hall was dedicated to the “Cause of Liberty.” Then followed those town meetings of the Revolutionary period, debating the question of “justifiable resistance,” from which the hall derived its sobriquet of the “Cradle of American Liberty.” In 1766 cm the news of the Stamp Act repeal the hall was illuminated. In 1768 one of the British regiments was quartered here for some weeks. In 1772 the Boston Committee of Correspondence, “to state the rights of the colonists” to the world, was established here, on that motion of Samuel Adams which Bancroft says “contained the whole Revolution.” In 1773 the “Little Senate,” composed of the committees of the several towns, began their conferences with the “ever-vigilant” Boston committee, in the selectmen’s room. During the siege the hall was transformed into a playhouse, under the patronage of a society of British officers and Tory ladies, when soldiers were the actors, and a local farce, “The Blockade of Boston,” by General Burgoyne, was the chief attraction.

Since the Revolution the hall has been the popular meeting place of citizens on important and grave occasions, and a host of national leaders, orators, and agitators have spoken from its historic rostrum. In 1826 Webster delivered here his memorable eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, in the presence of President John Quincy Adams and an audience of exceptional character. Here in 1837 Wendell Phillips made his first antislavery speech; in 1845 Charles Sumner first publicly appeared in this cause; in 1846 the antislavery Vigilance Committee was formed at a meeting to denounce the return of a fugitive slave; in 1854 the preconcerted signal was given, at a crowded meeting to protest against the rendition of Anthony Burns, for the bold but fruitless move on the Court House (see p. 59) to effect the escape of this fugitive slave.

Faneuil Hall is protected by a provision of the city charter forbidding its sale or lease. It is never let for money, but is opened to the people upon the request of a certain number of citizens, who must agree to comply with the prescribed regulations.     Faneuil Hall occupies made land close to the head of the Old Town Dock. The streets around the sides and back of the building constitute Faneuil Hall Square. From the south side of this square opens Corn Court, which runs in irregular form to Merchants Row. This space was the Corn Market of Colonial times. A landmark of a later day here, which remained till 1903, was an old inn long known as Hancock Tavern. While not so ancient as it was assumed to be, nor occupying, as alleged, the site of the first tavern in the town, it was an interesting landmark with rich associations. It became the Hancock Tavern when John Hancock was made the first governor of the Commonwealth, and the swing sign displaying his roughly painted portrait is still preserved. At other periods it was the Brazier Inn, kept by Madam Brazier, niece of Provincial Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phipps (1733), who made a specialty of a noonday punch for its patrons. In this tavern lodged Talleyrand, when exiled from France, during his stay in Boston in 1795; also, two years later, Louis Philippe; and, in 1796, the exiled French priest, John Cheverus, who afterward became the first Roman Catholic bishop of Boston. An annex to a modern office building occupies its site.

The Adams Statue

East of Corn Court, near the east end of Faneuil Hall, also on land reclaimed from the Town Dock, was John Hancock’s Store, where he advertised for sale “English and India goods, also choice Newcastle Coals and Irish Butter, Cheap for Cash.” West of Corn Court opens Change Alley (incongruously designated as “avenue”), a quaint, narrow foot passage to State Street, one of the earliest ways established in the town. It was sometime Flagg Alley, from being laid out with flag stones. Until the erection of the great financial buildings that now largely wall it in, the alley was picturesque with bustling little shops.

On the west side of Faneuil Hall Square the triangle, covered with low, old buildings, marks the head of the ancient Town Dock.

Old Dock Square makes into modern Adams Square (opened in 1879), near the middle of which stands the bronze statue of Samuel Adams, by Anne Whitney. This is a counterpart of the statue of the revolutionary leader in the Capitol at Washington. It portrays him as he is supposed to have appeared when before Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson and the council, in the Council Chamber of the Old State House, as chairman of the committee of the town meeting the day after the Boston Massacre of 1770, and at the moment that, having delivered the people’s demand for the instant removal of the British soldiers from the town, he stood with a resolute look awaiting Hutchinson’s reply.

The principal architectural feature of this open space is the stone Adams Square Station of the Subway.

Cornhill and about Scollay Square. From the west side of Adams Square we pass into Cornhill, early in its day a place of bookshops, and still occupied by several booksellers at long-established stands. It is the second Cornhill, the first having been the part of the present Washington Street between old Dock Square and School Street. Washington Street originally ended at Dock Square north of the present Cornhill, and its extension to Haymarket Square (1872), where it now ends, greatly changed this part of the town and obliterated various landmarks. A little north of the present opening of Cornhill, lost in the Washington Street extension, was the site of the dwelling of Benjamin Edes, where, on the afternoon preceding the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, a number of the leaders in that affair met and partook of punch from the punch bowl now possessed by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

This Cornhill dates from 1816, and was first called Cheapside, after the London fashion. Then for a while it was Market Street, being a new way to Faneuil Hall Market. From its northerly side was once an archway leading to Brattle Street and old Dock Square, which also disappeared in the extension of Washington Street. Midway, at its curve toward Court Street, where it ends, it is crossed by Franklin Avenue (another short passageway, or alley, with this ambitious title), at the Court Street end of which was Edes & Gill’s printing office, the principal rendezvous of the Tea-Party men, in a back room of which a number of them assumed their disguise. This was on the westerly corner of the “avenue,” then Dasset Alley, and Court, then Queen, Street. Earlier, on the east corner, was the printing office of Benjamin Franklin’s brother James, where the boy Franklin learned the printer’s trade as his brother’s apprentice, and composed those ballads on “The Lighthouse Tragedy” and on “Teach” (or “Blackbeard”), the pirate, which he peddled about the streets with a success that “flattered” his “vanity,” though they were “wretched stuff,” as he confesses in his Autobiography. Here James Franklin issued his New England Courant, the fourth newspaper that appeared in America, which Franklin managed during the month in which his brother was imprisoned for printing an article offensive to the Assembly, and himself “made bold to give our rulers some rubs in it”; and which, after James’s release inhibited from publishing, was issued for a while under Benjamin’s name.

The north end of Franklin Avenue, from Cornhill by a short flight of steps, is at Brattle Street, a short distance above the site of Murray’s Barracks, on the opposite side, where were quartered the Twenty, Ninth, the regiment of the British force of 1768-1770 most obnoxious to the “Bostoneers,” and where the fracas began that culminated in the Boston Massacre. The Quincy House, nearer the avenue’s end, covers the site of the first Quaker meetinghouse, built in 1697, the first brick meetinghouse in the town. Opposite the side of the Quincy House, facing Brattle Square, stood till 1871 the Brattle Square Church, which after the Revolution bore on its front a memento of the Siege, in the shape of a cannon ball, thrown there by an American battery at Cambridge on the night of the Evacuation. This was the meetinghouse alluded to in Holmes’s “A Rhymed Lesson,”

A model of the church as it thus appeared is in the house of the Massachusetts Historical Society, where also the cannon ball is preserved. The quoins of the structure, of Connecticut stone, were placed inside the tower of its successor on Commonwealth Avenue, Back Bay, now the church of the First Baptist Society. Though new, and “the pride of the town “at the time of the Revolution, having been consecrated in 1773, it was utilized as barracks for the British soldiers; and only the fact that the removal of the pillars which embellished its interior would have endangered the structure, prevented its use during the Siege as a military riding school, like the Old South Meetinghouse (see p. 51). It was the church that Hancock, Bowdoin, and Warren attended. Warren’s house, from 1764, was near by on Hanover Street, on the site now covered by the American House.

Court Street

At the head of Cornhill, in front of Scollay Square, stood the bronze statue of John Winthrop until its removal was necessitated by the East Boston Tunnel work below it in 1903. It was well worth a moment’s study, though the constant traffic of the busy thoroughfare made its near neighborhood perilous. The Colonial governor, clad in the picturesque costume of the period, is represented as stepping from a gang board to the shore. In his right hand he holds the charter of the Colony by its great seal; in his left the Bible. Behind the figure appears the base of a newly hewn forest tree, with a rope attached, significant of the fastening of a boat. The statue is the work of Richard S. Greenough and is a copy of the marble one in the Capitol at Washington. It was cast in Rome. It was first erected in 1880, on the 250th anniversary of the settlement of Boston. It now stands on Marlborough Street beside the First Church. About where the Scollay Square Station stands, or a little north of its site, was the first Free Writing School, set up in 1683-1684. This was the second school in the town, the first being on School Street, as we shall presently see. It continued in use till after the Revolution (or about 1793), latterly known as the Central Reading and Writing School. Looking down Court Street eastward, we have in near view the somber-pillared front of the Old Court House, dating from 1836. It was designed by Solomon Willard, the architect of Bunker Hill Monument. Its exterior is of Quincy granite. The ponderous fluted columns (originally eight in all, there having been a row on the rear as well as in front) weigh each twenty-five tons. The first two were brought over the roads from Quincy by sixty-five yoke of oxen and ten horses, making a great street show. This building was the center of the exciting scenes attending the fugitive slave cases in 1851 and 1854. Here is the main entrance to the East Boston Tunnel.

Here occurred first, in February, 1851, the rescue of Shadrach, who had been confined in the United States court room awaiting action upon a process for his rendition. Six weeks later came the Thomas Sims affair, when, to prevent the rescue of this slave, the building was guarded and surrounded with chains breast high, under which the judges and all others having business within were obliged to stoop to reach the doors. Finally, in May, 1854, occurred the Anthony Burns riot, on the evening of the 26th, with the failure of the rescue planned by a number of the anti slavery “Vigilance Committee,” when, in the assault made at the entrance on the west side of the building, one of the marshal’s deputies was killed. It was after this affair that indictments were brought against Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and several others, for “obstructing the process of the United States.” For their defense a formidable array of counsel appeared here, but the indictment was quashed.

On this same spot was the Colonial prison, its outer walls of stone three feet thick, with unglazed iron-barred windows, stout oaken doors covered with iron, hard cells, and gloomy passages, where were incarcerated the Quakers and, later, victims of the witchcraft delusion. Here also, after the over­throw of Andros in 1689, Ratcliffe, the rector of the first Episcopal church, which Andros so fostered (see King’s Chapel, p. 24), was confined with his leading parishioners for nine months, till sent to England by royal command. Another distinguished prisoner here, in 1699, was the piratical Captain Kidd. It was this prison that Hawthorne fancifully describes in “The Scarlet Letter.” The prison was first placed here in 1642, and gave to the street the name of Prison Lane, which it bore through the seventeenth century. Then it became Queen Street, and Court Street after the Revolution. Looking westward up Court Street to the upper side, called Tremont Row, we may imagine the site of Governor John Endicott’s house, where he lived after his removal from Salem to Boston, and where, in 1661, Samuel Shattuck, bearing the order of the King releasing the imprisoned Quakers, had audience with him, — the event upon which Whittier’s “The King’s Missive” is founded. This house is variously placed by local authorities on Tremont Row, between Tremont Street and Howard Street, but the best evidence appears to point to a situation toward the Howard Street end.

The Winthrop Statue

Tremont Street and King’s Chapel. Now we take Tremont Street. From the west side, at its beginning, opens the short way up to Pemberton Square, at the head of which we see the façade of the present County Court House (built 1887-1893). This is a long granite structure in the German Renaissance style of architecture, designed by George A. Clough. Its plan is on the system of open courtyards: four are in the area of the general block. It covers 65,300 feet of land. The feature of the interior is the great hall, broad and lofty, a flight of steps ascend ing to it from the front entrance, and other flights ascending from it to the rear exit on Somerset Street. Upon the faces of the cornices in the vestibule at the main entrance are statuesque bas-reliefs of Law, Justice, Wisdom, Innocence, and Guilt. On one side of the hall is the bronze statue of Rufus Choate, the great lawyer of his day. This is by Daniel C. French. It was placed in 1898. It was a gift to the city, provided for in the will of a Boston public-school master. The donor was some time master of the Dwight School for boys, and afterward principal of the Everett School for girls.

Pemberton Square marks the second highest peak of Beacon Hill. This peak at first received the name of Cotton Hill, from the Rev. John Cotton, the early minister of the First Church, whose house was on its slope facing Tremont Street. The Cotton estate originally spread over this peak, extending back across Somerset Street to about the middle of Ashburton Place in the rear of the Court House.

The peak rose originally in irregular heights, the loftiest bluff being at the southerly end of Pemberton Square, or on the west side of Tremont Street about opposite the gate of King’s Chapel Burying Ground. Against its slopes were early favorite places for house sites.

John Cotton’s house was set up in 1633, soon after his arrival in the Griffin. It stood a little south of the entrance to Pemberton Square. Next above, or adjoining it, was Sir Harry Vane’s house. This was built by the young statesman a few months after his arrival (October, 1635), he having at first been the minister’s guest. It was Vane’s home when he was governor of the Colony in 1636-1637. Later the Cotton house came into possession of John Hull, the “mint master,” who made the pine-tree shillings, the first New England money. In course of time it fell to Chief Justice Samuel Sewall (one of the witchcraft judges at Salem in 1692), the diarist of early Boston, through his marriage with the “mint master’s” daughter Hannah, whose wedding dowry, tradition tells, was her weight in the pine-tree shillings.

About on the site now occupied by the showy Beacon Theater, but back from the street, was Richard Bellingham’s stone house, in which he lived through his several terms as governor and till his death in 1672. He was dwelling here when, in 1641, he scandalized his brethren by the manner of his marriage to Penelope Pelham, his second wife, without “publishing” the marriage intention, and especially by performing the marriage ceremony himself, being a magistrate, as Winthrop relates in picturesque detail in his journal. In the next century the grand Faneuil mansion and terraced gardens were here. This was the estate that Peter Faneuil inherited in 1737 and was occupying when he built Faneuil Hall. It was maintained in all its elegance by its several owners till some years after the Revolution. At that time it was confiscated, its owner being a Royalist, — William Vassal, uncle of the Colonel John Vassal who built the Cambridge mansion now treasured as the Longfellow house. Early in the nineteenth century it was joined to the Gardner Greene estate, the finest in the town.

Old Boston Museum

The peak was finally cut down in the thirties, and Pemberton Square was then laid out through the Greene estate as a place of genteel residences in blocks, which character it sustained till the late sixties.

On the east side the Boston Museum, razed in 1903 to make way for a modem business structure, long stood the oldest playhouse of the city. For more than half a century it was a familiar landmark. At first the museum proper, with its halls of marvelous curiosities, was the chief feature of the institution, the performances being subordinate to these attractions, and the theater being called “the lecture hall,” to quiet the consciences of its patrons, who shied from the openly pro claimed playhouse. William Warren, the “prince of comedians,” as Bostonians delighted in calling him, was identified with the Museum for forty years. Here Edwin Booth made his first appearance on any stage.

From King’s Chapel to Park Street Church. King’s Chapel Burying Ground, adjoining the old stone church, is very nearly as ancient as the town of Boston. The exact date of its establishment is not known, but it was probably soon after the beginning of the settlement, for this record appears in Winthrop’s journal: “Capt. Welden, a hopeful young gent, & an experienced soldier, dyed at Charlestowne of a consumption, and was buryed at Boston wth a military funeral.” And Dudley wrote that the young man was “buryed as a souldier with three volleys of shott.” The earliest interment of record here was that of Governor Winthrop in 1649. It is believed that his third wife, Margaret Winthrop, who followed him to New England the year after he came out and who died two years before him, was also buried here.

In the same tomb are the ashes of other distinguished Winthrops — the Massachusetts governor’s eldest son and grandsons: John Winthrop, Jr., the governor of the Connecticut Colony, who died in 1676, and John Jr.’s two sons, Fitz John Winthrop, governor of the United Colonies of Connecticut (died 1707), and Wait Still Winthrop, chief justice of Massachusetts and sometime major general of the forces of the Colony (died 1717). A second Winthrop tomb contains the dust of Professor John Winthrop of Harvard College, the friend of Franklin and correspondent of John Adams (died in 1779).

The first Winthrop tomb is seen not far from the middle of the ground. Beside it is the tomb of Elder Thomas Oliver of the First Church, which subsequently became the property of the church; and close to this a horizontal tablet informs that “here lyes intombed the bodyes of ye famous reverend and learned pastors of the First Church of Christ in Boston, viz:” John Cotton, aged 67 years, died 1652; John Davenport, 72 years, died 1670; John Oxenbridge, aged 66 years, died 1674; and Thomas Bridge, aged 58 years, died 1715. Near by are the modest gravestones of Sarah, “the widow of the beloved John Cotton and excellent Richard Mather,” and of Elizabeth, widow of John Davenport.

In the middle of the ground is the marble monument to Colonel Thomas Dawes, a leading Boston mechanic of his day, who died in 1809, and near it the tomb of Governor John Leverett. A few steps distant is that of the Boston branch of the Plymouth Colony Winslow family. Here are the ashes of John Winslow, brother of Governor Edward Winslow, with those of the former’s wife, who was Mary Chilton, one of the Mayflower passengers, heroine of the popular but apocryphal tale of the first woman to spring ashore from the Pilgrim ship. In a cluster of ancient tombs are those of Jacob Sheafe, an opulent merchant of Colony times, in which was afterward buried the Rev. Thomas Thacher, first pastor of the Old South Church (died 1678), who married Sheafe’s widow; and of Thomas Brattle (died 1683), said probably to have been the wealthiest merchant of his day, whose son Thomas became a treasurer and benefactor of Harvard College. A tomb of especial interest in this quarter is the Benjamin Church tomb, for herein were deposited the remains of Lady Andros, the wife of Governor Andros, who died in February, 1688, and of whose funeral in the nighttime from the Old South Meetinghouse Sewall gives a quaint account in his diary. Other tombs of note are those of Major Thomas Savage, one of the commanders in King Philip’s War, and Judge Oliver Wendell, grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Many of the old tombstones here have been shifted from their proper places and made to serve as edge stones along the paths beyond the principal gateway. This vandalism was the performance years ago of a superintendent of burials who was possessed with an evil “eye for symmetry.”

King’s Chapel in part occupies the upper end of this burying ground, which extended originally to School Street, the land having been taken by Governor Andros in 1688 for the first Episcopal church, no Puritan landholder being found who would sell for such a purpose. This building dates from 1754 and is the second King’s Chapel on the spot. Its aspect has been little changed, beyond the enrichment of the interior, from Province days. The low solid edifice of dark stone, with its heavy square tower surrounded by wooden Ionic columns, stands as it appeared when it was the official church of the royal governors. The stone of which it is constructed came from Quincy (then Braintree), where it was taken from the surface, there being then no quarries. It was built so as to inclose the first chapel, in which services were held for the greater part of the time consumed in the slow work, — about five years. Peter Harrison, an Englishman who came out in 1729 in the train of Dean Berkeley to have part in the dean’s projected but never established university, was the architect. His model was the familiar English church of the eighteenth century; so the visitor sees in the fashion of the interior, its rows of columns supporting the ceiling, the antique pulpit and reading desk, the mural tablets and the sculptured monuments that line the walls, a pleasant likeness to an old London church. Memorials of the first chapel are preserved in the chancel. The communion table of 1688 is still in use. Several of the mural tablets are of the Provincial period. On the organ are in their ancient places the gilt miters and crown, which were removed at the Revolution and deposited in a place of safety. Among the tablets on the northern wall is one to the memory of Oliver Wendell Holmes. This was placed in the autumn of 1895. The inscription was composed by ex-President Eliot of Harvard University.

King's Chapel

At the Evacuation the venerable rector, Mr. Caner, fled with the Loyalists of his parish, taking off with him to Halifax the church registers, plate, and vestments, but most of these were in later years restored. The last Loyalist service before the Evacuation was on the preceding Sunday. In less than a month after the Evacuation the chapel was reopened for the obsequies of General Joseph Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill, and on that occasion the orator, Perez Morton, advocated independ­ence. For more than two years thereafter the chapel was closed. Then it was opened to the Old South congregation, and it was used by the latter for nearly five years, when their meeting­house was restored. In 1782 the remnant of the society renewed their services with the Rev. James Freeman as “reader.” In 1787 Mr. Freeman was ordained as rector, and at that time this first Episcopal church in New England became the first Unitarian church in America. A bust of Mr. Freeman is among the mural monuments.

The original King’s Chapel of 1688 was a small wooden structure, built at a cost of £284 16 s, contributed by persons throughout the Colony, with subscriptions from Andros and other English officers. For more than two years before its erection the Episcopal congregation had joint occupancy of the Old South Church with its proper owners, by order of Governor Andros against their earnest and constant protest. The church organization was formed in 1686, under the aggressive leadership of Edward Randolph, with the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe as rector, who had come from England commissioned to establish the Church of England in the Colony. The use of any of the Congregational meetinghouses being denied them, the projectors of the church founded it in the “library room” of the Town House. This was their place of meeting till Andros ordered the Old South opened to them. When Andros was overthrown the rector and his leading parishioners were imprisoned till their return to England (see p. 19). The remnant of the congregation resumed services in the chapel, which was finished a few months after Andros’s departure.

In 1710 the chapel was enlarged to twice its size. Then the exterior was embellished with a tower surmounted by a tall mast half-way up which was a large gilt crown and at the top a weathercock. Within the enlarged chapel the governor’s pew, raised on a dais higher by two steps than the others, hung with crimson curtains and surmounted by the royal crown, was opposite the pulpit, which itself stood on the north side at about the center. Near the governor’s pew was another reserved for officers of the British army and navy. Displayed along the walls and suspended from the pillars were the escutcheons and coats of arms of the king, Sir Edmund Andros, Governors Dudley, Shute, Burnet, Belcher, and Shirley, and other persons of distinction. At the east end was “the altar piece, whereon was the Glory painted, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and some texts of Scripture.” The communion plate was a royal gift.

Less than a block beyond King’s Chapel, on the opposite side of Tremont Street, we come to the Granary Burying Ground, established only about thirty years after the Chapel Burying Ground (in 1660), and of greater historic interest, perhaps, because of the more numerous memorials here.

On the short walk from the Chapel we pass the site of the birthplace of Edward E. Hale, covered by the upper part of the Parker House. This hotel also covers, on its School Street side, the site of the home of Oliver Wendell, the maternal grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes, for whom he was named. On Bosworth Street, the first passage opening from Tremont Street, opposite the burying ground, — a courtlike street end ing with stone steps which lead down to a more ancient cross street, — was Doctor Holmes’s home for eighteen years from 1841, the “house at the left hand next the farther corner,” which he describes in “The Autocrat.”

The Tremont Temple, next above the Parker House, is the building of the Union Temple (Baptist) Church, founded in 1839, a free church from its beginning. It is the fourth temple on this site, each of the previous ones having been destroyed by fire. The first one was a theater remodeled in 1843. The playhouse was the Tremont Theater, first opened in 1835, one of the most interesting of its class and time.

It was here that Charlotte Cushman made her début, in April, 1835; that Fanny Kemble first appeared before a Boston audience; that operas were first produced in Boston.

In the large public hall of the second Tremont Temple Charles Dickens gave his readings during his last visit to America, in 1868.

The large Tremont Building opposite occupies the site of the Tremont House, a famous inn through its career of more than sixty years from 1829, of which Dickens wrote, “it has more galleries, colonnades, piazzas, and passages than I can remember, or the reader would believe.” Preceding the inn, fine mansion houses with gardens were here, one of them being the estate of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a genuine “solid man of Boston,” a benefactor of the Boston Athenæum and of other Boston institutions. On the gates of the Granary Burying Ground, set in their high ivy-mantled stone frame, are tablets inscribed with the names of many of the notables buried here. They include governors of various periods, — Richard Bellingham, William Dummer, James Bowdoin, Increase Sumner, James Sullivan, and Christopher Gore; signers of the Declaration of Independence, — John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine; ministers, — John Baily (of the First Church), Samuel Willard (of the Old South Church), Jeremy Belknap (founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society), and John Lathrop (of the Second Church); Chief Justice Samuel Sewall; Peter Faneuil; Paul Revere; Josiah Franklin and wife, parents of Benjamin Franklin Thomas Cushing, lieutenant governor, 1780-1788; John Phillips, first mayor of Bos­ton, and father of Wendell Phillips; and the victims of the Boston Massacre of 1770.

Besides these, others of like distinction are entombed here, among them James Otis; the Rev. Thomas Prince, the learned annalist; the Rev. Pierre Daillé, minister of the French church formed by the Huguenots who came to Boston after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; Edward Rawson, secretary of the Colony; Josiah Willard, secretary of the Province; and John Hull, the “mint master” of 1652. General Joseph Warren’s tomb was here (the Minot tomb, adjoining that of Hancock) from after the obsequies in King’s Chapel in 1776 till 1825. Then his remains were removed to the Warren tomb under St. Paul’s Church. In 1855 they were again removed, being finally deposited in the family vault in Forest Hills Cemetery, Roxbury District. Wendell Phillips (died 1884) was also temporarily buried here, beside the tomb of his father, at the right of the entrance gate. After the death of his widow, two years later, his remains were removed to Milton and placed by her side. The most conspicuous monuments here, all in view from the side walk, are the bowlders marking the tombs of Samuel Adams and James Otis, the former near the fence, north of the entrance gate, the latter, also near the fence, south of the gate; the monument to Benjamin Franklin’s parents, in the middle of the yard; and the John Hancock monument, in the southwestern corner. The inscriptions on the Adams and Otis bowlders give these records:

Granary Burying Ground

Here lies buried Samuel Adams Signer of the Declaration of Independence Governor of this Commonwealth A leader of men and an ardent patriot Born 1722           Died 1803  Here lies buried James Otis Orator and Patriot of the Revolution Famous for his argument against Writs of Assistance Born 1725           Died 1783

Adams’s grave is in the Checkley tomb, which adjoins the sidewalk; Otis’s is in the Cunningham tomb, bearing now the name of George Longley. The bowlders were placed by the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the Revolution in 1898, as the inscriptions show.

The epitaph on the Franklin monument was composed by Franklin, and first appeared on a marble stone which he caused to be placed here. The granite obelisk was provided by a number of citizens in 1827, when the stone had become decayed, and the inscription was reproduced on the bronze tablet set in its face:

Josiah Franklin and Abiah his wife, lie here interred. They lived lovingly together in wedlock fifty-five years. Without any estate, or any gainful employment, By constant labor and industry, with God’s blessing, They maintained a large family comfortably, and brought up thirteen children and seven grandchildren reputably. From this instance, reader, Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling And distrust not Providence. He was a pious and prudent man; She, a discreet and virtuous woman. Their youngest son, In filial regard to their memory Places this stone J. F. born 1655, died 1744, Ætat 89. A. F. born 1667, died 1752, — 85.

The Hancock monument is a steel shaft, erected in 1895 close by the Hancock tomb, set against the wall of one of the buildings which back on the yard. It is simply inscribed: Obsta Principiis This memorial erected A.D. MDCCCXCV. By the Com monwealth of Massachv, setts to mark the grave of John Hancock.      Near by the Hancock tomb is a dilapidated slate slab with the inscription, “Frank, servant of John Hancock Esq’r, lies interred here, who died 23d Jan’ry 1771, ætat 38.”      The graves of the victims of the Boston Massacre are unmarked. Formerly a beautiful larch tree grew over the spot. It is said to be twenty feet back from the sidewalk fence and sixty feet south of the Tremont Building.      The grave of Benjamin Woodbridge, the young victim of the duel on the Common in 1728, is midway between the gate and Park Street Church, near the fence. The inscription on the upright stone informs us that he was “a son of the Honourable Dudley Woodbridge Esq’r,” and “dec’d July ye 3d, in ye 20th year of his age.”

Hancock Monument, Granary Burying Ground

One stone that many seek here, and some have seemed to identify, is not to be found, if we are to accept the word of an authoritative antiquary. This is the tablet marking the grave of “Mother Goose.” According to the late William H. Whitmore, who, in his “Genesis of a Boston Myth,” marshaled strong evidence to sustain his assertion, “Mother Goose” was not Elizabeth Vergoose, the worthy seventeenth-century matron, as has been alleged; nor was “Mother Goose” a name that originated in Boston.      In this yard, as in King’s Chapel Busying Ground, many of the old stones were years ago ruthlessly shifted from the graves to which they belonged, which caused the remark of Dr. Holmes that “Epitaphs were never famous for truth, but the old reproach of ‘Here lies’ never had such a wholesale illustration as in these outraged burial places, where the stone does lie above and the bones do not lie beneath.” Park Street Church, with its graceful spire, picturesquely finishing the corner of Tremont and Park streets, dates from 1809. It is the best example remaining in the city of the early nineteenth-century ecclesiastical architecture. It was designed by an English architect, Peter Banner, but the Ionic and Corinthian capitals of the steeple were the work of the Bostonian Solomon Willard.

It was the first Trinitarian church established after the invasion of Unitarianism in the Puritan churches, and the fervor with which the unadulterated orthodox doctrine was preached by its earlier ministers made its pulpit famous, and led the unrighteous to bestow upon the point which it faces the title of “Brimstone Corner.” Its history is notable. It is marked as the place in which “America” was first publicly sung. The hymn was written by the Rev. Samuel F. Smith to fit some music for Dr. Lowell Mason, music master of Boston, and was given for the first time at a children’s celebration here on July 4, 1832. Here on a preceding 4th of July (1829), William Lloyd Garrison, then not yet twenty-four years old, gave his first public address in Boston against slavery. In 1849 Charles Sumner gave his great address on “The War System of Nations,” at the annual convention of the American Peace Society, which that year began to hold its sessions here. This remained the Peace Society’s regular place of meeting for a long period. The patriotic sermons of the Civil War preached here by Dr. A. L. Stone (minister of the church from 1849 to 1866) have been called “a part of Boston history.” This church occupies the site of the town granary, a grain house (first set up on the Common, opposite, in 1737) from which grain was sold to the needy by the town’s agents. It was from its proximity to the granary that the old burying ground got its name.

Looking up Hamilton Place, opposite Park Street Church, we see the side of the old Music Hall, now a theater. This is a building of pleasant memories. It was erected in 1852, projected chiefly by the Harvard Musical Association, then the representative of classical orchestral music in Boston. Nearly thirty years later (1881) the Boston Symphony Orchestra began its career here, under the generous patronage of Henry L. Higginson. Once the hall had in its “great organ” one of the largest and finest instruments in the world, but this was permitted to be sold and removed at a time when the hall was undergoing alterations. For some years, during the latter part of his life, Music Hall was Theodore Parker’s pulpit; and at a later period that of W. H. H. Murray, after he had been a pastor of Park Street Church.

Boston Common and its surroundings. Situated in the heart of the city, the Common is unique among municipal public grounds. Its existence and preservation are due to the wise forethought of the first settlers of the town.      Its integrity rests primarily on a town order passed in 1640, reserving it as open ground, or common field. This was strengthened by a clause in the city charter forbidding its sale or lease. Subsequent acts prohibit the laying out of any highway or street railway upon or through it, or the taking of any part of it for widening or altering any street, without the consent of the citizens.

Beacon Street Mall

It dates actually from 1634, four years after the settlement of the town, when it was laid out as “a place for a trayning field” and for “the feeding of cattell.” A training field in part it has remained to the present day, and cattle did not cease to graze on it till the thirties of the nineteenth century. Originally it was larger than it is now, extending to the Tremont Building on Tremont and Beacon streets in one direction, and across Tremont Street to West and Mason streets in another. The taking from the north end for the Granary Burying Ground in 1660 was its earliest curtailment. On the west side, where is now Charles Street, it at first met the Back Bay, the waters of which came up to this line. Its present extent is 48 2/5 acres, exclusive of the old burying ground on part of its south or Boylston Street side. Its surface has been much made over, but without obliterating altogether its old-time contour. The broad tree-lined malls which traverse it display the taste and large-mindedness of the later town and earlier city fathers. Many majestic elms which once embellished the place have been destroyed by time and changes. The building of the Subway beneath the Tremont Street mall removed the oldest row and some of the finest of them; but there yet remain numerous stalwart specimens, with other varieties of trees, shading and beautifying the several paths.

Soldier's' Monument

Of the monuments here the Army and Navy Monument, the granite Doric column of which reaches above the trees, is most conspicuous. This occupies the highest elevation in the inclosure, the point where the British artillery were stationed during the Siege. It is the work of Martin Milmore, and was erected in 1877. The statues on the projecting pedestals of the plinth represent the Soldier, the Sailor, the Muse of History, and Peace. The bas-reliefs between them depict The Departure of the Regiment, The Sanitary Commission, The Achievements of the Navy, and The Return from the War and Surrender of the Battle Flags to the Governor. The figures on these bas-reliefs are mostly portraits of soldiers or citizens prominent in the Civil War period. The sculptured figures at the base of the shaft typify the North, South, East, and West. The crowning statue represents the “Genius of America.” The monument bears this inscription, written by President Eliot of Harvard University: To the men of Boston who died for their country on land and sea in the war which kept the Union whole, destroyed slavery and maintained the Constitution, the grateful city has built this monument that their example may speak to coming generations. At the foot of this hill, on the east side, stood the “Great Elm” till its fall in a windstorm in 1876, supposed to have been old when the town was settled, and a scene of executions in early Colony days, — per haps that of Anne Hibbens for “witchcraft” in 1656. An iron tablet marks the spot. On a northerly side path is another elm grown from a shoot of it. Not far from the “Great Elm” tradition says the Quakers were executed; but the learned antiquary, M. J. Canavan, fixes their gal lows at the South End. Beneath its branches is supposed to have taken place the fatal duel in which young Woodbridge was slain.

Frog Pond

Near by lies the historic “Frog Pond,” so called, as the town wits have it, because it was never known to harbor a frog. The real frog pond was the Horse or Cow Pond, a shallow pool where the cows slaked their thirst or cooled their legs, which lay in the lowlands about the present band stand. The present pond is the survivor of three marshy bogs originally within the Common. It was the scene of the formal introduction of the public water system in 1848, for which celebration James Russell Lowell wrote his Ode on Water.

West of the Frog Pond lies the Parade Ground, which represents, in small compass, the original training field of the Colonial trainbands. It has been the chief mustering place in war times from Provincial to modern days. In 1775, when the Common was the British camp, the force for Bunker Hill was arrayed here before crossing the river to Charlestown. In the preceding April the detachment that moved on Lexington and Concord started from near it, taking boats on the bay. Now it is the place where the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company with great gravity go through their annual time-honored evolutions, and the boys of the school regiments have their clever May trainings.

The granite shaft with its bronze figure of “Revolution,” which stands in the green facing Lafayette Mall on the Tremont Street side, commemorates the Boston Massacre of 1770, and is popularly called the Crispus Attucks Monument. It is by Robert Kraus, and was erected by the State in 1888. The bas-relief on the base reproduces a crude con temporary picture of the scene published in London, together with the “Short Narrative” authorized by the town. The inscriptions are these words of John Adams and Webster:

The names of the victims are inscribed on the shaft.

The promenade of Lafayette Mall is the finishing feature of the Subway work on this side of the Common. It extends over the Subway between Park and Boylston streets, and at Boylston Street joins a narrower walk which follows the Subway course on that side to Charles Street, passing by the picturesque old Central Burying Ground (established 1756) which has among its graves those of Gilbert Stuart, the painter, and M. Julien, the restaurateur, whose fame as the introducer of Julien soup survived him. While these walks lack the fringes of noble English elms which characterized the earlier malls here, especially the Tremont Street mall which once had three magnificent rows, they have attractions in the bordering masses of other trees and in their openness to the spacious street-ways free from street-car tracks.

Being in the heart of things Lafayette Mall is an animated thorough. fare. Close by is the principal theater quarter of the city. On the opposite side of the way are Keith’s Theater (fronting on Washington Street, next east of Tremont) and the Tremont Theater (near the site of the second playhouse built in Boston, — the Haymarket of 1796). On Washington Street (with its rear entrance near the West Street corner of Tremont) is the Boston Theater, and a little way above this the Park Theater. On Tremont Street again, just above Boylston Street, is the Majestic Theater, and a short block above this the Shubert Theater. On Hollis Street, off Tremont, is the Hollis Street Theater (its house including the brick walls of the third Hollis Street Church, dating from 1808, the pulpit of John Pierpont and Thomas Starr King, and the successor of the earlier Hollis Street Church of Mather Byles, the “Tory, wit, and scholar,” used, nevertheless, by the British for barracks during the Siege). On Boylston Street, opposite the Boylston Street walk, is the Colonial Theater (on the site of the first Boston Public Library building).

In the same neighborhood is a notable group of hotels, including the Touraine on Tremont and Boylston streets (occupying the site of the mansion house of President John Quincy Adams, birthplace of Charles Francis Adams, Sr.), the Brewster on Boylston Street, and the Adams on Washington Street (covering the site of the eighteenth-century Lamb Tavern, an early stagecoach starting place). On Washington Street, opposite the opening of Boylston Street, is a revolutionary land mark, — the site of the Liberty Tree, the rallying place of the Sons of Liberty in the prerevolutionary period, where the effigies were hung in the Stamp Act excitement. The business building that now covers the spot displays on its front an old tablet with a representation of a tree and beneath, these lines:

The adjacent hotel, popularly known as “Brigham’s,” stands in place of the Liberty Tree Tavern, where the Liberty men refreshed them selves after their meetings at the tree. “Brigham’s” was originally the Lafayette Hotel, erected to mark the historical spot in season for the great welcome to Lafayette on the Frenchman’s memorable last visit to the country in 1824; and so was named in his honor. It was in commemoration of this visit, very much later — three quarters of a century afterward, — that Lafayette Mall received its name.

The selection is based on a pretty incident of that visit. On the reception day the school children were lined up along Tremont Street mall, and, as Lafayette was passing in the procession, they cast bouquets in his path so that his progress was upon a carpet of natural flowers.

Midway up Boylston Street between Washington and Tremont streets is the building of the Young Men’s Christian Union (instituted 1851) with its stone clock tower. On the Tremont Street corner facing the Lafayette Mall is the white granite Masonic Temple (the second on this site, built in 1898 1899), headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, and housing thirteen lodges. Occupying the streets east of the mall is the heart of the retail shopping quarter. Below the Temple Place corner, hedged in by great stores, is St. Paul’s Church, the fourth Episcopal church in Boston, dating from 1820, a Grecian-like temple of gray granite, the hexastyle porticoes of Potomac sandstone. Solomon Willard carved the Ionic capitals; Alexander Parris designed the whole. The pediment is bare, the original design of a bas-relief of Paul preaching at Athens never having been carried out. It was in one of the tombs beneath this church that General Joseph Warren’s remains rested for thirty years after their second removal. In another tomb Prescott the historian was buried.

Milk Station, Washington Street Station

At the head of the Park Street mall are the Park Street entrance and exit stations of the Boston Subway. The upper west side building is the entrance for west, and south-bound surface cars; the upper east building is an exit only; the lower east building, an entrance for north bound surface cars (North Station and Charlestown); and the lower west building, entrance and exit for west, and south-bound cars. Above the stairways of the Park Street entrance a bronze tablet, placed in commemoration of the initial opening of the Subway in 1897, gives the following data: This Subway authorized by the Legislatures of 1893 and 1894. Hon. Nathan Matthews, Jr., Mayor of the City of Boston. Built by the Boston Transit Commission. Howard Adams Carson, chief engineer. Begun at the Public Garden, 28 March, 1893, was opened to this point for public travel 2 September, 1897. The work was completed throughout and the entire Subway opened September 3, 1898. Its length is about one and two-thirds miles. Its course is shown by the accompanying map. The surface cars coming from the west enter at the Public Garden and make the loop at the Park Street station, whence they return and emerge at the Public Garden. Those coming from the south and north use that part of the Subway between Scollay Square and the North Station. The Subway is owned by the city and leased to the Boston Elevated Railway Company for a term of years, at an annual compensation of “4 7/8 per cent of the net cost of the work.”

The elevated trains use the Washington Street Tunnel, between which and the Subway passengers transfer at the Haymarket Square station. The Tunnel, connected with the Elevated system, passes under Washington Street, and, including inclines, is 1 2/10 miles in length. It is constructed on a generous plan and is attractively finished at the several stations with tiling. The names of the stations are given in order of direction of traffic: south-bound — Friend, Milk, Winter, Boylston; north-bound — Essex, Summer, State, Union. Each platform is three hundred and fifty feet in length and will accommodate an eight-car train. This Tunnel was opened to the public November 30, 1908. In the State station is placed a bronze tablet bearing this inscription: Washington Street Tunnel, authorized by the Legislature, 1902. W. Murray Crane, Governor; Patrick A. Collins, Mayor of Boston. Opened November 30, 1908. Built by the Boston Transit Commission [names of the commission]. Howard A. Carson, Chief Engineer.

This Tunnel, like the Subway, is owned by the city and leased to the Boston Elevated Railway Company. The lease runs for twenty-five years, from the beginning of the use of the Tunnel, at an annual rental “equal to 41/2 per cent of the net cost.”

At the head of the Beacon Street Mall, opposite the State House, is the Colonel Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, facing Beacon Street, between two majestic elms, the most imposing piece of out door sculpture in the city. Colonel Shaw was the commander of the Fifty-fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry, composed of colored troops, in the Civil War, and was killed at the head of his command while leading the assault on Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863; and the monument commemorates the colored soldiers in that event as well as their leader. It consists of a statue of Colonel Shaw mounted, with his men pressing close beside him, in high relief upon a large bronze tablet. The sculptor was Augustus St. Gaudens, and the architect of the elaborate stone frame was Charles F. McKim. The inscriptions are unusually extensive and interesting, including verses of James Russell Lowell and Emerson, and a memorial by ex-President Eliot of Harvard. The monument was erected and dedicated in 1897. Its cost was met from a fund raised by voluntary subscriptions. On the opposite side of Beacon Street, just below Hancock Avenue, — the walk along the west side of the State House grounds, — is the site of a long-cherished landmark that should have been preserved: the mansion house of Hancock. It is marked by a modest bronze tablet set in the low iron fence in front of the brownstone building, the present publishing house of Messrs. Ginn and Company, which now occupies the spot: Here stood the residence of John Hancock, a prominent and patriotic Merchant of Boston, the first Signer of the Declaration of American Independence, and First Governor of Massachusetts, under the State Constitution. At the time of its demolition the mansion, besides being of exceptional historic value, was a rare type of our provincial domestic architecture, and was well fitted by situation and character for preservation as the official dwelling of the governors of the Commonwealth, as was proposed some years before. The main structure was then nearly as in Governor Hancock’s day, when it was called the “seat of his Excellency the Governor,” and it contained much of the furnishings and appointments of his time, with the family portraits by Copley and Smibert. A measure for its purchase by the state for the governor’s house was reported to the Legislature in 1859 by an influential committee; but the project failed. At length, in February, 1863, the land which it occupied was sold.

Shaw Monument

For a while thereafter it served as a museum of historical relics, and then, a scheme for its removal and reërection elsewhere failing, it was pulled down. Souvenirs of it were eagerly sought as it fell. The knocker on the front door was given to Dr. Holmes, who placed it on the door of the “old gambrel-roofed house” in Cambridge, where it remained till that also was demolished. The flight of stone steps which led up to the entrance are now in service on Pinebank, Jamaica Park. The purchasers of the land, J. M. Beebe and Gardner Brewer, two leading Boston merchants, erected the present stately double house here for their occupancy. Messrs. Ginn & Company became established in No. 29 in 1901, and their business offices fully occupy the spacious interior.

The old mansion was of Quincy granite obtained from the surface, as in the case of King’s Chapel, squared and well hammered. The principal features of the façade were the broad front door at the head of a flight of stone steps, garnished with pillars and an ornamental door head; and the ornamented central window over it. The high gambrel roof with dormer windows showed a carved balcony railing inclosing its upper portion. The interior comprised a nobly paneled hall, having a broad staircase with carved and twisted balusters, which divided the house in the middle and extended through on both stories from front to rear. On the landing, part way up the staircase, was a circular-headed window looking out upon the garden, with a broad and capacious window seat. On the entrance floor, at the right of the hall, was the great dining-room, seven teen by twenty-five feet, also elaborately paneled from floor to ceiling. Until the widening of Beacon Street the house stood well back from the street on ground elevated above it. The approach was then through a “neat garden bordered with small trees” and shrubbery. The mansion then, also, had two large wings, one on the east side containing a great ballroom, the other on the west side appropriated to the kitchen and other domestic offices. Beyond the west wing was the coach house, and adjoin­ing that the stable.

Behind the mansion were the gar­dens and fruit-tree nurseries, extend­ing up the side of the then existing peak of Beacon Hill where the State House Annex stands. The mansion with the estate came to John Hancock in 1777, upon the death of Lydia Hancock, widow of his uncle, Thomas Hancock, who built the house. The estate then included the territory occupied by the State House, and extended along Beacon Street to Joy Street. During the Siege Lord Percy occupied the mansion for some time.

Let us now step back to the opposite side of Beacon Street a moment and take a sweeping survey of the fine line of Beacon Street houses down the hill. Standing by the Joy Street steps to the Common, which lead to the head of Holmes’s “Long Path” (the mall running southward across the Common’s length to Boylston Street, — the scene of the crisis in the “Autocrat’s” courtship of the schoolmistress), we have the best point of view. Looking westward at the lower corner of Walnut Street, the next opening below Joy Street, we see the house in which Wendell Phillips was born. Lower down is the Somerset Club, — the stone double-swell-front house originally the “David Sears mansion,” — by the site of the house in which John Singleton Copley lived when painting his remarkable Boston portraits. Still farther down, below the next side opening, we catch a glimpse of the painted brick “swell” of the Prescott house (No. 55), the home of the historian William H. Prescott through the last fourteen years of his life. 

From the State House to the Old South. The front of the State House, with its terraced lawn, occupies the cow pasture of the Hancock estate, comprising about two acres, which the town purchased of John Hancock’s heirs for four thousand dollars and conveyed to the Commonwealth. This is the historic “Bulfinch Front,” designed by Charles Bulfinch and erected in 1795-1797. It alone constituted the Massachusetts State House for more than half a century. Then a new part, extend­ing back upon Mt. Vernon Street, was added (1853-1856), which came to be called the “Bryant Addition,” from its principal architect, J. G. F. Bryant; and finally the “State House Annex” was erected (1889-1895; Charles E. Brigham, architect), extending back from the Bryant Addition, with the archway over Mt. Vernon Street, to Derne Street, in exterior design and ornamentation harmonizing with the Bulfinch Front. Standing on the highest point of land in the city proper, the yellow dome of the Bulfinch Front (the “Gilded Dome” since 1874, when gilt was first applied to it) is a familiar landmark in every direction by day, while at night, lighted up by encircling rows of electric lights, it is a glistening beacon visible for many miles.      Till 1811 the main peak of Beacon Hill rose directly behind the Bulfinch Front, a grassy cone-shaped mound about as high as the dome. On its broad, flat summit the Beacon was set up as early as 1634, from which the name of the entire hill came, it having earlier been called Centry Hill, from a lookout established here.      The Beacon was to warn the country on occasions of danger. It consisted of an iron skillet filled with combustibles for firing, suspended from an iron crane at the top of a high mast, with treenails in it for its ascent. This and its successors stood for more than a century and a half, but it never seems to have been fired for alarm. During the Siege the British pulled the Beacon down and erected a fort in its stead. It was reërected after the Evacuation and stood till 1789, when it was blown down in a gale.

After the Revolution the first Independence monument in the country was set up on this sightly peak (1790-1791), — a plain Doric column of brick covered with stucco, on a base of stone, and topped with a gilded wooden eagle supporting the American arms, — the work of Bulfinch, now reproduced in stone and standing in the State House Park on the east side of the long building. When the peak was cut down (in 1811-1823, its earth going principally to fill the North Cove which became the Mill Pond, now in small part covered by Haymarket Square) this monument was destroyed, only the inscribed tablets and the eagle being reserved. The tablets are inserted in the base of the present monument. A wooden effigy of the eagle is now over the President’s chair in the Senate Chamber.

The main approach to the State House, up the long sweep of broad stone steps from Beacon Street, leads to the spacious porch from which opens Doric Hall, the main hall of the Bulfinch Front. The bronze statues on the terrace lawn are: on the right as we ascend, Daniel Webster, by Hiram Powers, erected in 1859 by the Webster Memorial Committee; on the left, Horace Mann, by Emma Stebbins, erected in 1865, a gift from school children and teachers of the state, who gave the fund for its execution in recognition of Horace Mann’s service in developing the system of popular education in Massachusetts.

In Doric Hall we see the statue of Washington in marble, by Sir Francis Chantrey, given to the state in 1827 by the Washington Monument Association; and the marble statue of John A. Andrew, the “war governor,” by Thomas Ball, erected in 1871, the cost being met from a surplus of $10,000 remaining from the fund subscribed for the statue of Edward Everett in the Public Garden. Set in a side wall near these statues are two memorials of the Washington family, — facsimiles of the tombstones of the ancestors of Washington, from the parish church of Brington, Northamptonshire, England, given to the state by Charles Sumner in 1861, to whom they were presented by Earl Spencer. Against the walls on either side of the Washington statue are tablets to the memory of Charles Bulfinch, and commemorating the “preservation and renewal of the Massachusetts State House.”

On the side walls are portraits of sixteen governors of Massachusetts. Four brass cannon are placed against the wall, two of them consecrating the names of Major John Buttrick and Captain Isaac Davis, heroes of the fight at Concord Bridge, April 19, 1775; the other two cannon captured in the War of 1812.

From Doric Hall we enter the passageway leading into the “Grand Staircase Hall,” and from the latter pass into “Memorial Hall,” the crowning feature of this floor. In the passageway a large bronze case contains the colors carried by Massachusetts soldiers in the Spanish War and returned to the custody of the Commonwealth. They were deposited here July 31, 1901. The skylight in the ceiling here, it will be observed, is decorated with a representation of Liberty surrounded by the names of various republics.

The Grand Staircase Hall is an effective piece of marble work. The paintings on the north wall represent “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “James Otis Making his Famous Argument Against the Writs of Assistance in the Old Town House in Boston, in February, 1761,” and “The Boston Tea Party,” all by Robert Reid. The staircases here are of Pavonazzo marble. The balcony formed by the third-floor corridor is surmounted by twelve Ionic columns. Its windows at the south are emblematic of Commerce, Education, Fisheries, and Agriculture. At the head of the stairs are the seal of the colony, 1628-1684, and the seal of the state carved in marble. Upon the pillars of the entrance to Memorial Hall are bronze reliefs of Major General Thomas G. Stevenson (by Bela L. Pratt), and Rear Admiral John A. Winslow (by William Couper).

The marble Memorial Hall in circular form rises to a dome with bronze cornice environed by the eagles of the Republic, the crest of the Com monwealth appearing above, in cathedral glass, surrounded by the seals of the other twelve original states. The gallery is supported by sixteen pillars of Sienna marble. The four niches with glass fronts contain the battle flags carried by the Massachusetts Volunteers in the Civil War, and in each niche is a framed extract from the address of Governor Andrew upon receiving them (all but a few which were returned later) on Forefathers’ Day, December 22, 1865. The bronze statue is of Major General William F. Bartlett, by Daniel C. French, placed in 1904. The large paintings on the walls are: north wall, “The Pilgrims on the Mayflower”; south wall, “John Eliot Preaching to the Indians,” — both by Henry Oliver Walker; west wall, “Concord Bridge, April 19, 1775”; east wall, “The Return of the Colors to the Custody of the Commonwealth, December 22, 1865,” — both by Edward Simmons.

Representatives' Hall - The Historic Codfish

Beyond Memorial Hall the main staircase leads to the floor upon which is Representatives Hall. This chamber is finished in white mahogany, with paneled walls. The coved ceiling is embellished with frescoes by Frank Hill Smith. The historic codfish is suspended opposite the Speaker’s desk between the two central columns. In the lobby the statue of Governor Roger Wolcott (placed 1907) is by Daniel C. French. On the east side are the rooms of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, in which are to be seen precious documents incased in asbestos boxes, — the Colony Charter of 1628, the Province Charter of 1692, the Explanatory Charter of George H, and the original Constitution of the Commonwealth, with an attested copy made in 1894, the original having become in part illegible. In the archives, on the fourth floor, belonging to this department are, with much other valuable historical material, the military records of the Narragansett War, of the French and Indian Wars, and the muster and pay rolls of the Revolution, the original depositions and’ examinations of persons accused of witchcraft, and manuscript papers of the Revolution.

In the State Library, at the north end of the building, is to be seen in a glass-covered case the famous Bradford Manuscript, the “History of Plimoth Plantation” by Governor William Bradford, popularly but erroneously called the Log of the Mayflower. This is the volume which after various adventures found lodgment in the Library of the Bishop of London’s Palace at Fulham, and was returned to the Commonwealth by the Bishop of London through the efforts of Senator Hoar of Massachusetts and the Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador at the Court of St. James. It was received in behalf of the Com­monwealth by Governor Wolcott, May 26, 1897. The State Library contains 125,000 volumes. Charles F. D. Belden is the librarian.

The Executive Department and the quarters of the Senate are in the Bulfinch Front. The Council Chamber, fashioned in the Corinthian order, has the old ornamentations designed by Bulfinch. In the Governor’s Rooms are several portraits of note. In the Senate Chamber, occupying niches, are busts of Washington, Franklin, Lafayette, Lincoln, and distinguished Massachusetts men. The gilded eagle above the President’s chair, with the national and State flags, holds in its beak a large scroll inscribed, “God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” In the Senate Reception Room are numerous interesting relics. Among them are the first king’s arms captured from the British, at Lexington, on the 19th of April, 1775, and the fowling piece used that morning by Captain John Parker, the commander of the minutemen there, — both gifts to the State from his distinguished grandson, Theodore Parker, the preacher and reformer. There are also a Hessian hat, sword, gun, and drum captured at the battle of Bennington, August 16, 1777, which were presented to the State by Brigadier General John Stark. On the walls are portraits of twenty-two governors, including an original portrait of John Winthrop.

The State House Park, on the east side of the long building, is a spread ing lawn fringed with young trees, shrubs, and flowers, space for which was obtained by discontinuing two or three fine old streets and removing the well-favored dwellings that faced upon them. Beneath a considerable part of it are great coal bunkers for the large supply of coal required for the State House. The reproduced Bulfinch Monument in stone occupies as near as may be the position of the original one. It is an exact copy of that in dimensions, and the eagle at its top follows the original drawing of Bulfinch’s bird. The inscription on the bronze tablet in the base gives this concise chapter of history: In 1634 the General Court caused a Beacon to be placed on the top of this hill. In 1790 a brick and stone monument designed by Charles Bulfinch replaced the Beacon, but was removed in 1811 when the hill was cut down. It is now reproduced in stone by the Bunker Hill Monument Association. 1898. The old tablets of the Bulfinch monument are set higher in the base.

The statues in the lawns near by are of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks (Governor, Congressman), by H. H. Kitson, placed 1908; and of Major General Charles Devens (United States Marshal, United States Attorney-General, and Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts), by Olin L. Warner, placed 1898. The equestrian statue on the Beacon Street side of the park, set in the broad walk, is of Major General Joseph Hooker, the figure by Daniel C. French, the horse by Edward C. Potter. This was erected in 1903.

We reënter Beacon Street by the arched way from this walk, opposite the head of Park Street. Down Park Street we see, facing the Common, a line of buildings, mostly dwellings reconstructed for business purposes, several of which are interesting landmarks. The upper one at the Beacon Street corner was, in part (that part fronting on Park Street, a portion of the old iron-railed entrance steps remaining), the home of George Ticknor, the historian (“History of Spanish Literature”). The larger building below is the house of the Union Club, established (1863) during the Civil War, primarily as a political club in support of the Union cause. Edward Everett was its first president. It occupies in part the residence of Abbott Lawrence, a foremost Boston mer chant in his time. In No. 6 are the quarters of the Mayflower Club, of women. Below is Goodspeed’s snug book shop. At No. 4 is the publishing house of the Houghton Mifflin Company, occupying the old Quincy mansion house, the winter home of the elder Josiah Quincy (whose statue we shall presently see) through  the last seven years of his long, eventful, and useful life of nearly ninety-two years.

From an Old Print of Boston Common

Now turning our steps down Beacon Street eastward, we pass in close neighborhood the Unitarian Building, at the corner of Bowdoin Street; directly opposite, the Congregational House; and next to this the Boston Athenæum.

The Unitarian Building, a low, Moorish-like structure of brownstone (built 1885-1886), is the headquarters of the American Unitarian Association, and the general denominational house, where are the offices of various organizations, national, state, and local. Channing Hall here, and neighboring rooms, are embellished with portraits and busts of Unitarian leaders. The Congregational House, a building of stone and brick, ornamented with sculptured tablets (built 1897-1898), is the head quarters of the Congregational Trinitarian denomination. The emblematic sculptures on the façade represent respectively, from east to west: Law, depicting the Signing of the Compact in the cabin of the Mayflower, November 21, 1620; Religion, the observance of Sunday on Clark’s Island on the day before the landing at Plymouth; Education, the act of the General Court of Massachusetts passed October 28, 1636, appropriating money for a “schoole or colledge”; and Philanthropy, the preaching of the apostle Eliot to the Indians at Waban’s wigwam on old Nonantum Hill, Newton, October, 1646. In this building are established the Congregational Library and the Missionary Library of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, with the remarkable Pratt Collection, in the Bible Room, embracing Hebrew rolls, various editions of the Scriptures, palm books, biblical and other charts, relics, and antiquities. The head offices of the American Board are here. Pilgrim Hall is in the rear from the main entrance.

The Boston Athenæum, presenting a classic front of brown freestone, in marked contrast with its lofty neighbors, dates from 1849. The literary institution for which it was erected dates back to 1807. This had its origin in the Monthly Anthology, a magazine first published in 1803, of which the Rev. William Emerson, father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was the principal editor. The persons who became interested in that “journal of polite literature” — a remarkable set of cultivated young men — formed the “Anthology Club,” and collected a library, which was incorporated in 1807 as the Boston Athenæum. Quarters were first found in Congress Street, then in a Pearl Street mansion house presented to the institution (1821), and later this building was built by the corporation. For many years the Athenæum had in connection with its library a valuable art gallery, but the best paintings of its collection have been transferred to the Museum of Fine Arts, Back Bay. It now possesses over 240,000 volumes, many of them rare; a large collection of Braun photographs and art works; files of early newspapers; the Bemis collection of works on international law, including state papers, etc., for the increase of which there is a substantial fund; one of the very best sets of United States documents in the country; the best collection in existence of books published in the South during the Civil War; and a large part of George Washington’s private library, with many works relating to the first President. The Stuart portrait of Washington now at the Art Museum is owned by the Athenæum.

The Athenæum became early a center of the new literary and artistic life which was to make Boston famous in Emerson’s time. From it came, more or less directly, the old and scholarly North American Review; and most of the literary societies and libraries of to-day in Boston owe their origin entirely or in part to the influence of the Athenæum and its founders. The institution is managed by trustees elected by its 1049 shareholders, known as “proprietors.” The income is derived from invested funds and from an annual assessment upon each share in use. Some famous men of New England have been among the proprietors, of the Athenæum, including Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, Holmes, Parkman, and Prescott. William F. Poole, who originated Poole’s Index, was at one time its librarian. Arthur Theodore Lyman is the present president, and Charles Knowles Bolton is the librarian.

The old-fashioned “swell fronts” above the bend of Beacon Street, at the upper corner of Somerset Street, are the quarters of the Boston City Club, a large social and business organization of citizens “interested in the city of Boston and the problems of its growth.”

In Somerset Street, a few steps from the corner, is the former general building of Boston University (chartered 1869, for both sexes), occupied till 1908, when removal was made to Boylston Street, Back Bay (see p. 81). It is now the house of the Boston lodge of the Order of Elks. On Ashburton Place, opening just above, is the Boston University School of Law. Within a ten-minute walk is the School of Theology at 72 Mt. Vernon Street, West End; the other department of the university, the School of Medicine, is at the South End, on East Concord Street, adjacent to the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital. Beyond the School of Law the upper end of Ashburton Place is imposingly finished by the Ford Building, erected for Baptist headquarters. Farther down Somerset Street, at No. 16, is the house of the Boston Architectural Club. No. 18 is that of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (founded 1844, incorporated 1845). In the latter institution is a valuable library of more than 50,000 volumes and over 100,000 pamphlets, comprising the best known collection of genealogical works, biographies, and histories, American and English. Many visitors, students in genealogy and compilers, make daily use of this extensive collection. The society also possesses numerous rare manuscripts and historical relics. It publishes the “New England Historical and Genealogical Register” (established 1847).

John Ward Dean was for a long period the librarian of this society. The present president is James Phinney Baxter, of Portland, Maine; the recording secretary, John Albree; the corresponding secretary, William R. Cutter; the librarian, William P. Greenlaw; and the editor of publications, F. Apthorp Foster.

On Beacon Street again, the modern office building occupying the corner of Tremont Place covers the site of a row of pleasant houses which slowly changed from dwellings to business places. The corner one was the sometime home of Nathan Hale, where Edward Everett Hale passed his boyhood when he was attending the Latin School. The end one in the row was latterly the publishing house of Ginn and Company, from which they removed to the Hancock-house site, 29 Beacon Street.

It was built in 1645 (previous to which the school was held in the master’s house), and remained on this spot for upward of a cen­tury. Then in 1748 another build­ing was erected on the opposite side where is now the Parker House. The present is the fifth building of the school. In the long roll of Latin School pupils appear the names of Franklin, Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine; Cotton Mather, Henry Ward Beecher, James Freeman Clarke, Edward Everett Hale, and Phillips Brooks; Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Lothrop Motley, and Francis Parkman; Presidents Leverett, Langdon, Everett, and Eliot of Harvard College; Charles Francis Adams, Sr., Charles Sumner, and William M. Evarts.

The heavy granite City Hall (built 1862-1865), of elaborate design, calls only for a passing glance. It succeeded a Bulfinch building on the same site, — a Court House (predecessor of the present “Old Court House”), refitted for a City Hall. The bronze statues in the yard are more interesting. That of Benjamin Franklin was the first portrait statue set up in Boston (1856). It is the work of Richard Greenough. The fund for its erection was raised by popular subscription. The four bronze medallions in the sunken panels of the pedestal represent as many periods in Franklin’s career.

The other statue, of Josiah Quincy, is by Thomas Ball, and was placed in 1879. It represents the elder Quincy as he appeared in middle life when mayor of Boston. The base is a block of Quincy granite. A marble statue by William W. Story, in Memorial Hall at Cambridge, represents Quincy in later life, or when president of the college.

We may stop a moment at the building next beyond the foot passage by the side of the City Hall (another court dignified with the term of avenue), and observe the inscribed fire-back set in its vestibule wall. The inscription relates that on this site from 1785 to 1815 was the dwelling of Dr. John Warren (brother of Joseph Warren, killed at Bunker Hill), who was the first professor of anatomy and surgery in Harvard University. The fire-back came from the old house.

At the end of School Street the ancient building long known as the “Old Corner Bookstore” lingers a weathered old relic of the past in one of the busiest quarters, although the booksellers finally left it in 1903. It dates from 1712. It had been a book stand since 1828. Its interest lies particularly in its literary associations, for in what is regarded now as the golden age of Boston literary activity — about the middle and third quarter of the nineteenth century — it was the chief literary lounge and calling place of the city. This was especially the characteristic of the “Old Corner” during the long years of its occupancy by Ticknor & Fields and their immediate successors. The “Curtained Corner” of James T. Fields in the back part of the old book shop has been much discoursed upon. George William Curtis in the “Easy Chair” called it “the exchange of wit, the Rialto of current good things, the hub of the hub. It was a very remarkable group of men, — indeed it was the first group of really great American authors which familiarly frequented the corner as guests of Fields.” Previous to this building there was here the Hutchinson Homestead, where lived that colonial dame, Anne Hutchinson, strong of mind and keen of wit, one of John Cotton’s old Boston-in England parishioners, who became the central figure in the violent antinomian controversy which tore the Colony in 1637-1638, and who was finally banished for heresy. In her little home here she instituted the weekly gathering of women to discuss the Sunday sermon after the fashion of the men, and so she is credited with having set up the first woman’s club in America.

Old Corner Bookstore

The Old South Building opposite, the monumental business structure of stone and steel spreading between Spring Lane and around the Old South Meetinghouse to Milk Street, covers near its south east end the site of Winthrop’s second mansion (where he died), which was afterward and until the Revolution the parsonage house of the Old South, and which the British demolished together with the shading row of butternut trees before it, using them for firewood during the Siege. The tall walls of the ornate building close against the plain brick meetinghouse and reaching above its tower, dwarf the historic structure, but add to its uniqueness. When the tower porch is arched, as is proposed, for the sidewalk, which has been brought to the inner line of the widened street at this point, its appearance will further be improved. The Old South is now a loan museum of Revolutionary and other relics, Colonial furniture, and portraits, open to the public for a modest fee, which goes to meet the cost of its maintenance. The interior is restored as far as possible to the aspect which it bore in the prerevolutionary period, when it was the scene of those great town meetings, too large for the old Faneuil Hall, which “kindled the flame that fired the Revolution,” and in commemoration of which the meetinghouse came to be called the “Sanctuary of Freedom.” The tablet on the tower, over which the Boston ivy spreads, is inscribed with these historic dates: Old South Church gathered 1669 First House built 1670 This House erected 1729 Desecrated by British troops 1775-6

The preservation of the meetinghouse is directly due to the efforts of an organization of twenty-five Boston women, under the title of the “Old South Preservation Committee,” formed in the centennial year of 1876, at a critical juncture, when its demolition was imminent through the sale of the property for mercantile purposes. Public interest was aroused, “preservation meetings” were held with lectures, addresses, and poems by Emerson, Henry Lee, Lowell, Holmes, and others; and finally this organization succeeded — Mrs. Mary Hemenway contributing $100,000 — in purchasing the estate subject to certain restrictions for $430,000. It is now used for the Old South Lectures to Young People, instituted by Mrs. Hemenway to promote among American youth a “more serious and intelligent attention to historical studies, especially studies in American History,” of which Edwin D. Mead is the director.

The town meetings of greatest moment held here were those of June 14 and 15, 1768, upon the matter of the impressment of Massachusetts men by the commander of his majesty’s ship of war Romney; the long afternoon and early evening meeting of March 6, 1770, the day after the Boston Massacre, which brought about the removal of the British regiments from the town; and the anti, tea meetings between November 27 and December 16, 1773, culminating with the “Tea Party” and the emptying of the cargoes of the tea ships into the harbor. The series of orations commemorative of the Boston Massacre was delivered here, Dr. Joseph Warren, three months before he was killed at Bunker Hill, pronouncing the second one, upon which occasion he was introduced through a window in the rear of the pulpit, the entrance doors and the aisles, and even the pulpit steps, being occupied by British soldiers and officers. During the Siege, when the meetinghouse was used as a riding school by Burgoyne’s regiment of light dragoons, the floor was cleared for their exercises, and cart loads of earth and gravel were spread over it. The pulpit, the pews, and all the inside structures except the sounding-board and the east galleries were taken out and most of them burned for fuel. One “beautiful carved pew,” with silken furnishings, was carried off to a neighboring house and “made a hog stye” of. The east galleries were fitted for spectators, and in one of them was a refreshment bar. The south door was closed and a pole was fixed here over which the cavalry were taught to leap their horses at full speed. In the winter a stove was set up, in which were used for kindling many of the precious books and manuscripts of the Rev. Thomas Prince’s New England Library, then deposited in the “steeple-room” of the tower. The manuscript of Bradford’s “History of Plimoth” (see p. 43), and that of the third volume of Winthrop’s Journal among them, were spared. In this tower study the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, the historian and the recognized founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, did much work.

The meetinghouse which preceded this, a “little house of cedar,” was the one which Andros obliged the regular church organization to share with the first Episcopal church (see p. 24). That, too, was the place where Judge Samuel Sewall in 1697 published his “confession of contrition” for his share as a witch craft judge in the “blood-guiltiness” at Salem five years before. It was also the meetinghouse where Benjamin Franklin was baptized on the day of his birth, January 17 (6 O. S.), 1706.

In the neighborhood of the Old South is the newspaper quarter, Newspaper Row, extending below the curve of Washington Street, northward. Near it, also on Washington Street and Bromfield Street, are popular bookshops.

From the Old South to the “Tea Party” Site. At the Old South we turn into Milk Street, but before doing so we should identify the site of the Province House, the official residence of the royal governors, celebrated in Hawthorne’s “Legends of the Province House.” This build. ing stood nearly opposite the meetinghouse, well back from Washington Street, above a handsome lawn ornamented by two noble oaks at the street front. A bit of its wall yet remains backing upon Province Court, which is reached from Washington Street by a foot passage.

It was a stately house of brick, three stories, with gambrel roof, and a high cupola surmounted by a figure of an Indian with drawn bow and arrow, another specimen of the handiwork of “Deacon” Shuns Drowne, maker of the grass hopper on Faneuil Hall. The approach was by a high flight of stone steps leading to a portico, over which appeared the royal arms in deal and gilt. It long outlived the Province period. After the Revolution it served the Com monwealth a while as the Government House, for the sittings of the governor and council, and for state offices. Thereafter it fell to commercial uses, and in its latter days it was a hall of negro minstrelsy. It finally passed, all but the bit of wall, in a fire in 1864. It was built originally for a dwelling by an opulent merchant, Peter Sergeant, in 1667. The Province bought it for a governor’s house in 1715. The Indian was preserved and is now in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Province Street and Province Court led to the rear grounds of the Province House. After the Revolution Province Street was for some time called the Governor’s Alley.

On Milk Street we pass the site of Benjamin Franklin’s Birthplace, covered by the building No. 17, nearly opposite the side of the Old South, which bears on its front the legend “Birthplace of Franklin,” with a bust of the philosopher.

A little farther down, on the left, is the Federal Building, including the Post Office and the Federal courts, a gloomy pile of granite, chiefly interesting for its service in checking at this point the sweep of the Great Fire of November 9-10, 1872, the gravest of all great Boston fires. In the wall at the Milk and Devonshire streets corner is a tablet commemorating that disaster, from which the city was quick to recover. It states that this fire, “beginning at the southeasterly corner of Summer and Kingston Streets, extended over an area of sixty acres, destroyed within the business center of the city property to the value of more than sixty million dollars, and was arrested in its north easterly progress at this point. The mutilated stones of this building also record that event.”

Federal Street, next below Devonshire Street, southward, is one of the main avenues to the South Station. It has two historic sites covered by business buildings. These are at or about the western corners of Franklin Street, the first street crossing Federal. One (northwest corner) is the site of the Federal Street Theater, the first regular playhouse in Boston, designed by Bulfinch and erected in 1794. The other is that of the Federal Street Church, the Boston pulpit of William Ellery Channing from 1803 till his death in 1842.

We continue two blocks farther down Milk Street to Pearl Street, which opens from the lower end of Post Office Square, upon which the Federal Building fronts. Near the north side of this square is the site of the first office of the Liberator, the dingy little attic room where, in 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began his most aggressive antislavery editorial work. The building stood on the northeast corner of Congress and Water streets until it was swept off in the fire of 1872.

When Garrison was mobbed in 1835, and was given refuge in the Old State House, then the City Hall, the Liberator office was on Washington Street in a building backing on Wilson’s Lane, now Devonshire Street, where the attack upon him began.

Turning into Pearl Street we follow it to its end at Atlantic Avenue, where is the “Tea Party” site. Along the way we cross High Street, and looking down this street eastward we see in the distance the poplar trees of Fort Hill Square, which marks the site of Fort Hill, one of the three original hills of Boston, which was leveled in 1867-1872. The hill got its name from the fort which was erected on its summit in 1632, the first fort on the peninsula. It was then at the eastern extremity of the town, directly opposite the harbor. In the second fort here, built in 1687, Andros took refuge at the time of the revolution which overthrew his government.

The “Tea Party Wharf” was near the western line of the present Atlantic Avenue, close by Pearl Street. The tablet which we see on the avenue front of the building occupying the northern corner of the two streets marks the site as nearly as possible. The inscription, beneath the model of a tea ship, tells the story of the party concisely:

At this point we can take a surface car or, by walking to the next station northward, an elevated train, and ride to the North End for our exploration of that quarter. It is better, however, to take a south bound car and return by way of Dewey Square (passing the South Station) and Summer Street to Washington Street, making our entry into the North End by the customary route from Scollay Square.

2. THE NORTH END

The North End (see Plate III), though now bereft of many of the landmarks that once gave it an antique flavor and a peculiar charm to seekers of things old and historic, is yet a quarter to which the much, worn term “unique “may justly be applied. There still remain a few landmarks of great interest, and “historic sites” abound in this small and compact district. The first “court end” of the town, where the gentry had their fine mansions beside the many quaint humbler houses of the early Colonial period, it is now the foreign quarter of the city, with foreign signs in dingy shops and a swarming population of Russians, Armenians, Israelites, Norwegians, Poles, Italians saluting our ears with a jargon of tongues.

We approach the North End by way of Hanover Street, which runs from Scollay Square to the Chelsea Ferry on the water front.

At Union Street, the cross street next below Washington Street extension, we come to two historic sites of first importance. One is the site of the Green Dragon Tavern, the “headquarters of the Revolution.” This stood on Union Street, a few steps off from the left side of Hanover Street. The spot is marked by a business building (No. 80), on the face of which for years was a stone effigy of the tavern sign, — a sheet-copper, green-painted representation of a creature of forked tongue and curled tail, which couched upon an iron crane projecting over the entrance door. The tavern existed from 1680 or thereabouts, through Colonial, Provincial, and Republican days, till the twenties of the nineteenth century, when the lane which bore its name was widened to form the present street.

It was at the Green Dragon that the prerevolutionary leaders held their secret councils and formed their plans of campaign. Here the Tea Party originated. It was the rendezvous of the night patrol of Boston Mechanics, instituted to keep watch upon the British and Tory movements. It was the chief meeting place of the “North End Corcus,” one of the three clubs composed of patriot leaders and followers, which added the word “caucus” to our political nomenclature. It was also the first Free Masons’ hall, the pioneer St. Andrews Lodge having been organized here in 1752, and in 1769 the first Grand Lodge of the Province, with Dr. Joseph Warren as Grand Master and Paul Revere a subordinate officer.

The other site is that of Josiah Franklin’s dwelling and chandlery shop, at “the sign of the Blue Ball,” the boyhood home of Benjamin Franklin, where he worked for his father at candle-making and tended the shop. Near by was the “salt marsh “by the Mill Pond, on the edge of which he fished for minnows. The “Blue Ball” stood near the south east corner of the junction of Union and Hanover streets. It held its place till the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was demolished in the widening of Hanover Street at this point. Its site is included in the street way.

A stone’s throw up Union Street (eastward) Marshall’s Lane (now officially called street) opens from the left side, — one of the alleys or “short cuts” of old Boston, through which we must pass. It will bring us back to Hanover Street close to the cross street next below Union Street.

As we enter Marshall’s Lane from Union Street we cannot fail to notice the low-browed brick building of eighteenth-century fashion which occupies the upper corner of the lane and street. This is interesting as the place where Benjamin Thompson of Woburn, who became Sir Benjamin Thompson and then Count Rumford, was a clerk or apprentice in his youth in Hopestill Capen’s shop, selling imported stuffs to the fashionable folk of the provincial town. At the outbreak of the Revolution the Massachusetts Spy, afterward of Worcester, was printed on the upper floor of this building.

Soon our lane makes a junction with another, — Creek Lane, which originally led to the Mill Creek, where is now Blackstone Street, as Marshall’s Lane first led to the Mill Bridge across the creek. Here we see set against the base of a building a rough piece of stone with a spherical one on top of it marked “Boston Stone, 1737.” This is only the relic of a paint mill which a painter brought out from England about 5700 and used in his shop close by. Perhaps he was Tom Child by name, to whom Sewall alludes in his diary: “Nov. 10, 1706. This morning Tom Child the Painter died.” The monument was set up here some time after the painter’s day, in imitation of the London Stone, to serve as a direction for shops in the neighborhood. A similar guide post, called the Union Stone, stood for some years at the entrance of the lane by Hopestill Capen’s shop. In the front of the building at the outlet of the lane, on Hanover Street, is a carved reproduction of the London Painters’ Guild, which is said to have been the sign of the painter who used the “Boston Stone.”

Opposite this monument we see, in the worn old structure on the corner of Creek Lane, the office of Ebenezer Hancock (brother of John Hancock), deputy paymaster general of the Continental army, where were deposited the funds in French crowns brought out by d’Estaing from America’s ally, the king of France, which went to pay the arrears of the officers of the Continental line. The block beyond, facing Creek Lane, is “Hancock Row,” built for stores by John Hancock after the peace.

Again on Hanover Street, we cross to the other side and enter Salem Street, which starts off obliquely from Hanover Street and then runs parallel with it. Now we are fairly within the North End. It is a curious street, with strange denizens. In early Colony days it was fair Green Lane, upon which it was the dream of prospering Bostonians to live At the corner of Stillman Street is the site of the first Baptist meeting house, erected in 1679, on the border of the open Mill Pond then on this side. This was the meetinghouse which was closed against the pro scribed sect and its doors nailed up in 1680 by order of the court; when the undaunted society held their services in the meetinghouse yard. Its descendant is the present First Baptist Church on Common wealth Avenue, Back Bay. Prince Street, intersecting Salem Street mid way, preserves more of the old-time aspect than other streets of the quarter. This street (first in part Black Horse Lane) was the direct way from the North End to the Charlestown ferry (where is now the Charlestown Bridge), and after the battle of Bunker Hill numbers of the wounded British were brought here to houses which were turned into temporary hospitals. The most important of these emergency hospitals was a fine new house near the lower end of Prince Street at the corner of Lafayette Street. This remained until the end of the nineteenth century, being occupied for some years by a grandson of one of the Boston Tea Party. Another on Prince Street, nearer Salem Street, is the so-called Stoddard house, a narrow brick dwelling, still standing (No. 130). It is said that Major Pitcairn was brought to this house and died here from his wounds. On the westerly corner of Prince and Margaret streets is the house where long lived John Tileston, the school master, the rigid but beloved master for two thirds of a century of the oldest North End school, which became the Eliot School.

In and about North Square. Taking Prince Street at the right we cross Hanover Street and enter North Square. This squalid triangular inclosure was the central point of the North End in its “elegant” days, when it was adorned with trees and dignified by neighboring mansions. It is now the heart of the Italian colony. At its outlet upon North Street is the one landmark here of historic value. This is the little low house of wood, hedged in by ambitious modern structures, marked as the home of Paul Revere. It was the versatile patriot’s dwelling from about 1770 through the Revolution and until 1800, when, having prospered in his foundry, he bought a finer house on Charter Street near by and there spent the remainder of his days. This North Square house was old when Revere moved into it from his earlier home on North Street (then Fish Street). It was built soon after the great fire of 1676 in place of Increase Mather’s house, the parsonage of the North Church, which went down with the meetinghouse in that disaster.

It was in the upper windows of this North Square house that on the evening of the Boston Massacre Revere displayed those awful illustrated pictures which, we read, struck the assembly of spectators “with solemn silence,” while “their countenances were covered with a melancholy gloom.” And well might they have shuddered. In the middle window appeared a realistic view of the “massacre” In the north window was shown the “Genius of Liberty,” a sitting figure holding aloft a liberty cap and trampling under foot a soldier hugging a serpent, the emblem of military tyranny. In the south window was an obelisk displaying the names of the five victims, in front of which was a bust of the boy Snider, killed a few days before the “massacre” in a struggle before a Tory shop which had been “marked” as one not to be patronized; and behind the bust a shadowy, gory figure, with these lines beneath:

Just below this house, at about the corner of North and Richmond streets, stood the Red Lion Inn of early Colony days, kept by Nicholas Upsall, befriender of the proscribed Quakers, — the “Upsall gray with his length of days” of the “King’s Missive,” — who suffered banishment and imprisonment for his friendly acts. On Richmond Street was the birthplace of Charlotte Cushman (born 1816), whose name is perpetuated in the Cushman School near by.

At the head of the square, on the north side, is the site of the Old North Church, which the British pulled down and used for firewood during the Siege. It stood between Garden Court and Moon streets. It was the second meetinghouse of the Second Church in Boston (instituted in 1649), built upon the ruins of the first one, burned in the fire of 1676. It became popularly known as the Church of the Mathers, from Increase, Cotton, son of Increase, and Samuel, son of Cotton Mather, successively its ministers. In the prerevolutionary period John Lathrop, a stanch patriot, was its minister, and it was the church which Revere attended.

After the Revolution the lot upon which it had stood was set apart for the dwelling of Mr. Lathrop (who continued the minister till his death in 1816), and the society acquired the “New Brick Church” in the near neighborhood on Hanover Street, the successor of whirls was the Cockerel Church, so called from a copper weathercock which crowned its steeple — still another piece of “Deacon “Shem Drowne’s clever work — and is now still doing service on the steeple of the Shepard Memorial Church in Cambridge. Mr. Lathrop’s house on the old church lot was large and comfortable in appearance, with a row of poplars in the front yard, and on the Moon Street corner a weeping willow. These were all blown down in the destructive September gale of 1815.

The descendant of the Old North is the ivy-clad Second Church on Copley Square. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a minister of the Second Church from 1829 to 1832.

In Garden Court Street stood the stately mansion of Governor Thomas Hutchinson (his birthplace), which was sacked and partly destroyed with much of its contents by the anti-Stamp-Act mob on the night of August 26, 1765. It was a house of generous proportions, built of brick, painted “stone color,” and set in ample grounds, the garden extending on one side to Fleet Street and back to Hanover Street. The interior was rich in finish and adornments. It is well pictured, although with fanciful touches, in Lydia Maria Child’s early historical romance, “The Rebels, A Tale of the Revolution,” published in 1852. It was here that Hutchinson wrote his “History of Massachusetts.”

The first volume was published in 1764. When the house was pillaged the second volume lay in the rich library in manuscript almost ready for the press. It was thrown out with other precious books and papers, and “left lying in the street for several hours in a soaking rain.” But most fortunately all but a few sheets were carefully collected and saved by the Rev. Andrew Eliot, minister of the “New North” Church, living near by on Hanover Street, and the author was enabled to transcribe the whole and publish it two years later.

Hutchinson and his family made their hurried escape from the house just before the mob reached it, finding refuge in neighboring dwellings. Hutchinson was first harbored in Samuel Mather’s house on Moon Street, but was obliged to seek another refuge to avoid the threatening mob.

Also occupying Garden Court Street with the Hutchinson house, and of similar elegance, was the Clark-Frankland mansion, so called from William Clark, a rich merchant who built it, and Sir Harry Frankland, who afterward lived in it. J. Fenimore Cooper pictured this house in “Lionel Lincoln,” in his description of the residence of “Mrs. Lechmere,” which he placed on Tremont Street; and Edwin L. Bynner portrayed it in his novel of “Agnes Surriage.” Both of these mansions lingered in picturesque decay till the thirties of the nineteenth century, when the Bell Alley entrance to the square was widened into Prince Street.

During the Siege North Square was a military rendezvous with barracks for the soldiers, their officers occupying the comfortable dwellings about it. The building on the east side by Moon Street, now an Italian church, was originally “Father Taylor’s Bethel,” a sailors’ church, built in the early part of the nineteenth century, long conducted by the Rev. Edward T. Taylor, one of nature’s orators and a born minister to seafaring men.

Christ Church and Copp’s Hill. Now we return to Salem Street, crossing Hanover Street and passing through North Bennet or Tileston Street, either of which will bring us close to Christ Church and Copp’s Hill, the predominating historic features of the North End to-day. As we cross Hanover Street we should give a glance at a little low house crowded back from the street line (a second story and roof above a projecting store) on the west side, just below North Bennet Street. This is a remnant of the house built in 1677 by Increase Mather after the fire in North Square. It was Dr. Mather’s home till his death in 1723. Afterward it was long occupied by the Rev. Andrew Eliot and his son, John Eliot, ministers successively of the New North Church. From these ministerial occupants it is called the Mather-Eliot house. On North Bennet Street was the first grammar school in the north part of the town, established in 1713, and on Tileston Street (named for the old schoolmaster) was the first writing school in the North End, begun in 1718. This street was at that time Love Lane, so called not from any sentimental characteristic that it possessed, but from a family by the name of Love who owned property about it.

Christ Church, Salem Street

Christ Church is the oldest church edifice now standing in Boston, older by six years than the Old South, and by thirty years than King’s Chapel. It was the second Episcopal church established in Boston. The corner stone was laid in April, 1723, when the Rev. Samuel Myles, then rector of King’s Chapel, officiated, accompanied, says the record, “by the gentlemen of his congregation.” The ceremony closed with the prayer, “May the gates of Hell never prevail against it.” It was certainly built well to withstand the assaults of time. The stone side walls are two and a half feet thick, and the construction throughout is substantial. The brick tower is of four floors. The first spire was described as the “most elegant in the town.” That was blown down in a gale in October, 1805, but the present one, erected three years later, is said to be a faithful copy of it, preserving its proportions and symmetry. This tower has additional interest in that it was made from a model by Bulfinch. The tower chimes of eight bells, still the most melodious of any in the city, were first, hung in 1744. Each bell has an interesting inscription. The tablet on the tower front bears this familiar legend: The signal lanterns of Paul Revere displayed in the steeple of this church April 18, 1775, warned the country of the march of the British troops to Lexington and Concord. This tablet was set in 1878, the statement it conveys being substantiated by several local historical authorities. Other recognized authorities, chief among them Richard Frothingham, the historian of the Siege of Boston, place these signal lanterns on the tower of the true Old North Church — the meetinghouse in North Square which the British destroyed. That Gage witnessed the battle of Bunker Hill from this tower is an undisputed statement. The interior of the church retains much of the old-time aspect. Among the mural ornaments is Houdon’s bust of Washington, the first monumental effigy of Washington set up in the country. It was placed here only ten years after Washington’s death. The figures of the cherubim in front of the organ and the brass chandeliers, destined originally for a Canadian convent, were given to the church in 1758 by the master of an English privateer, who captured them from a French ship on the high seas. An ancient “Vinegar Bible” and the old prayer books are still in use. The silver communion service includes several pieces bear ing the royal arms, which were gifts from George H in 1733, at the instance of the royal Governor Belcher. The clock below the rail has been in place since 1746.

Beneath the tower are old tombs. In one of them Major Pitcairn was temporarily buried. Some years later, when his monument was erected in Westminster Abbey and his English relatives sent for his remains, a box said to contain them was duly forwarded, but the grewsome tale is told that the sexton was not sure of his identification. The church is open to visitors for inspection upon application to the sexton; fee, twenty-five cents.

A block above, at the corner of Salem and Sheafe streets, is the site of the home of Robert Newman. He was the sexton of Christ Church in 1775 who, according to the tradition that its steeple was the place of the Revere signals, hung them out at the instance of John Puling, a warden of the church, and in Revere’s confidence. At the time British officers were quartered in this house upon the Newman family. It stood until 1889. Near by, on Sheafe Street, was the birthplace of the Rev. Samuel F. Smith, author of “America.”

Up Hull Street, opening directly opposite Christ Church, a few steps bring us to the main gate of Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, — a mob of youthful guides of both sexes and various nationalities pressing us along the way, rattling off with glib tongue the “features” of the region, and offering to show them, all and several, for a nickel. Hull Street perpetuates the name of John Hull, the maker of the pine-tree shillings. It was originally cut through Hull’s pasture (in 1701), and the land for it was given by his daughter Hannah and Judge Sewall, her husband, on the happy condition that it should retain this name “forever.” Of the few old houses permitted to remain here, but one need engage our attention. This one is on the south side, distinguished from its neighbors in standing endwise to the street. It is the Galloupe, or Gallop, house, so called, dating from 1722, which Gage’s staff made their head, quarters during the battle of Bunker Hill. The Gallops who occupied it through two generations were lineal descendants of Captain John Gallop, the earliest pilot in Boston Harbor, among the “first corners” of 1630, for whom Gallop’s Island in the harbor is named. He also lived in the North End, “near the shore, where his boat could ride safely at anchor.”

In the Copp’s Hill of to-day we see only a small remnant of the original eminence, the northernmost of the three hills of the peninsula upon which Boston was planted. It now consists of an embankment left after cuttings of the hill, protected on its steepest sides by a high stone wall. At the time of the battle of Bunker Hill, when its summit was occupied by the British battery whose shot, under the direction of Burgoyne and Clinton, set Charlestown on fire, it terminated abruptly on the northwest side, opposite Charlestown, in a high cliff.

This battery stood near the southwest corner of the burying ground on land afterward cut down. Perhaps its site was the same as that of the windmill of a century earlier, brought over from Cambridge and set up here in 1653, to “grind the settlers’ corn,” thereby giving the hill its first name of “Windmill Hill.” It got its name of Copp’s from William Copp, an industrious cobbler, one of the first settlers, who owned a house and lot on its southeast corner near Prince Street.

The burying ground, which now goes under the general name of Copp’s Hill, really comprises four cemeteries of different periods: the North Burial Ground (established in 1660, the same year as the Granary Burying Ground); the Hull Street (1707); the New North (1809); and the Charter Street (1819). The oldest section is the northeasterly part of the inclosure. It is the largest of the historic burying grounds of the city, and is especially cherished as a picturesque breathing place in a squalid quarter, as well as for its associations.

Among the noted graves or tombs which we may find here are those of the Revs. Increase, Cotton, and Samuel Mather; of Nicholas Upsall, the persecuted friend of the Quakers; Deacon Shem Drowne, the “cunning artificer”; the Rev. Jesse Lee, early preacher of Methodism in Boston, his first church being the Common, where Whitefield had preached fifty years before; the Rev. Francis W. P. Greenwood, rector of King’s Chapel 1824-1843; and Edmund Hartt, the builder of the frigate Constitution. The tomb of the Mathers is near the Charter Street gate. A large memorial stone with bullet marks on its face attracts attention. It stands, as the inscription states, above the “stone grave ten feet deep,” of “Capt. Daniel Malcom, mercht, who departed this life October 23d 1769 aged 44 years: a true Son of Liberty, a Friend to the Public, an Enemy of Oppression, and One of the foremost in opposing the Revenue Acts in America.” This stone was a favorite target with the British soldiers quartered in the neighborhood during the Siege, and the bullet marks were made by them. Another stone, which stands toward the northwest angle of the ground, is also curiously marked. This commemorates “Capt Thomas Lake, aged 61 yeeres, an eminently faithful servant of God & one of a public spirit,” who was “perfidiovsly slain by ye Indians at Kennibeck, Avgvst ye 14th 1676, & here interred the 13 of March following.” A deep slit is across its face, into which the bullets taken from the captain’s body were poured after being melted. The lead was long ago all chipped out by vandals. Captain Lake was a commander of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1662 and 1674. Near the middle of the ground is the triple gravestone of George Worthylake, first keeper of Boston Light in the harbor, his wife and their daughter, all drowned while coming up to town in his boat one day in 1718 — the mournful event that inspired Franklin’s boyhood ballad of “The Lighthouse Tragedy” (see p. 17). A notable monument is to Major Samuel Shaw, a Revolutionary soldier, ancestor of Robert Gould Shaw. There are a number of vaults bearing sculptured slabs and heraldic devices.

Here, as in the other old burying grounds, acts of vandalism have been committed in the past in the removal of several stones from their proper places, while sacrilegious hands have changed the dates on some tablets by transforming a 9 into a 2, as in 1620 for 1690, or 1625 for 1695. Others have taken stones away and utilized them in chimneys or drains, and two or three tombs have been desecrated by the substitution of other names for the rightful ones upon them. The treatment of the tomb of the Hutchinsons with its armorial bearings, where were deposited the remains of Elisha and Thomas Hutchinson, grandfather and father, respectively, of Governor Hutchinson, has been cited¹ as a flagrant case of this sort. In place of Hutchinson has been cut the name of Lewis, while the honored dust of these Hutchinsons is said to have been “scattered before the four winds of heaven.” It appears, however, from researches made in 1906 by a loyal descendant of Thomas Lewis, that this tomb was duly sold to him in 1807 by a granddaughter of Thomas Hutchinson, the deed of record bearing the signature of Hannah (Mather) Crocker, a daughter of Rev. Samuel Mather and his wife, Thomas Hutchinson’s daughter. It further appears that ^the Hutchinson bones lay in a corner of the tomb till between 1824 and 1825, when a grandson of Thomas Lewis caused them to be placed in a suitable box. Thomas Lewis was a deacon of the Second Church.

A corner of the inclosure by Snowhill Street was originally used for the burial of slaves. Near the Charter Street gate is the “Napoleon willow,” grown from a slip from the tree at Napoleon’s grave.

North Station, Causeway Street

Copp’s Hill Terraces, back of the burying ground, on Charter Street, extending down to Commercial Street, with the North End Park and Beach on the water front beyond, finish up rarely this fine open space. The terraces and the park are parts of the beneficent Boston City Parks System. With a short stroll along Charter Street back to Hanover Street and across to the water front, our survey of the North End finishes. Charter Street got its name in 1708 from the Province Charter of 1692. Before that the street was a lane, and the lane was associated with the Colony Charter, for it is said that that docu­ment was hidden during the troublous days of 1681 in the house of John Foster, which stood at the corner of this and Foster Lane (now Street). On the westerly corner of Charter and Salem streets Sir William Phips, the first royal governor, built his brick mansion house when he became prosperous, thus fulfilling his dream, when a poor ship carpenter, of some day living on “the Green Lane of North Boston.” Where is now Revere Place, off Charter Street near Hanover, was Paul Revere’s last home. On Faster Street was his foundry.

Taking Battery Street from Hanover Street, we pass to Atlantic Avenue and North Battery Wharf, the site of the North Battery. Constitution Wharf, the next wharf north, marks the site of Hartt’s shipbuilding yard where “Old Ironsides” was built; also the frigate Boston. Lewis’s Wharf, southward, opposite the foot of Fleet Street, marks in part (its north side) the site of Hancock’s Wharf, upon which were Hancock’s warehouses.

On Atlantic Avenue we can take an elevated train at the Battery Street station (or surface cars, if we prefer) and return to our starting point at Scollay Square.

¹ Bridgman’s “Memorials of the Dead in Boston,” 1852.

3. THE CHARLESTOWN DISTRICT

The trip to Charlestown naturally follows the exploration of the North End. If we start from the latter quarter, taking an elevated train north (Battery Street station), we change at the North Station station to a Sullivan Square train. If, however, we elect to go from the business quarters, we have a choice of various trolley lines besides the elevated: some in the Subway (from Scollay Square, Park, or Boylston Street stations), others on the surface, several of the latter passing through Adams Square. The Chelsea cars pass by the Navy Yard.

The elevated tracks, and surface tracks under them, pass over the new Charlestown Bridge (completed in 1900; composed of steel and stone; 1900 feet long, including the approaches, and too feet wide; draw operated by electricity; cost $1,400,000; built by the city of Boston). Trolley lines also cross the Warren Bridge.

All the “features” of Charlestown can be included within the com pass of a short walk. Chief of them, of course, is Bunker Hill Monument. This is only a block from the second station of the elevated line in the district, — Thompson Square (the first station being City Square, at the end of Charlestown Bridge), — and about a ten-minute walk from City Square. The United States Navy Yard (established in 1800), occupying “Moulton’s Point,” the spot where the British troops landed for the battle, is next in popular interest. The main gate is at the junction of Wapping and Water streets, and Water Street opens from City Square. The yard is open daily to visitors, admitted by passes which are to be obtained at the main gate. It is an inclosure of nearly ninety acres, attractively laid out, and with many interesting features. The marine museum and naval library occupy the oldest building in the grounds near the entrance gate. Another near-by point of interest is Winthrop Square (about a five-minute walk from City Square), the early Colonial training field, where are memorial tablets bearing the names of the Americans who fell in the battle of Bunker Hill; also a Soldiers’ Monument (Civil War) by Martin Milmore, sculptor of the soldiers’ monument on Boston Common. On Phipps Street, off Main Street, west side, near Thompson Square station of the elevated line, is the ancient burying ground in which is the monument to John Harvard, the first benefactor of Harvard College, designed by Solomon Willard and erected by graduates of the college in 1828.

City Square and “Town Hill,” which rises on its west side behind the Charlestown Branch of the Public Library (the City Hall when Charlestown was an independent city) are the parts in which the first settlement was made in 1629. The “Great House” of the governor, in which the Court of Assistants adopted the order giving Boston its name in 1630, stood on the west side of the square. The dwelling of the young minister, John Harvard, stood near the opening of Main Street, his lot extending back over the slope of “Town Hill.” The “spreading oak,” beneath which the first church, which became the first church of Boston, was organized by Winthrop and his associates, was on the easterly slope of this hill. The first “palisadoed” fort, set up in 1629 and lasting for more than half a century, was on its summit. The first bury ing ground, where it is supposed was the grave of John Harvard, all traces of which long ago disappeared, was near its foot, toward the northern end of the square.

The present church on the hill, facing Harvard Street, is the lineal descendant of the first meetinghouse of the Charlestown Church, organized in 1632. An earlier church, on the same spot, was from 1789 to 1821 the pulpit of Rev. Jedidiah Morse, author of the first geography of the United States, deserving of remembrance more especially as the father of Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph and noted in art. When his distinguished son was born, Mr. Morse was living temporarily in the house of a parishioner, Thomas Edes, the parsonage near the church being in building. This house is still standing, worn and dingy now, but preserved as the birthplace of Morse. We may see it on Main Street, above the Thompson Square station, marked with a tablet: “Here was born Samuel Finley Morse, 27 April 1791, inventor of the electric telegraph.” The room was the front chamber of the second story on the right of the entrance door. This house was the first dwelling erected after the burning of the town in the battle of Bunker Hill.

Bunker Hill Monument is on Breed’s Hill, where the battle was fought. Monument Avenue, from Main Street, leads to the principal entrance of the monument grounds. In the main path we are confronted with the spirited statue of Colonel William Prescott in bronze, representing the American commander repressing his impatient men, as the enemy advances up the hill, with the warning words: “Don’t fire till I tell you! Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes!” This statue is by William W. Story, and was erected by the Bunker Hill Monument Association in 1881. It is inscribed simply with Prescott’s name and the date, “June 17, 1775.” It stands on or close to the spot where Prescott stood at the opening of the battle when he gave the signal to fire by waving his sword; but the statue faces in a different direction. The obelisk occupies the southeast corner of the American redoubt, and its sides are parallel with those of that structure, which was about eight rods square. It is built in courses of granite, the stone coming from a quarry in Quincy, whence it was carried to the shipping point by the first railroad laid in the country. It is thirty feet square at the base and two hundred and twenty feet high. Inside the shaft is a hollow cone, around which winds a spiral flight of stone steps, by which ascent is made to the top. Here is an observatory, seventeen feet high and eleven feet in diameter, with windows on each side. Before attempting the climb the visitor should consider the task. The steps number nearly three hundred, — to be exact, two hundred and ninety-five. There is reward, however, for the exertion when the summit is reached, in the magnificent view which it commands in every direction. The stone lodge at the base of the obelisk contains an interesting museum of memorials of the battle and a fine marble statue of General Joseph Warren by Henry Dexter (dedicated June 17, 1857). The spot where Warren fell is marked by a low stone in the ground.

Bunker Hill Monument

The monument was begun in 1825, when the corner stone was formally laid by Lafayette, under the direction of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge of Masons, and Daniel Webster delivered the oration. It remained unfinished for nearly twenty years. Then, in 1840, largely through the efforts of American women, the required funds for its completion were raised. In July, 1842, the last stone was hoisted to its place, one of the workmen riding upon it and waving an American flag. When it was finally laid in cement the event was announced by a national salute. The completed structure was dedicated on the 17th of June, 1843, when Webster was again the Orator, and President Tyler with members of his cabinet was present. In the great throng that gathered on this occasion were a few survivors of the battle. The sculptor Greenough devised the monument, and Solomon Willard was the architect who superintended its construction.

Bunker Hill lies to the northward of Breed’s Hill, toward Charles town Neck, where the Elevated line ends. Its summit, higher than Breed’s Hill, is occupied by “Charlestown Heights,” overlooking the Mystic River, one of the most attractive of the Boston City Parks System. On Walker Street, on this hill, a short street extending from Main up to Wall Street, is still standing the house where Thomas Ball, the sculptor, was born.

4. THE WEST END

The West End (see Plate II) comprises that quarter of the city which lies north of the Common and between Beacon, Tremont, and Court streets, Bowdoin Square, Green Street and so northwest to the Charles River, and Charles Street to Beacon Street at the foot of the Common. It thus includes all of Beacon Hill. It is a fading quarter now, with a number of old Boston institutions, some mellow old streets, others in hopeless decay, and numerous landmarks, especially of literary Boston. In its better parts it retains more distinctly than any other quarter of the city the genuine Boston flavor.

The most interesting part is the Beacon Hill section. We have seen its southern boundary in the fine line of Beacon Street architecture opposite the Common from the State House to Charles Street. Let us enter it, therefore, above Beacon Street, — from the State House Park through the archway to Mt. Vernon Street.

Although “The Hill,” as this was called in its proud days, par excellence, is not the oldest part of the West End, it has been from its upbuilding the choicest, and accordingly its associations are the richest. Up to the Revolution it was largely a region of fields and pastures. Until near the opening of the nineteenth century there were but two houses on the Beacon Street slope west of the Hancock mansion. The greater part of the territory below the Hancock holdings was the domain of John Singleton Copley, the painter (after his fortunate marriage), from about 1769 to 1795. The bounds of this “farm,” as Copley called it, although it was chiefly pasture land, are indicated generally by the present Mt. Vernon and Pinckney streets on the north, Walnut Street on the east, the Common south, and the Charles River west. It included the homestead lot of the first European settler, William Blaxton, — he who was here before the Winthrop company, — with the “excellent spring” of which he “acquainted” the governor when he invited him hither. It was the acquisition of the Hancock pasture for the new State House, — the Bulfinch Front, — in 1795, that gave the impulse to the development in this quarter. Then a “syndicate “purchased the Copley estate at a bargain (Copley was at that time living in England), and in the course of a few years these now old streets appeared, built up substantially, in place of the Copley pastures and adjoining proper ties. A half-century after it was remarked that on “the Copley estate live, or have lived, a large proportion of those most distinguished among us for intellect and learning or for enterprise, wealth and public spirit.”

On Mt. Vernon Street from the archway we are passing through what were the Hancock gardens. Hancock Street, coming up the hillside at our right, is the oldest of the streets here. It originally ran by the side of the peak of Beacon Hill over to the Common. It was given the governor’s name in 1788. Near its foot, on the east side, is the Sumner house (No. 20) in which Charles Sumner lived from 1830 to 1867. Along the same side, extending from Derne Street nearly up to Mt. Vernon Street, stood from 1849 to 1884 the Beacon Hill Reservoir, a massive granite structure with lofty arches piercing its front walls, notable as a superior piece of architecture. Its service as a distributing reservoir closed some time before its removal, clearing the way for the State House Annex.

Joy Street, the first to cross Mt. Vernon, is next to Hancock Street in age. It used to be Belknap Street, the principal way to the negro quarters on the north slope of the hill. Midway in its descent to Cambridge Street a dingy court opens, Smith by name, in which is a landmark of antislavery days. This is the brick meetinghouse erected for the first African church (built in 1806), now a Jewish synagogue, which was used for abolition meetings. It was after a meeting held here on the evening of December 3, 1860, commemorating the execution of John Brown, that Wendell Phillips was assisted to his home, then on Essex Street, by a volunteer guard of forty young men with locked arms, pressed closely by a threatening mob. At the fairer end of this street, near Beacon Street, is the Diocesan House (1 Joy Street), the headquarters of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Here are the offices of various church organizations, the parlors of the Episcopal Church Association, and the library. Above (Nos. 3 and 4) are the houses of the Twentieth Century Club, which concerns itself with many reforms, and of the Massachusetts Civic League.

As we proceed along Mt. Vernon Street, which grows in old-fashioned stateliness as it advances over the hill, we come upon a succession of houses with an interesting past. No. 49, on the north side, was long the home of Lemuel Shaw, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for thirty years (1830-1860). Its near neighbor (No. 53), now the house of the General Theological Library, was once the dwelling of a merchant of distinction. The library which has succeeded it is an unsectarian institution established since 1860, for the purpose of “promoting religious and theological learning,” having a collection of 22,000 volumes and some 5,000 pamphlets.

It is a special library of standard and current theological books, that term being used in its broad sense to cover works on sociology, philosophy, comparative religions, and archæological research. Its books are free to all New England clergymen; and beyond Greater Boston they are furnished through the local public libraries.

The head of the stately row of houses beyond, set back thirty feet from the street (No. 57), was the town house of Charles Francis Adams, Sr., during the latter years of his life. The next one in this row (No. 59), with its classic doorway, is most interesting as the last home of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and associated with his ripest work. No. 65, transformed into an apartment house, so, unhappily, breaking the symmetry of the row, was formerly the home of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, where some of his most notable historical writing was done. No. 79 was the home of Horace Gray during his long service on the Supreme bench of the State as justice and chief justice, before he was made a justice of the United States Supreme Court. The last house of the row (No. 83) was the last Boston home of William Ellery Channing, whose study here was the “Mecca of all sorts and conditions of men.”

On the opposite side of the street the ornate brownstone houses with lofty entrances, now the Theological School of Boston University, were hospitable mansions erected in the fifties of the last century by the brothers John E. and Nathaniel Thayer, eminent merchants of their time and benefactors of Harvard University. No. 76, just below, was the home of Margaret Deland for a number of years, during the period marked by her “Philip and His Wife.” No. 88, on the lower corner of little Willow Street (which connecting, nearly, with another little street across Chestnut Street provides a “short cut” to the Common), was once the home of Enoch Train, the projector of the line of fast clipper ships to Liverpool, fine craft which came into successful competition with the early ocean steamships. He was the father of Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney of Milton, the favorite writer of girls’ stories. No. 92 was the home and studio of Anne Whitney during the years that she was modeling some of her most notable statues — the Samuel Adams (see p. 15) and the Leif Ericson (see p. 79) among them.

Louisburg Square, with its inclosed park of lofty trees and diminutive Italian marble statues of Aristides and Columbus at either end, suggestive of old London residential squares, connects Mt. Vernon with Pinckney Street, the latter with an air of shabby gentility yet borne with decorum. Blaxton’s spring is believed to have been in the middle of this square. The point is disputed by local historians, the popular location being in Spring Lane, north of the Old South Meetinghouse; but the evidence in support of the Louisburg Square situation is accepted as conclusive by most authorities. The matter, however, is not of moment, for the town was full of springs when Blaxton “solicited” Winthrop hither.

Blaxton’s orchard spread back up the hill slope toward this square. His homestead lot of six acres, reserved after his sale of the whole peninsula to the colonists for thirty pounds, occupied the northwesterly slope of the hill, bounded southerly toward the Common and westerly on Charles River, the water’s edge then being at the present Charles Street. His cottage, with its rose garden, was on the hill slope toward the Common, between the present Spruce and Charles streets. He moored his boat on the river, presumably at a point which jutted out from the bluff in which the hill ended, on the Charles Street side.

At No. 10 Louisburg Square was the last Boston home of Louisa M. Alcott, where her remarkable father, A. Bronson Alcott, died (1888) in his eighty-ninth year; her own death following the day of his funeral. No. 4 was the home of William D. Howells in the late eighteen-seventies, when he was a Bostonian editing the Atlantic. No. 20 is interesting as the house where Jennie Lind was married in 1852.

On the upper corner of the square and Pinckney Street are the main house and the chapel of the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, Protestant Episcopal, where is St. Margaret’s Hospital, one of the most worthy institutions of the city. At No. 5, this side, lived John Gorham Palfrey, the historian, in the eighteen-sixties.

Pinckney Street extends from Joy Street to the river, with but two streets crossing it. At the upper end was for forty years the home of Edwin P. Whipple, the essayist: the plain brick house, No. 1. Lower down, on the opposite side, the house No. 20 was the home of the Alcott family in the fifties of the last century, the scene of Louisa M. Alcott’s early struggle in authorship mingled with domestic occupations. At No. 54, nearly opposite the opening of Anderson Street, was the early home of George S. Hillard, lawyer, critic, essayist, remembered especially through his “Hillard’s Readers” of the mid eighteen-fifties. From this house Hawthorne in 1842 wrote his little note to the Rev. James Freeman Clarke requesting “the greatest favor which I can receive from any man,” — the performance of the ceremony of his marriage to Sophia Peabody. Hillard lived for a much longer period at No. 62. On the lower slope of the street, below the square, at No. 84, was the first Boston home of Aldrich after his marriage, where Longfellow got the inspiration for “The Hanging of the Crane.” The “Story of a Bad Boy” issued from this house.

On Mt. Vernon Street again we may see just below West Cedar Street the first home of Margaret Deland in this quarter, — No. 112, — where her earlier books were written; and nearly opposite, at No. 99, the home of John C. Ropes, in his day the authority on Napoleonic literature. In West Cedar Street, No. 24, is the home of Ferris Greenslet, litterateur, biographer of Lowell and Aldrich.

By West Cedar Street we cross to Chestnut Street, possessing in its entirety, perhaps, more of the old Boston flavor than the other streets of “The Hill.” In the short block of West Cedar Street through which we pass, note should be taken on one side of the town house of Percival Lowell (No. 11), the astronomer and producer of notable books; on the other side that of Henry C. Merwin (No. 3), the essayist and literary authority on the American horse and the dog; and, at No. 1, the home of the Harvard Musical Association, organized in 1837 “to promote the progress and knowledge of the best music,” and from its establishment a leading factor in the development of musical culture in Boston.

Up Chestnut Street on one side and down on the other we shall pass a series of historic houses. No. 50, on the south side, was the town house of Francis Parkman, from 1864 until his death (1893) identified with the most of his historical work in the preparation of his “France and England in North America.” No. 43, nearly opposite, was for upwards of forty years the town house of Richard H. Dana, Sr., the poet; here he died (1896) at ninety-one. A little way above, the house presenting a side bay to the street (No. 29) was the sometime home of Edwin Booth, the actor. Higher up the street a group of three houses (Nos. 17, 15, and 13) arrest attention as examples of the best type of early nineteenth-century domestic architecture. The first was the long time home of Cyrus A. Bartol, the “poet preacher” and essayist; the second is the ancestral home of Dr. B. Joy Jeffries; the third was for some years the home of Rev. John T. Sargent, the meeting place of the Radical Club, renowned in its day, which came after the Transcendental Club of wider fame. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe also lived some years in this house.

On Walnut Street, where Chestnut Street ends, — or, more properly, begins, — was the historian Motley’s boyhood home, in a pleasant house “looking down Chestnut Street,” now replaced by a more modern dwelling. At 8 Walnut Street was Parkman’s earlier house, from which he removed to 50 Chestnut Street.

Returning now to the foot of the hill and taking Charles Street north ward (once beautified by handsome trees, now all gone save one or two worn remnants), we may pass the Charles Street houses once the homes of Dr. Holmes, James T. Fields, and T. B. Aldrich (Nos. 164, 148, and 131, respectively). On the way we should notice at the foot of Mt. Vernon Street, corner of Brimmer, the Church of the Advent (Protestant Episcopal), in the early English style of architecture, with stone tower and steeple. In the tower is a chime of bells. The church organization dates from 1844. No. 26 Brimmer Street is the home of M. A. De Wolfe Howe, editor, biographer, and poet.

The old literary homes of Charles Street are near together toward Cambridge Street.

Holmes’s life at No. 164 was between 1859 and 1871, covering the period of his “Professor at the Breakfast Table,” “Elsie Venner,” and “The Guardian Angel,” his war poems and most noteworthy verses of occasion. Aldrich moved into No. 131 from the Pinckney Street house the year that Holmes moved from the street to 296 Beacon Street. He remained here for about ten years and then moved to the Mt. Vernon Street house. This Charles Street house is identified with his “Marjorie Daw,” “Prudence Palfrey,” “The Queen of Sheba,” and “ The Stillwater Tragedy,” and the beginning of his editorship of the Atlantic Monthly. Fields was the earliest of the three to come to Charles Street, and this remained his home until his death (1881). It was long after maintained as the town home of Mrs. Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett. The Fields library is one of the richest in authors’ manuscripts. It has the complete manuscript of “The Scarlet Letter.” The cross streets, Chestnut, Mt. Vernon, Pinckney, and Revere, lead to the Riverbank, with its broad esplanade along the Charles River basin, a favorite afternoon promenade. The finely designed building on the Chestnut Street corner, facing the park, is the clubhouse of the Union Boat Club, an organization dating back to 1851.

Charlesbank

Across Cambridge Street is the Charlesbank, the pleasant park with trees and shrubs and shaded seats, along the river front between the Cambridge and Craigie bridges. It is especially designed for the poorer classes living in the neighborhood.

The successive institutions on the opposite side of the street are the County Jail, generally called the Charles Street Jail, the Massachusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary (incorporated 1827), and the Massachusetts General Hospital (incorporated 1811). The latter fronts on Blossom Street, and embraces a group of noble buildings. The oldest, or central building, with porticoes of Ionic columns and shapely dome, was designed by Bulfinch. In the old operating room the first successful operation upon a patient under the influence of ether was performed in October, 1846, by Dr. W. T. G. Morton. This event is commemorated by the Ether Monument, so called, in the Public Garden. At Dr. Morton’s grave in Mt. Auburn, Cambridge, is also a monument. On North Grove Street, at one side of the hospital, is the first Harvard Medical School building (afterward the Harvard Dental School) (see p. 91E), the scene of the Parkman murder in 1849, — the killing of Dr. George Parkman by Professor John W. Webster. Both were men of good social and professional standing, and the trial was one of the most celebrated in Boston. Webster was executed the following year.

The only other object of interest in this older part of the West End is the West Church, at the corner of Cambridge and Lynde streets, now the West End Branch of the Public Library. It dates from 1806. Its predecessor was used for barracks during the Siege, and the steeple was taken down because it had been used in making signals to the Continental camp at Cambridge. The present house was long the pulpit of Charles Lowell (father of James Russell Lowell) and Cyrus A. Bartol.

The ornamental Cambridge Bridge, of steel and masonry, dating from 1907, architect Edmund M. Wheelwright, replaces the West Boston Bridge.

5. THE BACK BAY

The Public Garden below the Common, between Beacon, Charles, Boylston, and Arlington streets, is the gateway to the Back Bay District (see Plates I and H), the modern “court end” of Boston. Commonwealth Avenue is its principal boulevard. Boylston Street to Copley Square, and Huntington Avenue beyond, are its southern bounds; Beacon Street and Charles River its northern bounds. Copley Square is its central point. Massachusetts Avenue is its great western cross thoroughfare. To this avenue the streets of the quarter — with the exception of Huntington Avenue, which begins at Copley Square — run parallel to or at right angles with Beacon Street on the Charles River side. The cross streets, beginning with Arlington Street, are named in alphabetical order, a disyllable alternating with a disyllable word. Broad thoroughfares and imposing architecture characterize this quarter. The streets north of Boylston Street between Arlington Street and Massachusetts Avenue are free from car tracks. Commonwealth Avenue, with its tree-lined parkway, broken here and there by statues, is two hundred feet wide, or two hundred and twenty feet from house to house, between Arlington Street and Massachusetts Avenue. It extends beyond the original limits of the quarter, through the Brighton district to the western boundary of the city at the Newton line. Huntington Avenue, with a middle green occupied by street-car tracks, is one hundred feet in width, or one hundred and twenty feet from house to house. It extends to the Brookline line. Massachusetts Avenue comes into the quarter from the Dorchester District, where it begins at Edward Everett Square (so named from the birthplace of Edward Everett, which stood at this point) and, crossing Harvard Bridge, continues through Cambridge, Arlington, and Lexington.

All the territory of this district is “made land” in place of the bay whose name it takes, a beautiful sheet of water that made up from Charles River, and at flood time spread out from the present Charles Street by the Common to the “Neck” (the narrow stem of the original peninsula) and Roxbury, and toward the hills of Brookline. The Public Garden was the “Round Marsh,” or “the marsh at the bottom of the Common.”

Harvard Bridge

The filling of the bay was planned in 1852 by a state commission, the Com monwealth having the right to the flats below the line of riparian ownership. At that time the bay was a great basin made by dams thrown across it for the utilization of its water power by mills on its borders. These dams were also used as causeways for communication between Boston and Roxbury and the western suburbs. They were the “Mill Dam,” now included in lower Beacon Street; the “Cross Dam,” extending from the Roxbury side to the Mill Dam; and the cause way, corresponding in part with the present Brookline Avenue (earlier the Punch Bowl Road), which extends from the junction of Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue southwest to the Brookline line. The filling was practically begun in 1857 and finished in 1886. It was done by the Commonwealth and the Boston Water Power Company. The Commonwealth owned 108.44 acres of the territory. On its sales of the land remaining after large gifts to institutions, and reservations for the city of Boston, and for streets and passageways, it made a net profit of upward of four million dollars. The avails of the sale were applied to educational purposes and to the endowment of several of the sinking funds of the state.

Bridge, Public Garden

The Public Garden is the gem of the city parks, essentially a flower garden, with rich verdure, a dainty foil to the plainer Common. The artificial pond in the middle of the inclosure is so irregularly shaped as to appear extensive, although its actual area is only three and three quarters acres. The iron bridge which carries the main path over the pond has been endowed by the local wits with the title of the “Bridge of Size,” from its ponderous piers. The statues and monuments here are:

On the Beacon Street side: Statue of Edward Everett, of bronze, by William W. Story. Erected in 1867. The cost met by a popular subscription. The Ether Monument, commemorating the discovery of anæsthetics, of granite and red marble, by J. Q. A. Ward. Erected in 1868. The ideal figures surmounting the shaft illustrate the story of the Good Samaritan; the marble bas-reliefs represent (1) a surgical operation in a civic hospital, the patient being under the influence of ether, (2) the angel of mercy descending to re­lieve suffering humanity, (3) the interior of a field hospital, showing a wounded soldier in the hands of the surgeon, (4) an allegory of the triumph of science. This monument was a gift to the city by Thomas Lee. On the Boylston Street side: Statue of Charles Sumner, of bronze, by Thomas Ball. Erected in 1878. This was provided for by popular subscription. Statue of Colonel Thomas Cass (commander of the Ninth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, in the Civil War; killed at Malvern Hill, Va., July 1, 1862), of bronze, by Richard E. Brooks. Erected in 1889. A gift to the city by the Society of the Ninth Regiment.

Channing Statue

Entrance to Subway, Public Garden

On the Arlington Street side: Statue of William Ellery Channing (facing the Arlington Street Church on the opposite side of the street, the successor of the Federal Street Church, which was the pulpit of Channing), of bronze, by Herbert Adams. The carved canopy, of granite and marble, designed by Vincent C. Griffith, architect. Erected in 1903. A gift to the city by John Foster. On the marble columns of the canopy and on the marble stone at the back of the monument are inscriptions. The equestrian statue of Washington (in the main path, facing the Arlington Street gate), of bronze, by Thomas Ball. Erected in 1869. Provided for by popular subscription. The marble Venus in the fountain near by was the first work of art placed in the Garden. The Arlington Street Church (Unitarian), which dignifies the corner of Arlington and Boylston streets, was the first church built in this quarter (1860-1861). Its exterior design is broadly after old London Wren churches. The steeple was the first in Boston to be constructed entirely of stone. In its tower is a chime of sixteen bells. The church organization dates from 1727.

On the corner of Arlington Street and Newbury Street (the next street north opening from Arlington Street) is the house of the New Church Union, the headquarters of the New Jerusalem Church. Here are established the New Church libraries and the business departments of the Union, which is the business and financial representative of the Massachusetts Association of the New Jerusalem Church. Next to this building, on Newbury Street (No. 2), is the house of the St. Botolph Club, the representative literary and professional club of the city, taking its name from St. Botolph in old Boston, England (organized in 1880; Francis Parkman, the historian, the first president). It possesses a silver-gilt “loving cup” which formerly belonged to the corporation of the English Boston. In its art gallery exhibitions of new work by artists are given during the winter season. The picturesque church nearly opposite the St. Botolph is Emmanuel Church (Protestant Episcopal). It is built of the local Roxbury conglomerate stone. The church organization dates from 1860, and this edifice was erected two years later. No. 35 is the present home of Margaret Deland. Commonwealth Avenue opens from the middle of Arlington Street, its parkway being directly opposite the main path of the Public Garden, which terminates at the Arlington Street gate. A lovely vista opens through the long park of beautiful trees. The succession of statues down the long walk are:

Washington Statue, Public Garden

Alexander Hamilton, of granite, by Dr. William Rimmer. Erected in 1865. A gift to the city by Thomas Lee, the same who gave the Ether Monument in the Public Garden. This was the first statue in the country to be cut from granite. The inscription characterizes Hamilton as “orator, writer, soldier, jurist, financier. Although his particular province was the treasury, his genius pervaded the whole administration of Washington.”

General John Glover of Marblehead, “a soldier of the Revolution,” of bronze, by Martin Milmore. Erected in 1875. A gift to the city by Benjamin T. Read. The inscription details the conspicuous features of Glover’s military service with his marine regiment of Marblehead men, notably his leadership in transporting the army across the river from Brooklyn to New York and across the Delaware in 1776.

William Lloyd Garrison, a sitting figure, of bronze, by Olin L. Warner. Erected in 1886. The fund for this statue was raised by popular subscription. Beneath the chair in which the figure is seated lies a representation of a volume of the Liberator. The inscriptions are quotations of the motto of the Liberator: “Our Country is the World — Our Countrymen are Mankind”; and the declaration in Garrison’s salutatory in his paper: “I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard.”

Leif Ericson, the Norse discoverer, of the year 1000; an ideal figure, of bronze, by Anne Whitney. Erected in 1886. The pedestal dis plays reliefs, one representing a Norse scene, — a banqueting hall, with Leif returned from his voyages relating his discoveries; the other the fabled Norse landing on American shores. This statue is across Massachusetts Avenue where the parkway ends. On Berkeley Street, at the corner of Marlborough Street, a block north of Commonwealth Avenue, is the beautiful stone edifice, with corner tower and steeple, of the First Church of Boston (Unitarian), fifth in succession from the rude little fabric of 1632 on the present State Street (see p. 5). It was erected in 1868, succeeding the meetinghouse which stood on Chauncy Place (now Street), off Summer Street, in the business quarter, for sixty years. The Rev. William Emerson, father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was the minister of the church (his service being from 1791 to 1811) when that meetinghouse was built in 1808. On Berkeley Street, at the corner of Newbury Street, south of the avenue, is the Gothic Central Church (Congregational Trinitarian), built in 1867. Like the First Church this is constructed of the Roxbury rubble, with sandstone trimmings. Its fine spire, two hundred and thirty-six feet high, is the tallest in the city. This church (erected in 1867) is the successor of the first meetinghouse of the society, which stood on Winter Street, in the heart of the “down-town” shopping quarter, from 1841 to 1865.

Leif Ericson Statue

The only church on Commonwealth Avenue is the notable structure with its Florentine tower, at the western corner of Clarendon Street. This is the First Baptist Church, descendant of the pioneer Baptist meetinghouse at the North End which the then proscribed sect built in 1679, and which not long after was nailed up by the court officers (see p. 57). This edifice was originally erected (in 1873) by the Brattle Square Church organization (Unitarian), to succeed the historic meetinghouse in Brattle Square (see p. 17). It was purchased by the Baptists after the dissolution of the Unitarian society and the sale of the church property by auction. The massive square stone tower, rising one hundred and seventy-six feet, with frieze of colossal bas-reliefs, gives this structure an especial distinction in the Back Bay architecture. The sculptured figures on the four sides of the frieze represent the four Christian eras, — baptism, communion, marriage, and death; the statues at the angles typify the angels of the judgment blowing golden trumpets. These figures were cut by Italian sculptors from designs by Bartholdi after the stones had been set in place.

The lower south corner of the avenue and Dartmouth Street is impressively marked by the great marble hotel, the Vendome. Farther down, on the north side, below Exeter Street, is the Algonquin Clubhouse, a light stone building of striking façade, sumptuously designed and arranged for the club’s uses. The Algonquin (organized in 1885) is the representative business club of the city, composed largely of active men of affairs. In near neighborhood — on Beacon Street, nearly opposite the head of Exeter Street — is the University Clubhouse. It is a rich dwelling refashioned for club uses. It is especially favored by position with an outlook at the rear over the river. This club (organized in 1892), composed of college graduates resident in Boston and vicinity, is one of the largest of its class in the country.

Below Exeter Street, also on the favored water side of Beacon Street, is the Holmes house (No. 296), the last town house of Dr. Holmes, identified with the mellow productions of his latter years and old age, — as “The Poet at the Breakfast Table,” “Over the Teacups,” the grave and gay poems, “The Iron Gate,” and “The Broomstick Train” on the advent of the trolley car. Farther down, at No. 392, is the home of James Ford Rhodes, the historian of the United States “from the compromise of 1850.” Above Exeter Street, on the south side of Beacon Street (No. 241), is the latter-day home of Julia Ward Howe.

Copley Square and its Surroundings. Copley Square is at the junction of Boylston Street, Huntington Avenue, Trinity Place, St. James Avenue, and Dartmouth Street. The cross streets, Berkeley and Clarendon, are near its eastern boundary; the thoroughfare of Dartmouth Street makes its western bound. About the square and in its immediate neighborhood are grouped some of the most important institutions of the city, with noble buildings, beautiful churches, and attractive hotels. Bounding the square are: the Public Library, occupying the entire west side; the old Museum of Fine Arts (see pp. 91A-91D), the Westminster Chambers (hotel), and Trinity Church on the south side; the Second Church on the north side; and the Old South Church marking the northwest corner. On Boylston Street east of the square, beginning at Berkeley Street, are: on the north side, the Natural History Museum and the main buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; on the south side, the Hotel Brunswick. On Boylston Street west of the square is Jacob Sleeper Hall (dedicated March, 1908), the chief Boston University building (see p. 47), next the Public Library and extending to Exeter Street. On the lower corner of Exeter Street is the Hotel Lenox. Nearly opposite, on Exeter Street, is the Athletic Clubhouse, one of the largest of its class in the country. On Dartmouth Street, north, next beyond the New Old South Church, is the Boston Art Clubhouse, with entrance on Newbury Street. Opposite the clubhouse, on Dartmouth Street, is the Hotel Victoria. On Huntington Avenue, just outside the square, are the Hotel Nottingham, the Hotel Oxford, and the Copley Square Hotel. A short walk below, on Huntington Avenue, is the great building of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, with its fine halls. From Copley Square Trinity Place leads directly to the Trinity Place station of the New York Central Railroad for outbound trains, and Dartmouth Street leads to the Back Bay station of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, From Huntington Avenue, at the corner of Irvington Street, a block below the square, is the passage to the Huntington Avenue station of the New York Central for inward-bound trains.

Copley Square and Vicinity

Public Library Bates Hall, Public Library

The Public Library building is one of the notable architectural monuments of its day. It is built of granite of a peculiar pinkish white color, the façade classic in design. Its dimensions are two hundred and twenty-five feet long by two hundred and twenty-seven deep, and its height from the sidewalk to the top of the cornice is seventy feet. It is quadrangular in shape, surrounding a court, and covers with its broad entrance platform, exclusive of the court, an acre and a half of ground. The elegance of its proportions and the purity of its style are remarked as the chief architectural merits of the work. The main entrance is topped with a round arch, over which appears a medallion of the seal of the library by Augustus St. Gaudens. Sculptures by Bela L. Pratt, “Science” and “Art,” are ultimately to be set in the stone blocks of the platform by the entrance doors. The vestibule, the entrance hall with high vaulted ceiling, and the noble marble stair, case rising beyond are impressive features of the first floor. In the vestibule is the bronze statue of Sir Harry Vane, by Frederick MacMonnies. The artistically embellished bronze doors, admitting to the entrance hall, were designed by Daniel C. French. In the ceiling of this hall are wrought names of men identified with Boston, eminent in letters, art, science, law, and public work. The great marble lions on either side of the first landing of the staircase are by Louis St. Gaudens. They were memorial gifts of the Second and Twentieth Regiments, Massachusetts Volunteers, in the Civil War. The decorations on the walls of the stairway and the corridor above are by Puvis de Chavannes. They represent, in separate panels, Philosophy, Astronomy, History, Chemistry, Physics, Pastoral Poetry, Dramatic Poetry, Epic Poetry, and finally, in one symbolic composition, “The Muses welcoming the Genius of Enlightenment.” The decorations of the Delivery Room, which opens from this corridor, are by Edwin A. Abbey, and illustrate the legend of the Holy Grail. The walls of the corridor of the upper floor, familiarly known as the “Sargent Hall,” have in part the decorations by John S. Sargent which in their completed form will represent the triumph of religion. Only the panels of the east and west walls have yet been finished. The subject of the first of these is the confused struggle in the Jewish nation between monotheism and polytheism. That of the second is the dogma of the Redemption. The ceiling of the second Children’s Room, on the principal floor, carries a painting by John Elliott representing the “Triumph of Time”; twelve female figures symbolize the hours, and one male figure, Time. The Christian centuries are typified by twenty horses arranged in rows of four each. This decoration was given to the Library by citizens of Boston. The decorations of the lobby leading to the Children’s Room from the main corridor are by Joseph Lindon Smith, and were given by Arthur A. Carey, a citizen of Boston. The lobby at the opposite end of the corridor leading to the Delivery Room was decorated by Elmer E. Garnsey. Besides its mural decorations the Library is rich in memorial busts and other art objects.

The principal reading room, known as Bates Hall (in honor of Joshua Bates, who gave the Library at it beginning, in 1852, a fund of fifty thousand dollars, besides an equivalent amount in books), is in its dimensions and architectural features the most important apartment in the building. It is two hundred and eighteen feet long, forty-two and one half feet wide, and fifty feet high to the crown of the arches. The barrel-arched ceiling is deeply paneled and ornamented with rosettes. In this hall are collections of reference books and works in general literature, accessible to the public on open shelves. Readers are also served at the tables by runners, who bring from the stacks such vol­umes as are requested for hall use. The Children’s Rooms on this floor are entirely devoted to the needs of young readers. Special attendants aid the children in the selection of books, and instruct them in the use of the library. Nine thousand volumes are placed on open shelves here, mainly the better class of “ juveniles,” boys’ and girls’ fiction, and books of travel and adventure written for the young. Large tables are provided at which the children may read by themselves. The Children’s Reference Room is a study room, and is equipped with books intended to be used by young students. Children come here to write compositions, to look up topics connected with their school work, and to pre­pare their daily lessons. A collection of the text-books used in the Boston public schools is an important feature of this room, and the books contained in it are alike helpful to those who have left school and to teachers from other places. General and special reference hooks are also shelved here, duplicating in some cases those kept in Bates Hall for older readers; and there is a section of books on pedagogy and kindergarten methods for teachers.

In connection with the work for children, the schools included among the agencies of the Library (one hundred and twenty public and parochial schools) must be mentioned. These are supplied with books either for topical reference or miscellaneous reading, which are usually delivered by the Library wagons and may be changed frequently. Each set of books is made up for the occasion, and the teachers’ selection is followed as far as possible. The total number of volumes sent to the schools from the Central Library and Branches in 1909 was 22,263. Each large Branch library, also, regularly supplies certain neighbor ing schools. Applications for Library cards are taken by Library employees in all the schools once a year.

On the floor below are the Patent Room, with the best collection of publications relating to patents to be found in the country, except that at Washington; the Periodical Room, with a complete file of current periodicals and magazines; and the Newspaper Room, in which over three hundred newspapers from all parts of the world are regularly received and placed on the reading files. The Department of Documents and Statistics is in the rear part of the building, approached through the arcade, across the courtyard from the main-entrance corridor. It contains a large and constantly increasing collection of statistical works, official publications, and books relating to economic subjects; also many rare and valuable historical manuscripts and broadsides.

On the third floor are the Special Libraries, comprising the Fine Arts Department, the Allen A. Brown Library of Music, and the Barton, Barlow, Prince, Lewis, Bowditch, and Ticknor collections. The collections shelved on this floor are mainly intended for reference, and ample accommodation is provided for the use of students and for research work. The Brown Library contains more than eight thousand volumes relating to music; the Barton Collection (fourteen thousand volumes) is especially rich in Shakespeariana, unequaled in the world, outside of two or three great English libraries; and the Ticknor Library includes nearly seven thousand volumes of Spanish literature. These and the other collections designated by the names of the donors were presented to the Library. All of them contain many rare and exceedingly valuable books. The Fine Arts Department contains, besides a carefully selected collection of books relating to architecture, painting, and the allied arts, more than fifteen thousand photographs from all over the world, besides six thousand process pictures for the use of schools. Exhibitions are held regularly in a room especially devoted to this purpose, and collections of prints are sent to the schools and to the branch libraries and deposit stations.

On the north side of the building, opening from Boylston Street, a large Lecture Hall is provided, in which lectures on educational or literary subjects are given during the winter season.

The Boston Public Library system consists of the Central Library (this Copley Square building); eleven Branch Libraries, in different parts of the city, each having permanent collections of books; and seventeen delivery stations (of which all are reading rooms, formerly part service stations and shop stations). Regular de posits of books are placed in one hundred and forty-nine schools and institutions, and fifty-eight fire stations. In all, therefore, there are two hundred and thirty, five agencies for supplying books to the public. Regular daily wagon-delivery service is maintained between the Central Library and the outlying agencies. The administration of the Library is controlled by a board of five trustees appointed by the mayor, a librarian and assistant librarian, and, including chiefs of departments, a staff of two hundred and ninety employees for the regular service, and ninety, four for the Sunday and evening service. The Central Library is open daily from 9 A.M. to 10 P.M. (on Sunday from 12 m.) in the winter, closing one hour earlier in the summer; and the hours at the branches approximate this schedule, with some variation during the period from June to September.

The Library comprises a collection of nearly one million volumes. About thirty thousand are annually added. It is a circulating library free to every resident of Boston, and the use of the books within the Library is open to all, whether resident of the city or not. It is not only the largest circulating and reference library in the United States, but it undertakes a greater variety of service than is rendered by the noted libraries of the world. By means of an interlibrary loan system it is serving scholarship throughout the country, its recorded applications for books showing a wide range of towns and cities and educational institutions. The annual circulation for home use approximates one million six hundred and fifty thousand volumes, including the circulation from the branches. Besides this there is an extensive use of books in the Library itself of which no statistical record is kept.

Old Museum of Fine Arts Building

The Library maintains its own printing department and bindery. It issues a Weekly Bulletin of new accessions, and from time to time special bibliographies and other publications of importance. The annual appropriation made by the city for the maintenance of the institution is about $320,000. It also enjoys the income from about $385,000 of invested trust funds. Horace G. Wadlin is the present librarian. The architects of the Central Library were McKim, Mead & White. Its total cost, including the land, was $2,500,000. It was opened to the public in 1895. The old Art Museum building, of brick with terra-cotta ornaments, is in interesting contrast with the Public Library. It is now utilized for occasional expositions.

Trinity Church (Protestant Episcopal) is one of the richest examples of ecclesiastical architecture in the city. It was the crowning work of the architect, H. H. Richardson, and is called his masterpiece. Its style as defined by him is the French Romanesque, as freely rendered in the pyramidal-towered churches of Auvergne, the central tower pre­dominating. It is con­structed of yellowish granite, with brown freestone trimmings. The elaborate decora­tive work of the inte­rior is by John La Farge. The chapel, with open outside stairway, is connected with the church by the open cloister, and here are placed stones from the old St. Botolph Church in Boston, England, presented by the authorities of that church. Trinity Church was consecrated in 1877. Its predecessor was destroyed in the fire of 1872. That stood on Summer Street at the corner of Hawley Street, a Gothic structure with massive stone walls and tower. Phillips Brooks was rector of Trinity from 1869 to 1891, when he was made Bishop of Massachusetts. The Phillips Brooks house near by, on the northeast corner of Clarendon and Newbury streets, is the rectory of the church. Trinity, founded in 1728, is the third Episcopal church established in Boston.

The Phillips Brooks Memorial, in the green on the Huntington Avenue side of this church, was erected by popular subscription of citizens as a tribute to the beloved preacher, and passed to the care and custody of the corporation of Trinity by deed from the committee representing the subscribers. The statue is by Augustus St. Gaudens, and the canopy by Charles F. McKim of McKim, Mead, & White. Both are posthumous works, but the designs of both were practically completed before the death of the sculptor and the architect. The statue — of heroic size, representing the preacher in his pulpit garb and attitude, and the hooded head of Jesus appearing back of the figure, with the Saviour’s right hand on the preacher’s shoulder, typifying the inspirer — exhibits St. Gaudens’ last and boldest development of his scheme of the dual composition, the blending of the realistic with the ideal, in outdoor statuary; and as such invites and receives unusual attention. The memorial was formally unveiled on January 22, 1910, at the conclusion of dedicatory exercises within the church, attended by a distinguished audience, when Henry L. Higginson, chairman of the committee of citizens, gave the presentation address, and the gift was accepted for the corporation by the Rev. Alexander Mann, present rector of Trinity.

New Old South Church

The New Old South Church, so called to distinguish it from its still existing predecessor, the Old South Meetinghouse (Congregational Trinitarian), is also, like Trinity, noteworthy for richness of design and ornamentation in both the exterior and interior of the structure. It is in the North Italian Gothic style, and constructed mainly of the local Roxbury stone. The great tower terminating in a pyramidal spire, composed of combinations of colored stones, rises two hundred and forty-eight feet. The main entrance through the front of the tower is richly decorated and recessed. Delicate carvings of vines and fruits in a belt of gray sandstone ornament the façade. In the beautiful arcade between the tower and the south transept, across which are the words, “Behold I have set thee an open door,” are inscribed tablets. One bears this inscription: “1669. Old South Church. Preserved and blessed of God for more than two hundred years while worshiping on its original site, corner of Washington and Milk streets, whence it was removed to this building in 1875, amid constant proofs of his guidance and loving favor. Qui transtulit sustinet.” Cummings & Sears were the architects of this church. The Second Church (Unitarian), descendant of the historic Old North Church of North Square, founded in 1649, is built in large part from the stones of the previous meetinghouse in Bedford Street, now in the business quarter, which was taken down in 1872. It is a plain Gothic exterior, beautified by a complete mantle of ivy. The interior is broad and lofty, showing the open-timbered roof. Interesting memorials of former pastors of distinction are here. In the transept at the right of the pulpit is a bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson (minister in 1829-1832) by Sidney H. Morse. On the other side of the transept is a portrait of John Lathrop, the patriot minister of the Revolutionary period. In front of the pulpit is Cotton Mather’s pulpit chair.

The two main buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (founded by Professor William B. Rogers as a school of applied science, and chartered in 1861) occupy, together with the Natural History Museum, the entire square bounded by Boylston, Berkeley, Newbury, and Clarendon streets. They are the Rogers Building, dignified in design, with high portal approached by a noble flight of broad stone steps, and the severely plain Walker Building. In the former are the administrative offices of the institution and the departments of mining, mathematics, drawing, history, economics, and English; in the latter, the departments of physics and chemistry. Other buildings, the Henry L. Pierce and Engineering buildings, in which are the departments of civil and mechanical engineering, architecture, naval architecture, biology, and geology, are in Trinity Place; the Workshops are in Garrison Street, off Huntington Avenue; and the Gymnasium is on Exeter Street. The several buildings comprise, in addition to drawing, recitation, and lecture rooms, eight laboratories or groups of laboratories.

In the Rogers Building is Huntington Hall, in which the Society of Arts, organized with the institute for the encouragement of practical applications of the sciences, has its meetings. Here, also, are given the free lecture courses of the Lowell Institute (founded in 1839 by the will of John Lowell, Jr.). The Lowell School of Practical Design, established by the trustees of the Lowell Institute (1872) for the promotion of industrial art in the United States, is maintained by the Institute of Technology in its workshops. In the rear of the main buildings, on Newbury Street, is the Technology Clubhouse.

The Natural History Museum, sedate and elegant in style and finish, fronts on Berkeley Street. It is the building of the Boston Society of Natural History, founded in 1831. It was erected in 1864. Over the entrance door is carved the society’s seal, which bears the head of Cuvier. On the keystones of the windows are carved heads of animals, and a sculptured eagle surmounts the pediment. The collections in the halls and galleries of this museum are interesting and valuable, and are admirably arranged. Upon entering, in the first hall are seen the introductory synoptical collection and sundry important geological specimens. From the ceiling of the main hall is suspended the large skeleton of a whale. In the library, which contains from thirty to forty thousand volumes, much consulted by students, are fine mineralogical, geological, and botanical collections. On the second floor is a hall filled with stuffed animals, geological, physiological, and fossil cases, and skeletons of elephants and extinct fauna. Conspicuous is the skeleton of a gorilla. In the galleries here are New England tree and shrub and other botanical specimens; also conchological collections. On the third and fourth floors are general ornithological and ethnological collections, with the magnificent Lafresnaye Collection of birds, nests, and eggs. Lecture halls and rooms are in the building, in which instruction is given to classes of students. The museum is open free on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and on Sunday afternoons. Other days, entrance fee, twenty-five cents.

Natural History Museum and Technology Buildings

Chickering Hall

Below Copley Square, in the neighborhood of Huntington Avenue, are other institutions of note. On Exeter Street, two blocks north, is the Massachusetts Normal Art School (established by the State in 1873), and on opposite corners the South Congregational Church, long the pulpit of Edward Everett Hale, and the Boston Spiritual Temple. On Irvington Street, south of the avenue, is the South Armory, headquarters of the First Brigade, the First Coast Artillery Corps, the First Squadron of Cavalry, and Battery A, Light Artillery, of the State Militia. On St. Botolph Street, reached from the avenue by Garrison Street, is the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy (chartered 1852). Beyond the great exhibition halls of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, a few steps from the avenue, on side streets — Falmouth, Norway, and St. Paul streets — is the striking stone Christian Science Tem­ple, rising to the lofty height of two hundred and twenty feet, topped by a magnificent dome, and with an auditorium of five thousand sittings. It has a melo­dious chime of bells, which are rung with pleasing frequency. This is The First Church of Christ, Scientist: The Mother Church so called, generously endowed by Mrs. Eddy, the founder of this denomination.

About the Junction of Huntington and Massachusetts Avenues. In this section are grouped more notable buildings, giving it a special distinction. On the north side of Huntington Avenue, near the junction, is Chickering Hall, with ornamented façade. Next, at the east corner of the two avenues, is Horticultural Hall, the fine building of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (organized 1829), in which great exhibitions of flowers and fruits are held in their seasons. On the opposite corner is Symphony Hall, successor of the old Music Hall as a “temple of music,” where the concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the oratorios of the Handel and Haydn Society are given. Farther down Huntington Avenue, on the corner of Gainsborough Street, is the building of the New England Conservatory of Music (established in 1867), the greatest institution of its kind in the country, embracing sixteen separate schools and training students in every branch of the art. Opposite this are the buildings of the New England Children’s Hospital (incorporated in 1869).

Horticultural Hall

Symphony Hall

Through Westland Avenue, north of the junction of Huntington and Massachusetts avenues, the Fens, or Back Bay Park, may be reached. At Hemenway Street is the Western entrance, with the Memorial Fountain in commemoration of Ellen C. Johnson, superintendent of the State Reformatory School for Women at Sherborn, who left by her will a fund for the erection of a drinking font for animals at some public place in the city. Continuing along Huntington Avenue, we soon pass several buildings of note in succession, and come upon a noble assemblage of institutions, museums, colleges, schools, housed in monumental structures, facing the thoroughfare, and backed upon or over­looking the upper Fens. On the right side is the Boston Opera House, with handsome, dignified façade, a Boston institution for the presentation of operas by its own organization throughout the regular season. Opposite are the grounds and buildings of the Boston American Base­ball Club. Above, on the left side, No. 416, is the building of the Tufts College Medical and Dental Departments: the seat of Tufts College is on College Hill, Medford. Next above, on the right side, is the impressive modern structure of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The Museum of Fine Arts (incorporated 1870, first opened 1876), with façade in classical style, marked by extreme simplicity and dignity, is the second structure of the institution, erected in 1907-1909, and formally opened in November, 1909. In its general scheme the building embodies the results of three years’ studies of the principal museums of Europe and of modern museology, made by advisory committees composed of artists and architects, in connection with the director and the museum staff; and the principles governing the arrangement of the rooms and exhibits, though not wholly new, are applied with a consistency and thoroughness that are distinctly new. The classification is by what is termed the dual system, providing a compact exhibition in rooms on the main floor and reserved collections for study on the floor below. Each department comprises a series of rooms with independent approaches, and the arrangement of the exhibits of each department is historical and chronological.

The main floor is occupied by the galleries of five departments, — Pictures, Egyptian Art, Classical Art, Western Art, Chinese and Japanese Art, — and the Library. Waymarks of different colors, and each with a section map, direct the visitor to the circuits in all these departments, which begin in the corridors from the rotunda, to the right and left, at the top of the main stairway. The department of Paintings occupies the whole north side of the main floor (the circuit beginning at the right of the rotunda through the corridor of paintings and drawings), and one room, devoted to paintings on panels, on the ground floor. On the walls of the corridor are water colors by Burne-Jones, Troyon, Barye, Millet, and Joseph Lindon Smith; drawings by Millet, Rodin, and others. At the left of the corridor opens a small gallery, which, together with the east gallery adjoining, is at present vacant. The East Gallery will be hung with Impressionists and other pictures in high key. The gallery adjoining the corridor, and the long gallery adjacent will contain the large paintings by Le Rolle, Regnault, Lhermitte, and others, as well as modern American paintings. Crossing the rotunda, the circuit enters the Early American Room. Here are canvases by Copley, Stuart, West, and Trumbull, including the familiar heads of “Washington and his Wife,” originally in the Boston Athenæum, and the portraits of Samuel Adams, Hancock, and General Knox, originally in Faneuil Hall. In the next room are Roman interiors by Pannini, two paintings by Boucher, — “Going to Market” and “The Return from Market”; Turner’s “Slave Ship”; and examples of the work of Chardin, Greuze, Duplessis, Philippe de Champaigne, Wilson, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Constable, Romney, Opie, Leslie, Crome, Bonnington, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir Henry Raeburn. Next is the Flemish and Dutch Seventeenth Century Room, showing Van Dyck’s “Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their Children, afterwards Charles H and James H,” and the “Portrait of Anna Maria de Schodt”; Rembrandt’s “Danaë,” “Portrait of an Old Man,” and “Portraits of Dr. and Mrs. Nicholas Tulp”; “Portrait of a Lady,” by Franz Hals, and examples of the work of Santvoort, d’Hondecoeter, Van Goyen, Peter de Hoogh, Molenaer, Huysum, Teniers, Willem Kalf, Maas, Van Vliet, Ruysdael, Koninck, Thys, Rubens (“Marriage of St. Catharine”), Metsu, Cuyp, Van der Velde, and Murant. The West Gallery, devoted to Spanish and Italian sixteenth century paintings, contains Borrasso’s “Coronation of the Virgin,” given by Dr. Denman W. Ross in memory of the late Samuel Dennis Warren; Goya’s “Portrait of a Man” (a recent gift); “The Philosopher,” by Ribera; Velázquez’s “Philip IV of Spain” and “Don Balthazar Carlos”; “Fray Feliz,” by El Greco; “Infanta Maria Theresa,” by Carrero; “Portrait of the Artist’s Son,” by Goya; “The Crown of Thorns,” by Ribera; “A Sibyl” and “Justice” by Veronese; “The Scourging of Christ,” by Bassano; “Apotheosis of a Poet,” by Tiepolo; and examples of the work of Sustermans, Tinelli, Solario, and Moroni. In the Panel Room, on the ground floor, we have Crivelli’s “Pietà”; an altarpiece by Bartolomèo Vivarini; “St. Luke drawing the Portrait of ,he Madonna,” by Rogier van der Weyden; a triptych by Sano di Pietro; and examples of the work of Gozzarelli, Peruzzi, Bellini, Wohlgemuth, Timoteo della Vite, School of Botticelli, and the Venetian School.

Museum of Fine Arts

The department of Egyptian Art, one of the largest of the Museum, occupies a series of rooms in the eastern wing, reached by a corridor from the rotunda. The Hall of the Mastabas is first entered. Here are objects of great interest from the Prehistoric and Old Empire Period, and sculpture of the Middle and Early New Empire. The Mastaba Chambers are from the group of tombs at Sakkara and are fine specimens of the wall decorations of Dynasty V. From this hall opens a room containing ,he Way Collection (given by C. Granville Way in 1872), comprising many small objects of great interest, among them a series of scarabs classified according to subjects or dynasty. Next is the New Empire Room, containing objects dating in general from the Middle and New Empires. Thence the circuit passes into a small room containing in a case a garment of cut leather dating from the reign of Thothmes IV, 1436-1427 B.C. Next, the Ptolemaic Room, displaying a varied collection, with examples of Coptic textiles. The department of Classical Art adjoins that of Egyptian Art. At the north end of the corridor leading to it is a colossal statue of Cybele. Its circuit begins with the Archaic Room. This contains small bronzes, vases of stone and pottery, terra-cotta figures of the sixth and early fifth centuries representing scenes from daily life. Next, the Fifth Century Room. This is so arranged as to lead up to one of the Museum’s most prized objects, — the three-sided marble relief at the end. Here are terra-cotta vases, gems and jewelry, superb bronze vessels, one of them an early Greek basin with fine figures constituting its handles. In connecting small rooms are the finer marbles: the head of Aphrodite (of the Francis Bartlett collection, the largest gift of works of art ever received by the Museum); the youthful Hermes; the late Greek torso of a maid; and, exhibited under glass, a beautiful head of a girl, found in Chios and conjectured to have been possibly by Praxiteles. Next, the Fourth Century Room, the chief exhibit of which is a series of small terra-cotta figures. Finally, the Late Greek Room, with more terra-cotta figurines and bronzes. In the balcony of the court stand marbles of the Græco-Roman period.

The department of Western Art occupies a series of galleries beginning with the Western Art Corridor at the left of the staircase and continuing through the Nearer Orient Room, the Tapestry Gallery, the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Century rooms, the Eighteenth Century Vestibule, and the Library Corridor, and including the Bremgarten and Lawrence rooms on the ground floor. The collection em braces specimens of all the arts developed in Europe and the Nearer Orient, or under European influence since classical times. Objects of aboriginal American and African workmanship are also included. The department of Chinese and Japanese Art is in the west wing, reached by the Japanese Corridor. The museum collection of this class is the largest and finest in the world, and only a small proportion can be exhibited here at one time, the bulk being stored on the floor below. In the Japanese display are rich specimens of metal work, ivory and wood carving, costumes, and lacquer, the latter being especially noteworthy. The elaborate Morse Collection of Japanese Pottery, which gives a more complete representation of the fictile art of Japan than all other exist ing collections combined, occupies a gallery by itself at the left of the main entrance of the building.

The Library, dignified, in virtue of its endowment by a generous friend, by the title of the “William Morris Hunt Memorial Library,” is a beautiful hall, its upper walls hung with tapestries and adorned with pictures, notably the large “Boar Hunt” by Snyders. Next to the Reading Room is the Photograph Collection, including some thirty thousand photographs representing the sculpture, painting, and architecture of Europe, the Nearer Orient, and Japan. The Print Department occupies a suite of rooms on the ground floor, with a Study Room ad joining. Selections from the Museum’s great collection of Casts are shown in the two large courts and adjacent rooms. In the basement of the west wing is a public restaurant. The Museum School is housed in a separate building of a single story, built around two courtyards. Here all the classes and departments are together under one management. The entrance corridor is hung with envois from students who have held the Paige Travelling Scholarship which entitles the holder to two years’ study of art in Europe.

The Museum School gives instruction in drawing and painting, in modeling and design, with supplementary courses in artistic anatomy and perspective. The first suggestion of a public establishment in Boston to be devoted wholly to the fine arts was the result of a wish to make more accessible to the public several collections of works of art already existing in the Athenæum, at Harvard College, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Museum has been wholly dependent upon private liberality for its creation and maintenance. It is managed by a board of thirty trustees, of whom three are appointed by Harvard College, three by the Boston Athenæum, and three by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There are five ex-officio members, of whom three, including the mayor, represent the city of Boston. The remainder of the board are those first named in the act of incorporation and those chosen by the board to fill vacancies in its number. The president of the corporation is Gardiner M. Lane; director of the Museum, Arthur Fairbanks. The Museum is open every day in the year excepting the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas; on week days, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. (November to March 1, 4 P.M.); Sundays, 12 M. to 5 P.M. Admission is free on every Saturday and Sunday and on public holidays. On other days the entrance fee is twenty-five cents.

The present building is only a part of the structure as planned. The architect was Guy Lowell.

The Gardner Museum of Art Harvard Medical School

Just beyond the Art Museum, reached from Huntington Avenue by Ruggles Street, is Fenway Court, which contains the rich collection of works of art belonging to the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum corporation. Next beyond this Venetian structure are the buildings of Simmons College (chartered 1899), established by the will of John Simmons, a Boston merchant, to furnish instruction in “such branches of art, science, and industry” as will “best enable women to earn an in, dependent livelihood.” Back of Fenway Court, facing the Fenway road at its junction with Huntington Avenue, is the fine cluster of Boston school buildings of the higher grade, — the Girls’ Latin, the Boston Normal, and the High School of Commerce. On Longwood Avenue, here opening from Huntington Avenue, is the Harvard University Dental School and hospital, a dignified building of brick with stately marble entrance porch; and immediately beyond this, the noble group of five marble structures constituting the Harvard University School of Medicine, the central, white-pillared administration building facing an open court and reached from the Longwood Avenue entrance by broad terraced stone walks on either side. The four other buildings are designed for laboratory purposes and are all constructed on one general plan, — two parallel wings united by an amphitheater. The rear entrance is from grounds opening upon a proposed Avenue Louis Pasteur. In the administration building is the Warren Anatomical Museum, the original collection of which was given by Dr. John Collins Warren, professor of anatomy and surgery in the School from on one general plan, — two parallel wings united by an amphitheater. The rear entrance is from grounds opening upon a proposed Avenue Louis Pasteur. In the administration building is the Warren Anatomical Museum, the original collection of which was given by Dr. John Collins Warren, professor of anatomy and surgery in the School from 1815 to 1847, succeeding his father, who was the first to hold that position upon its establishment.

We may return by way of Brookline Avenue, taking an Ipswich Street car, and pass on this side of the Fens. The church suggestive of colonial architecture, on Peterborough and Jersey streets, is the Church of the Disciples (Unitarian), successor of the meetinghouse at the South End of the city, for nearly fifty years the pulpit of James Freeman Clarke, who founded this church in 1841 as a free church, all expenses to be met by voluntary subscriptions. We should leave the car at its entrance upon Boylston Street from Ipswich Street, and pass, a short block westward, to the Fenway, the east and south border of the Fens.

Westland Avenue Entrance to the Fens

On the Fenway near Boylston Street is the handsome house of the Boston Medical Library (founded in 1874), ornamenting the street. The principal reading room is Holmes Hall, named for Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and adorned with mementos of him. His own valuable medical library is preserved in the general collection of this library, the fourth in size of the medical libraries of the country. There is here the Storer collection of medical medals, remarkable in its variety and extent.

At the corner of the Fenway and Boylston Street, facing the latter, is the house of the Massachusetts Historical Society (founded in 1791), the oldest historical society in the country, and probably in the world. This distinguished building was designed by Wheelwright & Haven, and was erected by the society in 1897-1899. It contains the society’s rare library of forty-three thousand volumes, enriched with historical docu­ments and manuscripts. Over the entrance to the Dowse Library are the crossed swords which used to rest above the library of William H. Prescott, and to which Thackeray alludes in the opening of “The Virginians.” The cabinet museum of curios contains numerous interesting objects, among them the wooden Indian which topped the old Province House and the cannon ball which struck the Brattle Square Church during the Siege. The model of the historic meetinghouse is in the upper hall. The museum is open on Wednesday afternoons only, from 2 to 5. The chief function of this society is to publish, and it has issued infinitely more publications than any other historical society in this country, and more than all the other societies combined, the number approaching two hundred. Charles Francis Adams is the present president of the society, and Dr. Samuel A. Green has long been the librarian. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (founded in 1780) is also established in this building.

John Boyle O'Reilly Monument

Near by, in the Fens, is the monument to John Boyle O’Reilly, the Irish poet, editor, and athlete. We may pass along the Fens north­ward by a circling course to Charlesgate and finish our tour in the newer residential part of this quarter, with its broad streets and fine dwellings, locally termed the “New Back Bay.” Charlesgate is the passage through which Muddy River empties into the Charles River. Near the Fenway, on Commonwealth Avenue, is the memorial to Patrick A. Collins, another worthy Irish-American, orator and statesman. This is by Mr. and Mrs. Henry H. Kitson, and was placed in 1908. Bay State Road, making off from Charlesgate West to the riverside, is especially noticeable for its display of domestic architecture. On Charlesgate East and Commonwealth Avenue is the sumptuous Hotel Somerset. On Commonwealth Avenue near Massachusetts Avenue is the equally sumptuous Hotel Puritan.

6. THE SOUTH END

The South End is now a faded quarter. Like the Back Bay it is composed largely of “made land.” It was developed from the narrow neck connecting the old town with Roxbury, and was planned and built up on a generous scale to become the permanent fashionable part of the city. Such favor it was enjoying when the lavish development of the Back Bay began, and fashion was not long in turning from it and moving westward. With all its air of having seen better days, however, this quarter still has attractions. Its streets are broad, some are shaded with fine trees; numerous small parks are scattered through it; many of the houses are yet substantial dwellings, with a look of roominess within; and various important institutions are established within its borders. The latter most interest the visitor.

Among the most noteworthy of these institutions are the Public Latin and English High Schools, on Warren Avenue, Dartmouth and Montgomery streets; the Girls’ High School, West Newton Street; the Boston College (Roman Catholic, founded in 1860), Harrison Avenue (No. 761), near East Newton Street; the great Boston City Hospital, with its twenty, six buildings (a group of nineteen constituting the City Hospital proper, and a group of seven, in the South Department, for infectious diseases), occupying lands bounded by Harrison Avenue, East Concord Street, Albany Street, and Massachusetts Avenue; and the group of buildings of the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital, with the School of Medicine (connected with Boston University), on East Concord Street and Harrison Avenue.

A Typical Children's Playground

Of the churches of the quarter the stone Cathedral of the Holy Cross (Roman Catholic), on Washington Street, at the corner of Malden Street, is the greatest. It is the largest Catholic church in New England, and in some respects the finest. It is in the early English Gothic style. The interior is richly designed and embellished. The arch of the front vestibule is constructed of bricks from the ruins of the Ursuline Convent on Mount Benedict (now leveled) in Somerville, which was burned by a mob on the night of August 11, 1834. In the front yard of the edifice is the bronze statue of Columbus, by Alois Buyens (a replica of the San Domingo monument), erected in 1892. In the rear, on the corner of Union Park Street and Harrison Avenue, are the chief offices of the archdiocese. The archbishop’s house is on Bay State Road, Back Bay District. Another South End Catholic church of note is the Church of the Immaculate Conception, on Harrison Avenue and East Concord Street (by the side of Boston College). The interior of this church is also rich in ornamentation.

Of the older Protestant churches several have become “institutional churches,” with numerous helpful activities. Such are the Berkeley Temple, on Berkeley near Tremont Street, in association with the Union Church on Columbus Avenue and West Newton Street; the Shawmut Church, on Tremont Street; and the Warren Avenue Baptist Church, on Warren Avenue and West Canton Street. The Denison House (College Settlement) is at 93 Tyler Street, and the South End House at 20 Union Park Street. Among the churches still retaining the old parish methods are the Second Universalist Church and the First Presbyterian Church, both on Columbus Avenue; the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, on Clarendon and Tremont streets; and the Tremont Street Methodist Church, on Tremont and Concord streets. On Berkeley Street, No. 41, is the admirable Franklin Union, with its trades school.

The East Armory (East Newton Street), housing the Ninth Regiment of Infantry, and the Cadet Armory (Columbus Avenue), First Corps of Cadets, are in this quarter.

Washington and Tremont streets and Shawmut and Columbus avenues are the great thoroughfares generally north and south through this quarter. Columbus Avenue opens at Park Square (from Boylston Street opposite the Common). Here is the Emancipation Group, commemorating the freeing of the slaves by President Lincoln, an interesting piece of statuary by Thomas Ball, erected in 1879. It was a gift to the city by Moses Kimball, long the owner of the old Boston Museum.

7. THE OUTLYING DISTRICTS

East Boston on its islands is a place of steamship docks and of great manufactories. In the days of wooden ships it was a center of ship yards, whence fine craft were launched. Here were built splendid clipper ships for the California service in the gold-digging days. Now its at tractions for the visitor are slight, although several of its hill streets are pleasant, and wide harbor views open from various points. Belmont Square, on Camp Hill, marks the site of the fort erected in the Revolutionary period, and perhaps also the site of the fortified house of Samuel Maverick, the earliest white settler, in 1630. Wood Island Park, of the Metropolitan Parks System, lies on the harbor or south side of the main island.

Castle Island, Marine Park Head House, Marine Park

South Boston has also become a great industrial center and a place of shipping docks. Its points of popular interest to-day consist of the remnant of Dorchester Heights, — Telegraph Hill, — upon which is the monument “perpetuating the erection of American fortifications that forced the British to evacuate Boston, March 17, 1776”; the Perkins Institution for the Blind, the beneficent institution founded by Dr. Samuel G. Howe in 1829; and the beautiful water-front esplanade, the Marine Park, of the Boston Public Parks System. These are all at the east end of the district locally known as “The Point”; South Boston cars marked “City Point” reach them all. In the Marine Park is the admirable statue of Farragut, in bronze, by H. H. Kitson. This was erected in 1893. The Point is a favorite yachting station, and several yacht clubhouses are situated here. In the lower part of the district the Lawrence school­house on West Third Street marks the site of Nook Hill, the historic interest of which is disclosed in the inscription on a tablet here.

The Roxbury District also has interesting landmarks of the Revolution. These are the Roxbury forts, near Highland Street, in the neighborhood of Eliot Square, with its century-old meetinghouse of the “First Religious Society in Roxbury” (dating from 1632), on the site of the first rude structure in which John Eliot preached for more than forty years. Roxbury Upper Fort is marked by the lofty ornate white water pipe, on the hill of Highland Park, between Beach Glen and Fort avenues. The lines of the fort are indicated, and it is fittingly marked by a tablet. The site of the Lower Fort, a short distance northward, is pointed out in the yard of a dwelling on Highland Street. These forts, built by General Harry Knox, under the direction of Gen­eral Thomas, crowned the Roxbury lines of investment during the Siege of Boston. Highland Street, which leads from Eliot Square, is most interesting as the last home of Edward Everett Hale, in a broad, roomy, old-time house (No. 39). On this street also was “Rockledge,” the home of William Lloyd Garrison through his later years. On Warren Street, not far from the Dudley Street station, is the site of the birthplace of General Joseph Warren, now covered by a stone house built in 1846 by Dr. John Collins Warren “as a permanent memorial of the spot.” In the neighboring square is the statue of Warren, by Paul W. Bartlett, placed in 1904. Near by, on Kearsarge Avenue, was the home of Rear Admiral John A. Winslow of the Kearsarge which destroyed the Alabama in the Civil War. H ere also is the Roxbury Latin School, only ten years the junior of the Boston Latin School, having been established in 1645. Of this school Warren was a master when he was but nineteen years old. Near the old Boston line, at the corner of Washington and Eustis streets, is the ancient burying ground in which are the tombs of John Eliot and of the Dudleys, — Governor Thomas Dudley (died 1653), Governor Joseph Dudley (1720), Chief Justice Dudley (1752), and Colonel William Dudley (1743). In the western part of this district is Franklin Park, the largest single park in the Boston City Parks System.

Tablet at "Nook Hill" Path in the Wilderness, Franklin Park

The West Roxbury District contains memorials of Theodore Parker, and embraces “Brook Farm,” the place of the experiment in socialism by the Brook Farm Community of literary folk in 1841-1847, and the scene of Hawthorne’s “Blithedale Romance.” The old First Parish meetinghouse with its Wren tower, locally known as the Theodore Parker Church from Parker’s nine years’ ministry here, is still standing, though unused and dismantled. It is on Centre Street, close by the Bellevue station of the railroad (Dedham Branch). Electric cars from Forest Hills pass its neighborhood. In front of its successor, a little farther up Centre Street, is a fine bronze statue of Parker. Farther along this main street, at the corner of Cottage Avenue, Parker’s residence also remains, — now occupied as the parish house of a neighboring Catholic church. Brook Farm is but little changed in its outward aspect. It lies about a mile distant from Spring Street station on the railroad (by way of Baker Street). The Stony Brook Reservation of the Metropolitan Parks System is in this district. Forest Hills Cemetery, one of the most beautiful of modern burying grounds, is in another part of the district, close by the terminus of the Forest Hills lines of electrics and the Forest Hills station of the railroad. Here are the graves or tombs of General Joseph Warren, Rear Admirals Winslow and Thacher, William Lloyd Garrison, John Gilbert, the actor, Martin Milmore, the sculptor, and many others of distinction. At Milmore’s grave is the monument representing the Angel of Death staying the hand of the sculptor, an exceptionally fine piece of sculpture by Daniel C. French. Jamaica Plain, in which are the Arnold Arboretum and Olmsted Park of the Boston City Parks System, is a part of this district.

The Dorchester District is now essentially a place of homes. It embraces a series of hills, several of them commanding pleasant water views. Meetinghouse Hill, in the southern part, is crowned with a fine example of the New England meetinghouse of the early nineteenth century, in direct descent from the first meetinghouse of 1631. At Upham’s Corner, on Dudley Street and Columbia Road, is the ancient burying ground, one of the most interesting in the country. Among the distinguished tombs here are those of Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, chief justice of the court before which the witchcraft trials at Salem were held, and Richard Mather, the founder of the Mather family in New England. Many of the inscriptions on the stones are quaint, and there are a number of imposing tablets.

Looking Down Commonwealth Avenue

The Brighton District was once the great cattle mart of New England, and famous also for its extensive market gardens and nurseries. A few of the latter remain, but the district is mainly a residential section so closely associated with newer Boston as to be a component part of it.