Boston the The State Library of Massachusetts - A Guide to Researching Boston Buildings Page 1 of 5 Mass. mass.gov home online services state agencies SEARCH MASS.GOV The State Library of Massachusetts Home State Library > Special Collections Holdings > A Guide to Researching Boston Buildings Databases A Guide to Researching Boston Buildings for State Employees Compiled by the Boston Landmarks Commission Library Since its establishment in 1976, the Boston Landmarks Commission Catalog (hereafter "BLC") has systematically identified, documented, and analyzed upwards of 30,000 historic properties within the City of Boston. Known as Ask Us a Boston's Cultural Resource Inventory, this multi-volume document is Question available for review at the BLC (Room 805, Boston City Hall, office hours: Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m.). The Inventory provides broad coverage of Boston's residential architecture, identifying both common and exceptional examples of various house types within each About the neighborhood. While not all-inclusive, it is a wonderful place to begin your Library search. The following guide provides research tips for documenting the construction date and history of Boston properties not yet included in the FAQs Inventory. Genealogy When conducting research on buildings, two distinct types of information are sought: 1.) architectural data, such as date of construction, name of Government architect, builder or housewright, building dimensions, construction Information materials, and physical changes over time; and 2.) historical data, such as information on the original owner, residents over time, or any interesting Guide to events associated with the building or area. This guide focuses on the use Services of primary sources, such as public records, atlases, and historic photographs that, if used correctly, will yield information on almost any Legal building. Research http://www.mass.gov/lib/sc/buildings.htm 7/23/2004 Charles Bulfinch Page 1 of 3 Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844) Civic Architecture Domestic Architecture Introduction: There is perhaps no other body of work which better illustrates the architectural style of the Federal Period than that of Charles Bulfinch. The young Bostonian, often called America's first professional architect, was a herald of the Neo-classical movement that was occurring in Europe at the time. It was Bullfinch who changed the face of Boston, guiding the town from its stiff colonial traditions to the charming and flexible Federal Style. His work would define a city and young nation with the architectural lessons learnt first hand in Europe as his style spread throughout Boston and to the nation's capital Born on August 8, 1763, to Thomas Bulfinch and Susan Apthorp, Charles Bulfinch was the fourth generation of a prominent Boston family. His architectural legacy seemed to have been inherited from his mother's family--the Apthorps. Charles Apthorp, Bulfinch's grandfather, donated much of the money for King's Chapel in Boston and persuaded his friend, Peter Harrison, to design the building. Charles Ward Apthorp, an uncle, was the architect of the controversial Apthorp House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as the designer of the famous pre-Revolutionary house at West End Avenue and 80 Street in New th York City. Thomas' architectural education began when he was very young, and he was, no doubt, influenced by his grandfather's architectural library which housed French editions of Vitruvius, English editions of Palladio, and folios of William Kent's and Isaac Wares' works. This architectural pedigree seemed to have had its effect on Thomas, and it was obvious that architecture delighted the young boy's mind, a point illustrated by rough architectural doodles that were found on the inside cover of the Latin grammar schoolbook he received when he was ten years old. Bulfinch continued his architectural education at Harvard University, which he entered in 1778, and graduated three years later in a war-thinned class of twenty-one students. His http://www.holycross.edu/departments/classics/wziobro/ClassicalAmerica/BulfinchintroHP.htm 12/17/2004 Charles Bulfinch Page 2 of 3 years as a student were relatively uneventful and it is generally regarded that his college education contributed little to his architectural background. The Harvard College library at that time included the archeological books which helped spark the Neo-classical movement in Europe: Revett's Antiquities of Athens, Wood's Ruins of Palmyra and Robert Adam' The Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian in Spalatro in Dalmatia. Theoretically, Bulfinch graduated in 1781 with an introduction to Neo-classicism and some training in mathematics and perspective, the foundation for an architectural future. It would take, however, a two year voyage to Europe to enkindle the architectural flame that would burn as his passion for the remainder of his life. From June, 1785, to January, 1787, Bulfinch conducted his grand tour through the old world visiting London, Paris, Southern France, Northern Italy and Rome. This voyage, and his exposure to the continent's architecture, only sealed a fate long decided. While on his grand tour, he was the guest of such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette in Paris, where he spent the majority of his time viewing its "buildings and other objects of curiosity". It seems that the Sage of Monticello took an interest in the youth's education, specifically architecture, which must have been a mutual interest. In all likelihood, Jefferson planned Bulfinch's journeys into Southern France and Northern Italy, for it is the same route the statesman would take years later during his own pilgrimage. Bulfinch had the good fortune to travel trough Europe at the height of the Neo-classical movement, observing first hand the glorious style being developed throughout the capitals of Europe. It was these images and influences, freshly imprinted in his memory, that would later manifest themselves in Bullfinch's personal architectural style. BACK HOME It was not the revolutionary aspects of Neo-classicism that inspired Bulfinch--as a young provincial from Boston, he was not a Romantic. It was, rather, the spatial possibilities and decorative aspects of the genre, as typified by the English architects Robert Adam and William Chambers, which converted Bulfinch to Neo-classicism. Their influences that can be seen in Bulfinch's own personal style. Like Adam, his style is largely interior focused, as expressed in his room groupings which demonstrate a concern for convenience and freedom of organization unseen in colonial times. He often employed a central room as a focal point of a floor plan, and organized the remaining space around it for function and comfort, customizing each space for a specific use. Bullfinch moved away from the heavy paneling and carvings that characterized the interiors of colonial Boston architecture prior to this time and adopted a light and delicate style, usually through the medium of plaster. His walls were simple, graceful lines, often accented by the use of an alcove. Interior decoration followed the Neo-classical goal of movement through contrast; bare walls were accented with decoration focused on the ceiling and the mantelpiece in the manner of the English style. Bulfinch served the town of Boston in a variety of roles-- as a selectman and chief of police- -but none were as important as his role as an architect. From his return to the United States in 1787 to 1817, Bulfinch worked constantly to adorn the city he loved with the ornaments of good architecture. His labors were rewarded in 1817 when James Madison, after a visit to http://www.holycross.edu/departments/classics/wziobro/ClassicalAmerica/BulfinchintroHP.htm 12/17/2004 Charles Bulfinch Page 3 of 3 Boston, offered him the post of Architect of the nation's Capitol, which he held until 1830. After his is life of public service was over, Bulfinch retired to the city he loved where he died in 1844. http://www.holycross.edu/departments/classics/wziobro/ClassicalAmerica/BulfinchintroHP.htm 12/17/2004 The Boston Historical Society and Museum Page 1 of 1 GENERAL INFORMATION EVENTS LIBRARY AND MUSEUM GET INVOLVED EDUCATION SH THE BOSTONIAN Library Collections Reference Services Library Request Form Image Order Form Donati SOCIETY Details Page New Manuscript Search I New Photograph Search Click on to see associated records. Item VW0001/- #002395 Number: Collection Boston Streets photograph collection, ca. 1855-1999 Title: Item 002395 Number: Creator: Rickards, A. H. Title: Beacon Street, ca. 1860-80 Dates: 1860 --ca. -- 1880 --ca. Form/Genre: Photographs Description: Street-level view looking west of the multi-story brick and stone build on the right side of Beacon Street looking toward Charles Street. Beac Street is a dirt road, lined with brick sidewalks and street lights. Many the buildings that line Beacon Street have ornate ironwork balconies C fences. This section of Beacon Street is on the south slope facing the Boston Common. Geographic: Massachusetts --Boston (Mass.) --Beacon Hill (Mass.) -Beacon Street Topic: Buildings -- Dwellings --Ironwork --Balconies --Fences Personal: Beebe, John M. -- -Brewer, Gardner Corporate: Notes: The house at the extreme right is one of the two (Beebe and Brewer) which replaced the Hancock Mansion in 1863. Next west is the boyhod home of Henry Cabot Lodge, bought in 1858, by his father from Samu ELiot, father of President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University. Beyo the Eliot house is the home of Mrs. Gardiner Greene. Searching provided by: Re:discovery Software, Inc. New Manuscript Search I New Photograph Search Browse Index Terms The Bostonian Society © 2004 Nothing from the site can be reproduced without specific written permission issued by: The Bostonian Society I 206 Washington Street I Boston, MA 02109 - 1773 Any questions. contact the Bostonian Society Library at (617) 720-1713 extension 12. http://rfi.bostonhistory.org/boston/default.asp?IDCFile=/Boston/details.idc,SPECIFIC=4106,DAT... 2/18/2005 Page 1 of 1 http://rfi.bostonhistory.org/boston/full/002395.jpg 2/18/2005 BPL - First Library Buildings Page 1 of 1 Comedian Jack Benny loved Boston Quick Feature Finder Ripley's Believe It or Not. go Public Read his letters in the Library Books Rare Books department. are just General & Central Neighborhood Research & BPL Electronic Guides News Questions the Contact Library Branches Specialized Catalogs Resources the and and beginning. Information Services Library Events Suggestions HOME Guides to Boston Public Library the Library The First Library Buildings BPL History Guides to the Library and description Founders of the Library BUILDING ON MASON STREET Founding Legislation First Facts Location of Library 1854-1858. A First Buildings + public school building within which McKim Building rooms were assigned to the McKim Project Photos Library. McKim Phasing Plan Johnson Building Bates Hall How to Use Book Review Indexes Popular Subjects and Call Numbers Understanding Call Numbers BUILDING ON BOYLSTON Tours STREET Art and Architecture Brief Walking Tour Location of Library 1858-1895. The McKim Building first building exclusively devoted to Abbey Room the Library. Paintings Chavannes Gallery Sargent Gallery Triumph of Time Maps Central Library Library Locations Top I Home General/Contact Central Neighborhood I Research Catalogs Electronic Guides News Questions Site Search/Site Map The Boston Public Library 617-536-5400 info@bpl.org Central Library -- 700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116 Last Updated July, 2001 . © 2003 Boston Public Library http://www.bpl.org/guides/buildings.htm 1/2/2006 BPL - First Founders of the Library Page 1 of 2 Boston Check out videos, CDs, Quick Feature Finder go Public tapes and more Library Books are just General & Central Neighborhood Research & BPL Electronic Guides News the Questions Contact Library Branches Specialized Catalogs Resources to the and and beginning. Information Services Library Events Suggestions HOME Guides to Boston Public Library the Library First Founders of the Boston Public BPL History and description Library Founders of the Guides to the Library Library Founding Legislation GEORGE TICKNOR First Facts Trustee of the Library, 1852-1866; First Buildings President of the Board, 1865. Born, McKim Building Boston, August 1, 1791; died, McKim Project Photos Boston, January 26, 1871. McKim Phasing Plan Dartmouth College, class of 1807; Johnson Building lawyer and author; Professor of Bates Hall French and Spanish languages and How to Use of Belles-Lettres at Harvard College, Book Review Indexes 1819-1835. Popular Subjects and Call Numbers EDWARD EVERETT Understanding Trustee of the Library, 1852-1864. Call Numbers President of the Board, 1852-1864. Born, Dorchester (Mass.), April 11, Tours 1794; died, Boston, January 15, Art and Architecture 1865. Harvard College, class of Brief Walking Tour 1811; clergyman, Boston, 1813; McKim Building appointed Professor of Greek at Abbey Room Harvard, 1814; Representative in Paintings Congress, 1825-1835; Governor of Chavannes Gallery Massachusetts, 1836-1839; Minister Sargent Gallery to Great Britain, 1840-1845; Triumph of Time President of Harvard College, 1846- 1849; Secretary of State (U.S.), Maps 1852; Senate (U.S.), 1853-1854. Central Library NICHOLAS MARIE ALEXANDRE Library Locations VATTEMARE Advocate of the establishment of a public library in Boston. Born in Paris near the close of the eighteenth century. In early life, a student of surgery with some army practice in that profession. Of wide European reputation as a ventriloquist and minor theatrical performer. After 1827 devoted his time and private fortune to the promotion of a system of international exchange of books, and in this connection advocated the establishment of free public libraries and museums in all countries. http://www.bpl.org/guides/founders.htm 1/2/2006 BPL - First Founders of the Library Page 2 of 2 JOSHUA BATES Liberal benefactor of the Library. Made two generous gifts of $50,000. Born Weymouth (Massachusetts), 1788; died London (England), September 24, 1864. Financier; partner in Baring Brothers & Co. Joshua Bates's Original Letter to Mayor Seaver, October 1, 1852 JOSIAH QUINCY, JR. Mayor of Boston, December 1845- January 1849. Born 1802, died 1888. Believed in Vattemare's plan so thoroughly that he made the first cash gift to the Library-the sum of $5,000. He made the gift anonymously with the condition that "$10,000 be raised at large for the same purpose and that the library should be as fully used by all, as may be consistent with the safe- keeping of the property." Top I Home I General/Contact Central I Neighborhood I Research Catalogs Electronic I Guides I News I Questions Site Search/Site Map The Boston Public Library 617-536-5400 info@bpl.org Central Library -- 700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116 Last Updated April, 2001 c 2003 Boston Public Library http://www.bpl.org/guides/founders.htm 1/2/2006 Boston Daily Advertiser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 3 Boston Daily Advertiser From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Boston Daily Advertiser (est. 1813) was the first The Boston Advertiser daily newspaper in Boston, and for many years the only daily paper in Boston. [2] BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER. Type Daily newspaper Contents Format Broadsheet 1 History Founded 1813 [1] 2 Former contributors Language English 3 Allusions in literature 4 Images Ceased publication 1929 5 See also Headquarters 20 Court Street; Washington 6 References Street Boston, Massachusetts 7 Bibliography United States 8 External links History The Advertiser was established in 1813, and in March 1814 it was purchased by journalist Nathan Hale. Hale was its chief editor until his death in 1863. Under Hale's supervision, the paper was first Federalist in politics, then Whig, and finally Republican, and it became very influential. It opposed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, and was the first paper to recommend the free colonization of Kansas. The principle of editorial responsibility, as distinct from that of individual contributions, was established in its columns. From 1841 until 1853, Hale's son Nathan Hale, Jr., was associated with his father in the editorial management of the paper. [2] In 1832 the Advertiser took over control of The Boston Patriot, and then in 1840 it took over and absorbed The Boston Gazette. Daily Advertiser building, Boston, C. [1] 1870s In 1885 Elihu B. Hayes took over control of the Advertiser. [3] After Hayes the Advertiser was acquired by former Massachusetts House of Representatives Speaker and Massachusetts's 7th district Congressman William Emerson Barrett who published the Advertiser until his death on February 12, 1906. [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Daily_Advertiser 9/30/2013 Boston Daily Advertiser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 2 of 3 The paper was purchased by William Randolph Hearst in 1917, became an illustrated tabloid in 1921, and was defunct in 1929. Hearst continued using the name Advertiser for its Sunday paper until the early 1970s. Former contributors William Emerson Barrett, Washington correspondent (1882-1886). editor in chief (1888), chief proprietor and publisher. Charles Hale George A. Marden. Samuel W. McCall, leading editorial writer. William M. Olin, reporter, editor, and Washington, D.C. correspondent. Allusions in literature In Henry James' 1878 novel The Europeans, Mr Wentworth reads The Boston Daily Advertiser. In William Dean Howells' 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham, Bromfield Corey reads The Boston Daily Advertiser. Images ALMANAC 1875 Four men in front of a The Boston Advertiser The Advertiser's The Boston Advertiser tent with a sign for the Building circa 1872 Almanac for 1875 Building cir. 1886 Boston Daily Advertiser, 19th century See also Boston Weekly Messenger (1811-1861), the weekly edition of the Advertiser References 1. "Newspapers (http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Newspapers)". "The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information" 19. New York, NY: Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1911. p. 567. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Daily_Advertiser 9/30/2013 Boston Daily Advertiser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 3 of 3 2. ^ a b Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1892). "Hale, John". Appletons' Cyclopredia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton 3. ^ Death List of A Day.; Elihu Burritt Hayes. New York: The New York Times. April 2, 1903. p. 9. 4. ^ Death List of A Day.; William Emerson Barrett. New York: The New York Times. February 13, 1906. p. 7. Bibliography The New York Times (April 2, 1903) "Death List of A Day.; Elihu Burritt Hayes", (1903), p. 9. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf? res=9407E3D91E30E733A25751C0A9629C946297D6CF) The New York Times (February 13, 1906) "Death List of A Day.; William Emerson Barrett" (1906), P. 7. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf es=9D06E3DF1531E733A25750C1A9649C946797D6CF) "Newspapers" "(http://www.191lencyclopedia.org/Newspapers).The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information 19. New York, NY: Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1911. p. 567. Howells, William Dean.: The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885). James, Henry.: The Europeans (http://books.google.com/books? I=Sv2H4Qtdp78C&printsec=titlepage) (1878). External links Articles from the Boston Daily Advertiser Texts on Wikisource: Letters from the South (July and August 1865) Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard (June 30, 1882) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? tle=Boston_Daily_Advertiser&oldid=551674776" Categories: Defunct companies based in Massachusetts Defunct newspapers of Massachusetts History of Boston, Massachusetts Newspapers published in Boston, Massachusetts Publications disestablished in 1929 Publications established in 1813 This page was last modified on 22 April 2013 at 18:50. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Daily_Advertiser 9/30/2013 Dorchester, Boston - Wikipedia Page 1 of 16 Coordinates: 42°19'N 71°3'W Dorchester, Boston From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Dorchester is a historic neighborhood comprising over 6 square miles (16 km2) in Dorchester Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally, Dorchester was a separate town, founded by Puritans who emigrated in 1630 from Dorchester, Dorset, England. This Neighborhood of Boston dissolved municipality, Boston's largest neighborhood by far, [3] is often divided by city planners in order to create two planning areas roughly equivalent in size and population to other Boston neighborhoods. The neighborhood is named after the town of Dorchester in the English county of Dorset, from which Puritans emigrated on the ship Mary and John, among others and is today sometimes nicknamed "Dot" by its residents. (5) Founded in 1630, just a few months before the founding of the city of Boston, Dorchester now covers a geographic area approximately equivalent to nearby Neponset River at Lower Mills (2009). Dorchester Cambridge. [6] It was still a primarily rural town and had a population of 12,000 when it on the left, Milton on the right (south) side of the river. was annexed to Boston in 1870. Railroad and streetcar lines brought rapid growth, increasing the population to 150,000 by 1920. In the 2010 United States Census, the population was 92,115. Dorchester as a separate municipality would rank among the top five Massachusetts cities. It has a very diverse population, which includes a large concentration of African Americans and a foreign-born population made up of European Americans, Irish- Seal American immigration, Caribbean Americans, Latinos, and East and Southeast Asian Americans. Most of the people over the age of 25 have completed high school or Nickname(s): Dot obtained a GED. [7] Nearly 60% of the population earns less than $40,000 per year and Motto: Pietate, Literis, Industria (Latin) a majority of them live in rental units. Currently, there is a foreclosure crisis occurring "Piety, Learning, [and] Industry" and, as a result, 25%(8) of Boston's distressed buildings are located in the community. Country United States State Massachusetts County Suffolk Neighborhood of Boston Contents Settled May 1630 1 History Incorporated June 1, 1630 1.1 17th century: Settlement and incorporation Annexed by Boston January 4, 1870 1.2 18th century Population (2010) [2] 1.3 19th century Total 91,982 or 134,000 1.4 Turn of the 20th century 1.5 1950s-present Time zone Eastern (UTC-5) 2 Geography Summer (DST) Eastern (UTC-4) 2.1 Neighborhood sections and squares Zip Codes 02121, 02122, 02124, 3 Demographics 02125 3.1 American Community Survey - Estimates - 2013 Area code(s) 617 and 857 4 Transportation 5 Economy 6 Crime 7 Education 7.1 Primary and secondary schools 7.2 Colleges and universities 7.3 Public libraries 8 Health care 9 Housing 10 Safety 11 Public Utilities 12 Urban Policies 12.1 Public Policy Issues 12.2 City Budget Plans 13 Community Resource 13.1 Education 13.2 Food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorchester,_Boston 5/2/2017 Dorchester, Boston - Wikipedia Page 2 of 16 14 Entertainment 15 Leisure activities and areas 16 Sites of interest 17 Notable people 18 Notes and references 18.1 Notes 18.2 References 18.3 Further reading 19 External links History 17th century: Settlement and incorporation May 30, 1630, Captain Squib of the ship Mary and John entered Boston Harbor and on June 17, 1630, landed a boat with eight men on the Dorchester shore, at what was then a narrow peninsula known as Mattapan or Mattaponnock, and today is known as Columbia Point (more popularly since 1984 as Harbor Point). [9] Those aboard the ship who founded the town included William Phelps, Roger Ludlowe, John Mason, John Maverick, Nicholas Upsall, Capt. Roger Fyler, Henry Wolcott and other men who would become prominent in the founding of a new nation. The original settlement founded in 1630 was at what is now the intersection of Columbia Road and Massachusetts Avenue. (Even though Dorchester was annexed over 100 years ago into the city of Boston, this founding is still celebrated every year on Dorchester Day, which includes festivities Old Blake House in C. 1905 and a parade down Dorchester Avenue). Most of the early Dorchester settlers came from the West Country of England, and some from Dorchester, Dorset, where the Rev. John White was chief proponent of a Puritan settlement in the New World [10] (Rev. John White has been referred to as the unheralded champion of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, because despite his heroic efforts on its behalf, he remained in England and never emigrated to the Colony he championed.) The town that was founded was centered on the First Parish Church of Dorchester, which still exists as the Unitarian- Universalist church on Meeting House Hill and is the oldest religious organization in present-day Boston. On October 8, 1633, the first Town Meeting in America was held in Dorchester. Today, each October 8 is celebrated as Town Meeting Day in Massachusetts. Dorchester is the birthplace of the first public elementary school in America, the Mather School, established in 1639. [11] The school still stands as the oldest elementary school in America. [12] The oldest surviving home in the city of Boston, the James Blake House, is located at Edward Everett Square, which is the historic intersection of Columbia Road, Boston Street, and Massachusetts Avenue, a few blocks from the Dorchester Historical Society. The Blake House was constructed in 1661, as was confirmed by dendrochronology in 2007. [13] In 1695, a party was dispatched to found the town of Dorchester, South Carolina, which lasted barely a half-century before being abandoned. 18th century In 1765, chocolate was first introduced in the United States when Irish chocolate maker John Hannon (or alternatively spelled "Hannan" in some sources) imported beans from the West Indies and refined them in Dorchester, working with Dr. James Baker, an American physician and investor. They soon after opened America's first chocolate mill and factory in the Lower Mills section of Dorchester. The Walter Baker Chocolate Factory, part of Walter Baker & Company, operated until 1965. [14]:627[15][16][I7] Before the American Revolution, "The Sons of Liberty met in August 1769 at the Lemuel Robinson Tavern, which stood on the east side of the upper road (Washington St.) near the present Fuller Street. Lemuel Robinson was a representative of the town during the Revolution Dorchester looking north toward Boston, C. and was appointed a colonel in the Revolutionary army. "[[8] Dorchester (in a part of what is now 1781 South Boston) was also the site of the Battle of Dorchester Heights in 1776, which eventually resulted in the British evacuating Boston. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorchester,_Boston 5/2/2017 Dorchester, Boston - Wikipedia Page 3 of 16 19th century Victorian era In Victorian times, Dorchester became a popular country retreat for Boston elite, and developed into a bedroom community, easily accessible to the city-a streetcar suburb. The mother and grandparents of John F. Kennedy lived in the Ashmont Hill neighborhood while John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald was mayor of BAKER'S COCOA Boston. is particularly adapted for elderly people, is R contains considerable fats statter, more than one quarter, vet to cash dis The American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote a poem called gested and is pure and delicious "It is real food containing the asstritive "The Dorchester Giant" in 1830, and referred to the special kind of principles." stone, "Roxbury puddingstone", also quarried in Dorchester, which WALTER BAKER 10 CO. Edc. was used to build churches in the Boston area, most notably the BOXCHISTER MASS Central Congregational Church (later called the Church of the Covenant) in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. [19][20]:116 Baker's Cocoa Advertisement in One of Dorchester's most Overland Monthly, January 1919. influential residents, Lucy Stone In 1845, the Old Colony Railroad ran through the area and The manufacture of chocolate had was an early advocate for connected Boston and Plymouth, Massachusetts. The station was been introduced in the United women's rights originally called Crescent Avenue or Crescent Avenue Depot ² as States in 1765 by John Hannon and Dr. James Baker in an Old Colony Railroad station, then called Columbia until Dorchester. Walter Baker & December 1, 1982, and then again changed to JFK/UMASS. It is a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority rail line station for both the Red subway and the Plymouth/Kingston, Company was located in Middleborough/Lakeville and Greenbush commuter rail lines. Dorchester. In the 1840s and 1850s, a new wave of development took place on a strip of waterfront overlooking Dorchester Bay (Park and Mill Streets at the Harrison Square Historic District, later known as Clam Point.) Renowned architects who had contributed to one of the most significant and intact collections of Clam Point's Italianate mansards include Luther Briggs, John A. Fox, and Mary E. Noyes. By the 1890s, Clam Point gained prominence as a summer resort with the Russell House hotel as its centerpiece and the establishment of the Dorchester Yacht Club on Freeport Street. In the 1880s, the calf pasture on Columbia Point was used as a Boston sewer line and pumping station. This large pumping station still stands and in its time was a model for treating sewage and helping to promote cleaner and healthier urban living conditions. It pumped waste to a remote treatment facility on Moon Island in Boston Harbor, and served as a model for other systems worldwide. This system remained in active use and was the Boston Sewer system's headworks, handling all of the city's sewage, until 1968 when a new treatment facility was built on Deer Island. The pumping station is also architecturally significant as a Richardsonian Romanesque designed by the then Boston city architect, George Clough. It is also the only remaining 19th century building on Columbia Point and is in the National Register of Historic Places. [9] Annexation to Boston Dorchester was annexed by Boston in pieces beginning on March 6, 1804 and ending with complete annexation to the city of Boston after a plebiscite was held in Boston and Dorchester on June 22, 1869. As a result, Dorchester officially became part of Boston on January 3, 1870. [22] This is also the historic reason that Dorchester Heights is today considered part of South Boston, not modern-day Dorchester, since it was part of the cession of Dorchester to Boston in 1804. Additional parts of Dorchester were ceded to Quincy (in 1792, 1814, 1819, and 1855) and Two people play tennis in Franklin Park, portions of the original town of Dorchester became the 1906. separate towns of Hyde Park (1868 and later annexed to Map of Dorchester, Massachusetts Boston in 1912), Milton (1662), and Stoughton (1726, and surrounding area from the H. F. itself later subdivided). Walling Map of the County of Norfolk, Massachusetts, 1858. In 1895, Frederick Law Olmsted, architect of the Boston Public Garden/Emerald Necklace and Central Park, was commissioned to create Dorchester Park, to be an urban forest for the residents of a growing Dorchester. [23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorchester,_Boston 5/2/2017 Dorchester, Boston - Wikipedia Page 4 of 16 In 1904, the Dorchester Historical Society incorporated "Dorchester Day" which commemorated the settlement of Dorchester in 1630. An annual event, Dorchester Day is a tableau of community events, highlighted by such activities as the Landing Day Observance, the Dorchester Day Parade along Dorchester Avenue the first Sunday in June, and as a grand finale, the Community Banquet. [24] Turn of the 20th century There was also increased social activism in Dorchester during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dorchester became home to the first racially integrated neighborhood on Jones Hill. One of the residents of that neighborhood, William Monroe Trotter, with W.E.B. Du Bois, helped to found the Niagara Movement, the precursor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. [25] Many leading suffragettes also lived in Dorchester, including Lucy Stone. [26] Map showing all ground in Boston occupied by buildings in 1880 just In the early 20th century, Dorchester also saw a large influx of new immigrants from origins such as after Dorchester was annexed to Ireland, French Canada, Poland, Italy, and migrant African Americans from the south. This is the era Boston in 1870. Dorchester is in the when the trademark Dorchester triple decker apartment buildings were built. lower left quadrant. From U.S. Census Bureau. 1950s-present In the early 1950s, Dorchester was also a center of civil rights activism. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived there for much of the time he attended Boston University for his PhD. "With Boston's Baptist community riveted by his preaching and Coretta [Scott King] at his side, King's circle grew. The Dorchester apartment drew friends and followers like a magnet, according to [friend and roommate John] Bustamante, with 'untold numbers of visitors coming from the other schools." The roommates housed and fed the visitors, who would join in civil rights discussions. "[27] John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and During the 1950s-1980s, the ethnic landscape of Dorchester changed dramatically. The Jewish Museum on the Columbia Point peninsula and Irish populations were replaced with African, Asian, and Caribbean populations. (2007) The first community health center in the United States was the Columbia Point Health Center in Dorchester. It was opened in December 1965 and served mostly the massive Columbia Point public housing complex adjoining it. It was founded by two medical doctors, Jack Geiger who had been on the faculty of Harvard University then later at Tufts University and Count Gibson from Tufts University.[28][29][30] Geiger had previously studied the first community health centers and the principles of Community Oriented Primary Care with Sidney Kark and colleagues HITT while serving as a medical student in rural Natal, South Africa. [32] The Columbia Point Health Center is still in operation and was rededicated in 1990 as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center. [33][34][35] Uphams Corner section of Dorchester In 1977, after an unsuccessful bid to have the John F. Kennedy Library in Cambridge, showing the typical urban street-scape Massachusetts close to Harvard University, ground was broken at the tip of Columbia Point for found in the neighborhood (2010) the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, designed by the architect I. M. Pei, and dedicated on October 20, 1979. By the 1980s, the Blue Hill Avenue section of Dorchester had become a predominantly black community. Numerous burned out buildings existed on Blue Hill Ave. During the 1990s, the city administration increased police presence and invested city money into the area for more street lighting. On March 30, 2015, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate was dedicated by President Barack Obama. [36] The Institute opened to the public on March 31, 2015. [37] Geography Dorchester is located south of downtown Boston and is surrounded by the neighborhoods of South Boston, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, South End, and the city of Quincy and town of Milton. The Neponset River separates Dorchester from Quincy and Milton. According to the U.S. Postal Service, Dorchester includes the zip codes 02121, 02122, 02124, and 02125. Neighborhood sections and squares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorchester,_Bostor 5/2/2017 Dorchester, Boston - Wikipedia Page 5 of 16 Dorchester is Boston's largest and most populous neighborhood!38 and comprises many smaller sections and squares. Due to its size of about six square miles, it is often divided for statistical purposes in North and South Dorchester. North Dorchester includes the portion north of Quincy Street, East Street and Signature Freeport Street. The main business district in this part of Dorchester is Uphams Corner, at the intersection of Dudley Street and Columbia Road. South Dorchester is bordered to the east by Dorchester Bay and to the south by the Neponset River. [39] The main business districts in this part of Dorchester are Fields Corner, at the intersection of Dorchester Avenue and Adams Street, and Codman Square, at the intersection of Washington Street and Talbot Avenue. Adjacent to Fields Corner is the Harrison Square Historic District, also known as Clam Point, noteworthy for its collection of substantial Italianate Mansard residences. Name Dorchester Avenue is the major neighborhood spine, running in a south-north line through all of Dorchester from Lower Mills to downtown Boston. [40] The southern part of Dorchester is primarily a residential area, with established neighborhoods still defined by parishes, and occupied by families for generations. The northern part of Dorchester is more urban, with a greater amount of apartment housing and industrial parks. South Bay Center and Newmarket industrial area are major sources of employment Map showing the locations of and the Harbor Point area (formerly known as Columbia Point) is home of several large employers, Dorchester sections and squares including the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Distinct commercial districts include Bowdoin/Geneva, Fields Corner, Codman Square, Peabody Square, Adams Village and Lower Mills. Primarily residential areas include Savin Hill, Jones Hill, Four Corners, Franklin Field, Franklin Hill, Ashmont, Meeting House Hill, Neponset, Popes Hill and Port Norfolk. Demographics Up until the 1950s, the Blue Hill Avenue part of Dorchester from Roxbury to Mattapan was primarily composed Historical population of Jewish Americans who had lived there for generations. [41] The Neponset neighborhood was primarily Irish- Census Pop. % American. During the 1950s-1960s, many African-Americans moved from the South to the North during the Great Migration and settled on Blue Hill Avenue and nearby sections. While some Jewish-Americans were 1830 4,074 moving "up and out" to the suburbs, certain Boston banks and real estate companies developed a blockbusting 1840 4,875 19.7% plan for the area. The Blue Hill Avenue area was "redlined" SO that only the newly arriving African-Americans 1850 7,969 63.5% would receive mortgages for housing in that section. [42] "White flight" was prevalent. Later, Dorchester had 1860 9,769 22.6% another wave of immigrants, this time from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Vietnam, Cape Verde, as well as other Latin American, Asian, and African nations. There was still a large number of new immigrants from traditional countries of origin, such as Ireland and Poland. This made Dorchester more diverse than at any point in its long history, and home to more people from more countries than ever before. These immigrants helped revive economically many areas of the neighborhood by opening ethnic stores and restaurants. [43] The sections of Dorchester have distinct ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic compositions. The eastern areas of Dorchester (especially between Adams Street and Dorchester Bay) are primarily ethnic European and Asian, with a large population of Irish Americans and Vietnamese Americans, while the residents of the western, central and parts of the southern sections of the neighborhood are predominantly African Americans. In Neponset, the southeast corner of the neighborhood, as well as parts of Savin Hill in the north and Cedar Grove in the south, Irish Americans maintain the most visible identity. [44] In the northern section of Dorchester and southwestern section of South Boston is the Polish Triangle, where recent Polish immigrants are residents. Savin Hill, as well as Fields Corner, have large Vietnamese American populations. Uphams Corner contains a Cape Verdean American community, the largest concentration of people of Cape Verdean origin within Boston city limits. Western, central and parts of southern Dorchester have a large Caribbean population (especially people from Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago). They are most heavily represented in the Codman Square, Franklin Field and the Ashmont area, although there are also significant numbers in Four Corners and Fields Corner. Significant numbers of African Americans live in the Harbor Point, Uphams Corner, Fields Corner, Four Corners and Franklin Field areas. [45] In recent years Dorchester has also seen an influx of young residents, gay men and women, and working artists (in areas like Lower Mills, Ashmont Hill/Peabody Square, and Savin Hill). [46][47][48][49][50] American Community Survey - Estimates - 2013 The American Community Survey (ACS) for Dorchester, from 2007-2011, estimates the total population is 113,975 people. Most of them are female, representing 52.6% or 59,914 7 of the community's populace and 47.4% or 54,06 [7] people are male. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorchester,_Boston 5/2/2017 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY Boston during the Civil War Author(s): Edward C. Kirkland Source: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 71 (Oct., 1953 - May, 1957), pp. 194-203 Published by: Massachusetts Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25080484 Accessed: 26-04-2017 13:47 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Massachusetts Historical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society STOR This content downloaded from 137.49.122.74 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 13:47:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Boston during the Civil War EDWARD C. KIRKLAND* URING the Civil War Boston played a dual role. On the one D hand, it was a metropolis in its own right, a city of 177,840 people in 1860; on the other, it was a state capital and hence the center of state policy and action. Nor was Boston a unity. Like other urban communities, it contained both masses and classes, and the classes were themselves divided. Since Bostonians of the classes wrote letters and preserved them, this paper will be about them. They lived along the streets running down Beacon Hill and in acceptable suburbs like Milton; they counted or thought they did. I have high precedent for this focus. Some years after the war when young Francis W. Palfrey, a Boston war hero of Antietam, wrote of the city's soldiery, he called the roster of Boston's regiments, and went into considerable detail about the conditions and methods of recruitment and performance, but simply dismissed the 9th and 28th as "Irish regiments." Indeed, Palfrey spent more words on the 54th and 55th regiments of colored infantry raised under Bos- ton influence¹ and commanded by representatives of outstanding fami- lies. Both Governor John A. Andrew (born and educated in Maine, let it be noted) and John Murray Forbes, Boston merchant, capitalist, and civilian entrepreneur of war, took pains to have "gentlemen of the highest tone and honor" at the head of these Negro infantrymen. 2 This centralization of command among Boston's best was not con- fined to the Negro regiments. Although elected as the "people's gov- ernor," Andrew felt that a liberal education and a social tradition bred the mental flexibility and the habit of leadership essential for officers. Thus he raided Harvard College and Beacon Hill in making his regi- mental appointments. As an outlander he relied for advice on his aide, Henry Lee, Jr., a man of conservative temper who was well-informed about past and contemporary generations in Boston families. In view * This paper was read at the March, 1955, meeting. 1 The Memorial History of Boston, ed. Justin Winsor, 4 vols. (Boston, [1880-81]), 316-317. 2 Henry G. Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, 1861- 1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1904), II, 74. This content downloaded from 137.49.122.74 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 13:47:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1947 ClevelandAmory E.P.Dutton THE OLD GUARD ON GUARD 332 N.Y. 333 THE PROPER BOSTONIANS Times, but it became the Boston paper's trademark. The loyalty lady did, but she had heard a great deal about the book, and she of its readers was proverbial, In the wind of its editoral opin- wished to read it before she died. Looking the lady over the ion they swayed, said the poet T. S. Eliot, "like a field of ripe girl decided that since she obviously would never see sixty again, corn." the case called for special handling. She took the woman to the Employees served the Transcript; they did not work for it. chief of the reference division and explained the situation to The sign at the bottom of its six-story granite building at Milk 1863.5 him. The chief of the reference division decided in favor of the and Washington Streets read: "Editors two flights, reporters lady and ordered the volume procured from the non-circula- three flights," but in spite of this evidence of the caste system ting rare-book room. After some delay the book arrived and the even the paper's copyboys spoke with Harvard accents. One First librarian gave it to the lady with the warning that she would Family man, Harry D. Eustis, was listed as an employee of the have to look at it right in his office; she could on no condition press department. Though he came to work in a chauffeur- take it home. driven limousine and dressed in a stiff collar, he promptly The lady sat down and read. She could not finish and at changed to overalls and worked a full eight-hour day doing closing time relinquished the book, only to return the next such tasks as baling waste paper in the basement. He did SO for day and continue her task. At length she completed the book fifty years, until he retired in the 1930's. To ask for a raise on and handed it back to the librarian. But as she got up to leave the paper was tantamount to an attempt to make change out of she told him candidly that she could not see anything wrong the Trinity Church plate. William Durant, a seventy-year man with it. "I don't even see why it was banned," she said. who rose from office boy to treasurer and controlled Transcript "Ah," said the librarian, tapping the volume gently, "but finances as well as a large measure of the editorial policy of the remember, Madam, this isn't the original version. This is the paper, believed that the permanent salary of a newspaperman expurgated edition." should be twenty dollars a week. In connection with a case where he had consented to a five-dollar-a-week raise for a man he was quoted as having remarked that the added five dollars It is doubtful if Boston's institution men would ever have meant nothing to the recipient except the development of achieved such prominence in their city if they had not had a hurtful extravagance. "What does he do with that five dollars? voice to carry their "way of life" to the Proper Bostonian masses. He moves into a house that costs him that much more in rent They found this voice in one of the all-time curiosities of Amer- or he buys a piano for his daughter." On the question of women ican journalism, the Boston Evening Transcript. Daily except on his paper Durant was adamant. He once hired a girl only Sunday, just at tea-time-when the Proper Bostonian mind is on the condition that she agree that her salary should never ex- traditionally at its most receptive stage-the Transcript was ceed ten dollars a week. Since she remained close to forty years quietly laid, never tossed, on the doorsteps of the best people in and became one of the most valuable members of the Tran- Boston. Not to read the Transcript was unthinkable. It was script staff, the agreement was regarded as a landmark in Yankee never a newspaper in the vulgar sense of the word. The story of bargaining. three representatives of the press who were received into a All parts of this paper were must reading for Proper Bos- Beacon Hill home with a servant's announcement, "Two re- tonians, but the Wednesday evening genealogical columns and porters from the papers, Sir, and a gentleman from the Tran- the Saturday obituaries were the week's highlights. At one time script," was actually a legend once removed from the London 334 THE PROPER BOSTONIANS THE OLD GUARD ON GUARD 335 an attempt was made to prove that the mortality records of blue bloods showed a marked increase on Friday over all other days ling of what was coming the next day by pounding Symphony's due to the desire of the socially elect to make their last bows on floor with his thick knotted cane. If anyone made a sound, he the Saturday page-and when this failed there was always the would use the same cane to rap them into silence. Among Bos- legend of two Beacon Hill spinsters who each week fought so ton's First Familyites he showed great favoritism for Mrs. Jack determinedly for the honor of being the first to read the Satur- Gardner and was fond of attending social events with her. Visi- day columns that they gave the paper its Proper Bostonian war tors often stared in amazement seeing the two together-Mrs. cry, "Who nice in the Transcript died tonight?" Niceness was Jack short and plain-faced and Parker even shorter with a beetle ever the paper's keynote. It won for it deserved praise when in face and a square apelike body-but they were Boston's best, and no mistake. 1930 the Transcript was found, in an exhaustive study, to be one of only eight newspapers in the country free from any ad- Throughout its history the paper stood like a rock for Boston's vertisements condemned by the American Medical Association. Old Guard. The Transcript was sound. Never giving an inch to But Transcript delicacy was carried to such extremes that the Bennett sensationalism, to Hearst sensationalism, or even to pictures-it rejected "illustrations" until World War I-it was result was not always so felicitous. On one occasion the paper's standing injunction against any reference to anatomy in its just the sort of sturdy support the Proper Bostonians needed in 1830 columns was ignored by a reporter who used the word "navel" a time which saw the steady encroachment of the new and dif- in an article he was writing. It passed the copy desk and the ferent on their sacred soil. Its genteel tub-thumping for the edition was already running before the managing editor blue bloods began with its first edition on July 24, 1830, with a spotted it. He stopped the presses with a stern order to chisel front page devoted to column after column of free advertising for Boston merchants-of which one historian notes that "one out the offensive word. Unhappily he had not had time to read the full context. The reporter had used the word in a descrip- will search the columns in vain for other than a good Yankee tive sense about the calm of a concert musician, and the Tran- name"-and continued unabated for more than a hundred years script appeared on the Boston streets that evening with the through every test of Proper Bostonian standards. In May, 1846, sinister information that the musician had been "in a state of the quasi-Bostonian Edgar Allan Poe was giving trouble and the Transcript editor was firm: repose as complete as that of a Buddhist regarding his The late Henry Cabot Lodge, John P. Marquand and Brooks He is a wandering specimen of the Literary Snob, continu- Atkinson were among those who got their start on this remark- ally obtruding himself upon public notice; today in the gutter, able journal, but no reporter ever lived SO long in Boston news- tomorrow in some milliner's magazine; but in all places, and paper annals as the late H. T. Parker. The "H.T.P." reviews at all times, magnificently snobbish and dirty, who seems to of Symphony were so erudite that it was claimed they were invite the Punchy writers among us to take up their pens and written in Latin and translated for the benefit of lesser minds. impale him for public amusement. Mrs. Louisa Godey has They were not, but as Lucius Beebe recalls two typographers lately taken this snob into her service in a neighboring city, had to be retained in the paper's composing room to decipher where he is doing his best to prove his title to the distinction of Parker's original copy. Often Parker could not wait until his being one of the lowest of his class at present infesting the review to criticize the performance of the orchestra but in the literary world. Whenever seen in print his falsehoods are ever midst of a number of which he disapproved would give an ink- met by the reader with the simple exclamation-pooh!-Poel 336 THE PROPER BOSTONIANS THE OLD GUARD ON GUARD 337 The paper reserved its most telling anti-Poeism for the poet's force made up of "General" Francis Peabody, T. Jefferson death in 1849. Leaping at the chance to disown the man en- Coolidge and S. Huntington Wolcott, etc. were "Minute Men tirely, it printed his obituary word for word from the New of 1919." Even after an ignorant guard lieutenant had fired on York Express and baldly refused to correct the misstatement a crowd in Boston's South End and killed two men, and after made that the poet had been born in Richmond instead of in other Minute Men had bayoneted several members of another Boston. Even on the question of Emerson, who in his early days crowd which had given way to a long-suppressed desire to shoot was by no means a Proper Bostonian stand-by, the Transcript craps on the sacred Boston Common, the Transcript found maintained firm reservations. "Original thinkers," it warned, words to make rousing editorial comment. "It is good to know," "are not always practical men, and they are sometimes led into it said, "that many of Boston's blue coats are true blue." unsupportable theories." In the great Boston fire of November, In the Sacco-Vanzetti case the Transcript showed a mettle 1872, the paper first encouraged the city as a whole-") thought reminiscent of the days when it had called on Shakespeare to for a while," said its editor, "that we couldn't stand up under it, sum up the murder of Dr. George Parkman. A reporter from but-well, we had the Transcript left"-and then went on to the paper who had come to the conclusion that the men deserved give advice to the ladies of Boston to sleep with loaded pistols a new trial and said as much was summarily taken from the at their bedside in the wake of the murder and rapine that they case, and even after the Boston Herald had reversed its original felt convinced must be stalking the Boston streets. Major Hig- position the Transcript never wavered. When Felix Frank- ginson was pushed a long way on his path to institutionalism furter came out in defense of the men, the paper reached all by the paper's citation of his valiant vigil at the Lee, Higgin- the way to Northwestern Law School to answer the Harvard son safe-deposit vaults-a vigil which, it later became clear, professor in its very next edition. The name of the professor was not at all concerned with the thwarting of robbers but only was John H. Wigmore, and the paper gave Wigmore's lusty with attempting to keep back an aggressive group of First disavowal of Frankfurter its largest headline since the Ar- Family depositors, including several Higginsons, who wished mistice. to remove their securities to their own homes. Finally, on July 24, 1930, the Transcript was ready in its Bostonians, the late Philip Hale of the Boston Herald once centennial edition to compliment not just Proper Boston but said, are "hell on facts," and the Transcript did its little part all of Boston. "We do not believe," it declared editorially, to make them more so. In the Boston police strike of 1919 it "that there is a city in the United States where the young men rose to its greatest heights. The pay of Boston's constabulary and minors are SO little prone to heedless extravagance as in was based on a minimum of $1100 a year, out of which they Boston." In this same issue the paper laid down its creed for had to buy their own uniforms, and in the inflation year of 1919 the future: they asked for more. The strike, which the astute Boston mer- Quick to sense new currents in life and thought, the Tran- chant Frank Stearns used to make a national figure of Calvin script marches in the van of progress without sacrifice of dig- Coolidge, was actually settled by the paying of new policemen nity and self-respect. To the flapper, male or female, it makes the same increased salary that the strikers had been refused- no appeal. To men and women in all walks of life who are but to the Transcript the issue was as clear-cut as an Irish re- earnest in their work, clean in their play, and thoughtful in the bellion. "Boston's black night" the paper called the evening hours between, it is, as of old, counsellor and friend. It differ- before the state guard was called out, and the unofficial police entiates solids from froth, the permanent from the passing, :019 The town of Boston in New England - Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center TheTOWN of Charles River BOSTON IN New England Cap 1732 Mill send. "FoxHill Stole BeaconHill PowderHoufe Watch House COMMON Scaleof Male CLEAR BOSTONENE EXPLANATION Wind Mill Point hills Gen Small Pox //collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:9s161f21f 1722 Bonner Map 2/9 Charles Hudfoon CHARLES RIVER Point the For are Non Borth Battry want Mill Pond Missis T. Magazine Beason.Hill T LOOK what Street Griffins Whad Battery Lident Wher/ COMMON South Battery Fore Nik A New and Correct Hotel PLAN of the TOWN Windmill Point of BOSTON. Fortification October 1775 K STIMPSON'S BOSTON DIRECTORY, CONTAINING THE NAMES OF THE INHABITANTS, THEIR OCCUPATIONS, PLACES OF BUSINESS, AND DWELLING HOUSES, AND THE CITY REGISTER, WITH LISTS OF THE Streets, Lanes and Wharbes, THE CITY OFFICERS, PUBLIC OFFICES AND BANKS, AND OTHER USEFUL INFORMATION. BOSTON CHARLES STIMPSON. 1846. 192 DIRECTORY. Dorety Patrick, cabinetmaker, h. 70 Endicot Dorety Patrick, moulder, h. Swan court Dorety Roger, h. rear 130 Ann Dorety Ross, h. rear 135 Hanover Dorey William, stevedore, h. 5 Bennet place Dorman J. W. boards New England House Dorman James, h. 6 Charter Dorman James W. Denison & Co.), b'ds N. Eng. H. Dorn Valentine, musician, h. 6 Boylston sq. Dorr A. C., Secretary American Insurance Company Dorr (Charles H.), Balch (B. W.) & Prince (J.B., & G. C. Piper), dry g'ds, Old So'h Bl'k, h. 3 Louisburgh sq. Dorr Edward R. tailor, 61 Commercial, h. r. 11 Carver Dorr John, merchant, h. 31 Bedford Dorr Joseph, baker, h. 55 South Dorr Joseph H. boards U. S. Hotel Dorr Moses, clerk, 6 Merchants row Dorr R. S. 74 Long wharf, h. U. S. Hotel Dorr Samuel A. house 22 Louisburgh square Dorr Thomas E. (Ammidown, Bowman & Co.), boards United States Hotel Dorr William B. counsellor, Turnpike, h. 678 Washing. Dorrance Oliver B. (Richardson, Burrage & Co.), house 14 Derne Dorren William, laborer, h. 27 S. Russell Dorrill Theodore, sailmaker, Arch wf. h. Broadway Doten Prince, mason, h. 7 East st. place Dougherty Cornelius, Dedham Dougherty Cornelius, lab. Paris.-Ano. rear Liverpool Dougherty James, laborer, h. rear Border Dougherty James, plasterer, h. 3 S. Foster place Dougherty John, lab. h. Everett.-Ano. op. 2 Haymk't pl. Dougherty John, mason, 9 Federal court Doughton William. paperstainer, h. 21 Dedham Doughty James (Boynton & D.), h. 112 S. Hudson Douglass Andrew, ferryman, h. Liverpool Douglass Harrison, printer, h. 36 Leveret Douglass Henry, tailor, h. 1 Boylston square Douglass James, h. Henchman lane Douglass Maria C. dressmaker, 131 Pleasant Douglass Peter G. physician, 8 Winter Douglass Robert. See Everett & D. Douglass Thos. T. engineer fer. boat, E. Bos. h. Everett Dow Amos, housewright, h. 7 Commercial Dow Benjamin F. See Adden & D. Dow Charles H. clerk, 15 Broad Dow Charles J. 76 Summer Dow (Daniel) & Alden (J. V.), housewrights, Portland, house 8 North Chapel place Dow Ephraim, h. Marion Dow George (R. Stone, jr. & Co.), h. 69 Atkinson 548 DIRECTORY. Walter Lynde, Mrs. house 58 Belknap Walter Richard, stonecutter. h. 17 Vine Walton Calvin, printer, h. C st. near 5th st. Walton Eliza, rear 96 Warren Walton Henry, blacksmith, h. 81 Kneeland Walton Reuben, housewright, 14 Gouch Walton William, tailor, h. 15 Atkinson Walworth (James J.) & Nason (Joseph), engineers and iron tube manufacturers, 22 Devonshire Ward Andrew H. jr. (Jones, Denny & W.), h. Temple pl. Ward Artemas, h. 6 Park Ward Artemas, leather, 36 N. Market, h. 11 Elm Ward A. L. & Co. (C. Andrews). grocers, 29 Essex, h. 6 Oxford Ward Catharine, widow, h. 11 Milton place Ward Charles T. 92 State Ward David, h. 207 Hanover Ward Dennis, fisherman, h. Tremont II. Dover Ward Ellen F. widow, 18 Carver Ward Francis, h. foot of Essex place Ward Francis. wheelwright, Beverly, h. Canal Ward George C. ( Wm. J. Niles & Co.), h. 33 School Ward George L. boards U.S. Hotel Ward George W. housewright, E. Orange, h. 2 Oneida Ward Henry A. physician, 1 Sullivan pl. h. 6 Park Ward Hugh. cook, h. opposite 71 South Ward Holbrook A. house 10 Purchase Ward James, laborer, h. 3012 Cross Ward John, house 3 Park Ward John M. house 6 Park Ward Joseph W. (Henshaw, W. & Co), h. 8 Temple pl. Ward Joshua F. fruit, 24 Merchants row Ward Mary, widow, h. 212 Hanover Ward Michael, h. 4 Stillman place Ward Nahum & Co. ( W. H. Jackson), 104 Fulton Ward Patrick, cooper, h. 291 Atkinson Ward Richard, teller Atlantic Bank Ward Richard (Andrews & W.). h. 8 Village Ward Samuel D. counsellor, 10 Court, h. 6 Park Ward Samuel D. jr. 66 Milk Ward (Simon B.) & Jones (H. B.), tailors, Broadway corner C st. Ward Sarah, widow of Samuel. h. 17 Harrison avenue Ward Thomas, fisherman, h. rear 6 Charter Ward Thomas, housewright, h. 2 Church n. Piedmont Ward Thomas W. 28 State, h. 3 Park Ward William, sailmaker, 45 Charter Ward William (Henshaw, W. & Co.), h. 3 Winthrop pl. Ward William, tailor. h. 58 Prince Ward William, housewright, h. 2 Oneida Ward Z. H. Clinton House, 178 Harrison avenue 7/4/2017 List of libraries in 19th-century Boston Wikipedia List of libraries in 19th-century Boston From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This list includes libraries located in Boston, Massachusetts, active in the 19th century. Included are reading-rooms, circulating libraries, subscription libraries, public libraries, academic libraries, medical libraries, children's libraries, church libraries, and government libraries. A CONDITION Adjutant-General's Library{1 Almshouse Libraryl [2] Circulating Library. American Academy of Arts and Sciences Libraryl 1][ American Baptist Union Libraryl² S UBSCRIBERS by the quarter pay few 13art By the month, AMP dollar. The money to be American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Library, [1][2] paid time of fublessing. Subtenberr have the Mission House, liberty of taking cut two volumes if 4 time et chang- Pemberton Square them they please and Sta) book to be retained longer than one month American Institute of Instruction Library[1][2] Aar person once substribed to be confidered as % febtunber till he express defire to the proptacts to have his name trifed, and even in that cate, to pay American Peace Society Libraryl a long AS he retain any book or have any unfettled. American Statistical Association Library(1][2] pay and Extrant dillar per week for each dundetimo volume, of the fire of a corn. American Unitarian Association mon Teffament CT under. One affiliar pr: week foreach offare volume Mary Ashley, no. 124 Charles St. [3] Any book retained longer than (even days, mult other upon fecaus week, and to on, Asylum and Farm School Library[2] The value of the books to be deported when re quired. Any perform taking a book on loan, and who may afterwards purchase or like it, muit not only pay the B price of the book, but the loan of 14 up to the time of payment. aboved leavesfulded down, written up Backup's Circulating Library(2) on. or mult be paid for and if it belong tr Re the whole mult be taken and paid for, or reaform Me compensation made. Luke Baker's circulating library, no.69 Court St. [4] Conditions of Blakes' circulating Berkeley Circulating Library[5] library, no. 1 Cornhill, 1800 Bigelow School Library(2) Bixby's Circulating Library; L.W. Bixby, Washington St. [6] 'c William Pinson Blake and Lemuel Blake, circulating library at the Boston Book-Store, no. 1, SUFFOLK CIRCULATING Ll. Cornhill 7 BRARY G N S. & J SIMPKINS have this day Board of Trade Library(1)[2] di their Book and Statement Store NEW Ismit a Boston and Albany Railroad Library (est. 1868) [8] valuable History Boston Art Club Library(2) and Revenue, Novels, or will he aided 18 Boston Athenaeum 1.4 month Periedica Politication Boston Circulating Library, no.3 School St.; E. Penniman Jr.; [9] no.5 Cornhill-Square [10] IN this OT QUANTO BIBLES, Boston City Hospital Library(2) quantity of kiddle, whatevel Boston College Library(2 by mails, Waster Interest Sale Books, Boston Library Society(2) present LETTER Paper, Boston Lunatic Hospital Library(2) rated pattern, 1. **B Russia us plain binding 2mg Boston Medical Library (1805-1826)!11 - Knowleare in Power.' Boston Medical Library (est. 1875) Ad for Suffolk Circulating Library, Boston Public Library corner Brattle and Court St., 1822 Boston Society for Medical Improvement ¹ Boston Society of Natural History Libraryl [1][2] Boston Society of the New Jerusalem Church Library(2) FRANKLIN CICULATING LIBRARY THE following "Popular Works" just ad. ed to the Franklin Circulating Library, No. Boston Theological Library{2][11] 69. Court-street. The Albigenses a romance, by the author of Boston Turnverein Library(2) "Bertram," "Woman, or Pown et Contne," &c. 4vols. The Adventures of Hajji Raba of Ispa- Boston University han, by the author of Anastasits, 3 vols. The Spac Wife, a tale of the Scottish Chronicles, by Boston University Library(2) the author of **Annals of the Parish, "Sir An. drew Wylie," &c. & 2 vole Narrative of a Boston University School of Medicine Library(2) Journey to the Shorea of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819, 20. 21, and 22, by John Franklin, il. hatrated by a Frontispiece and Map. Boston University Theological Libraryl2 march 18 Spis Boston Young Men's Christian Union Library, [2] 10.20 Boylston[6 Ad for Franklin Circulating Library, Bowditch Library{1] Court St., 1824 Bowdoin Literary Association!1 Boylston Library[12] Brattle Square Church Library(2) Broadway Circulating Library(2) Bromfield Street Church Library(2) Eliza Brown, circulating library{13] Bulfinch Place Chapel Libraryl [2] Burnham & Bros., 10.60 Cornhill; [14] Thomas Burnham, Perry Burnham ¹ Kezia Butler no 82 Newbury Street[12][15] 7/4/2017 List of libraries in 19th-century Boston Wikipedia C Campbell's Circulating Library(2) Carney Hospital Library(2 Carter's Circulating Library(2][12] Callender's Library, School St.; also known as the Shakespeare Library; Charles Callender, H.G. Callender-3][12][16] Charlestown High School Library(2) Mercantile Library Association, Christ Church Library{2] Merchants Hall, corner Congress and Christian Unity Library(2) Water St., 1820s-1830s Church Home for Orphans Library(2) Church of the Advent Library(2) City Point Circulating Library{2] S. H. PARKER, Clarendon Library, Clarendon St.[6] 164 WASHINGTON STREET, MUSIC AND BOOKSTORE W.B. Clarke's circulating library{12] ALSO, AN EXTENSIVE Columbian Circulating Library, no.43 Cornhill GIROULATIING LIBRARY, Columbian Social Library (est.1813), Boylston Hall[17][18] SUPPLIED WITH all THE NEW PORICITIONS A LARGE COLLECTION OF Comer's Commercial College(1) MUSIC, Congregational Library, [2] corner of Beacon and Somerset ¹ Printed on Plate, the lowest reduced prices. Consumptives' Home Libraryl² PIANO FORTES D FOR MAKE TO 1.07. Deaf Mute Library Association² AND TUNE To order, by C. BRADLEE, publisher of Music on Plase. Democratic reading room, corner Congress St. and Congress Sq. [3] Dorchester Athenaeum Library[2] Now publishing, as above, & new Edition of THE Dramatic Fund Association! WAVERLEY NOVELS, J.H. Duclos & Bro., no.57 Warren St.[6] Revised by the Author, with new Preferes and Notes. Subscriptions received for the Series, Ene edition each work in two volumes with Engravings, at (2 1-9 cents per volume Also, in edition, one work in one E volume, without Engravings, at 75 cents per volume, needly doos up in cloth. East Boston Library Association1 Ad for S.H. Parker's circulating Ministerial Library of Eliot Church [2] library, Washington St., 1832 F Caroline Fanning{19] Farrer's Circulating Library(2) First Christian Church Library(2) First Universalist Church Library(2) Frederick Fletcher, no.55 Meridian, East Boston201 Franklin Circulating Library, no.69 Court St. [21] Franklin Typographical Society Library(1][2] G Gate of Heaven Church Library(2) Library of the General Court ¹ Portrait of Elizabeth Peabody, General Theological Library (est.1860);{2][12] no. 12 West St. [6] proprietor of foreign library, West St., Gill's Circulating Library(2) 19th century Good Samaritan Church Library(2) Grand Lodge of Masons Library{2] Grant & Brown, no. 873 Washington St.[6] Guild Library of Church of the Advent 2 H Halliday's Circulating Library, West St. [2][5] Hancock Library, 42 Hancock; A. Boyden [22] Handel and Haydn Library(1) Harvard Chapel Library(2) Harvard Musical Library(2) Medical College of Harvard University Library(2) Boston Public Library, Boylston St., C.W. Holbrook's circulating library; no.88 Dover [6] mid-19th century 7/4/2017 List of libraries in 19th-century Boston - Wikipedia Home for Aged Women Library(2) House of Correction Library(2) MEDICAL House of Industry Library(2) House of Reformation Library(2) J Jamaica Plain Circulating Library(2) Boston Public Library, Boylston St., Joy Street Baptist Church Library{2] mid-19th century K Keating's Circulating Library; no. 1027 Washington St. [6] King's Chapel Library{1] L Ladies Circulating Library, Washington St.; N. Nutting, proprietor[19] Lawrence Association Library(2) R.L. Learned's circulating library, Tremont St. [5] Boston Athenaeum, Beacon St., Lincoln School Library(2) 1850s Lindsay's Circulating Library;{2] George W. Lindsey, Washington St. [20] Liscomb's Circulating Library(2) Loring's Circulating Library;[2] Loring's Select Library, Washington St.; [20] A.K. Loring{12] A.F. Low's circulating library, Meridian St. [5] Lowe's Circulating Library(2) M Marine Board of Underwriters' Library(2) Mariners' Exchange reading room, no. Lewis[20] Mariner's House, North Square(23) Thomas Marsh's circulating library, Beach St.[5] Massachusetts College of Pharmacy{1] Massachusetts Historical Society Massachusetts Horticultural Society Library(2) West Church, Lynde St., West End, Massachusetts Hospital ¹ mid-19th century Massachusetts New Church Union Library{2] Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-minded Youth(1) UT Orders for all European books etc. Massachusetts Society for Promotion of Agriculture ¹ with despatch, at the shortes Massachusetts State Library Massachusetts State Prison Library(2) Massachusetts Teachers' Association¹ Catalogue Massachusetts Total Abstinence Society Library{2] Mayhew and Baker's Juvenile Circulating Library, no.208 Washington St. [12] McGrath's Circulating Libraryl Mechanic Apprentices Library Association(2) J.O. Mendum's circulating library, Tremont St.[5] 8. URBINO'S Mercantile Library Association Library(2) foreign circulating library. Merchants Exchange reading room, Merchants Exchange building, State St.; [24] "basement, Old State House" 2 Merrill's Circulating Library;l2 C.H. Merrill, no. 1575 Washington St.[6] Methodist Episcopal Church Library{2] Catherine Moore's circulating library, no. 436 Washington St. [3][14] Mount Vernon Church Library(2) BOSTON Present 42.52 Mount Vernon School for Young Ladies ¹ Munroe & Francis, juvenile library, no.4 Cornhill[25] Catalogue of S. Urbino's foreign Musical Society Library[1][2] circulating library, 19th century (American Antiquarian Society) N New England Conservatory of Music Library(2) New England Female Medical College 7/4/2017 List of libraries in 19th-century Boston Wikipedia New England Methodist Historical Society{1] Norcross School Library(2) North End Circulating Library, no. 123 Hanover St.; Thomas Hiller Jr. [3][26] Notre Dame Academy Libraryl² O Odd Fellows' Library(2) Old Colony Chapel Library(2) Osgood's Circulating Library(2) P Paine's Circulating Library(2) Samuel H. Parker's circulating library H.B. Payne & Co.'s circulating library(5) Elizabeth Peabody's foreign circulating library, no. 13 West St. [3] William Pelham's circulating library, no.59 Cornhill Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Penitent Female Refuge Society Library(2) Horticultural Hall, Tremont St., mid- 19th century F.W. Perkins' circulating library(5) Library of Perkins Institution for the Blind[1][2] Pioneer Circulating Library(2) Prince Library(27) Q Quinn's Circulating Library [2] R Library in house of George Ticknor Lydia Reed ¹9 and his daughter Anna Ticknor, Park Republican Institution¹ St., Boston, ca. 1890s Republican Reading Room, Bromfield St. [20] E.R. Rich & Son; no. 477 West Broadwayl6 Roxbury Athenaeum Library(2) Roxbury High School Library(2) LEASSON S Sage's Circulating Library;[2] William Sage, no.371 Tremont[6 Sailors Home Library(2) "Book railway" used in Boston Public School of Technology Library(2) Library, 1895. Made by Lamson Consolidated Store Service Company, Second Methodist Church Library(2) of Boston W.F. & M.H. Shattuck, no. 106 Main 6 Shawmut Avenue Baptist Church Library(2) Shawmut Mission Library(2) Social Law Library{2] Society to Encourage Studies at Home South End Circulating Library(2) Mary Sprague's circulating library, no.9 Milk St. [12][28] St. Francis de Sales Church Library{2] St. Joseph Circulating Library(2) St. Mary's Young Men's Sodality Library(2) St. Stephen's Church Library(2) State Agricultural Library(2) Stoughton Street Church Library(2) Suffolk Circulating Library; corner of Court and Brattle St.; N.S. Simpkins, J. Simpkins [29] Sumner library, no.6 Winthrop block, East Boston20] T Teuthorn's Circulating Library;[2] Julius Teuthorn, no. 10 Beach!6 George Ticknor's private library, no.8 Park St. Toll-Gate Circulating Library,{2] no.665 East Broadway[5][6] 7/4/2017 List of libraries in 19th-century Boston Wikipedia U Union Circulating Library, no.4 Cornhill, corner of Water St.; [30] William Blagrove Union Mission Church Library(2) Unitarian Association Library(2) S.R. Urbino, foreign circulating library V Village Church Libraryl Vine Street Congregational Church Library(2) W Walker's Circulating Library(2) J.B. Walker, no. 1392 Tremont[6] Thomas O. Walker, no.68 Warren Street Chapel Library(2) Washington Circulating Library, no.38 Newbury St. [31] Washington Circulating Library, no. 11 School St. [32] Washingtonian Home Library(2) West Boston Library, Cambridge St. [12] West Church Library(2) West Roxbury Free library, Centre St. [6] West Roxbury High School Library(2) Whig reading room, no. 144 Washington St. [3] Winkley & Boyd's Central library(20] Workingmen's Reading Room Y Boston Young Men's Christian Association Library (YMCA), [2] Tremont Young Men's Christian Union¹ Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), no.68 Warrenton 6 Young Men's Working Association Library[2] Z Zion Church Libraryl [2] Contents 1 References 2 Further reading 3 External links 4 See also References 1. William Jones Rhees (1859), Manual of public libraries, institutions, 8. Also called the "Circulating and Consulting Library for the Officers and societies (https://books.google.com/books?id=y2XFg9jQRjoC) and Employees of the Boston and Albany Railroad Company;" cf. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., OCLC 3991453 (https://www.w "Railroad Libraries." Journal of social science (https://books.google. orldcat.org/oclc/3991453), OL 6937678M (https://openlibrary.org/bo com/books?id=TcnNAAAAMAAJ): containing the Transactions of oks/OL6937678M) the American Association, no.2. 1870 2. Massachusetts Census: 1875 (https://books.google.com/books?id=j5t 9. Boston Mirror, Dec. 17, 1808 It3K2IQEC). Retrieved 2010-09-03. 10. Boston Patriot, March 31, 1810 3. Boston Directory 1848. 11. Boston Directory. 1810 4. Boston Directory. 1813 12. Charles K. Bolton (Feb 1907). "Circulating Libraries in Boston, 5. Boston almanac and business directory: 1878 1765-1865" (https://books.google.com/books? 6. Boston Almanac and Directory 1876. id=t7oMAAAAYAAJ). Publications of the Colonial Society of 7. Catalogue of W.P. & L. Blake's circulating library at the Boston Massachusetts. 11. Retrieved 2010-09-03. Book-Store, no. 1, Cornhill (Boston: William P. and Lemuel Blake, 13. Boston Directory (https://books.google.com/books?id=En4qAAAAY 1800) AAJ). 1858 14. Boston Directory. 1850 7/4/2017 List of libraries in 19th-century Boston Wikipedia 17. Catalog of Books in the Columbian Social Library. Boston: 1818 25. ca. 1820 advertisement in: American Broadsides and Ephemera, 18. Bowen's Picture of Boston, 3rd ed. 1838. Series 1 19. David Kaser (1980), A book for a sixpence, Pittsburgh: Beta Phi Mu, 26. Boston Directory. 1852 ISBN 0-910230-14-5, OL 4402878M (https://openlibrary.org/books/ 27. Catalogue of the library of Rev. Thomas Prince (https://books.googl OL4402878M), 0910230145 e.com/books?id=mjQAAAAAYAAJ): former pastor of Old South 20. Boston Directory 1868. Church. Presented by him to the Old South Church and Society. 21. Columbian Centinel, Feb. 12, 1823 Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1846 22. Boston Almanac. 1847 28. Independent Chronicle, May 17, 1802; cf. Bolton 23. "Mariner's House, North Square." Dearborn's Reminiscences of 29. Boston Daily Advertiser, July 17, 1822 Boston. Boston: N. Dearborn, 1851 30. Boston Daily Advertiser, Aug. 23, 1815 24. Goodrich. The family tourist. 1848 31. Catalog of the Washington Circulating Library, Boston. 1817 32. Catalog of the Washington Circulating Library, Boston. 1833 Further reading Bacon's dictionary of Boston (https://books.google.com/books?id=hRqFvLB0S7EC).I Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1886. Charles K. Bolton (April 1909). "Social Libraries in Boston" (https://books.google.com/books?id=tjw-AAAAYAAJ) Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Jesse Hauk Shera (1949), Foundations of the public library: The Origins Of The Public Library Movement In New England 1629- 1855(http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6048468M/Foundations_of_the_public_library),Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, OCLC 575422 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/575422) External links Princeton University (http://www.princeton.edu/~davpro/databases/index.html). Davies Wikimedia Commons has Project. American Libraries before 1876. media related to Libraries in Boston. See also List of libraries in 18th century Massachusetts Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_libraries_in_19th-century_Boston&oldid=748023466" Categories: 19th century in Boston Libraries in Boston Cultural history of Boston Boston-related lists 19th century-related lists United States history-related lists I Lists of libraries in the United States This page was last edited on 5 November 2016, at 21:54. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. The "Literary Centre" - The Atlantic file: Boston available: online CULTURE The "Literary Centre" "The assertion that Boston was the literary center during the period in which American literature acquired a shelf of its own in the library of the race is hardly open to dispute." M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE SEPTEMBER 1903 ISSUE Quotation marks are safe inclosures for words in danger of losing their place. The words at the head of this paper have been dragged relentlessly from one American city to another, and have before them a prospect of endless migration. Their meaning, too, is subject to indefinite change. The centre may be that of the writing, the printing, or the reading of books. A courageous confidence is needed to say that this, that, or the other place is or will be the "literary centre of America. " It is the fortune of the present writer to be dealing with what has been, and the assertion that Boston was the literary centre-without quotation marks-during the period in which American literature acquired a shelf of its own in the library of the race is hardly open to dispute.)The production of books possessing something like permanence is perhaps the most characteristic mark of a centre to which the term literary, in its true meaning of "related to literature," may be applied. Name the American writers whose work has stood the test of half a century, and with a few notable exceptions they belong to Boston and its neighborhood. All this is thrice familiar. The record of it, in outline or in detail, is a story which has been told by many tongues and many pens. If we look rather at the significance of the story, and try The "Literary Centre" - The Atlantic to give it its place in the longer story of Boston, the more immediate purpose will be served. Amongst the many fields of activity into which Boston has made an early or the earliest entry, the field of creative writing-not for instruction or argument-can hardly be counted. It is to other places that we must look for the first important contributions to what is called American literature. Yet in Philadelphia and New York the first comers, Charles Brockden Brown, Irving, and Cooper, each enjoyed some of the distinction of the solitary. Brown has become a mere name in literary history; the others live. But when they made their appearance, it was rather as detached luminaries than as planets or fixed stars belonging to a system. The life of the communities in which they lived had not reached the organic state demanding expression in literature, and finding it at the hands of a body, however small, which could be called a literary class. In Boston, at this early period, the condition was much the same with the two differences that the individual writers of distinction were yet appear, and that influences were at work, perhaps more powerfully than anywhere else in America, toward making a definite expression through literature at some later time almost a necessity. (These influences called into being the Anthology Club, the Athenaeum, and the North American Review. )The unremitting influence of Harvard College, sending its sons year by year into the pulpits, counting-houses, and professional offices of Boston, had also to be reckoned with. For the devotion of any considerable number of these or other men to the pursuit of literature, the time was not yet ripe. Questions of politics laid claim to much the best thought of the best thinkers. As before the Revolution, SO in the days of the Federalist the in From Town to City: Boston in the 1820s ROBERT A. McCAUGHEY Barnard College, Columbia University The belief in the unbroken quality of Boston's his- tory from the Revolution to the 1840s, a pillar of Brahmin histori- ography, has proved surprisingly durable. The fact that Boston un- derwent an official change from town to city in 1822 has been noted, but with little attention paid to its possible significance. Lucius Beebe dismisses the change as inconsequential, describing Boston in the next decade as still "an almost pastoral community." After acknowledging its rapid growth in the 1820s and the pro- gressive administration of Mayor Josiah Quincy from 1823 to 1828, Roland Stromberg goes on to describe Boston of the 1830s as "an overgrown village, where everybody likely enough knew everybody else, and nobody escaped the scrutiny of the collective eye." Oscar Handlin writes that "there had been no disruption in the essential continuity of the city's history" during the half-cen- tury prior to the Irish migrations of the late 1840s. According to Martin Green, only with the coming of the Irish and industrialism were Boston's "communal hopes of earlier times spoiled." 1 Lucius Beebe, Boston and the Boston Legend (New York, 1936), 111-12; Roland Stromberg, "Boston in the 1820's and 1830's," History Today, XI (1961), 591-92; Oscar Handlin, Boston's Immigrants (2nd ed., Boston, 1959), 24; Volume 88 Number 2 June 1973 191 Political Science Quarterly 192 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY The purpose of this essay is to suggest an alternative interpreta- tion, that a decisive break occurred in Boston's history around 1820, Thesis at which point the population of Boston had not only increased significantly in number, but changed in character from the Boston of the 1780s. The change from town to city in 1822 was not incon- sequential, but was the logical institutional response to that change in character. Moreover, Josiah Quincy's mayoralty, rather than hav- ing been in the tradition of elite rule in a homogeneous, orderly, consensual community extending back to John Winthrop, may be understood as the first attempt to govern a Boston where anonymi- ty, disorder, and conflict-oriented politics-phenomena associated with contemporary American urban life2-were already manifest- ing themselves. I Few ideas appealed less to colonial Bostonians than incorporation. By 1800, seven separate proposals to replace the town meeting with a mayor and city council had been rejected, and all for the reason offered by one conservative Bostonian in 1714: "A People can hard- ly be guilty of greater folly than to change a Government under which, not only they, but their Fathers also, for a long time have Lived, Flourished and Prospered; it having been ever looked on as a very hazardous, perillous and dangerous thing for a People SO to do." On October 16, 1815, the Boston Town Meeting heard a Report on the Expediency of Making an Alteration in the Municipal Gov- ernment, the fourth such since 1784. Disclaiming any desire "to alter forms that are settled and familiar to our citizens in con- formity to some chosen or theoretic form of city government," the report recommended only modest changes in the prevailing arrange- Martin Green, The Problem of Boston: Some Readings in Cultural History (New York, 1966), 44-45. 2 Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," in Richard Sennett, ed., Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities (New York, 1969), 143-64; Richard Sennett, The Uses of Disorder (New York, 1971); Edward Banfield, The Unheavenly City (Boston, 1970). "A Dialogue Between a Boston Man and a Countryman, 1714-1715," Pub- lications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, X (1904-06), 348. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 193 ments. 4 Nevertheless, four weeks later a majority of Bostonians voted against making any alterations in the way they governed themselves. "Where the spirit of liberty is on so high a key," Timothy Dwight observed the year before while visiting Boston, "necessity only, and that little less than absolute, will persuade most men to admit cheerfully the unpleasant change from a smaller to a greater number of restrictions."5 But more than loyalty continued to commend ancestral forms to Bostonians at a time when fifty other American communities had already opted for incorporation. During its long history, town gov- ernment had proved both responsive to community needs and effec- tive in meeting the Although ultimate power resided in the meet- ing, the administrative details of governance were left to a board of selectmen. As Boston grew and its problems became more readily differentiated, special boards were established by the town meeting to deal with them. In 1679, following a fire that gutted much of the town, a board of firewards was created and charged with directing all firefighting operations. Thirteen years later, a board of overseers of the poor was formed, ostensibly to manage the almshouse, but also to discourage vagrants from taking up residence in the town. A school committee was created in 1790 to administer the town's growing educational system; nine years later, in the wake of a yel- low fever epidemic, a board of health was established. The members of these boards were elected annually in a general meeting of all freeholding townsmen. In theory, a more democratic, decentralized arrangement would be difficult to imagine. Town government had also met two other important criteria: it was cheap and it was honest. All elected officials, except the senior selectman, who was usually superintendent of police as well, served without salary. Yet, because these positions reflected standing in the community, they did not lack for volunteers. Indeed, however democratic in theory, town government was controlled by an oli- garchy. According to James A. Henretta, all the important offices of Boston in the 1770s, "were lodged firmly in the hands of a broad & Report reprinted in Boston Town Records, 1814-1822, Vol. XXXVII of Boston Record Commissioners' Reports (Boston, 1906), 45-48. 5 Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York (1821; Cam- bridge, 1969), I, 362-63. 194 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY elite, entry into which was conditioned by commercial achievement and family background." Educated, propertied, and politically con- servative-which by the 1790s meant Federalist-this elite re- tained into the early 1800s that indispensable character of a domi- nant group which Robert Dahl has defined as "the sense, shared not only by themselves but by the populace, that their claim to gov- ern was legitimate." So long as this sense prevailed, town govern- ment worked. But by 1820 it was no longer working, at least not well. Of sev- eral factors contributing to the declining effectiveness of town gov- ernment, the overriding one was demography. After having reached a population of 16,000 in the 1740s, Boston had remained at that level throughout the 1760s. During the Revolution the town experi- enced a net loss in population, in part due to the Loyalist exodus and in part due to the growth in New England of secondary ports. Then, in the late 1780s, Boston's population began to grow again. The 18,000 recorded in the 1790 census grew to more than 43,000 by 1820, an increase of 250 per cent in thirty years. (A city census in 1825 reported a population in excess of 58,000, indicating that the annual growth rate had accelerated to 7 per cent.)8 Although most of those swelling Boston's ranks during this period, unlike what would happen in the 1840s, were native born, the increase, never- theless, rendered the town's almost familial governing arrange- ments suddenly obsolete. (Coinciding with this rapid growth, and compounding the result- ant depersonalization of public life, was a redistribution of Bos- ton's population> Beginning in the 1790s, hills were cut down and coves filled in, a process which not only provided more usable land but helped destroy the relatively stable residential patterns of the eighteenth-century town. The North End, for example, during the Revolutionary era a mixed neighborhood of the well-to-do and of James A. Henretta, "Economic Development and Social Structure in Coloni- al Boston," William and Mary Quarterly, XXII (1965), 91-92. Robert Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, 1961), 17. 8 Jesse Chickering, A Statistical View of the Population of Massachusetts from 1765 to 1840 (Boston, 1846), 12-13. Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (2nd ed., Cam- bridge, 1968), 73-94; Walter Firey, Land Use in Central Boston (Cambridge, 1947), 43-45. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 195 artisans, by the early 1800s was well on the way to becoming a slum. Fort Hill was subject to a similar exodus of wealthy residents, who went to either Beacon Hill or the suburbs. Profits from the War of 1812 and new revenues from manufacturing enterprises widened the economic gap between Boston's rich and poor and underwrote their residential segregation. The result was a discern- ible loosening of those civic ties that had earlier transcended class differences and bound one member of the community to another. 10 Another factor contributing to the decline of Boston's cohesive- ness was the blurring of town boundaries. As late as 1784, Boston could be approached by land from only the southwest. Physical iso- lation reinforced the reality of social solidarity. During the follow- ing 37 years, however, Boston was connected by bridges to Cam- bridge, Charlestown, Dorchester, and Roxbury. "Our town re- sembled a hand," a speaker recalled at the opening of the Western Avenue Bridge in 1821, "but it was a closed one. It is now open and well spread."} Whatever benefits Bostonians derived from their greater mobility were purchased at the cost of their earlier common identity. By 1820, nearly 8,000 people were eligible to participate in the town meeting, a statistic which by itself made unobtainable the ideal of such meetings as deliberative assemblies. "The time is rapidly approaching," one hoarse Bostonian complained in 1821, "when the dictates of reason can find no human voice strong enough to carry them through the whole extent of the assembled citizens and when deliberations will be wholly impossible." Others be- lieved that point had already been reached. 12 If some meetings were crowded and unruly, most were so poorly attended that often a ma- jority of those present were elected officials. The town budget, which by 1820 amounted to $150,000, was regularly approved at meetings attracting fewer than fifty citizens. 13 10 For a discussion of distribution of wealth in Boston, see Edward Pessen, "The Equalitarian Myth and American Social Reality: Wealth, Mobility, and Equality in the 'Era of the Common Man,' " American Historical Review, LXXVI (1971), 1119-21. 11 Whitehill, 94. 12 Columbian Centinel, Nov. 10, 1821; [Samuel Alonzo Knapp], Extract from the Journal of Travels in North America by Ali Bey (Boston, 1818), 40-41. 13 Josiah Quincy, Municipal History of the Town and City of Boston, 1630- 1830 (Boston, 1852), 29. 196 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY Another casualty of Boston's rapid growth was its deferential pattern of politics. The presence of so many new voters either un- familiar with or hostile to the town's governing elite certainly helped to undermine it, as did a growing fragmentation within the elite itself. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Boston's upper class was divided religiously into Calvinists and Unitarians, economically into those whose wealth derived from foreign commerce and those whose interests had shifted to manu- facturing, and politically into proto-Whigs, those Federalists who joined in the "Era of Good Feelings" after the War of 1812, and the intransigents. No longer able to agree among themselves, the mem- bers of the upper class found it increasingly difficult, as one of them delicately phrased it, "to manage that class which is acted upon." The rebuff Charles Bullfinch suffered at the polls in 1815, after having served the town as chairman of the selectmen for sixteen years, marked the point at which many prominent Bostonians ceased regarding town offices as their prerogative or public service as a responsibility incumbent upon them. Rather than vie with "the wickedly aspiring," they voluntarily withdrew from public life and permitted less disinterested but more politically aggressive Bosto- nians to gain office by default. 15 Thus, as the town's problems grew more complex, those elected to deal with them were increasingly less able to do so. Generally in- experienced and often inept, the new officeholders seemed more in- tent on shirking than on meeting their public responsibilities. Juris- dictional disputes among the various boards became commonplace as each tried to shift the blame for the decline in the quality of mu- nicipal services. The board of health, for example, which had per- formed heroically earlier in the century, by 1816 was a way-station for politicians hoping to become selectmen. Such men were more concerned with their own careers than with keeping the streets clear of animal waste or checking on clogged sewer vaults. Boston, as a result, literally stank. 16 By 1820 even the most conservative Bostonians acknowledged Letter from Harrison Gray Otis to William Sullivan, Jan. 19, 1822, Harri- son Gray Otis Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society [MHS], Boston. 15 Harold and James Kirker, Bulfinch's Boston 1787-1817 (New York, 1964), 268-70. For the predisposition to withdrawal among Federalists, see David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (New York, 1965), 1-28. 16 Columbian Centinel, Dec. 12, 1821. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 197 the shortcomings of the governmental arrangements they had in- herited and agreed with Lemuel Shaw that they should be replaced by a system "more suited to the needs of a numerous people." That same year the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, in clarifying the provisions relating to incorporation, cleared the way for reform. On December 21, 1821, after rejecting an earlier plan "for not going far enough," the Boston Town Meeting elected a committee to devise a new system of government. 18 The committee's report, presented eight days later, called for sweeping changes, including replacing the "Town of Boston" with the "City of Boston." During the ensuing three-day session, the meeting discussed and accepted the committee's proposed charter, which contained provisions for a popularly elected mayor with broad if ill-defined powers, an 8-man board of aldermen elected at large, and a common council composed of 48 members, 4 from each of the 12 wards. On January 7, 1822, Boston voters by a seven-to- five margin approved the charter and directed that it be sent to the General Court for its endorsement. An era, begun 192 years earlier, had ended. 19 II Determined to have a city, Bostonians needed a mayor. Initially it appeared that the customary procedures would prevail: selection by the Federalist Central Committee, endorsement by a public party caucus, election by balloting at Faneuil Hall. Even before the charter was submitted to the General Court, William Sullivan, a leading Boston Federalist, wrote to the head of the state Federalist party, U.S. Senator Harrison Gray Otis, that "if we should arrive at the point of having the right to choose a mayor, you are that one of my fellow citizens, whom I expect to see engaged in the labor of putting the executive machinery in action." Another Bostonian, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, wrote to Otis in a similar vein, assuring him of the backing of "Webster, Lowell, Tudor, all the Judges and those whom I know you feel a high respect for."20 17 Journal of the Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates Chosen to Revise the Constitution, 1820-1821 (Boston, 1821), 615. 18 Boston Town Records, 1814-1822, 254-55. 19 Columbian Centinel, Jan. 9, 1822. 20 William Sullivan to H. G. Otis, Jan. 6, 1822; Thomas S. Perkins to H. G. Otis, Apr. 5, 1822, Otis Papers. 198 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY The offer caught Otis in a receptive mood. Four frustrating years in Washington had been enough; he had already decided to return to Boston, he told his wife, "where I can help train the young leaders of my breed." Why not do SO as mayor? The office had the additional attraction of providing a respectable position while he waited for Governor Brooks to retire. Once consenting to "the solic- itation of my friends," Otis left it to Sullivan and Perkins to secure for him the party's nomination and the election.²¹ At this point few difficulties were anticipated. Federalist confidence was shaken, however, when the General Court failed to delete from the proposed city charter a provision for ward-voting for all city offices. Such an innovation had long been opposed by the Federalists since much of their success in Boston was attributable to "the influence and example" they were able to exert on those who appeared at Faneuil Hall on election day. If balloting was to be permitted in each of the wards, Otis had warned earlier, that influence would be dissipated and "the town will be revolutionized to a certainty."22 The very possibility of dissipating Federalist influence had prompted Boston Democrats to back incorporation in 1822 after having condemned it seven years earlier as a Federalist plot. Ward- voting was the price they exacted for supporting the charter. They hoped it would eliminate not only the coercive practices at Faneuil Hall but the advantage Federalist candidates traditionally enjoyed by virtue of their greater townwide prominence Decentralizing the electoral procedures would have the further effect of consolidating growing Democratic strength in particular neighborhoods, most notably the North End. When ward-voting carried in the March 4 referendum by a majority greater than that of all other provisions of the city charter, Democrats and political independents correctly sensed that Boston's days as a Federalist rotten borough were 23 over. "The chief reason for our friendship towards the city bill," the Democratic Independent Chronicle announced two days before the referendum, "is that it will introduce into power the Middling In- 21 Otis to Sullivan, Jan. 8, 19, 1822, Otis Papers. 22 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis (Boston, 1913), II, 207-18, 234-37- 23 For Democrats' reversal, see Independent Chronicle, Mar. 2, 1822. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 199 terest, an interest among our citizens, which if it had assumed to its due weight, would long ago have swayed the government of our town." "124 The principal leaders of the Middling Interest) were, in fact, not Democrats but disaffected rank-and-file Federalists, po- litical mavericks like William Sturgis, and newcomers to Boston like the Baptist minister Francis Wayland. Repudiating the insinu- uation that the group was "an array of the POOR against the RICH," they insisted the Middling Interest represented "men of property and men of business.''25 Young Ralph Waldo Emerson dismissed it as "a band of mur- murers, a parcel of demagogues hoping for places as partisans which they could not achieve as citizens,"26 but Federalist party of- ficials watched with growing alarm the growth of the Middling In- terest. During the winter of 1821-22 many small businessmen joined its ranks to protest the enforcement of a town ordinance pro- hibiting the construction of wooden buildings. Defended by the selectmen as a fire-prevention measure, the ordinance was seen by the town's undercapitalized shopkeepers as part of a conspiracy to thwart their legitimate aspirations perpetrated by the commercial establishment. On March 7, the ordinance was brought before the town and repudiated by a margin of better than five-to-one. Com- ing on the heels of the ward-voting victory, this impressive show of strength prompted the Independent Chronicle to declare that "Aris- tocracy is in a tremble." "Aristocracy" soon had more cause for concern. Ten days before the city elections, the politically independent but pro-Middling In- terest New England Galaxy offered a critical assessment of those be- ing publicly considered for the mayor's office. Conceding that Otis -already endorsed by the Daily Advertiser-John Phillips, and William Tudor were all reasonably "fit," the Galaxy went on to conclude that none of them was as "preeminently entitled to be the 24 Independent Chronicle, Mar. 22, 1822. 25 On the Middling Interest, see An Exposition of the Principles and Views of the Middling Interest in the City of Boston (Boston, 1822); Defense of the Middling Interest (Boston, 1822); Daily Advertiser, Mar. 6, 16, 30, 1822; Boston Patriot, Mar. 9, 1822. 26 Ralph Waldo Emerson to John Boynton Hill, Mar. 11, 1822, reprinted in Ralph L. Rusk, ed., Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York, 1934), I, 110- 12. 27 Independent Chronicle, Mar. 29, 1822. 200 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY first mayor of Boston" as someone not previously mentioned, Josiah Quincy. 28 The Middling Interest had found a candidate- at first glance a most improbable one. A member of one of Boston's oldest and most distinguished families, Quincy had already served four terms as a Federalist con- gressman (1805-13), seven years in the Massachusetts Senate (1813-20), and had just announced his resignation from the Massa- chusetts House to become judge of the Boston Municipal Court. Long hated by Boston's Democratic-Republicans for his intemper- ate attacks on Jefferson and his violent opposition to the War of 1812, he had not been particularly popular among his fellow Fed- eralists since his return to Boston in 1813. Otis and other party leaders anxious to present themselves in a conciliatory light after the debacle of the Hartford Convention were frequently embar- rassed by his ideological intransigence and unwillingness to sub- mit to party discipline. In 1820 they unceremoniously dumped him from the Federalist slate for the State Senate. Only his humbling shift to the lower house had staved off political oblivion. Moreover, Quincy was known to be hostile toward the city charter. As a mem- ber of the 1815 and 1821 town committees investigating the sub- ject, he had opposed incorporation. Indeed, when first approached by the Middling Interest, he warned them that nominating him "would be like nominating Guy Fawkes for Mayor, for he had done all in his power to blow up their city."28 The choice of Quincy, however, showed considerable astuteness. To add to the respectability of the cause, the Middling Interest re- quired a candidate with a public reputation and wide officeholding experience. But if the first requirements made almost unavoidable the selection of a Federalist, the second was that his ties with the party be tenuous enough to be easily severed. Quincy was qualified on all counts. Dependent upon public responsibilities to give his life substance, he found, at 51, his life-long connection with the Federalist party could no longer be counted on to provide him with offices in which he might have such responsibilities. Furthermore, he had a well developed interest in municipal affairs stemming from his researches as a state representative into the social problems 28 New England Galaxy, Mar. 29, 1822. 29 Letter from Eliza Susan Quincy to Robert C. Winthrop, Oct. 29, 1879, Robert C. Winthrop Papers, MHS. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 201 attending industrialization in Massachusetts. Thus, when offered the nomination as mayor by the Middling Interest, neither party loyalties nor personal scruples prevented him from accepting. When the Federalists held their public caucus the Middling In- terest came within five votes of denying the party's nomination to Otis and winning it for Quincy, which prompted Daniel Webster to concede, "We are in a deplorable state here. Nothing seems prac- ticable but to go forward and support Mr. O. and probably be beaten." Perkins voiced the betrayal he and many of his class felt at one of their own "having thrown himself into the hands of the 'Middling or Meddling Interest.' Quincy has done himself up, by the course he has pursued," he assured Otis, before adding propheti- cally, "He will have the high gratification of having split up the federal party. 1131 As events had it, neither Quincy nor Otis became Boston's first mayor. Although the Democratic press supported Quincy, a suffi- cient number of North Enders refused to vote for a candidate "whose whole political life," one of them later explained "has ren- dered him obnoxious."32 Although Quincy outpolled Otis (1,736 to 1,384), Democratic-Republican scattering left Quincy 62 votes short of a needed majority. When the results were announced, Otis's name was withdrawn. Two days later Quincy followed suit, declaring that the mayor's office "is a station, which I never sought, or coveted." His daughter remembered his sentiments at the time somewhat differently: "He rejoiced at his own defeat-as he feared going in by a small majority." On April 13, 1822, standing unopposed, John Phillips, an ideal compromise, was elected mayor. Phillips proved to be only a tem- porary solution to Boston's executive needs; halfway through his first term he fell seriously ill and announced that he would not stand for reelection. By the spring of 1823 most party leaders accepted the fact that, with Phillips unavailable and Otis committed to a try for the gov- 30 Daniel Webster to Joseph Story, Apr. 5, 1822, reprinted in Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (National Ed., Boston, 1903), XVI, 68. 31 Thomas H. Perkins to H. G. Otis, Apr. 5, 1822, Otis Papers. 32 Independent Chronicle, Apr. 10, 1822. 33 Columbian Centinel, Apr. 10, 1822; Eliza S. Quincy to Robert C. Winthrop, Oct. 29, 1879, Winthrop Papers. 202 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY ernorship, the only alternative to the perpetrator of "the memorable treachery of March last" was a Democratic mayor. It took John Lowell, however, to convince Otis that unless all Federalist office seekers, those of "a higher and better class" as well as "the milk and water" variety, joined together, "they will never again be heard of -they will eat no more Corporation dinners, nor be regaled any longer with the odoriferous praises upon which they have subsisted heretofore." Grudgingly, Otis gave Quincy the Federalist party's endorsement. None of the men of that "higher and better class" were active in Quincy's election, but he made do without them. On April 14, 1823, with the support of the already disintegrating Middling Interest, he secured a majority of 121 votes out of 4,766 cast to defeat the Dem- ocrat George Blake. It was hardly an overwhelming mandate. With only the most tentative political backing and with only the out- moded precedents of town government as a guide, Quincy was now obliged to confront the long-neglected problems of a growing city of 50,000. III "Their labors have been, in a measure, unobtrusive," politely com- mented Boston's second mayor on his predecessor's administration. Temperamentally disinclined to assert the powers of his office or divest the old town boards of theirs, Phillips had done little to alter municipal arrangements. Rather than take personal responsibility for the city's public health, for example, he reconstituted the defunct board of health and delegated to it all its old powers. Similarly, the overseers of the poor and the firewards carried on much as before, that is, without effective executive supervision. Conceding the possible wisdom of shaping the first city admin- istration "by the spirit of the long-experienced constitution of the town, than by that of the unsettled charter of the city," Quincy im- mediately made clear that such caution would not characterize the second. He pledged instead to end "the division of the executive power among many." He also expressed the hope that his exertions would find favor among the voters, but acknowledged the greater 84 John Lowell to H.G. Otis, Feb. 25, 1823, Otis Papers. BOSTON IN THE 1820s 203 likelihood that they would "be followed by loss of confidence." Quincy's determination to provide Boston with effective govern- ment and his skepticism about the political possibilities of doing so would serve him well during his six years as mayor, The inaugural ceremonies over, the city council was called into session to hear a report from the mayor "on the state of the streets" and an accompanying plan "for making and keeping them clean." The town had divided responsibility for the streets between the board of health and the selectmen acting as the surveyors of high- ways. Phillips had sought unsuccessfully by way of a referendum to place the entire responsibility in his office; Quincy simply as- sumed the power as part of his overall responsibility for the city's welfare. Rather than rely on scavengers, he hired teams of laborers to clean the clogged streets. Certainly one of the more impressive statistics of his first year as mayor was the amount of street dirt collected-six thousand.tons The mayor's efforts in this area intentionally encroached upon the domain of Phillips's board of health. Rather than continue the board, Quincy wanted the public health of the city placed in the hands of a full-time professional, appointed by and answerable to the mayor alone. Less than two weeks after taking office, Quincy appointed as "Marshall of the City," Benjamin Pollard, a Harvard graduate and lawyer. This position made Pollard not only Boston's police chief but its health officer as well. What would prove to be Quincy's favorite remedy for urban ills was being prescribed: cen- tralization of power in the mayor's office plus professionalization of the administration of municipal services The mayor and his marshall succeeded where the board had not. Streets were cleaned regularly, sewers were brought under public control, and the unsanitary practice of church-vault burials was fi- nally halted. During Quincy's tenure, Boston acquired a reputation as the healthiest city in the United States. Indeed, so zealous was the mayor about cleaning the streets that some Bostonians thought it was done "to a needless and pernicious extreme." Not since 35 Josiah Quincy, "Inaugural Address, May I, 1823," reprinted in Municipal History, 376-78. 36 Complaint repeated in Harrison Gray Otis, "Report to the Common Coun- cil, January 4, 1830," in Quincy, Municipal History, 304. 204 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY Quincy has anyone had cause to complain on this score. Whereas Quincy had moved quickly and with impunity to as- sume the powers of the board of health, discretion obliged him to proceed more cautiously with respect to the firewards and overseers of the poor. If less socially prestigious than their eighteenth-cen- tury counterparts, members of both boards remained, under the city charter, a potent force in Boston's political life. They were also, as anyone intent upon reforming Boston's antiquated firefighting pro- cedures and provisions for public relief soon discovered, bastions of traditionalism. Equally committed to the status quo were the four hundred mem- bers of Boston's sixteen volunteer engine companies. These politi- cally active companies possessed an esprit de corps unmatched by any other civic organizations. Enginemen apparently received con- siderable personal gratification from the conspicuousness of their public labors. Consequently, convinced that "the nearer the fire the greater the honor," they adamantly opposed the use of hoses that were, by 1820, standard equipment on New York and Philadelphia engines. 37 Quincy's first clash with the firefighting establishment involved the cash bonus traditionally paid to the first engine company at a fire. Phillips had agreed to fifteen dollars, but six weeks after the new mayor took office, the enginement presented a demand for fifty dollars on the threat that they would all quit. Quincy turned to the firewards and asked them to act as mediators, only to discover that they supported the enginemen. He formally rejected the demand and a week later the enginement made good their threat. Fortunate- ly, replacements were secured before any need for them arose. There remained, however, the basic problem of a firefighting system re- sisting the mayor's efforts to modernize it. In the spring of 1825 fate intervened on the side of reform in the guise of a $1,000,000 fire begun in a chowder pot. Before burning itself out, the blaze consumed fifty establishments along State and Broad Streets. Efforts to contain it were totally unsuccessful, at times ludicrous. In May, seeking to capitalize on the public's dis- tress, Quincy brought forward a comprehensive plan for a fire de- 37 Arthur W. Brayley, A Complete History of the Boston Fire Department (Boston, 1889), 148-49; Quincy, Municipal History, 153-56. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 205 partment modeled after that of New York City. Although the en- gines would continue to be staffed with volunteers, each company was to have a chief engineer appointed by the mayor, reservoirs were to be constructed throughout the city, hoses were to be intro- duced immediately, and, finally, the board of firewards was to be abolished. In the ensuing controversy Quincy defended the plan in a Public Letter insisting that a change was needed because Boston had changed. "Our present system," the mayor argued, "presupposes either a will in the surrounding multitude at fires, to aid in form- ing lanes to pass water to the engines, or a power in the firewards to compel them to form such lanes." When both assumptions were warranted, he acknowledged, Boston's traditional system had been effective as well as a source of civic pride. But neither operated now, he argued. For a fireward to point out a lagger no longer sufficed; social obloquy carries force only in a community where everyone knows everyone else and where each individual feels his personal contribution to a collective effort could be crucial. Bostonians, Quincy reminded them, and not without a trace of sadness, had long ago passed from that primitive state. Furthermore, the mayor cited growing class differences and the introduction of fire insurance, which caused a fire to be viewed by onlookers as a private concern rather than a public calamity. The Public Letter quotes one Bostonian's explanation for his refusal to join in a bucket brigade, "I ask no protection from others, and I mean not to incur the risk of health and life in protecting them." However much he personally deplored "such cold, selfish, calculat- ing language," the mayor insisted that he had to reckon with its implications. "In all cities, after they have obtained a certain amount of greatness," Quincy concluded his Letter, "the system of depending on the aid of all the citizens has been abandoned, and a system, self-dependent and which SO far from requiring the aid of all citizens, excluded that aid, has been adopted." This was but one of the unlovely facts of urban life that the mayor was calling on Bostonians of the 1820s to accept. Quincy got his fire department, though barely. Of the more than 2,500 votes cast in a city referendum, his plan won by a majority of 38 Quincy's Public Letter reprinted in Brayley, 154-57. 206 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY less than 200. Nevertheless, his reforms were quickly instituted, and over the next three years Boston fire insurance rates dropped 20 per cent. 39 Nowhere was the disparity greater between the magnitude of a social problem confronting city government in the 1820s and the inherited mechanism for dealing with it than in the area of public relief. Responsibility for the town's poor was vested in elected overseers of the poor, a provision retained by the city charter. The overseers clearly were unequal, however, to coping with Boston's swelling population of poor and dependent. No one knew this better than Quincy, who had criticized the overseers while a state legislator examining pauper laws, a municipal judge obliged to deal with the poor as well as the criminal, and chairman of the town committee to establish a House of Industry. The promiscuous use of the almshouse particularly offended him. He complained to the city council that the overseers indiscriminately crammed nearly four hundred persons into the 32-room Leverett Street facility: "In this collection are to be found all ages and colors; every state of poverty and disease whether produced by misfortune or vice." He further deplored the overseers' principal reliance on "outdoor" relief, that is, boarding the poor "on the town" and allowing them to remain part of the community, on the grounds that this cost more than in- stitutionalization and indulged the poor by exacting no work of them. 40 One of Quincy's first acts upon becoming mayor was to direct the overseers to transfer all able-bodied poor on outdoor relief or in the almshouse to the newly opened House of Industry in South Boston. The overseers refused, agreeing only to send those poor who specifically requested transfer to what was already being called the mayor's "Botany Bay." None did, and the dispute continued through Quincy's first year in office, while the $35,000 facility re- mained unoccupied. 41 39 Quincy, "Address on Taking Final Leave of Office," Municipal History, 263-65. 40 Boston Town Records, 1814-1822, 267-72; Records of the City of Boston, Mayor and Aldermen, Dec. 12, 1822, ms. copy in the City Clerk's Office, Boston City Hall. 41 Records of the City of Boston, July 28, September 29, October 6, 1823; Quincy, Report of the Committee of City Council on Relations with Overseers of the Poor (Boston, 1824), copy in Massachusetts State House Library. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 207 In the fall of 1824 the mayor attempted to break the deadlock and to arouse public sympathy for his reform proposals by directing the overseers to make an accounting of their expenditures for outdoor relief. When they refused, Quincy announced a city referendum to decide whether the overseers ought to be placed under the mayor's control, a proposal the voters rejected. The mayor resorted to other means to accomplish the same end. In March 1825, he sold the almshouse. The following month the city council, miffed by the overseers' assertion of complete auton- omy, enjoined them against extending any more outdoor relief. By 1828, most of the city's poor were out in South Boston, "hammer- ing stone and like material."42 Quincy did not eliminate poverty in Boston, nor had he attempted to. "The poor," he wrote in 1821, like "the vicious, and the criminal are necessary parts of the social system." But by separating what he called "the respectable and honest poor" from "the idle and vicious" and by providing the latter with "coercive restraint and employment" rather than per- mitting them to obtain relief without institutionalization, he es- tablished a new procedure for dealing with an old problem. 43 In so doing, he made yet another decisive break with Boston's past. IV "It is a general time of health and prosperity in the city," Dr. George Shattuck wrote to his son in 1825. "I could send you a map of the progress of Mr. Quincy's new improvements.''' But if Shattuck gloried in the "paternal government watching over his comfort and convenience" that Quincy had provided,4 45 others had begun critically to assess its cost. Reforms did not come cheaply. Street cleaning and -widening between 1823 and 1826, for example, cost $250,000, more than the total expenditure of town government in of the City of Boston, Apr. 25, 1825; Quincy, "Address Upon Taking Final Leave of Office," 271. 43 Quincy, Remarks Affecting Poverty, Vice, and Crime (Boston, 1822), 2. On the long-range implications of Quincy's reforms in this area, see David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971). "Dr. George C. Shattuck to his son, Aug. 24, 1825, George C. Shattuck Papers, MHS. 45 Quincy, "Inaugural Address, May 1, 1823," 378. 208 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY 1821. The new fire department cost an additional $50,000. The South Boston complex, which by 1826 consisted of Houses of In- dustry, Correction, and Juvenile Reform, required $100,000 to build and maintain. But it was the New Faneuil Hall Market proj- ect, a mammoth urban renewal undertaking completed in 1826, which ran the city debt to $1,000,000 and evoked "the most prodi- gious outcry 1146 The mayor initially dismissed criticism of his spending as unin- formed. "Abstractedly, a debt is no more an object of terror than a sword," he lectured in his second inaugural address in 1824. "Both are very dangerous in the hands of fools or madmen. Both are very safe, innocent, and useful in the hands of the wise and prudent." In 1826, after demonstrating that his reforms were being funded not by increased taxes but rising property values, Quincy called upon his increasingly tight-fisted constituents to undertake a water works project that would cost $2,500,000.4 47 The project was never mentioned again, and in his 1827 inaugu- ral address he announced that "our chief duty will be to finish what we have begun and the gradual extinction of the city debt."48 The sudden turnabout may have been prompted, as the mayor in- sisted, by fiscal considerations, but it appears more likely that pol- itics was the crucial factor. Criticism of his spending had been par- ticularly vehement in the Democratic press during the 1826 mayoral campaign. The decision to cut spending did him little political good, however, as his subsequent problems with the Boston school committee would reveal. Quincy's battle over the schools only pointed up the ultimate futility of trying to satisfy all the contradic- tory demands of an urban electorate. Compared with other contemporary American cities, Boston had an exemplary public school system, In 1826, over 7,000 students were enrolled in the city's 74 schools at an annual cost to the tax- 46 Independent Chronicle, Dec. 9, 1826; Quincy, "Inaugural Address, 1826," Municipal History, 391-95; Records of the City of Boston, May 29, 1824; Boston Newsletter and City Record, Oct. 28, 1826. 47 Quincy, "Inaugural Address, 1824," "Inaugural Address, 1826," 383, 393-96. 48 Quincy, "Inaugural Address, 1827," Municipal History, 399-405; Inde- pendent Chronicle, Dec. 9, 1826. For evidence that Quincy's reforms were with- in Boston's financial means, see Charles Phillips Huse, The Financial History of Boston, 1822-1909 (Cambridge, 1916), 49-51. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 209 payers of $54,000. In addition to 51 primary and 19 grammar schools, a school for blacks, and two boys' high schools, the system included the country's first High School for Girls, just completing its first year of operation. It was over the seemingly insignificant question of whether to continue the girls' high school that the may- or's previously cordial relations with the school committee were shattered and his political future put in jeopardy. Ironically, Quincy had not anticipated, much less wanted, this particular fight. Of all the old town boards, he had managed to work best with the school committee. Though he and his seven children had attended private schools, he was not hostile to the idea of publicly supported schools. In the 1790s, he had served five years as a school committeeman; later, he had not joined with Harrison Gray Otis and other Federalists in an attack on the primary schools. But neither did he share the Jeffersonian vision of public schools as nurseries of "a natural aristocracy" nor the later Whig notion of public schools as instruments of social control. The girls' high school had been a popular success, but when it was moved at a meet- ing of the school committee that it be continued and enlarged, the mayor blocked the motion, announced the formation of a special subcommittee, which he would chair, to examine the subject and adjourned the meeting. For Quincy this was not an ideological issue nor even a jurisdic- tional power struggle between the mayor's office and an elected board, but merely an opportunity to prove his fiscal prudence.4 49 The school's popularity was his most compelling reason for want- ing it discontinued. He had supported the experiment when first discussed in 1825 in the belief that it would provide student moni- tors for the lower schools and thereby reduce the need for full-time teachers. By the fall of 1826, however, it was clear that the girls' high school actually drained from the lower schools the brightest girls at a lower age than before and thus made the introduction of a monitorial system all the less likely. Its success also, as one of the lower-school headmasters ingenuously informed the mayor, had 49 Joseph M. Wightman, Annals of the Boston Primary School Committee (Boston, 1860), 14-35; Quincy, "Address Upon Taking Final Leave of Office," 271; [Josiah Quincy], Report of the Subcommittee on the High School for Girls, Nov. 17, 1826, Boston School Committee Records, Rare Book Room, Boston Public Library. 210 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY convinced many Boston parents who previously sent their daugh- ters to private schools that they might now have them "fitted at the publick expense. "150 However much public educators might have welcomed the prospect of the 3,000 girls attending private schools in Boston transferring to the city schools, Quincy was appalled.5 The number of applications for admission was SO great that com- petitive examinations had been established to determine admis- sion, a practice that the mayor warned would "provoke the inevi- table discontent of the citizenry.''52 Yest most Bostonians had the opposite reaction; rather than condemn the school for being selec- tive and demand its closing, they called for the universalization of its benefits. In January 1827, the school committee received a peti- tion calling for "the Establishment of a High School for the Educa- tion of Children of the Colored Citizens." Six weeks later a group of merchants petitioned the committee "to provide French, Spanish and German Instruction in the Public Schools to qualify our children for the pursuits of active life [and] equalize the advantages of our schools among all classes of citizens." To Quincy it was clear that if Boston were not to bankrupt itself, the girls' high school had to go. Caught in a classic squeeze between demands to economize and demands to expand public facilities, Quincy tried to wiggle out by attacking the girls' high school as discriminatory. He did not point out that the school's selectivity was made necessary by the city's re- fusal to expand its facilities to meet the demand for them. >Never- theless, this bit of demagoguery sealed the school's fate. On Feb- ruary 26, 1828, despite considerable grumbling from some mem- bers, the school committee bowed to the mayor's wishes and an- nounced that the High School for Girls would not reopen in the fall. Thus a potentially gaping hole in Boston's fiscal dike was closed, but only at the cost of ending the city's pioneering effort to public- 50 Andrew Andrews, Headmaster of Bowdoin School, to School Committee, Oct. 21, 1826, School Committee Records. 51 Report of Subcommittee on High School for Girls, Nov. 17, 1826. 52 Ibid. 53 Petition Regarding the Establishment of a High School for the Education of Children of the Colored Citizens, Jan. 12, 1827; David French, Memorial for French, Spanish and German Instruction in Boston Public Schools, Feb. 22, 1827, School Committee Records. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 211 ly "provide fit wives for well-educated men"-and at considerable political cost to the mayor, Prior to 1828, Quincy's majorities had grown each year until, on December 10, 1827, he was returned to a fifth term by a six-to-one margin. Yet his appeal to the Boston electorate ought not be exag- gerated. Opposition surfaced early in his tenure. The rapid turn- over of aldermen and frequent complaints from common council- men about being left uninformed were symptomatic of the misgiv- ings many had about his centralization policies. Certainly the abol- ished firewards and evicted overseers of the poor felt no more loyal- ty to him than the "lazy poor" cutting stone in South Boston. Much of the latent opposition can be attributed to Quincy's auto- cratic style. No one denied his devotion or doubted his integrity, but many came to feel he took too proprietary an interest in what was also their city. John Pray, upon receipt of the following letter, must have been counted among them: March 1, 1826 Sir - I hereby give you notice that the Mayor and Aldermen intend to continue the widening of Hanover Street through the building you are altering You may govern yourself accordingly. Josiah Quincy Mayor of Boston54 The decision to close the High School for Girls provided an issue around which anti-Quincy sentiment could finally coalesce. Only the Columbian Centinel, the most conservative and debt-conscious of Boston's newspapers, had endorsed the decision; the papers earlier aligned with the Middling Interest condemned it. When the mayor tried to explain his reasons in a Report on the Subject of the Schools, he drew a strong rejoinder from the high school's ex-head- master, Ebenezer Bailey. Attributing Quincy's enthusiasm for the monitorial system to his desire to eliminate "half the present teachers," Bailey went on to quote the mayor as saying that "public schools should be merely eleemosynary establishments where noth- ing but the lowest elements of learning should be doled out to the 54 Quincy to John Pray, Mar. 1, 1826, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Rare Book Room, Boston Public Library. 212 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY children of poverty."66 The quote was promptly snapped up by the Democratic press, already engaged in an aristocracy-baiting cam- paign on behalf of the presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson. The fact that municipal balloting in 1828 followed the national elections by only five days meant that Quincy's Democratic-Re- publican critics found themselves better organized than usual. "Fragments of the party feelings generated in the late national elec- tion," the Columbian Centinel noted, were being "hashed up in a new dish for city aliment." An election-day broadside widely dis- tributed by the Democrats reflected the intrusion of national poli- tics into the mayoral contest when it charged Quincy with increas- ing the city debt so as "to furnish a safe and convenient investment for a few rich individuals very agreeable to them as the United States debt was to be paid off." It used the girls' high school issue to make an even more direct appeal to the animus of the Jacksonian voter, quoting the mayor as saying: 'If this School is continued, by and by, the education of our servant girls will be equal to that of our daughters, and perhaps enable them to form connections with our sons!' 1157 Unable to agree upon a candidate of their own, a fact which underlines the negative impulse of the anti-Quincy campaign, crit- ics of the mayor called upon the voters to "support any opposing candidate, with the fullest assurance, that almost any change will advance the best interests of the city."58 At two separate election- morning caucuses, the names of Thomas C. Amory and Charles Welles were placed in nomination. Between them they managed to win enough support to leave Quincy 83 votes short of a majority. Hailing the vote, the Boston Patriot credited the mayor's rebuff to "the laboring class vote who suffer most by his extravagance.''59 Supporters assured the mayor that the necessary additional votes would be forthcoming in the December 15 reballoting. The Colum- bian Centinel and Daily Advertiser, silent before the first balloting, Ebenezer Bailey, Review of the Mayor's Report on the Subject of the Schools so Far as it Relates to the High School for Girls (Boston, 1828), 6-11. 56 Columbian Centinel, Dec. 12, 1828. 67 Look to Your Interest!, Broadsides Collection, Rare Book Room, Boston Public Library. Ibid.; see also Independent Chronicle, Dec. 8, 1828. 59 Boston Patriot, Dec. 10, 1828. BOSTON IN THE 1820S 213 now called for his reelection. Yet little enthusiasm was to be found among what the Patriot called "that little knot of men in State Street who, through their influence, kept Mr. Quincy in office."60 Clearly, Democrats were not the only Bostonians who believed that "this poor exhausted body politic" needed nothing so much as a respite from "the empiricism of a reckless Quack who fears nothing be- cause he knows nothing."/61 For many wealthy Bostonians good government had already come to mean cheap government, and this Quincy had not provided The second balloting duplicated the first, even to the accompany- ing broadsides. "Look at Mr. Quincy's overbearing and imperious manner, look at his haughty and anti-republican manners to Citi- zens generally," a Democratic broadside admonished, "and then say whether you will vote for him."62 Again without a candidate of their own, critics of the mayor once more denied him a majority, this time by 66 votes. Quincy withdrew and a week later, without significant opposition, Harrison Gray Otis was chosen mayor, The ousted mayor accepted his fate calmly, even graciously. His address upon leaving office pointedly refrained from reflecting "on the fickleness of the popular will." In time his accomplishments were duly acknowledged; long before his death in 1864 he was re- ferred to as Boston's "Great Mayor." Those reforms which he im- plemented remained the core of the city's municipal structure into the 1880s when a reorganization went further toward centralizing power in the mayor's office. Though Quincy's loyalties remained with the smaller, more cohérent town of his childhood, he had ac- cepted the reality of change and tried to alter the city government accordingly His difficulties and ultimate repudiation, no less than his successes, suggest that the 1820s were not a coda to Boston's communal past but an overture to its urban future. Ibid. 01 Boston Patriot, Dec. 8, 1828. 62 "Worse and Worse!," Broadsides Collection, Rare Book Room, Boston Public Library. 03 Quincy, "Address Upon Taking Final Leave of Office," 261. Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 1888.] Boston Painters and Paintings. 89 often indeed, they looked down the white "Not yit," sneered Bassett. "He'l winding road to where the little forge be kemin' along arter a leetle, a-ridin' stood under the crag, between the moun- of his mare, though he knows the rest o' tains and the dark and lustrous river. we-uns 'low ez 't ain't safe ter hey hoss Hy're, Clem," the owner of the critters an' sech hitched round hyar. premises was greeted, when his head Ef all o' we-uns done that, thar 'd be appeared above the floor as he slowly enough hosses ter make ez much racket, mounted the rungs. an' whinnyin', an' seeh, ez a comp'ny o' "Hy're," he responded in a gruff cavalry, an' them men would git a warn- growl. in', an' we-uns would never ketch 'em. The tone and manner were so un- Ye mark my words, Teck 'Il be 'long characteristic that one or two of the d'rec'ly, a-ridin' like some great cap- martial figures striding about the floor tain." turned and looked around at him in sur- As he spoke, a sudden, distant, undis- prise. Bassett, lying on the hay, lifted tinguished sound smote the air. himself upon his elbow, and demanded, What's that cried Bassett, half "What ails you-uns ter be so powerful springing up, and resting upon one knee high an' mighty? Ye think ye air Teck on the pile of hay. Jepson, don't ye Hush! said one of the vigilantes Clem Sanders did not reply for a mo- near the moonlit window. He bent to- ment. Still, with his unwonted air of ward it, his eyes scanning the empty road, grave dissatisfaction, he lumbered into the silent woods, and lonely mountains the moonlit place, one hand in his pock- with the melancholy splendor upon them. et, his shoulders slouched forward as he The others stood motionless, listening. peered about from under his broad hat- The man at the window abruptly brim at the men's faces, as if he were turned toward them his moonlit face, seeking to individualize them, and men- the sheen full in his dilated, excited tally calling the roll. eyes; he held up one significant finger, 'Whar's Teck, ennyhows? he asked. bespeaking silent attention. He ain't hyar." For the sound had come once more. Charles Egbert Craddock. BOSTON PAINTERS AND PAINTINGS. William H Downes I. acters on pages of canvas, and consists of a series of autobiographies or confes- THE PRE-COPLEYITES, COPLEY, TRUM- sions, in which, by the nature of the case, BULL, AND STUART. there can be no reservations. In spite of a prevalent lack of faith in our art, NOTHING that books can tell us throws some admirable painters have lived and half so much light upon the artists who flourished here : men of force, of feel- are dead and gone as their own works; ing, and of deep perceptions, whose and if we wish to know what manner of achievements from the earliest times men were the Boston painters of the down to the present day I have studied past, we have but to look at the pictures with ever-growing interest, respect, and they have left behind them. The his- admiration. tory of art is written in chromatic char- The art of painting is of greater an- http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla00... 7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 90 Boston Painters and Paintings. [July, tiquity in Boston than has been common- before Pelham and Smybert came to ly supposed. It has been assumed until this country is shown by the following a recent date that Peter Pelham and extract from Judge Sewall's Diary, vol- John Smybert were the earliest New ume ii. page 170 : - England artists, but, thanks to the in- November 10, 1706. This morn- vestigations made by members of the ing, Tom Child, the painter, died. Massachusetts Historical Society, it is Tom Child had often painted Death, now held to be clearly proved that there But never to the Life before : were "limners" in Boston more than Doing it now, he's out of Breath, a century before the Revolution. The He paints it once, and paints no more." few forbidding specimens of the art of This lugubrious epigram is the only these pioneer portrait-painters remain- existing memorial of an artist whose ing on the walls of college halls, in the abbreviated name suggests that he may rooms of antiquarian associations, and have been a well-known character in in private houses, where they are trea- the snug little town at that time, and sured for their age, and now and then that he may have been also something because of family pride and loyalty to of a Bohemian. It is at least interest- 'grandmother's mother," rather than ing to know that a city which has given for their beauty, show that we need not birth to and adopted so many eminent regret too keenly our meagre knowledge painters may trace the beginnings of her concerning our own old masters. In- art almost as far back as the middle of deed, what Dr. Holmes says of the por- the seventeenth century. trait of Dorothy Q. applies to the entire Pelham and Smybert did not come category of anonymous paintings belong- over from the old country until Tom ing to the colonial period - Child had been under the sod near Who the painter was none may tell, - twenty years. The former was a por- One whose best was not over-well trait-painter, a mezzotint-engraver, a Hard and dry, it must be confessed, mathematician, and a land surveyor all Flat as a rose that has long been pressed." in one, but his chief title to fame proba- The quaint portrait of one Dr. John bly consisted in his relationship of step- Clark, which belongs to the Massachu- father to a certain young man named setts Historical Society, and which rep- Copley, whose earliest efforts in the resents that remote personage contem- study of painting were guided by this plating a skull, is believed to have been versatile exponent of the arts and sci- painted in Boston prior to 1680. The ences. Pelham painted a portrait of same age is attributed to a portrait of the eminent divine, Cotton Mather, Increase Mather ; and the portraits of whose identification with the witchcraft the Gibbs children " are dated 1670. prosecutions is a melancholy page in our (Vide Massachusetts Historical Society early history and he was the author of Proceedings, September, 1867, page 47.) a likeness of the Rev. Mather Byles, Nobody knows who painted the paltry justly celebrated as the first New Eng- portrait of John Winthrop (1587- land elergyman who ever made a joke, 1649), belonging to Harvard College: and who was cleverly introduced by but granting that it was drawn from Hawthorne as one of the characters in life, in Boston, it is the oldest work of his sketch of Howe's Masquerade. Pel- native art in this part of the world. ham's list of sitters comprised Dr. Tim- There is record of an artist named Jo- othy Cutler, the president of Yale Col- seph Allen, who sailed from England lege, and two or three other well-known for Boston in 1684 and that still other preachers he made engravings of them painters made Boston their home long as well as paintings. Smybert, who http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla00... 7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 1888.] Boston Painters and Paintings. 91 came from Scotland, in the hopeful com- modeled and having a far more distin- pany of good Dean Berkeley, three years guished air than any example of Smybert later than Pelham, by way of doing his that we have seen. It is very quiet in part in the planting of the arts in Amer- tone, and thinly painted, in neutral col- ica, free from the pedantry of courts ors. The pose is proud and assured, and schools," painted in a dry and se- the costume handsome, the expression verely formal style the portraits of many almost supercilious. There are Copleys of the foremost New Englanders of his alongside of it, and they look as if they time, - solemn judges and clergymen, might have been painted by the same in wigs and black robes, frosty and aus- hand. Blackburn's portrait of John tere. There are said to be over thirty Lowell, in the Harvard Memorial Hall, Smyberts in and about Boston, but not is a less creditable specimen of his work. more than half of them are well authen- Little is known about this painter, but it ticated. The portrait of Judge Edmund is quite possible that young Copley may Quiney in the Museum of Fine Arts and have got some useful hints from him. that of John Lovell in the Harvard Me- Before Copley, however, there were morial Hall may be mentioned as char- so few artists worthy of the name that acteristic.examples Considered as art his development appears quite phenom- works, their value is small. They are enal. With him the actual record of primitive, stiff, and hard, but they are Boston art may be said to begin. He undoubtedly good literal likenesses, as was but a boy of fourteen when Smy- portraits go. In these respects, Smy- bert died in 1751, and it is probable that bert's portraits are similar to almost all the youth was influenced to some extent the pre-Copleyite portraits which are to by the examples of the old Scotchman's be seen in the Harvard Memorial Hall, work which must have abounded at that the Museum of Fine Arts, and the hall day, as well as by the more direct in- of the Massachusetts Historical Society. structions of Pelham but more than all Smybert's studio, on Court Street, be- that could be derived from both of these tween Cornhill and Brattle Street, was worthy limners is needed to account for the first painting-room of which there the young man's remarkable talent, al- is any record in Boston. It was occu- ready so mature and so prolific before pied afterwards by Trumbull, and in la- his departure from this country. It is ter years still by Allston. known that he never saw any pictures Jonathan B. Blackburn, who arrived better than those of Smybert, Pelham, in Boston in 1750, was an abler painter and Blackburn until he went to Italy, than Smybert, if we may judge by his and this fact is enough to make him a portrait of Colonel Jonathan Warner, of prodigy. No previous nor subsequent Portsmouth, N. H., which hangs in the period in all the story of Boston art Museum of Fine Arts. Blackburn went could possess a livelier interest for the away in 1765, leaving upwards of fifty historian and critic than that extend- portraits behind him. In the chapter ing from the opening of this young on the fine arts, in the Memorial His- man's professional career up to the day tory of Boston, Mr. Arthur Dexter (on that he left these shores, never to return. page 384) says that Blackburn's style Here, in the old house facing the Com- **was much like Smybert's, generally ra- mon, surrounded by a princely estate of ther harder and dryer." This remark about eleven acres, - which he sold for is not borne out by the portrait of Colo- so much less than its actual worth, after nel Warner, which resembles a Copley he quitted America, that it is said he rather than a Smybert, and is much never quite recovered from the chagrin more delicate in color, besides being better caused by his want of shrewdness in http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla 7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 92 Boston Painters and Paintings. [July, making the bargain, - he painted about charged only eight guineas for the fa- three hundred portraits, most of which mous portrait of John Hancock. It is are in or near Boston to-day. People a matter for regret that 50 little is known soon came to him from all parts of New about Copley's early life here. We are England to have their portraits painted. able to reconstruct him, after a palmon- In those days gentlemen dressed in col- tological fashion, from the scattered an- ors there were few black frock-coats eedotal bones preserved by the histori- except on the bench and in the pulpit. ans and biographers, who in general The artist appreciated his good fortune have failed to estimate him at his true in being permitted to surround the faces worth as an artist; but it is the better and forms of his sitters with rich dra- way to go straight to his best works, and peries and accessories which should make to study him through them. them decorative and splendid pictures, That old Boston family is unfortunate apart from their personal value as like- which does not possess at least one por- nesses. He was a calm, deliberate, and trait of a great-grandmother or great- methodical workman, who never hurried, grandfather, signed by Copley and dis- and never neglected any part of his tinguished by a somewhat angular ele- task. He required many sittings ; and gance. As it is an enviable fortune to to illustrate how slow he was in paint- have a Copley in the house, so it was a ing a portrait, an anecdote was current, happy thought to name the finest square which alleged that he undertook to paint in the city for him, since the Museum a family group, but that before the work of Fine Arts, which faces it, always con- was finished the wife died and the hus- tains a representative group of his por- band married again. The first wife was traits. therefore represented as an angel, and The portraits of John Hancock and her terrestrial place was given to the Samuel Adams, taken from Faneuil second wife; but the latter died also be- Hall, are permanent loans from the city. fore the painting was completed, and Hancock's slight figure is seen at almost had to be placed aloft, while her succes- full length, seated, and clothed in a well- sor occupied the earthly centre of the looking costume of dark blue trimmed family group. This story was merely with gold cord, a gray wig, and gray an exaggeration of the actual circum- hose. Holding an idle pen in his right stances. But if Copley was slow he was hand, he rests the other on a large ac- industrious, for three hundred portraits count-book which lies on the table be- painted between 1754 (presuming him fore him. He is an exceedingly neat to have begun to work seriously at the and punctilious person, and his air is age of seventeen) and 1774, the date of somewhat self-conscious. As for Samuel his departure from Boston, would give Adams, he has been caught in the act of us an average of fifteen a year, or one making a speech, and, with his dogmatie and a fraction for each month; which, mouth, penetrating and assured glance, to be sure, cannot be compared with the and convincing gesture (as he points at rate of production maintained by cer- a roll of parchment on the desk), he is tain more modern portrait-painters, the embodiment of determination, en- whose rapidity has been made a subject ergy, and grit. Adams's dark brick-red of boasting, but which, for such a con- coat is far from unbecoming. The visit- scientious artist as Copley, is a consider- or to the Museum may find also, usually, able ceuvre. His prices were extreme- numerous lent portraits by Copley, the ly low in comparison with those of the property of individuals and families. His successful portraitists of later times, as best portraits, however, are those of the may be inferred from the fact that he Boylston family, in Harvard Memorial hhttp://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla00... 7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 1888.] Boston Painters and Paintings. 93 Hall, Cambridge, and it is there that during a college year. The bullet head Copley must be seen to be appreciated is superbly modeled and brimful of vi- as a portraitist. There are four of the tality. Seated by a table, with his left Boylston portraits, namely, those of arm resting on some large books, and Thomas Boylston and his wife and two one slim leg crossed over the other, the of Nicholas Boylston. It is sufficient man eyes you, an actual presence, with to compare these works with any por- a half-mocking smile playing about his traits painted before Copley's time to thin lips. His costume consists of an demonstrate his vast superiority over all ample blue figured brocade morning- his predecessors, and it is not too much robe over an old gold waistcoat, a to say that there are very few later red silk cap set jauntily on his bald American portraits which surpass them. head, and a pair of huge red slippers Copley's fame may rest secure upon on his feet. The artist has been able the portrait of Mrs. Thomas Boylston, to tell us on this canvas that Nicholas which recalls to mind the work of the Boylston was an active, shrewd, nervous great masters by its simplieity, repose, man, and something of a quiz: the char- penetrating truth, and refinement. It is acter of a sitter was never more intimate- executed with the easy skill of a master- ly revealed. The second portrait of workman, and has no weak spots. The Nicholas Boylston is a variation of the figure is of three-quarters length. Mrs. first: it is only three-quarters length, so Boylston is seated in a handsome arm- that the lean ankles and immense red chair, which is covered with faded yellow slippers are not in it. The robe here is brocade fastened by brass-headed nails. green instead of blue, but has the same Her gown is of a light olive-brown silk, pattern, and is probably painted from and she wears a white cap, a broad white the same garment. More agreeable muslin collar. or cape, covered by black than the other likeness, this is somewhat lace, wide white ruffled wristbands, and less piquant. There are ships in the black silk mitts. There is a curtain in distance, seen through an open window the background. The face, which is of these are the glorious symbols of the old a very intelligent and interesting cast, is Boston merchant's calling. Thomas described with perfect taste and, it may Boylston bears a strong family resem- be presumed, perfect accuracy and the blance to his brother, being. like him, lady's hands, which lie crossed upon her small, bald, clean-shaven, and very wide lap, are characterized with equal force. awake. He too wears a cap, which is In its pretty old-fashioned frame, this of pink silk. His long waistcoat is of portrait, so quiet, so well bred, so com- white satin with gold trimmings, over plete, utterly refutes the superficial judg- which is a dark brown coat, thrown well ment that Copley could paint nothing open. He holds a pen in his hand, and so well as his sitters' clothes. The there are writing materials on a table. Boylstons were evidently compact, wiry His pose is easy and picturesque, like little people, keen, hard-headed, bold, that of a successful man of affairs who with a sense of humor and an eye to has just stopped writing in order to turn business, - typical Yankees, well worth and speak to a friend who has come in. painting and we have in this series of His expression is as good-natured as effigies a complete exposition of their Nicholas Boylston's, perhaps less sar- character, which no mere painter of donic. The flesh is firm without being draperies could have given. Nicholas too hard, and the draperies are crisply Boylston, at full length, is not likely to and brilliantly treated. Each of these be forgotten by any student who has sat portraits has a distinct personal senti- at his slippered feet three times daily ment, which, though unlike that of any http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla00... 7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 94 Boston Painters and Paintings. [July, other painter's work, gives it a kinship blue velvet cloak with lace collar, worn with many of the masterpieces of Eu- over a white satin doublet, with scarlet ropean museums, and constitutes its final silk breeches, blue hose, and a black hat charm. The Nicholas Boylston is a with a white plume. Add to this array gorgeous piece of decoration, which of brilliant colors and fine fabrics the makes the black frock-coat portraits of sword, the coquettish red rosettes worn to-day seem doubly stupid and colorless. on the shoes, a decoration and a blue From Copley as a portrait-painter to ribbon upon the royal breast, and we Copley as an historical painter involves have a figure which any painter might a journey from the Harvard Memorial well delight to represent, although the Hall to the Boston Public Library, weak, good-natured face and the long, where, in the unfavorable light of the flowing brown hair combined to pro- so-called Fine Arts room, hangs his duce an appearance of effeminacy which King Charles I. Demanding in the ill comports with the haughty attitude House of Commons the Five Impeached of the unfortunate king. who holds his Members, a fine example of his elegant right hand on his hip, while with the left and accomplished later style, executed he points to the Speaker kneeling before in England, and brought to Boston in him. William Lenthall, thus bending the 1859, when it was given to the Public knee in simulation of that reverence no Library by the Hon. Josiah Quincy and longer felt for the representative of di- eleven other citizens. It was first ex- vine right," is attired all in black with hibited in a dealer's gallery, and a yellow ornaments, and holds his hat in pamphlet printed at the time described one hand, while with the other he makes the composition in the artist's own lan- an appealing gesture. The members are guage. It may be remembered that grouped all about the hall in various at- Charles I. had demanded in vain the titudes, expressive of astonishment or ap- persons of the five Commoners whom he proval, indignation or resolution. There had accused of high treason, - Pym, is enough animation without violence Hampden, Hollis, Haslerig, and Strode, of action. The artist has not made the - and on January 2. 1641, he went to king the most prominent figure. The the House in quest of them. Mounting most interesting group is at the right, to the Speaker's chair, he asked if the nearer the foreground, and consists of accused members were present. The six Royalist members. One of them, Speaker politely refused to answer: and Sir Bevil Greenville, of Cornwall, who, this is the situation of affairs Copley as we are told by the pamphlet alluded chose for his picture, wherein the king to, led the Cornish Royalists afterwards has just finished speaking, and the kneel- at the battle of Stratton, and was killed ing Speaker replies with an air of meek- in the fight at Lansdowne while lead- ness and words of defiance. There are ing a charge against the Roundheads, about sixty figures in the composition. is a particularly fine fellow, and wears All the heads are portraits, derived a yellow costume, with a cloak of gray from paintings by Vandyck. Lely, and velvet trimmed with gold and elegantly other contemporaneous artists, or from disposed. His attitude is full of grace busts. The size of the canvas is ninety and dignity, and altogether he is a good by one hundred and twenty-one inches. representative of the old nobility. The The king, whose likeness was obtained animated young man in the scarlet from a portrait by Vandyck and a bust breeches who steps forward so earnestly by Bernini, stands in the left of the com- is Philip Lord Herbert, son of the Earl position, on the steps of the Speaker's of Pembroke and Montgomery. His dais. His rich costume includes a fine figure is drawn rather clumsily, an un- http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla 7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 1888.] Boston Painters and Paintings. 95 usual fault in Copley. The noble gen- there is some want of historical propor- tleman just in front of him, in a becom- tion in the design. The workmanship, ing suit of black, with one hand resting however, is in general that of a painter upon the table, is Edward Hyde, after- of no mean ability. A pleasant glow of wards Lord Clarendon, an eminent and warm color pervades the canvas. It is able supporter of the royal cause. The the work of an accomplished artist, and remaining three men in the group are it would be surprising that it should not Sir Philip Warwick, Geoffrey Palmer, have been kept in England as a part of and Sir Edward Nicholas. Behind them the group of historical scenes by Copley all is Lord Viscount Falkland, who was in the National Gallery, did we not know killed at the battle of Newbury. The that there, as elsewhere, such matters man engaged in writing. at the extreme are regulated by the fashion of the hour. right, is the clerk of the House and his- Copley was essentially a portrait-paint- torian, Rushworth. The group at the er, as we have seen, and his best days left of the picture, near the Speaker's were those in which he painted the Boyl- chair, is also composed of distinguished ston family, He had not much imagi- Royalists, - the gallant Prince Rupert, nation, and could not make history live who stands with one foot on the step again in his canvases. The work we of the dais, and behind him Endimion have just reviewed is not much more Porter, Sir Ralph Hopton (a Vandyck than a collection of portraits. He was head), Giles Strangwayes, and at the ex- a superior workman, and painted a head treme left Sir Edmund Verney (from a as lovingly as Gerard Dow painted a Vandyck, a fine head), the king's stand- broom-handle, with the same pride and ard-bearer, who lost his life at Edge- satisfaction in his own dexterity and hill. Sir William Waller, commander competency. The peculiar merits of his of the parliamentary forces, leans for- portraits are their external accuracy ward from behind the Speaker's chair, and their distinction of style, qualities and a little farther back may be seen strongly marked in his best paintings. John Selden, the representative of Ox- His portraits may be stiff sometimes, but ford University. On the king's left hand they are never commonplace. Their oc- the seats are occupied by members of casional hardness is seldom an offensive both parties. Very near the kneeling fault, for we feel that this precise man- Speaker is the younger Harry Vane. ner mirrors forth fitly the somewhat Just at the end of the table sits Crom- artificial elegance of the time. Besides, well, as yet unknown to fame, and be- of the two extremes in painting, hard- yond him are Whitlocke, the historian, ness is always to be preferred to soft- and Sir Henry Slingsby. On the same ness. It is only the very greatest mas- side of the House is a smaller group of ters who find the golden mean. Copley, six, - Edmund Waller the poet. Sydney by his direct and vivid naturalism, im- Godolphin, the elder Harry Vane, John presses us with the truth of his like- Hotham, Sir Dudley North, Sir William nesses, and makes the men and women Widdington. The room is a Gothic hall, of the colonial period live before our decorated in red and gold. The picture eyes. His paintings give a better idea impresses by its complete elegance. The of Boston before the Revolution than conception is pieturesque, decorative, can be gained from all the books in the scenic, but without great insight it adds Public Library. no new light to the history of the peri- Between 1774, when Copley went od. and the reading of character is not away, and 1806, when Stuart appeared remarkable. Charles I. interested the upon the seene, there was a long period artist but little, Cromwell still less and of almost entire vacuity in the history of http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla00... 7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 96 Boston Painters and Paintings. [July, Boston art. There was no time to pro- on about the same scale as the Battle of duce pictures when it was a question of Bunker's Hill in the Yale art gallery. founding and preserving a nation. Colo- It was painted in West's studio in Lon- nel John Trumbull's is the only name don, and was one of Trumbull's earliest of note which appears in this interval. compositions. In the porch of Priam's The Revolutionary struggle was still in stately palace a group of mourning wo- progress when he retired from the army, men, which includes Andromache and and resumed the practice of his art in Helen, surrounds Hecuba, who, robed in the room which had been built for Smy- red, raises her arms in an ecstasy of bert. Here he painted portraits of grief, as she advances to view with over- John Hancock and of other local heroes flowing eyes the body of the slain Tro- of the Revolution. His picture of the jan hero, which is borne tenderly up the Declaration of Independence, now in steps by a soldier and an old servant, the rotunda of the national Capitol, the latter a very touching figure of mel- which John Randolph called the shin ancholy and solicitude. The venerable piece," and which was engraved by Du- king comes up the steps just beyond the rand, was first exhibited in Faneuil Hall, funeral group, and earnestly addresses in 1818, and the venerable John Adams his frantic queen. At the left a group was prevailed upon to visit it. He ap- of soldiers and civilians witness the sad proved the picture," says Miss Quincy meeting. and Troy sends forth one uni- in her Memoir, "and, pointing to the versal groan." The corpse of Hector is door next the chair of Hancock, said, swathed in white, and the head drops There that is the door out of which towards the left shoulder. The fatal Washington rushed when I first alluded wound inflicted by Achilles is visible to him as the man best qualified for 'twixt the neck and throat." The sur- commander-in-chief of the American roundings are lost in deep shadows, as if army." Although Trumbull did not night were falling. Trumbull touched remain long in Boston, and his most im- a chord here which was vastly deeper portant works are in Washington and and more genuine than any that he New Haven, he is well represented in struck in his huge historical canvases, the collections of the Museum of Fine and reached a higher level of expression. Arts by one of his best known historical In the great portrait gallery of Har- paintings, The Sortie from Gibraltar : vard College there are several of his by one of his classic compositions, Pri- most valued portraits, comprising his am and the Dead Body of Hector; and Washington, his John Adams, and his by two of his portraits. The latter, the Christopher Gore, the last named being portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Minot, a replica of the portrait in New Haven. are respectable performances, but not The Washington lacks substance, and great. The Sortie from Gibraltar is a does justice neither to sitter nor artist large and lurid canvas, with an abun- the Christopher Gore is an indifferent dance of scarlet in it: the group of well- performance and the Adams, the best fed British officers in their red coats, at of the three canvases, is mainly inter- the right. forming the most conspieuous esting because it reveals to posterity a feature of the composition. The sug- florid and handsome young man in a be- gestion of carnage, excitement, action, coming coat, and gives us an original and danger at the left is strong, but one notion of the first and greatest of that gets only a confused idea of what is go- remarkable line of statesmen. Trumbull ing on there. A much better painting was an earnest student of art, and made in every respect is Priam and the Dead himself familiar with what had been Body of Hector, which is smaller, and done by the masters. It is related of http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla00... 7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 1888.] Boston Painters and Paintings. 97 him that, being in Paris during the bold, good-natured, and rubicund Gen- troubled period when the guillotine was eral Henry Knox and that of the Hon- kept busy lopping off aristocrats' heads, orable Josiah Quincy. It may be said he became suspected by the Directory, that Stuart has no need of a monument and was arrested; whereupon the painter and in one sense that is true, but Boston David saved his life and obtained his certainly needs to show that it appreci- release by showing a print of his Battle ates his worth and the renown he re- of Bunker's Hill to the judges, and ask- fleeted upon the town. ing if the man who painted that picture Frank and hearty, like himself, his were not a good enough republican. He portraits are full of robust character. had been less fortunate in England, For the purity of their color and the where he suffered an imprisonment of freshness and transparency of their flesh eight months soon after the execution of tints, his heads will be always remark- André. His eyesight must have been able. He never spoiled them by over- uncommonly good, for the catalogue of elaboration, for he knew when to leave the Yale gallery, referring to the Bat- them. 'Let nature tell in every part tle of Bunker's Hill, says, On the day of your painting' was one of his coun- on which this battle was fought, the ar- sels to young artists be ever jealous tist was adjutant of the first regiment about truth in painting." He forbade of Connecticut troops, stationed at Rox- his pupils to blend their colors, and the bury, and saw the action from that admirable condition of his own works point." to-day proves that he practiced what he There is no name among those of the preached in this regard. He was in early artists of Boston that is held in some respects more modern than his greater esteem than Gilbert Stuart's. time, and undoubtedly partook of the A native of Rhode Island, which has tendencies and aims which distinguish given birth to several eminent artists, the intelligent realists of the present pe- when he came to Boston to live, in 1806, riod. He had the happy faculty of sug- he was already fifty years old. and had gesting much by a slight touch, and did been a citizen in turp of London, Dub- only what he could do well. He cared lin, New York, Philadelphia, and Wash- more for nature than for art. was a ington. He spent the last twenty-two keen reader of character, and under- years of his life in Boston, without fur- stood how to charm and draw out his ther wandering, and, dying in 1828, was sitters in conversation. He did not pay buried in the little cemetery on the much attention to what had gone before Common. All trace of his grave has him in art. but he had the great advan- been lost, and all that is known is that tage of living in England during the his bones lie somewhere in that ground. golden age of painting in that coun- There are scores of his beautiful por- try, and of associating with such men as traits in the homes of the people who Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Sir daily pass the picturesque little burial- Thomas Lawrence, West, Sir Henry ground in the heart of the busy city, Raeburn, and the others who were the but who thinks of honoring the memory glory of British art. There is, there- of Stuart? Go to the Museum, and you fore, nothing so phenomenal about Stu- shall see the famous 'Athenseum por- art's success as there is about Copley's. traits" of Washington and his wife, the His paintings look easy when compared Washington at Dorchester Heights, and a with others, and they were, in fact, ex- group of portraits which are of a charm- ecuted rapidly. His small unfinished ing simplicity and freshness, among sketch of himself, in the Museum of which I need mention only that of the Fine Arts, appears to have been the VOL. LXII. - NO. 369. 7 http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla00.7/7/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 98 Boston Painters and Paintings. [July, work of twenty minutes, and has no re- sey Hartigan, with its attractive com- semblance to the engraved portraits; at bination of fresh and rosy flesh and all events, its vagueness gives a good silvery - gray silk draperies. (Stuart's deal of scope for the imagination. female sitters had the most marvelous In the celebrated Washington at Dor- pink and white complexions in the chester Heights, the only large painting world.) The movement of Mrs. Harti- by Stuart that I know of, the figure of gan's hands in sewing is one of the most the Father of his Country is well plant- masterly strokes of his art. So, also, ed on its feet, and full of dignity and the slow and rather supercilious uprais- reserve power, but the accessories - ing of the dame's eyes from her work is mainly consisting of smoke and a wild described with rare felicity. The un- white horse - are flagrant examples of finished heads of two sisters, the daugh- what would be called chic work now- ters of Dr. Jackson, of Philadelphia, are adays. Regnault's horses, in the same on one panel, and present an epitome of gallery, though not scientifically drawn, youthful grace, high spirits, and old- are very equine, but Stuart's steed is fashioned loveliness, as delicate and far from probable. Washington's uni- beautiful as a nosegay of wild-flowers. form - a dark blue coat, ornamented Stuart was not above liking to paint by brass buttons, light facings, and ep- pretty things, and these sisters were cer- aulettes; buff waistcoat and breeches tainly extremely pretty. We have his black stockings a white choker" biographer's word for it that he painted about the neck and the three-cornered the portraits of these ladies more than black hat held in one hand - is a rich, once, but always felt that he had not sober, paintable costume. Stuart has done them justice. made good use of the uniform of the The number of heads by Stuart, in Revolutionary time in the portrait of and near Boston, is very considerable. General Knox also, which is a sterling Soon after his death, in 1828, an exhi- example of his most vigorous, truthful, bition of his works was held in Pearl and simple style. Knox rests one hand Street, near the old Athenium, which on a cannon, and the other is held comprised no less than two hundred and against his side in a strikingly plausible fourteen portraits. Mason's Life and position. His highly colored counte- Works of Gilbert Stuart contains a list nance, framed by a thick and bristling of his paintings, with many entertaining crop of short gray hair, is delightful for anecdotes about the bluff and irascible its amiability, ease, and underlying de- old painter. He lived and had his cision. The man is completely in your painting-room," says Drake, in his Old presence. The painter felt sure of him- Landmarks of Boston, in Washington self when he did this, and it was done Place, Fort Hill, and later on Essex joyously, with the unconseious power of Street, near Edinboro Street," but dur- a great workman. A quaint and mem- ing the War of 1812 he was living in orable work is the portrait of Mrs. Bet- Roxbury. William Howe Downes. http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla 7/7/2005 4/10 The Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill, 1800-1850 bank bog x 28% Sample By CARL J. WEINHARDT, JR. "For wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill -John Winthrop on Board the Arbella, 1630 R T HE conspicuous charm of the Beacon Hill area has been much praised in the last four or five decades, and, fre- quently, the wish has been expressed that some measures might be taken to protect it from further destruction. The preservation movement has been making progress throughout the country, and offers what may well be a solution to the problem in the form of Historic Zoning. Early in 1954 the Beacon Hill Association decided to make a formal attempt to induce the Massachusetts State Legislature to enact such a law. The first step was to determine the confines of the area to be included. The various factors that had to be considered all indicated the district roughly bounded by the State House and Charles Street and by Beacon and Pinckney Streets. It is logi- cal historically, for this is essentially the same area with which the Mt. Vernon Proprietors began the development in 1795. The small section to the east, between their original boundary and the State House, then in the possession of the Joy and Hancock families, was also developed in the next forty-odd years and is indistinguishable in character. To the west, the Charles Street area, which the Proprietors soon created as a result of leveling the Hill and filling in the former beach, has been added. While not a great deal of that street's original as- pect remains, there are many obvious reasons why it is desir- able to include this immediately contiguous service area with- in the terms of the legislation. Finally, the blocks on Beacon Proceedings of the Boston an Society. 1958. Pp. 11-32. I 2 The Bostonian Society Street facing the Public Garden are included, both because they are adjacent to an important public park, and because they provide a unique opportunity to study the transition from the "Beacon Hill Styles" of the early nineteenth century to the "Back Bay Styles" of the last half of the century. At this point, Henry A. Millon and I were engaged by the Association to make a survey of the buildings in this district to determine their use and style. In both cases the results proved gratifying; it was found that the area is overwhelmingly resi- dential with a large percentage of the houses still occupied by single families, and that the great majority of the structures date from before 1850. For the purpose of this stylistic analy- sis three categories were sufficient: Federal-Greek Revival to 1850 75% Victorian 1850-1900 13% 20th Century nondescript 1900- 9% While these figures establish the general homogeneity which the Association wished to prove, the architectural his- torian is more interested in how the area developed, and what minor changes and permutations of style can be perceived within the admitted general unity of effect which the pre- 1850 group presents. For this reason, I have pursued the sub- ject somewhat further in an effort to determine the pattern of growth, and the stylistic developments which did in fact take place. Before examining these changes in style let us look at the background and general development of the Mt. Vernon Pro- prietors' land. The map (figure 1) gives an excellent picture of the state of affairs at the beginning of the Revolution. During the course of the eighteenth century, the fashionable residen- tial area had grown southward into the center of the peninsula 1 am much indebted to Mr. Millon, now of Rome, Italy, for his collaboration in the original survey. Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 13 east of the Common. Land was still relatively plentiful and the dwellings there were of the mansion house type, usually surrounded by ample gardens. (The Beacon Hill district was the last major undeveloped part of the peninsula, and when the war was over and the city began to grow again, it was in- evitable that there would be activity of some sort in this area, The map also shows that Southacks and May Streets (Phil- lips and Revere today), and several cross streets, already ex- listed on the North Slope of the Hill. The slope was gradual on that side and a village had grown up there during the eight- eenth century. It consisted primarily of small wooden houses, and had earned for itself a wholly unsavory reputation. One might have expected that in the future this same community would spread haphazardly over the Hill to the edge of the Common. The story was, of course, to be quite different. The event which really determined the future was the decision in 1787 to build a new State House. The selection of the southeast corner of the area as its site immediately focused a new inter- est on the Hill. In 1795, the year the capitol was actually be- gun, the far-sighted group of investors called the Mt. Vernon Proprietors began buying up the land between this site and the river. The make-up of this group varied during the following years, but Charles Bulfinch is known to have been a Propri- etor from 1795-17977 The two plans surviving from these years (figures 2 and 3) show that the Proprietors' original conception of the develop- ment was far different from the form it later took, for both propose relatively wide lots, obviously intended for free- standing houses with side yards. Figure 2, Charles Bulfinch's scheme, provided for an extremely large open square, reflect- ing the kind of city-planning he had admired during his trav- els in England It is interesting that the idea of the creation of 14 The Bostonian Society in the lower portion of the plan are oriented in that direction. One obvious defect, which we will also note in the following plan, is that the houses along the present Chestnut Street would have faced the stables and outbuildings of the houses on the Beacon Street frontage, thus considerably reducing their desirability. The second scheme, which is very close to the one adopted, is technically by Mather Withington, a surveyor, but it seems to be merely an unimaginative if more practical reduction of the Bulfinch proposal. Bulfinch testified in a lawsuit in 1836 that the adopted plan was "only mine in part," indicating that he accepted at least partial credit for the final result. In this plan the idea of the square, which would have necessitated a major leveling operation before the development could be- gin, is abandoned, and the width of the lots is increased to IOO feet. The present Walnut Street is added, bordering "Dr. Joy's land," and "Miss Brown's land" having been acquired on the northeast, the beginning of the present Pinckney Street is indicated. Once again the "stable problem" would exist, this time for the houses facing south on Olive (Mt. Vernon) Street. The next major piece of planning was an obvious one and came in 1809. George (West Cedar) Street, a part of the old North Slope village, was extended to Chestnut Street and the made land between it and the new Charles Street was sub- divided. It is surprising to find the old concept of wide lots still applied at this date despite the actual building which had intervened. The final phases of the development of the plan came in the 1820s, when the clearly urban character of the area had been established. The row or town house with no possible pro- vision for adjoining stables was now accepted as the ruling form, and the most successful plans to date were evolved for the Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 15 the middle of Chestnut Street access to the Common-and which had in fact existed for some time-was officially recog- nized. The next year, 1823, a particularly clever solution was devised for the hitherto empty western end of the block bound- ed by Chestnut, Mt. Vernon, Walnut and West Cedar Streets. Willow and Acorn Streets were created and the division of the lots on them provided for fairly large houses on Mt. Vernon Street, medium-sized ones on Chestnut and quite small ones on Acorn Street. The next and final piece of planning completed the Hill Gs we know it. It was also the most inspired--the creation of the Louisburg Square area.) During the course of the years, Sign Pinckney Street was automatically extended straight down to the river, and had been connected to the North Slope by two streets running north and south between Anderson and West Cedar Streets. The western end of the block formed by Pinckney, Mt. Vernon, Joy and West Cedar Streets was also still vacant, and in 1826 the Proprietors decided to de- velop it. The plan was drawn by a surveyor, S. P. Fuller. It is unlikely that the conception was entirely his. He was no doubt working under the direction of the Proprietors, who may have solicited advice from one of the local architects. Bulfinch was in Washington at this point, and since he makes no reference to it in the testimony cited above, his name must be ruled out as a direct participant in the planning. Nonethe- less, the original idea of an open square on the Hill was his, and his Franklin Place building provided a concrete example, SO he is at least its indirect ancestor. Figure 4 illustrates how well conceived the plan was. The two streets connecting Pinckney Street with the North Slope were closed, and the north side of Pinckney was laid out in an unbroken line of uniform lots from Anderson to West Cedar Street. This protected the new development from the dis- 16 The Bostonian Society Pinckney Street which had developed in a very spotty manner above Anderson. The houses along the existing streets, Pinck- ney and Mt. Vernon, serve as the third and fourth sides of the Square, and at the same time, the Square gains in spacious- ness from these streets which at this point are drawn into the ensemble. Though Louisburg Square was not yet built up, its plan may be considered the immediate parent of the now virtually de- stroyed and little mentioned, but extremely handsome Pem- berton Square of 1835.)And from this it is not far to the notably enlightened planning of the South End in 1850. Thus we have seen in thirty years a complete revolution in the concept of what the Hill was to be-from a spacious semi- suburban affair to a completely urban district. The Louisburg Square project actually created more house lots than the en- tire Bulfinch plan would have provided.) Let us turn now to the changing style of the houses which had covered the south slope by 1850. To do this it has been necessary to try to discover the approximate date of all the buildings involved. This has been quite a difficult task as the records are frequently confused and partial, and at times it would seem, nonexistent. Even the concrete evidence which the houses themselves offer is often misleading for two rea- sons. First, not all of them were up-to-date, SO to speak, when they were built-a builder might repeat almost verbatim a type of house which he had built elsewhere some ten years earlier. Secondly, very few of them have been untouched by remodeling at some point. Fortunately these remodelings may be classified fairly well, and once understood, are not difficult to recognize. The earliest type consists of alterations made before 1850 to "modernize" the appearance of a house--a Greek Revival doorway might replace an earlier Adamesque example. Then came the Victorians with their French roofs, Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 17 tieth century the Federal-Georgian revivalists have frequent- ly set out to undo the Victorian work, and in other cases to improve upon the original. Despite these complications, the analysis of the individual buildings and their dates has shown that there were four fairly distinct waves of building and that each is characterized by certain stylistic peculiarities. 1800-1812 Notwithstanding the late eighteenth-century flavor which the Hill certainly possesses, with the exception of the State House, there is not a building in the "Old Beacon Hill Dis- trict" which actually dates from that century. The years 1795-1800 were troubled ones for the young nation-the Jay Treaty, the XYZ Affair and the Undeclared War with France-and the development does not really begin until after 1800. Although the election of Jefferson in that year was regarded with dismay in Federal Boston, it was the be- ginning of a period of prosperity which ended only with the events leading to the War of 1812. This then forms our first phase of activity, and within it Bulfinch is obviously the cen- tral figure) We are extremely fortunate in having a map dating from 1814 which chronicles the state of affairs at the end of this period. The so-called Hale's Property Map (figure 5) il- lustrates immediately that the original concept of the Pro- prietors has been much confused by the influx of row houses into the area. For along with the freestanding buildings there are strips of such houses along Mt. Vernon, Walnut, Chest- nut and Beacon Streets. Indeed the variety of types of houses is greater and more confusing than in any of the later periods. The problem is made even more difficult by the fact that many of them have disappeared, or have been radically al- tered in appearance. Still, it is possible to sort out and analyze I 8 The Bostonian Society The first and most obvious are the single mansion houses on Mt. Vernon, Chestnut and Beacon Streets. Only two of these, 85 Mt. Vernon and 45 Beacon Street, survive intact. They are both by Bulfinch and are superb examples of the kind of house the Proprietors originally envisaged for the whole district. While there is nothing "rural" about either one, they are conceived as freestanding entities and required open space on either side to achieve their full effect. The deli- cate and highly refined style of these houses and its English sources have led to the not inept term Late Colonial. These houses and the nature of this phase of the Bulfinch style are too well known to need reiteration here. Secondly, there is a group of pairs of houses which were treated as single compositions, thereby gaining symmetry and monumentality. This treatment (which remains current in the later periods), may be regarded in this case as a sort of compromise between the free single, and the row house types. Some had side yards, while others were joined to their im- mediate neighbors in a row. Of these several remain-6 and 8 Chestnut, 54 and 55 Beacon, 87 and 89 Mt. Vernon, and on a lesser scale, 47 and 49 Pinckney, 21 and 23 Joy Street and 8 and IO Joy Street (the latter two pairs in a much altered condition). 87 Mt. Vernon and its now missing twin 89, again by Bulfinch, in their original form presented an imposing façade eight bays wide to the street. The recessed arches and the small windows of the ground floor, the very tall windows of the second floor, and their diminution in the upper floors, as well as the refined details are all highly typical of the rul- ing style he set for the period. 54 and 55 Beacon are perhaps the best-known examples of the double type. The attenuated Adamesque forms of the pair mark them as distinctively Late Colonial, but they have a personal flavor which is quite unique. They have been var- iously to Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 19 the only other architects of note in this early period-but the problem remains unsolved. They are of particular interest for our purposes, for they employ the bow front in what is essentially a row house, for the first time on the Hill. This form, which remains of minor importance during the 1820s, will emerge suddenly as an important motif in the early thirties. Next there is the architect-designed town or row house and in this category Bulfinch once again established the model with two groups-the block on the north side of Mt. Vernon above Walnut and the three Swan houses, 13-17 Chestnut Street. Of the former group only 55 and parts of 57 and 53 remain. Number 55, the end of a block, was oriented toward a side yard as were 49 and 57. (This is a novel treatment also found in some single houses of the period-25 Joy Street, 29A Chestnut and several houses on upper Pinckney.) Both rows exhibit the familiar Bulfinch vocabulary here applied to a design which presumably could be repeated over and over, side by side. Though not as fine, they are close in style to his famed design for the long-destroyed I-4 Park Street. The Chestnut Street row suffers from an irregularity in the place- ment of the doors, unless a fourth house was projected to the east. Upper Pinckney Street presents a case by itself. Its prox- imity to the even more rapidly developing community to the north really made it a part of that development, and with the exception of a pair of houses at 47 and 49, there was little here of any architectural pretention. Buildings hatched diag- onally on Hale's Property Map are of wooden construction, and vestiges of several of these remain today. Since most of the North Slope was built over with tenements in the later nineteenth century, it is fortunate to have this one remnant still revealing the pleasantly haphazard character the whole 20 The Bostonian Society Of particular interest is the group of tall narrow brick houses numbered 5 1-65. This group is an excellent example of what might be called the vernacular row house of the turn of the century. Severely simple and functional, they are ob- viously the work of builders who cared but little for the ar- chitectural handbooks of the time. The only bit of the Bul- finch-Benjamin vocabulary which they consciously employ is a handsome elaborately carved wooden cornice-some of which are still in place. The triple square-headed windows on the first floor of several of them were a practical innovation introduced after the Revolution to gain light for a one-window room. Other houses of this general type still exist on Charles Street and in the block bounded by Mt. Vernon, Joy and Han- cock Streets. I have particularly emphasized these houses produced by the speculative builder-designer, for this type, much improved by the builders' increasing sophistication and familiarity with the pattern books, becomes the dominant one during the sec- ond phase of activity in the twenties. Before moving on to that highly productive decade, let us list the general characteristics which apply-to a greater or lesser extent-to all the divergent pre-1812 categories:) The prevailing height with few exceptions is four stories, the top floor generally being quite low with "one over one" windows. In almost all of the larger houses the basement or ground floor is separated from the upper part of the building by a band of brick or stone, and frequently recessed arches frame the windows below the band. The Adamesque-Late Colonial decorative details-porticos, pilasters, cornices, and so forth are usually of wood, though a form of brownstone or granite is occasionally used for window lintels and brick cornices with a dentil motif are sometimes substituted for wooden ones. The front doorways, at least in the surviving examples, were pre- Charles Mudfoor CHARLES RIVER Point a For are Tom North Batery want Mill Pond Erms Minois T. Magazine Beason Hill T Long what Street Griffin Whad Battery Ident Where COMMON South Battery Fort Nik A New and Correct PLAN of the TOWN Windmill Point of BOSTON. Francisco 1775 Rope walks cowder House Street 55 ft wide Square 460 feet long strect leading to Dr-stoy's 50 feet wide copelay's KISSON Ln J olive Sireci 18FC 17851 A not D 17853 Pt BE 277 EIF D 17853 Ft us 247 D C C A NI B 17851 B A D are A B B A 17857 A 17251 No.7 No. is we.11 THE Heit No. is A 17853 No. 19 nit A 1884 Ft. 28FL Sq. C 1884 H. nic Louisburg B 1884 A MA D 1884 A ITA No.A No.1 Na 10 No.8 Nac B 1884 A 12 2016 1476 No.20 No.13 A 1700F H No.22 MR C 1700H FX B B THE B 1700R FA C C D D A&B 22 21FC 1456 zefc ** B 1700 ff & B WITH 11-7 B 1869 Ft. 24FC LIFT 21F74 C B A A A MY B 17008 R 1567 Ft A B C 19087 ft. 24FC 2011 ID C 1700H R 1599 Ft. D 2430 AT JA 1700 D D nook Street 1700X A. Cedar Figure 4. The Fuller Plan George Street Charles Figure 5. Detail of Hale's Property Map of Boston 1814 NOO LOUISBURG SQUARE ANDERSON RUSSELL HANCOCK IS THA The Mansion House by Bulfinch n 11', 00 Vernacular Row House Turn of the Century ⑉ Large House of the 1820's Small House of the 1820's 5,0E81 247 fo Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 2 I ception being the fine pair of arched doorways at 54 and 55 Beacon. Lintels were in the form of a flat arch, often having a single or double keystone with voussoirs scored on the sur- face. The brickwork of the façades was almost universally of rough reddish-orange brick laid in a Flemish bond resulting in a pleasing textural quality notably lacking in later periods. 1819-1829 The activity that the war abruptly halted in 1812 was not resumed for some time. The end of the war was followed by a period of economic confusion, improved somewhat by the charter of the Second Bank of the United States and the en- actment of the Tariff Act in 1816. It was not until 1818 that any significant amount of building was resumed on the Hill, and it then continued without interruption until the financial crisis of 1829 This forms our second period and we will find it very different from the prewar era. (The most meaningful change is that the confusion of types of houses disappears. As we saw in considering the planning of the area, the row house replaces other forms, and these need only be divided into larger and smaller examples for further analysis, A small number of what might still be termed vernacular houses continue to be built, and at the other end of the scale, some which are clearly the work of architects for specific clients. But Bulfinch has now left the scene for Washington and his role is not filled by any other individual. Most of the houses of the period are the work of builder-architects, working from the textbooks or perhaps continually modifying a scheme originally derived from an architect as such. Though the period lacks a single major figure, Bulfinch's influence still lingers in the broad sense of a tradition of good design with careful attention to proportion and details. The specific elements of his vocabulary disappear rather quickly, to 22 The Bostonian Society speak-rather than what to say. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that there is not a house dating from the twenties that could seriously be mistaken for his own work. The style of ornamentation as it was continued by these men was an adaptation of the Late Colonial, as modified by the classicism now current almost everywhere in the young country. The Greek Revival came to Boston in 1819 in the form of St. Paul's Church, across the Common, and while it never came to the Hill in any complete sense, it certainly ex- ercised a sobering influence on the elegant, Adam-derived forms. This short-lived local fusion of the two principal styles of the early republic produced what, in my opinion, was the classic phase of the domestic architecture of the Hill. This style of the "Era of Good Feeling" avoids the often mannered elegance and attenuation of forms of the Late Colonial, and at the same time the heavy dryness of much of the Greek Revival The main scene of activity is now the southwestern portion of the Proprietors' land. Lower Chestnut and Beacon, the south end of West Cedar, and Acorn Streets are primarily products of this decade. The first in date are five houses on Beacon Street all of which had been built by 1819. They form a transitional group containing elements of the older and of the new fashions.Number 42 Beacon (now the Somerset Club with an added bay and otherwise much altered) was the last mansion house erected on the Hill. Its design, by Alexander Parris, with projecting curved central bay, is a free transla- tion into heavy stone of Bulfinch's since-destroyed Mason Mansion on Mt. Vernon Street.) The remaining four consist of two pairs with curved bays, 39 and 40, and 56 and 57 Bea- con, in the tradition of the already described 54 and 55 of 1806. 56 and 57 still exhibit the soon to be outmoded Flemish bond brickwork, and in height and character closely resemble Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 23 more classic profile and rectangular, rather than flared, lintels with incised patterns both attest to the later date. 39 and 40 (now with an added story) are also of Flemish bond, but were forward-looking in other ways. The original height of three stories and attic is an early instance of the reduced verticality favored in the twenties. Further, incised lintels are present in an early and rich form with raised blocks at the centers and ends, and the recessed Ionic columns in the entrance portals have a distinctly classic flavor. The fact that all five have curved bays is not typical of the twenties, when a straight façade was usually preferred. Others in these blocks from a few years later also have bays and this peculiarity is perhaps due to their Beacon Street location, where 54 and 55 had early established the precedent, and where the added vistas derived from such a treatment were particularly rewarding. Within the twenties proper, the row houses exhibit a happy uniformity and a balanced style that make our examination considerably easier. Many of the building contracts of the period specify that the house in question is to be finished exact- ly like, say, "Miss Cabot's house, on Mt. Vernon Street." At the same time, titles to vacant land were frequently sold with the proviso that "none other than brick or stone dwellings three stories high ever be erected on this lot." Thus there is still a conscious striving by individuals-with the admittedly limited means available to them-to achieve the uniformity of effect typical of the group planning of eighteenth-century England, for which Bulfinch's work provided an immediate local prototype. In the single instance where a speculative builder was able to finance a whole block at once, such an effect was automatically achieved. This is the singularly simple and handsome block on the lower side of West Cedar between Mt. Vernon and Chestnut. It was built in 1827 by the builder- 24 The Bostonian Society this builder group. His name may be associated with innumer- able houses of the period and they are almost invariably of high quality. Though the trend throughout the decade was toward gen- erally smaller houses, larger ones were still current, and ideal examples exist which have been little changed. 28-34 Mt. Vernon is an interesting row dating from 1822 which still savors somewhat of the earlier period. The overall propor- tions-four stories high and only two windows wide above the ground floor-are reminiscent of the early vernacular town houses on upper Pinckney Street. But there are significant changes; the windows are more nearly equal in height, and regular brickwork has replaced the Flemish bond. The triple window in the ground floor, the efficient means of procuring light for a narrow room, was adopted by the clever builder- designers and became almost a trademark of this decade. The window lintels however are still of the flared flat arch variety, though minus the keystone, and the relatively light, project- ing wooden Doric portico might be termed unprogressive for the date. (While such porches tend to disappear during the twenties, they occasionally reappear in the next period with notably more "correct" proportions.) In numbers 33 and 34 Beacon, and 7, 9 and II Chestnut from a short two years later-1824-we find classic examples of the larger house of the twenties from which the minor ar- chaisms have disappeared. Both are four stories high and have granite basements, rusticated in the larger Beacon Street pair, and smooth-faced in the somewhat smaller Chestnut Street trio. We have already seen the new tendency to use granite introduced in Parris's 42 Beacon Street. The overall use there of this sober and inherently monumental material is perhaps of questionable success-though it must be recognized that it has suffered from its later enlargement. On the other hand, it is perfectly to Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 25 it contrasts handsomely with the brickwork above. Once again the ground and top floor windows have gained relatively in height and the lintels are now of the new form with incised patterns. There are floor-length windows in the piano nobile or second floor (the original introduction of which Fiske Kim- ball attributed to Bulfinch). These remain current as a pos- sible variant during the whole period 1800-1850. The con- tinuous iron balconies break the surface of the façades and provide a horizontal counterbalance for the essentially vertical compositions. These became increasingly popular in the twen- ties and thirties, with an ever-changing repertory of motifs. By contrast, the ironwork from 1800-1812 was generally more delicate in form and confined to the single window. The smaller house is the most characteristic and in many ways the finest product of the time. And fortunately a great many survive in excellent condition, particularly in lower Chesnut Street. As examples we might select the row there numbered from 50 to 60 and the three at 44, 46 and 48 Mt. Vernon, all dating from the middle of the decade. They are all three stories high with moderately pitched attic roofs. The door recesses are arched and banded with a light line of incised brownstone broken by small impost blocks and keystones. Within the recess, the doors are surrounded by side and fan lights with tracery that exhibits the somewhat sobered delicacy of the period. The lintels again display the finely incised rec- tangles and squares-in the Mt. Vernon row with raised end and central blocks. The Chestnut Street houses illustrate a most successful use of the triple window. In these it is repeated in the second and third floors where it becomes the single light source for the larger rooms on those levels. In such smaller houses where the principal entertainment rooms were usually on the first floors, the piano nobile is given no particular ex- ternal emphasis. 26 The Bostonian Society The Flemish bond of the earlier period disappeared almost entirely in favor of a somewhat darker, though still slightly rough brick, laid in regular courses with narrower joints. Wooden external decorative details tend to disappear. The elaborately carved wooden cornice is almost universally re- placed by a slightly projecting brick cornice with a dentil motif formed by alternately projecting "headers." The light projecting portico gives way most frequently to recessed en- tries framed with an arch. When columns are used at an en- trance they are often of stone as at 33-34 Beacon-and usually of more classical proportions. On the whole, granite was used more than before or later, this tendency culminating in 1829 in the extremely handsome row at 70-76 Beacon. Though their all-granite façades are obviously exceptional, these rela- tively small houses, in their distinction, balance and restraint, serve as an epitome of the achievement of the twenties. 1830-1840 The brief but severe financial panie of 1829 brought an end to the period, and when building was resumed in the early thirties, the style changed in several important respects First the bowed front façade, heretofore largely confined to Bea- con Street, and there in symmetrical compositions with the doors placed together, was now widely adopted for row houses. Secondly, the decorative details turned rather abruptly from the modified Late Colonial to the new repertory of Greek- inspired motifs which Asher Benjamin presented in his books from the late twenties onward. In the preface to his 1833 Practice of Architecture he praises the "Grecian System" because its "economical plan, and plain massive features, are pecu- liarly adapted to the republican habits of this country." The lingering traces of the eighteenth century withered away rapidly under such competition. Finally, the mid-thirties were Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 27 and no lack of funds combined to produce a demand for larger houses, and these now come to the fore as the principal type. The center of activity moved to Louisburg Square and low- er Pinckney Street which, though planned in the twenties did not begin to develop until 1834. There was also much build- ing near the State House on the old Hancock and Joy proper- ty, just recently opened for development. And a last vestige of the Proprietors' original scheme, several large vacant man- sion house lots on Mt. Vernon, was soon covered over The first important row of the new period was I-5 Joy Street, built in 1832, which immediately proclaim a change of taste. They revert to the prevailing four-story height of the early period, and the ground-to-cornice bowed front re- peated in each façade gives the row a dynamism which is a dis- tinctly new quality. New also is the complexity of the lintel system and the heavy enframement of the doors-all in brownstone. The lintels of the ground and top floor windows are merely an undifferentiated part of horizontal bands of brownstone running clear across the façade. The lower is per- haps a reminiscence of the Bulfinch basement band in his near- by Mt. Vernon Street houses, while the upper serves as frieze- like enrichment below the cornice which is frequent in the thirties. The intervening lintels are a development of the in- cised twenties style, now with pendant blocks at either end creating a slightly hooded effect indicative of things to come. In place of an arched entrance, we find a rectangular opening framed with sturdy, unfluted, double-faced angle pilasters carrying an entablature, and this is to be the favored form in the new decade. Numbers 69-83 Mt. Vernon also date from the early thir- ties and are similar in character to the Joy Street row. 79-8I exhibit another new variant of the lintel form. It consists of a simple rectangular brownstone slab with a small rosette a note. 28 The Bostonian Society considering the increased scale of the houses and the heaviness of other details. Just above these, 59 to 63 were built toward the end of the decade on the site of the Mason mansion, which was destroyed to meet the new demand for house lots. 63-67 are of the new bow front type with an even richer array of brownstone detail. The lintels here are all variations of a low pediment projecting from the façade, differing in form at each of the first three floors. Number 59 is unique among the houses on the Hill in that it marks the high point of the Greek Revival in the area. Its fine Ionic portal is almost a temple front in miniature, the pedimented window lintels are among the most successful of the type, and classical wreaths in a frieze beneath the roof cornice mark the vertical rows of windows. The interior of the house boasts an abundance of pure Greek Revival details, particularly variations of the anthemion motif. The fact that this is the sole example of a full-blown acceptance of the style exemplifies the tempering of the new fashion by already long extant local tradition. Louisburg Square itself must obviously be regarded as the finest product of the thirties. The new style achieved a certain perfection and unity of effect here-happily more or less re- spected by all latecomers to the scene. The lower side of the Square with its row of swelled fronts is particularly fine (numbers 8-22). In these the usual four-story elevation of the time is discarded in favor of a rather novel three-story, areaway and basement scheme, perhaps in deference to the essentially small scale of the square. In these the piano nobile is moved to the first story, which thus becomes the tallest. The areaway and retaining wall made it possible to have a large well-lighted room in the front of the basement and in some cases this actually served as the family dining room. Number 14 is probably closest to its original form. The door frame is of the now prevalent type introduced at I-4 Joy Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 29 Street, in this case very successfully embellished with a low pediment. The unusual open granite steps and slab over the areaway show a fine feeling for the nature of that material, and even the light "rosette-square" lintels are more effective, here, due to the smaller scale of the house. Larger houses without bows continued to be built and there are good examples of these in Mt. Vernon Place, along Mt. Vernon opposite the Square, and even several in the Square itself. With the natural exception of their less plastic quality, they exhibit the same general characteristics as their bowed contemporaries. Nor did the smaller house disappear from the scene, but these to this, as a rule adhered to the straight façade. (An exception adapted 76 and 78 Pinckney, prove that the bowed front is ill- ones achieve for narrower frontages.) The best of the smaller vantage in a certain austere dignity and may be seen to ad- West Cedar the block between Mt. Vernon and Pinckney on predecessors Street. They too are quite distinct from their spite its of the twenties. The familiar triple window, de- tranceway merits, is disappears completely, and the arched en- pletely superseded by a rectangular opening often com- rectangular undecorated lintel. with the exception of a purely functional predecessors and They tend to be somewhat taller than their courses pronounced due to their brick-dentil cornices are often more continuous beneath the the addition of several slightly projecting Greek-derives The balconies dentils. employing Many have the new the vocabulary now frequent of above the discussion- basic trends motifs. of the decade emerged from houses. the impact One of the Greek new importance will have of the toward bowed larger front, the face introductionificant pressed innovation Revival, the and remains the trend to be mentioned- smooth-sur- for decade, of deep-red, the This laid 30 The Bostonian Society with very fine joints of dark mortar, the result being an ex- tremely precise and almost textureless plane. (The major depression of 1837 brought a quick end to this third chapter of our story. As may be seen from figure 6 there was little empty land left at this point, and it would be the end of the tale were it not for a short postscript. When prosperity returned again in the forties the last remaining lots were built over and the Proprietors' venture was completed- some fifty years after its inception/ This time there is no sharp change within the local tradition. Many buildings from the years after the final resumption of activity are indistinguishable from those of the preceding dec- ade. The houses at 2, 4, 6, and I and 3 Louisburg Square/ar illustrations of this. Their general style is very close to that of their earlier neighbors, though with more analysis certain mi- nor distinctions emerge. These houses exemplify, for instance, a continuation of the vertical impulse-being the tallest build- ings on their respective sides of the square. The continuity of style persists in most of the smaller houses too, as witness the block on West Cedar Street between Pinckney and Revere. The increased value of land caused the division of this remain- ing plot into somewhat narrower lots, but the houses there are almost identical to those in the thirties-built block to the south on the same street. The houses of the forties are the final product of the con- tinually developing style we have traced since 1800. But they are not the whole story of the decade, for in these very same years certain houses were built in a completely foreign idiom not only with no regard for unity of effect-but with what was obviously a very conscious desire to be different. These deny all the traditions of the first half of the century, and lead directly to the vast confusion of styles of the second half, which usually pass under the loose label "Victorian." For ex- ample the Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill 31 were built with manifest respect for the ensemble, Richard Upjohn designed the tremendous brownstone houses at 70 and 72 Mt. Vernon in a pastiche of revival elements that al- most defies analysis. It is rather remarkable that a tradition of dignified anonymity had persisted this long in an age of in- dividualism and romanticism. A word at least should be said about interior planning which we have virtually disregarded thus far. A detailed study is not only beyond our scope but would not prove particularly re- warding. The problem of row house planning is by nature quite limited, and the possible variations are few. The stairs, for example, could be at the side of the house, or in the middle between the front and back rooms. Curving flights exist as a possible alternative in the finer houses from the earliest to the latest examples. Bulfinch set standards of comfort and con- venience in his plans that could hardly be surpassed in the terms of the first half of the century, and the subsequent de- velopment was merely the integration of as many of these features as possible into the plan of an average house.) The architects, with a few notable exceptions, have re- mained anonymous. Many, like Coolidge, were builders who were architects too, by virtue of their design books. Others no doubt were "gentlemen" still schooled in the tradition that architecture was a normal facet of a complete education. They worked in the framework of the fast-expiring eighteenth-cen- tury rationale that provided rules for practice and taste in all the arts. The justly proportioned results which we have ex- amined were thus almost anachronistic when produced, and the fact that they have survived until the mid-twentieth cen- tury makes them doubly so, and consequently of particular interest and worthy of preservation. In conclusion, let us run through a brief summary of our findings. The first period was marked by a confusion of types, was the Fed- 32 The Bostonian Society eral or Late-Colonial manner of Bulfinch and his followers. By the twenties the town house had become the undisputed form and the style achieved a classic phase as a result of the absorption and modification of the Bulfinch tradition by the local builders. The thirties saw the conquest of the Greek- derived vocabulary of detail, but the Greek Revival at its most imaginative provided no alternative form for the tall narrow town house, and their ultimate ancestors remained the houses of Georgian London and Bath. This style persisted into the forties, where it met the competition of the oncoming revivals that spelled its doom> While our purpose has been to dwell on the changing minutiae and minor distinctions by which the houses of the suc- cessive decades may be recognized, the functional homo- geneity of all of the pre-1845 work must again be emphasized. Talbot Hamlin stated this particularly well: "Their sim- plicity itself produced a certain fluidity in style that gave har- mony to the work of different periods; for doors could vary and be Adam-like or Greek, the details of the ironwork could be the scrolls of the 18th century or the palmettes of the 1830s, and still-with the basic forms of tall slim windows and delicate cornices remaining the same from decade to dec- ade-harmony reigned." Messachusetts Historical Review 19 (2017). 23-42 From Parker House Filet de Boeuf to Hash on Washington Avenue Dining Out in Antebellum Boston KELLY ERBY of N A THURSDAY EVENING IN LATE JULY 1859, Charles Wiggin, O a Boston teenager, went with his friend Albert to get supper at the Parker House Restaurant. In the 1850s, Parker's was a fixture of social life for affluent Bostonians. Located on School Street, the restaurant was attached to the Parker House Hotel, at that point the most luxurious in the city. The advertisement in the Boston Herald announcing Parker's open- ing in April 1856 emphasized that the hotel's showpiece was its public dining accommodations, intended for guests of the hotel as well as locals. Parker's, the ad declared, boasted "a public Restaurant, where meals will be served at all hours of the day." Diners ordered à la carte from a bill of fare containing a long list of dishes, many of them French or French-inspired. 2 The ad went on to assure readers that the proprietors of the Parker House had "spared no expense in fitting this house with all the arrangements and appliances neces- sary for the comfort of its guests." In other words, they made every effort to win the approbation of Boston's well-heeled diners. 3 But good taste and comfort came with a hefty price tag. On this Thursday night in 1859, Wiggin and his friend "entered with bold steps," took a seat at one of Parker's many tables, and began to look over the restaurant's bill of fare. The boys had a particular dish in mind: beefsteak and fried potatoes. KELLY ERBY is associate professor of history at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. She is the author of Restaurant Republic: The Rise of Public Dining in Boston (2016). THE HUB OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM by Peter Davison like three Bostoni- The author walks Baptist Church-by the ton during the Revolution). L ans out of four, I waterside for baptismal con- Mount Vernon Street cer- live on a site that us through literary venience. A favorite meet- tainly altered the character was originally un- Boston at its ing place for abolitionist of the place; by the early derwater. My house is on orators, it became an Afri- twentieth century Henry River Street, an alleyway zenith. But Boston can Methodist Church, and James would call it "the only that was built for stables at serves today as an office respectable street in Amer- the bottom of Beacon Hill in being what it is, we building. ica." From a literary point the middle of the nineteenth also come across My work (I am a poet and of view he could not be century. Until my wife, twen- an editor) regularly takes faulted: Robert Frost, Robert ty years ago, redesigned the the Revolution, me on a route that covers Hillyer, Thomas Bailey Al- carriage house we live in, no ward politics, the history of literary Boston drich, Henry Adams, and Ju- humans had resided there. in the nineteenth century. I lia Ward Howe all lived on Out of the back of the house and the great fire. walk to work (as do most this street at one time or an- we see the spire of the people in Boston who value other, while the side streets Church of the Advent, a late- their personal safety), and gave residence to Sylvia nineteenth-century Gothic- my way takes me along Plath and Ted Hughes, W. S. revival creation that has the Charles Street, built in 1799 Merwin, L. E. Sissman, and best music, and the high- by filling the edge of Boston George Starbuck during the est Episcopal service, in Bos- Harbor with the soil from little Boston poetic renais- ton. Outside the front door one of Boston's five original sance of the 1950s Parallel stands the Charles Street hills (Mount Vernon, cheer- to Mount Vernon Street runs Meeting House, originally fully called Mount Whore- Chestnut, obedient to the built in 1804 as the Third dom by the appreciative principles of English Geor- redcoats who occupied Bos- gian architecture as inter- preted by Charles Bulfinch, and to my taste the most Mount Vernon Street (opposite) is one of the brick-paved thoroughfares that make Beacon Hill so appealing. At left, turn-of- the-century postcard views of, left to right, the Boston Public Library, the Old State House, and King's Chapel. AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL 1989 V61.40,#31p.54-65. SCHOYER'S BOOKS PITTSBURGH OPPOSITE PAGE: STEVE DUNWELL/IMAGE BANK WILLOW ST % J.T. Fields W. HolMES beautiful street on the Hill. It Boston sheltered James Russell Low- ell, Richard Henry Dana, and Boston Harbor Francis Parkman. Edward Weeks, the tenth editor of The Atlantic Monthly, still lives at the near end of Chest- nut Street, as the ninth edi- tor, Ellery Sedgwick, once lived at the far end.) o I walk each morn- S ing past the antique shops of Charles Street, past the Charles River Boston mouths of Mount Vernon State House Athenaeum State St. King's Chapel and Chestnut streets. On Old State House Mt. Vernon St. some days, when I arrive at Chesinul School Old Corner Book Store the corner of Charles and Shaw ROW Memorial Beacon streets, I turn left toward Beacon Hill to my Boston Common work at Houghton Mifflin Company; on others, I turn right toward the Back Bay, to work at The Atlantic Monthly, two enterprises that in the nineteenth cen- Back Bay tury were closely allied. If I were to stop at this cor- ner I would be standing at the present cultural cross- 0 roads of the city. But in 2000 Ft. 1800, if I had stood here af- ter dark, I would scarcely have seen a light. Straight ahead there would only have been an embankment to Boston before Back Bay was edge of the peninsula, would To walk up Beacon Street keep the waters of the Back filled in, and some of the sites on have dropped nearly sixty now is to continue a walk Bay under control, with a our walking tour. feet. The brick houses of into the past. At the corner road atop it leading half a Charles Street, Chestnut of Spruce Street lived Bos- mile straight ahead until along Beacon Street, the Street, and Mount Vernon ton's first settler, the Rever- it encountered Washington farmhouse of John Singleton Street would have sprouted end William Blaxton. At the Street, the only land exit Copley probably would not up on the eighteen acres corner of Walnut Street lived from Boston at the time. To have obscured the view of that the Mount Vernon Pro- the family of the abolitionist my right there would have Charles Bulfinch's two-year- prietors, in one of the great orator Wendell Phillips. At been nothing whatever ex- old State House, though the land grabs in history, had the corner of Joy Street lived cept a watery waste, for Bos- steep slopes, not yet leveled, managed to buy in 1795 from the family of Robert Gould tonians were only just begin- might have kept me from see- the agents of John Singleton Shaw, the young command- ning to outgrow their little ing it from here. Copley for one thousand er of the 54th Massachu- peninsula of 785 acres of Seen from this spot fifty dollars an acre. By 1850 all setts, a black Civil War regi- land and begin filling in the years later, Beacon Hill the great houses of Beacon ment. A block farther on, shallows around it. Up the would have looked very dif- Street were in place. Beacon across from Bulfinch's State Hill to my left, in 1800, I ferent. Boston's population was principally a street for House (the dome did not get would have seen the open would have totaled 136,881. those aspiring to social gran- its coating of gold leaf until country of the Boston Com- The top of the Hill, removed deur, though today only insti- 1874), is the memorial to mon. Halfway up the Hill, to fill the coves around the tutions can afford it. Shaw and his men, designed 56 AMERICAN HERITAGE - APRIL 1989 by Augustus Saint-Gaudens M come a national literary capi- In 1789 it became the first in 1897. One of the great pa- tal, and it could not serve a Unitarian church in Amer- triotic monuments, it stands invitations nation to which it was only ica, and Emerson sometimes where it ought to, not only included only barely connected by land. preached there. A five-story near Shaw's birthplace and The first bridge to Charles- marble hotel called the opposite the State House of R. W. Emerson, town was built in 1786; the Parker House was built on the Commonwealth of Mas- first bridge to Cambridge in School Street opposite the sachusetts but also only a H. W. Longfellow, 1793; and by the 1830s Bos- chapel, where the modern stone's throw from the old J. R. Lowell, ton was reached by railroad 1927 version of the hotel black quarter of Boston on In came its youthful aspi- now stands. In May 1857 a the north side of Beacon Hill Mr. Cabot. rants from the surrounding dinner took place there that and within sight of the Park centers of New England- was described by its host, Street publishing house, nial Boston had been a sea- the Hawthornes, the Lowells, Moses D. Phillips, a book- Houghton Mifflin Company, port. All its resources, save the Whittiers, the Fieldses, seller and publisher: "My in- that by 1897 had published for the most elementary, the Aldriches, the Beechers, vitations included only R. W. the collected works of every came to it by water: settlers, the Thoreaus, the Longfel- Emerson, H. W. Longfellow, scion of the Golden Day: Em- import trade, export trade, re- lows-while a second gener- J. R. Lowell, Mr. [John Loth- erson, Lowell, Holmes, Whit- ligions, immigrants, and cul- ation-Henry James, Wil- rop] Motley (the 'Dutch Re- tier, and the rest. As Robert ture. (Today a tourist com- liam Dean Howells, Mark public' man), O. W. Holmes, Lowell, another child of Bea- ing to Boston only for its his- Twain were to bring their Mr. Cabot, and Mr. Under- con Hill, wrote of the Shaw tory and architecture would wares to Boston from New wood, our literary man. monument in 1959: "at the be best advised to approach York, Ohio, and Missouri. We sat down at three P.M., dedication,/William James it from that direction: come Moreover, without railroads and arose at eight." At that could almost hear the in by water taxi from the air- the publishing firms could dinner the founding of The bronze Negroes breathe./ port, landing at the beauti- never have brought the Atlantic Monthly was pro- Their monument sticks like ful new gateway at Rowe's books of new American writ- posed by Phillips in an utter- a fishbone/in the city's Wharf, then walk uptown ers to their audiences, who ance that for condescension throat." The abolition of slav- along State Street, with the were now stretching out could perhaps have been ery was the passion of radi- magnificent harbor view be- hundreds and thousands of voiced only in Boston: "Mr. cal Boston in the years be- hind you, toward the Old miles into the continent. Cabot is much wiser than I fore the Civil War, though in State House.) The Boston of The new traffic was exciting am, Dr. Holmes can write fun- the 1970s Boston would still the 1850s would still be, for a indeed Emerson, the child nier verses than I can, Mr. find that monument stick- short while, an international of Beacon Hill, would proph- Motley can write history bet- ing in its throat. Yet Low- terminus for the clipper-ship esy in 1837: "We have lis- ter than I, Mr. Emerson is a ell's poem, like Julia Ward trade. Samuel Eliot Morison, tened too long to the courtly philosopher and I am not, Howe's "Battle Hymn of the writing in our century, de- muses of Europe We Mr. Lowell knows more of Republic" in 1862, was pub- scribed an arrival: "Off India will walk on our own feet; the old poets than I, but lished first in The Atlantic Wharf the ship rounds into we will work with our own none of you knows the Ameri- Monthly. the wind with a graceful minds. can people as well as I do." Farther along Beacon curve, crew leaping into her By November 1857 the Street, the Boston Athenae- rigging to furl topgallant continue down first issue of the magazine um, a private library with sails as if they were shot I Beacon Street and came out, with Lowell, who some of the most beautiful in- upward by the blast of pro- approach the junction was already the author of teriors in the city, stands on fanity from the mate's bull- with Tremont Street, I some fifty abolitionist pam- the site of the house where like throat. With backed top- will be for the first time walk- phlets and articles, acting as Ralph Waldo Emerson grew sails her way is checked, and ing through parts of Boston principal editor in addition up, now and then grazing his the cable rattles out of the that were heavily occupied to his duties as Smith Profes- parents' cows on the Com- chain lockers for the first before the leveling of Bea- sor of French and Spanish mon. Of all the three-named time since Shanghai." It was con Hill. On the far left cor- Languages and Literatures grandees of the Golden Day, scenes like this that Haw- ner stands King's Chapel, at Harvard. He would deliver only Emerson was born in thorne watched during his the first Anglican church copy to the printer, Henry O. Boston. For the city to be- days in the Old Boston Cus- built in Boston, with pews re- Houghton of the Riverside come a center either for lit- tom House on Long Wharf served, before 1776, for the Press, in Cambridge, stroll- erature or for its favorite from 1839 to 1841. royal governor and, after- ing from his home at cause it would have to es- But the new Boston of the ward, for such eminent visi- Elmwood (now the Harvard cape from its insularity. Colo- 1850s was preparing to be- tors as George Washington. president's house) along 58 AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL 1989 the Charles to the printing year, post paid, in any part counter at the left end the fa- current good things, the hub factory that stood on the of the United States within bled Old Corner Book Store, of the hub." Henry O. Hough- Charles riverbank. Holmes, 3000 miles." The Atlantic long derelict but now, ton established offices at the in one of the earliest issues, was nothing if not ambitious, thanks to the Boston Globe, Old Corner in late 1865, af- wrote, "Boston State-House nothing if not American. a bookstore again, where ter Ticknor & Fields moved is the hub of the solar sys- Alas, the "conductors" Ticknor & Fields for a while to larger quarters, The fact tem." proved to be sounder in conducted its business, pub- is that Ticknor & Fields lost The new magazine, despite their various fields than Mr. lishing the works of Emer- its credit, and its heart, as its abolitionist underpin- Phillips was in his knowl- son, Lowell, Holmes, Haw- fast as any other Boston pub- nings, announced itself as edge of the American peo- thorne, Longfellow, Thoreau, lishing firm. By 1881 Hough- "the organ of no party or ple. Within two years his Thackeray, Tennyson, Brown- ton Mifflin owned not only clique," proclaimed its devo- firm had gone bankrupt and ing, and, after enormous ef- Ticknor & Fields but The At- Looking most satisfactorily Bostonian, the trustees of the Public Library convene in 1894; the librarian, Samuel A. B. Abbott, is at center. tion to "Literature, Art, and the Atlantic had been sold forts of literary piracy, Dick- lantic Monthly and the River- Politics," and aspired to be for ten thousand dollars to a ens. The house itself echoes side Press. Houghton died in "the exponent of what its competitor, the publishing Boston's past In the seven- 1895, just as all his famous conductors believe to be the firm Ticknor & Fields, which teenth century it was the three-named authors were American idea" and to be- had hastily submitted the site of Anne Hutchinson's also taking their leave of the come "welcome wherever only bid in an auction. By house; in the eighteenth it solar system. the English tongue is spo- 1862 James T. Fields had re- housed an apothecary's shop The corner of School and ken." Moreover, "Subscribers placed Lowell as editor. and in the nineteenth, for a Washington streets finds us remitting three dollars, in ad- As we continue down while, Ticknor & Fields, a in the heart of the old book- vance, to the publishers, will School Street to its terminus gathering place for "the ex- selling and publishing center receive the work for one at Washington, we will en- change of wit, the Rialto of of Boston. Little, Brown, pub- APRIL 1989 AMERICAN HERITAGE 59 lisher of the historians Wil- The Old Corner Book Store about liam Prescott, George Ban- 1865, and today, refurbished croft, and Francis Parkman, and back in the book business. as well as Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, originally con- harbor, and from Milk to ducted its legal and general Summer streets, completely publishing business at 112 devastated. Further crushed Washington Street. Ticknor only a year later by the pan- & Fields had moved to 124 ic of 1873, Boston publishing Tremont Street in 1866, and continued its gradual de- its successor firms hopped cline, just as the giving over around the downtown area of Boston to business contin- for years before Houghton ued the process of destruc- Mifflin moved up Beacon Hill tion for the rows of beauti- to 4 Park Street in 1880. Lit- ful houses that Bulfinch had tle, Brown joined it on the left along Tremont and Park Hill in 1909. streets, in Bowdoin Square, Downtown, across Wash- and in the old South End. ington Street, beyond the By 1875 Boston had grown Old South Meeting House to nearly 342,000 people, and above the birthplace of and it was turning its down- Benjamin Franklin, were to town over to clothing and stand the quarters of the Bos- textile businesses while the ton Post and of the paper new population moved into whose readers T. S. Eliot newly filled land. To walk to- would evoke in sardonic day from the Old Corner left- lines: "When evening quick- HIULD ward on Washington Street ens faintly in the street,/Wak- is to find the old print dis- ening the appetites of life in trict erased to the point of some/and to others bringing blankness. A faceless tow- the Boston Evening Tran- er stands where the Globe script. " The district also and the Advertiser once held the offices, within my published newspapers. At memory, of most of the ground level the street is other newspapers, though given over to New England the Globe and the Herald, the Tontine Crescent soon Telephone and to an aban- sole survivors, have now enough fell to giddy finan- doned movie theater. At moved to distant parts of cial planning or builders' T State Street I turn right and the city. The papers betook greed while immigrations icknor & approach the Old State themselves to South Boston, from Ireland and elsewhere while the publishing houses Fields publishing House from the uphill side, filled the old North End and grateful for its humane pro- grouped themselves around the new South End, and the house was portions, but I remember the rim of the Boston Com- Brahmins who could not mon and Public Garden. "the Rialto of that in 1876 Boston was find places on Beacon Hill ready to tear down both the For a while in the 1870s began to move to the new current good Old State House and the Old Boston book publishing ven- Back Bay. The worst disas- South Meetinghouse, then tured farther into the thrill- ter of all, fire. struck on No- things, the hub used as a post office. The ing purlieus of the new busi- vember 9, 1872, when an epi- of the hub." city of Chicago actually of- ness district that developed demic of equine influenza fered to buy the State House along State and Franklin and had felled most of the na- and move it to the shores of Summer streets, displacing tion's horses, and only two streets, some 700 buildings, Lake Michigan, brick by the fashionable residential of Boston's ninety-odd fire- 960 businesses, and nobody brick, and both buildings districts that had preceded horses could answer the knows how many residences were saved by the first out- the development of Beacon call. Eighteen hours after the were gone. The holocaust raged wave of the preserva- Hill. Those beautiful group- fire had sprung up at the cor- left downtown Boston, from tion movement. I look down ings like Franklin Place and ner of Summer and Kingston Washington Street to the the long vista of State Street 60 AMERICAN HERITAGE - APRIL 1989 TOP: BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY: BOTTOM: MILTON FEINBERG/STOCK BOSTON "This is the way you always imagined the South Pacific and see a glimmer of the har- bor at the end between the to be 12 Read skyscrapers that have grown Andrew Harner like concrete fungi on both auide to Dspolled places Hideaway Report sides. The splendid 1977 res- Forbes torations of the Quincy Mar- explic Ustane paradise ket evoke some memories of early seagoing grandeur, but It's the vacation Boston is no longer a sea- port of much consequence. of a lifetime for What Boston won from the $2, 150 a week! land it lost again and what New York did not claim, Bal- HOUR timore and San Francisco picked up. aken as a whole, Fiji is an intimate cottage colony accom- I turn right on Devonshire T perhaps the most idyllic and modating no more than 8 guests in Street and walk toward Frank- hospitable archipelago in the residence at any one time. lin between even higher, South Seas, its essence Meals are a delight here, begin- darker walls. At Franklin the springing right from the heart ning with breakfast prepared by a street burgeons out into a of unpretentious people whose en- cook and housekeeper in the priva- thusiastic greetings of 'bula' are a re- cy of your own bungalow at any hour wide lunar shape, a remnant flection of the welcome and care you wish. Dinner and lively conver- of Bulfinch, and straight extended to visitors. sation are enjoyed at the atmospheric ahead of me I can see a hand- "This is the way you always Plantation House some new red-topped twen- imagined the South Pacific to be - "A wide range of daytime diver- ty-story building, an appro- an unspoiled, once-upon-a-time sions are available including top- tropical isle seen by very few people notch sport fishing aboard a spe- priate size for this city, stand- outside Fiji since it was first spot- cially-designed 45-foot deepsea boat ing on the place where the ted by Captain Bligh from the decks staffed with a knowledgeable cap- 1872 fire was kindled. If I of the Bounty two centuries ago. tain and crew at your call. Tuna, mai- wander back up Franklin or Situated 200 miles out to sea north- mai, snapper, jack fish and sailfish Summer Street to Washing- east of Nadi, Laucala is the lushest, are all regularly hooked in these vir- remotest and most exclusive of all the gin grounds, plus an occasional ton Street, however, it be- destinations in this corner of the black marlin. There's also superb comes clear that the nature world. The island is ringed by impres- snorkeling/scuba diving (tanks and of Boston changed some sive coral reefs, shell-strewn weights provided) in the transparent time ago. The creative cen- beaches and a beautifully manicured offshore waters where stunning ter shifted to some other coconut plantation whose terrain reefs harbor colorful coral heads rises upward to a mountainous interi- teeming with rare tropical fish and part of the city after the or rife with giant ferns, mango trees specimen shells catastrophes of the Gilded and wild birds "It's always satisfying to uncover Age. This was once the theat- "It was only recently a decision an idyllic island these days that is rical district, but nearly all was made to share this unique spot still pretty much the way it has the theaters, even the X- with compatible travelers capable always been, and even nicer when of appreciating the charm and unhur- you realize the owner is determined rated ones, are closed. ried atmosphere such a pastoral to keep it that way. Very, very spe- 1881 William Dean How- sanctuary can offer. Peace and priva- cial particularly for those who want ells, the most intellectually cy, of course, are still paramount, to sample a relaxing tropical life- energetic editor of the Atlan- so don't expect to find a traditional style that is fast disappearing in the full-blown social resort, but rather South Pacific tic, was tempted away from Boston to New York by the refusal of Henry O. Hough- Fire up my imagination! ton to pay his editor more Contact: Send me a free color brochure. than five thousand dollars a Fiji Manager year, "dragging," as Alfred Attn: Errol Ryland Name Kazin writes, "the center of Fort Garland, CO 81133 Address American literary culture (719) 379-3263 with him.' The two last dec- City ades of the nineteenth cen- State Zip tury saw Boston culture 89K7 transform itself from a creat- 64 AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL 1989 straight ahead of you from above the corner of Walnut here, you will see all the Street and Beacon Street, Back Bay, the towers of the where, more than thirty beautiful churches built by years ago, my friend Edwin Henry H. Richardson, the O'Connor wrote what still variably ugly towers built stands as Boston's most re- for hotels and insurance com- cent prose classic, The Last panies, and soaring above Hurrah. But that nostalgic them all the dazzling prism phrase, though it has found of the John Hancock Tower, its way deep into the lan- built by I. M. Pei and Part- guage, will not govern. Bos- ners. At the turn of the twen- ton, after all, rose from the tieth century Yankee Boston- waves to start with, and it ians built palaces in the has, not very gracefully, new lands of the Back Bay stood up to wave after wave to keep their culture safe: of new immigration, new ex- The Old State House seen the Boston Public Library perience. We may no longer in an 1801 painting by James B. (1895), the Massachusetts be able to conduct ourselves Marston and as it looks now. Historical Society (1899), with complete confidence in Symphony Hall (1900), Mrs. the face of the challenges serve the Chinese vases and Jack Gardner's monument that face us now, as we did, old masters, tucking them to herself at Fenway Court in good puritan conscience, away in larger and larger mu- (1902), the Museum of Fine when faced with the evil prin- seums, libraries, and memo- Arts (1909). Though the ciples of slavery. But even rials. facades looked generous, though the foundations of Walk back along Washing- what lay behind them was buildings on Boston's filled ton Street past Filene's, Jor- self-celebration, celebration, land are beginning to suc- dan Marsh, and the horrific as Elizabeth Hardwick wrote cumb to rot, there is a spirit facade of Lafayette Place, in 1959, of "Boston and its about the Hill that has not the most hideous building in mysteriously enduring repu- yet quite finished offering the city, whose mirrored tation. History, indeed, thinkers and statesmen to and windowless walls hide a with its long, leisurely, gen- America. As Emerson wrote forest of malls inside. (Fortu- tlemanly labors, the books in the first issue of the Atlan- A nately it is slated for destruc- arriving by post, the cards tic, "They reckon ill who tion before it reaches its to be kept and filed, the sec- leave me out." State tenth birthday.) Turn right tions to be copied, the docu- Street I turn right on West Street, and on your ments to be checked, is the Like most Boston literary right look into the Cornuco- ideal pursuit for the New Eng- people, Peter Davison came and approach pia Restaurant, which was land mind. from elsewhere: New York the Old State once the residence of the Before walking back and Colorado. He has been Peabody sisters of Salem. across the corner of the Com- involved in Boston's publish- House, grateful Here Emerson in the 1840s mon that will bring me to ing community since 1955 helped Margaret Fuller edit Charles Street and home to and has written eight books for its humane The Dial and smiled suppor- River Street, I look away of poetry and a memoir proportions. tively on her feminist. writ- from the west, and the long called Half Remembered. ings, her translations of Goe- receding towers of the Back the, and her bluestocking lec- Bay, and the vast acreages TO PLAN A TRIP ing culture to a preserving tures. Here Hawthorne was of filled land that make up one. As the titans of the Gold- wed to his wife, Sophia Pea- contemporary Boston. I feel Information is avail- en Day died off, Boston pub- body. some pride in what we have able from the Greater lishers devoted themselves Then walk out to the Bos- become- a city of techno- Boston Convention & to preserving their works in ton Common and take the logical marvels, of scientific Visitors Bureau, Pru- titanic sets. As the riches path that leads before you inquiry, of institutions that dential Plaza, P.O. Box earned by commercial Bosto- to the top of Flagstaff Hill investigate, that invest, that 490, Boston, MA 02199/ nians got turned into chat- and the Soldiers' and Sail- inter-and then I look at the Tel: 617-536-4100. tels, Boston began to pre- ors' Monument. If you look narrow apartment building TOP: MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY; BOTTOM IRA BLOCK/IMAGE BANK APRIL 1989 AMERICAN HERITAGE 65 Buildings and Landscapes J. if the Vernacular Additectival form 15(2008). (n/x. JEFFREY KLEE Civic Order on Beacon Hill Developed between the 1770s and the 1850s as a residential district along the Common, Beacon Hill is one of the most beloved neighborhoods in Boston (Figure I). Its refined rows have been host to many of New England's principal art- ists, authors, and architects, to say nothing of its merchants and lawmakers. Less famed, and less favored, are the tenements that loom over its northern streets. In the early twentieth century, these buildings replaced a dense and tangled landscape of smaller structures that accom- modated many of the city's artisans and trades- people, as well as its laborers and its poor. In the decades before the Civil War, the north slope of Beacon Hill was additionally known as both the principal center of abolitionism in New England and as a safe refuge for runaway slaves: (To critics who believed in a positive relationship between architectural and personal character, and to city builders who sought to make Boston a model of efficiency and order, this district was a persistent problem. But many of the qualities that contem- porary critics derided-in particular, the irregu- larity of its streetscape and its buildings hidden in courts and alleys-also helped make Beacon Hill a center of resistance to slavery Beacon Hill was barely settled before its north PLAN the TOWN slope was described as a district of dubious char- acter. The hill itself was a pastoral spot, beloved BOSTON of romantics and a famed point from which to survey all of Boston. Reformers, however, railed against the profusion of unlicensed taverns and bustling houses of prostitution on its northern and western edges) In 1784, a wanted thief was tracked as far as Beacon Hill but lost among its still sparse streets. More troubling to some, Bos- posed to have pushed for Boston." A contributor Figure 1. ton-and Beacon Hill in particular-was reputed to the Boston Centinel complained that Boston Map of Boston in 1789, to be a destination for fugitive slaves. An adver- was becoming "an asylum for them [i.e., African with Beacon Hill high- tisement for a Connecticut runaway described lighted. Reproduction from Americans] from all parts of the continent." By 1930 of the original in the a black servant named Fortune who was "sup- the 1810s, Beacon Hill was known as "Negro Hill" 1789 Boston Directory. 43 This content downloaded from 137.49.191.250 on Tue, 16 Jun 2020 10:19:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms OLD-TIME NEW ENGLAND A Quarterly Magazine Devoted to the Ancient Buildings, Household Furnishings, Domestic Arts, Manners and Customs, and Minor Antiquities of the New England People BULLETIN OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF NEW ENGLAND ANTIQUITIES Volume LII, No. 2 October-December, 1961 Serial No. 186 Charles Bulfinch and Boston's Vanishing West End By ABBOTT LOWELL CUMMINGS T WO large-scale land clearance sarily historic landmarks these houses projects in Boston's early West were nevertheless distinguished by their End during 1960 and 1961 have good lines, many original features, and a created a devastation here unmatched patina which only time and associations since that of the fire of 1872 in the down- can create. It must always be a source of town area, It is true that the two most regret that a policy of "spot" renewal was important local monuments, Asher Ben- not established here-removing the hope- jamin's West End Church of 1806 and lessly decayed while saving those build- the Harrison Gray Otis House, designed ings which could be rehabilitated-there- by Charles Bulfinch in 1795, have been by preserving the basic character of this spared. Beyond these, however, whole picturesque part of the City. Instead just blocks of buildings have been indiscrimi- that much more has been lost of Boston's nately leveled. individual character and quality which Clearance north of Cambridge Street, have so long attracted tourists from all a under urban has been over the country. For these many Amer- buildings aimed project redesigned swept replacing housing environment. away blighted renewal, obviously Some thorough- of at structures icans Boston represents a tangible link with modern units in a with the past. The present and future are CHARLES BULFINCH HOUSE (LATER THE HOTEL WATERSTON), ly the elsewhere all about them, Will they not 8 BULFINCH PLACE, BOSTON, 1793-1794 were be- think it something of a paradox in a na- From a photograph taken in January, 1918. yond reclamation, but the ancient street tion whose architects from coast to coast pattern, the eighteenth-century street design countless imitations of New Eng- names, and many pleasant small brick land's Colonial- and Federal-style houses town houses of the period between 1800 that here in her most historic city we busi- and 850 had survived in only partially ly stave down the genuine article-whole run-down condition. Though not neces- streets at a time? Later generations who 31 - 49, "Expansive Intellect and Moral Agency": Public Culture in Antebellum Boston HOWARD M. WACH* I N December 1838, the Boston hardware merchant William Gray Brooks noted in his diary that "Nothing is SO popular just at this pe- riod as Lectures-almost every evening before one society or other they are delivered & the halls are crowded-the prices of tickets are SO low as to afford it to all being from 50 cts. to 2 doll, for the course of IO to IS evenings." "1 While he attended many lectures himself, Brooks felt am- bivalent about their abundance and about what had become, in his mind, their undiscriminating character. He compared the effect-a general dwindling of awe-struck respect for learning and the learned-to a de- cline in clerical influence. Like the diminished hold of minister over con- gregation, "the great increase and diffusion of knowledge" represented the attenuation of learning: the great number of lectures where every subject not excepting theology & ethics is brought before the people may have some effect of this kind. I think it would be much better if our lectures were confined to courses upon some stated subjects-such as for instance on Chemistry, Natural History or some such subjects-this was the course a few years since but now it seems to be an object to give as great a variety of subjects and lectures as possible & it must be evident to every one that no permanent good can be derived from listening to a lecture of an hour's length. 2 (In antebellum Boston, the ubiquitous public lecture was entertain- ment, informal education, social occasion, and public forum. Successful lecturers sometimes attracted celebrity status and in some instances earned a celebrity's income. The institutions that engaged them belonged to a burgeoning city culture composed of public associations that reflected the ideas, dynamics, and conflicts streaming through an expanding and unruly urban society. In the fluid and uncertain environment of early- nineteenth-century cities, the public lecture became an increasingly pop- * Lehman College, City University of New York. I. William Gray Brooks, Diary, Dec. 2, 1838, William Gray Brooks Papers, Massachusetts His- torical Society (hereafter M.H.S.). 2. Brooks, Diary, Dec. 16, 1838, M.H.S. Proceedings of the Mass. Historical Society , 3rd Series. V. 107 (1995) 30-56 1 1 A Plan of Boston in New England with its Environs Original by Henry Pelham, 1777 A map commissioned by the British Crown to locate the military works constructed during 1775 and 1776. The original peninsula was vir- tually an island, commanding a landscape of tidal flats and salt meadows. A single fragile neck connects the peninsula to Roxbury. There are, as yet, no bridges or tunnels to Charlestown, Cam- bridge, or East Boston, itself but an island called Noddles. Long Wharf, begun in 1710, indeed warrants its name as it thrusts out one-third of a mile into the harbor. 2 The diagram outlines the major landfills in rela- tion to the Pelham map. The key is numbered chronologically by date of the beginning of each R 7' venture. B ( ) S T ( ) X R B () R Alex Kneger & Lisa J. Green. Past Futures Two Centuries of Imagining Boston Havvard U. Graduate School 22 of Design , 1985, 1 The Expansion of the City Boston has had no option but to grow at the expense of its principal geographi- cal feature, the shoreline. The city today has a land mass that is over four times the area of the original Shawmut Peninsula. Approximately 785 acres have become more than 4,000 acres by an ongoing series of landfill programs. The earliest recorded filling for the purpose of adding usable land occurred in 1803, with the widening of the peninsula neck parallel to Washington Street (Boston's umbilical cord to the mainland). Rapidly following were the filling of portions Test Cove. about 80 acres. 1803-1863 of the West Cove and Mill Dam. These initiated the era of large-scale land Filled in part by the cutting down of West Hill expansion that has continued with the construction of Logan Airport and incre- Vernon). mental filling of Fort Point Channel. The often delightful, sometimes frustrating Pond. about 70 acres. 1804-1835 fabric of Boston is largely the product of these landfills, many of which have left Filled by the cutting down of Sentry Beacon) Hill and their imprint in the form of a distinct precinct of streets and open spaces. Comon Pemberton) Hill. Land for the fills came from the trio Beacon Hills, which lost some sixty feet South Cove. about 86 acres. 1806-1843 of height and two of its peaks in the process; from Fort Hill, which is no longer a Cove. about 112 acres. 1823-1874 for this and other hill at all; and from as far away as Needham. The dumping of city ashes and the = along Atlantic Avenue dredging of the harbor also provided fill material. Even the excavations for the 35 provided by the cutting of first subway lines provided fill material, used to back-fill parts of the Charles For Hill River Basin. Boston, about 714 acres. 1836 - present Bay, about 138 acres. 1850 - present Bay, about 580 acres. 1857-1894 commonly known landfills. Material for came from Needham, 2 the use of the steam then a new invention miles of railway laid especially for the purpose 10 transporting fill material escilitated the 40-year-long 2 13 process. Charlestown. about 416 acres. 1860-1896 Fenway, about 322 acres. 1878-1890 Included in this total is the land 7 3 5 South Bay, and these two 9 completed the Back Bay fill. East Boston. about 370 acres. 1880 - present 6 11 Manne Park. about 57 acres. 1883-1900 Columbus Park, about 265 1890-1901 12 2016 Logan Airport, about 750 1922 - present 23 10 10 Plan of the Back Bay and Vicinity Henry F. Conant, 1852 A survey commissioned by the Legislature of Massachusetts at the dawn of the filling of the Back Bay. Mill Dam is soon to become Beacon Street. Just to the north of the crossing of the Boston Worcester and the Boston Providence Railroad Bridges, Copley Square will appear. The Public Garden is clearly marked, though a decade prior to being SO designated by an Act of the Commonwealth. 11 View from the State House Looking South c. 1869 A photograph showing a decade of progress in filling the Back Bay. The sequential process of fill and construction, block by block heading west, is evident. Construction has almost reached BACK BAI and VICINITY Clarendon Street and the fill extends past Exeter. Prepared Irvin Surreys Remarkably, Commonwealth Avenue appears complete, including landscaping, though for the moment it is only a block and a half long. In the background, behind the steeple of the Arlington Street Church, is a temporary coliseum built for a National Peace Jubilee at which President Ulysses S. Grant appeared. It is on the site of the first Museum of Fine Arts, built seven years later in 1876, and currently the location of the Copley Square Hotel. 12 Boston Saturday Evening Gazette 11 April 23, 1859 The publication of the Back Bay Act of the Commonwealth, three days before the special referendum election on April 26, 1859. The accompanying article urges Bostonians to approve the Act and officially initiate the removal of an "unmitigated nuisance and source of disease," i.e. the Back Bay. The Act authorized the annexation of the Back Bay lands to the City of Boston; provided for the filling of the flats according to a surveyor's plan; committed funds for a major sewer across the lands; and desig- nated land for a public garden. This last provi- sion removed the possibility of selling the land at the foot of the Common for home lots, some- thing the city had been threatening to do unless the Commonwealth and the citizens acted. SUPPLEMENT BOSTON SATURDAY EVENING GAZETTE PLAN OF THE BACK BAY LANDS. HOW THE BACK BAY is FILLED. We indebted to the Traveller for the following BOSTON. account of how the Back Bay being filled up article faily the intended pro- paration similar account, that lay before SATURDAY EVENING APRIL 23. 1659. The the Back together with lead the of place is the treasury Bexburn Advertiser will op the work middle May, railroad contracts. one of so They already the This, which they might A K B Y The gravel is brought from of Newton, the Upper Depot. One dred eighty mm, engineers, brokenes employed day is transporting the gravel OUR chirty-Ave State S this leading the by and with repidity TO them, of other half by each balf. the being Trade hundred though very During there gravel of that which the Charles PUBLIC GARDEN They nit further as ex M o N. BAY The the Public Garden thirty from Judicial Court, Jollars They at thousand dollars the State Treas- first They of from black the River, worth forty and Newbury with the State. they Power The the hundred Arlington received the worth amount to Gesa Meason BACK ACT. the the hundred serve will realise giving their completed. the dollars over above enterprise la great one, batis believed are faily compalent They will probably complete for days the Boston W ster Power Company this the the process any the Why, the Ballread, and by at the New October Depot. and walking reds only. whole able reazing by Company all Number Six. of the rapidity with which the ground tree, kills and to the Beak the MIII Dam the the City of Garden, The office the filled provides April 6, the the Legis the security the Company M. proposed City build a in this City strip to this domala. City, and particularly sighty improved. the City of Mayer street, to of Boston by is afforded of making THE The the improve exist Back Charles of streets, hortisultural city The the have here- accrue to the neighboring cities and Bay, its The experience the plan of Commisioners they of the of Bay, will South that that One hundred thousand dollars rights and needery, which the great Museum Agencia Fifty buildings gratified that the advents the taste. Grass the Tafte College. Twenty-five thousand Bay graded and green will make if Williams and Amberst Colleges and Wilbrehem the said industries December property within the of Beston the territory the was these Academy and the whole talanos School Food, hundred ead the Governor the Counce without the great express which has advantages country that they are of which Boston geta about third. Anything wealth and Mayer of said three acturised similar by City many drawbacks doing both parties; that therefore that tende defeat the project and pro- shall Government. now subjected 27 BOSTON A Topographical History NON Walter Muir Whitehill POTEST CIVITAS ABSCONDI SUPRA MONTEM POSITA Second edition, enlarged 1968 TITE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND CONTENTS Prologue: To Build a City I I. Enclosing the Common 22 2. Constructing Water 75 3. Inventing the Suburbs I29 4. Making the Harbor I79 5. Recreating the Wilderness 233 Epilogue: The City Complete 277 Note on Boston Common Petitions 285 ht © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Notes 29I is reserved rvard University Press paperback edition, 2014 Acknowledgments 347 of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data , Michael. Index 349 1 the Charles : the making of Boston / Michael Rawson. . s bibliographical references and index. 78-0-674-04841-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 78-0-674-41683-3 (pbk.) n (Mass.)-History-19th century. 2. Boston (Mass.)-Social conditions-r9th : 3. Boston (Mass.)-Environmental conditions. 4. City planning-Massachusetts- -History-19th century. 5. Human ecology-Massachusetts-Boston-History- ntury. I. Title. 39 2010 103-dc22 2010007038 Boston ; Beacon Press 2010 A CITY SO GRAND The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900 STEPHEN PULEO BOSTON'S CREATING THE ORTH AMERICAN LANDSCAPE "CHANGEFUL TIMES" Gregory Conniff Bonnie Loyd Edward K. Muller David Schuyler Origins of Consulting Editors Preservation & Planning George F. Thompson Series Founder and Director in America Published in cooperation with the Center for American Places, MICHAEL HOLLERAN Harrisonburg, Virginia 1998 The Johns Hopkins University Press BALTIMORE AND LONDON HILL Boston, 1825-1845 R THE ATHENS OF Min Dam AMERICA Thomas H. O'Connor BOSTON. REFERENCES. State Prison PublicBuildings Court House State House Barlston,Market State House Paneull Hall Morth Custom House Office Pemberton's Theatre Tremont Theatre Garden 20Jall Technere Pt. The larger figures refin to the Hards. 2006. Scale of Feet. 500 1000 1000 3000 UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS Amherst & Bost JUSTIN T. CLARK RIDGWAY STEREOPTICON ADVERTISINGING 36 CAMBRIDGE ST BOSTON CITY of SECOND SIGHT NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOSTON AND THE Making of American Visual Culture North 2018 Mark A. De Wolfe Have Boston Common. Scenes from 40 Boston Common Four Centuries. Boston: HMCo., 1921. in his later years to "the fortification on the Common - that was levelled when I was in College." III After the evacuation there were still nearly twenty-five years THE NINETEENTH CENTURY of the eighteenth century to be passed, and through these years the Common continued its ancient service as the background of charac- I was during the nineteenth century that the greatest changes teristic events. Here the bonfire which celebrated the surrender of in the physical aspect of the Common were wrought. From Cornwallis lighted a multitude of happy faces. Here occurred the the almost treeless field, lending itself so serviceably to the pur- promiscuous milking of all the cows on the historic pasturage when poses of His Majesty's troops, it has changed by degrees into the Madam Hancock happened to need an unwonted supply of milk wooded park which, in large measure, it has now become. As the for the entertainment of guests suddenly arriving from the French changes in any object are apt to work from the edges inward, so the fleet. Here, in the Frog Pond, the local tradition insisted that the most notable improvements in the Common began upon its borders. common sailors of the fleet proved themselves true Frenchmen by The Tremont Street Mall - - which took the name of Lafayette hunting for frogs. There has been no attempt to enumerate every after the beloved Frenchman's visit in 1824, and lost the glory of striking occurrence of the first three quarters of the eighteenth its trees when the Subway was built in 1895 - had its origin, as century; nor shall such an effort be made for the final fourth. The we have seen, before the eighteenth century was half gone. The reasons for omitting many items may be less defensible than that planting of many of the trees on the Beacon Street Mall is closely which applies to the thrice-familiar story of the coasting boys and associated with what was called in its day the "Madison War," the British general. The true reason for its omission will be found an unpopular conflict in Federalist Boston. A sum, amounting to on a bronze tablet fastened to the School Street fence of City Hall. about twenty-five hundred dollars, was raised to build fortifications for the defence of the harbor. It was not all expended, and in 1816 the elms, now venerable, which shade the walk along Beacon Street, and supplement those previously placed by John Hancock, in 1780, opposite his own house, were set out with the residue from this fund. In 1823 the first Mayor Quincy began the planting of the Charles Street Mall, completed the next year, and in 1826 re- placed the poplar trees along Park Street with the elms which now border its Mall. In 1836, under Mayor Armstrong, the Boylston 42 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 43 Street Mall was completed by absorbing a portion of the burial- The changes that came within the Common during the nineteenth ground, and for the first time the Common was entirely surrounded, century certainly had their abundant counterparts in its surround- as at present, with broad walks. The origin and names of the inter- ings. On three out of four bordering streets the dwelling-houses secting paths across the Common would extend the catalogue of have given place almost entirely to business, and the encroachment improvements far beyond our present limits. upon the fourth is well under way. Leaving out of account the To balance these additions, there was one important subtrac- purely modern structures to be seen across these streets, and the tion in the first third of the century - that of the cows, in 1830, entire substitution of an urban for a marine view to the westward, by Mayor Otis. These ancient tenants of the Common were forced the landmarks themselves, almost without exception, belong to in the course of events to give way before a growing population of what may be called the new order. The conspicuous exception is human beings. If it could no longer be recorded of youthful Emer- the State House, and that had stood but two years before 1800. sons that one item of their daily chores was to drive the family Another landmark then existing disappeared when the Hancock cow to and from the Common, the past still survives in the restric- house, to the sorrow of later generations, was destroyed in 1863. tion upon certain Mount Vernon Street real estate that a passage In the course of the nineteenth century, the dignified Colonnade through and across it must be maintained ample enough for a cow Row of dwelling-houses facing the Tremont Street Mall came and to make its way towards the pasture of earlier days. went. In 1809 the Park Street Church came - and it has remained The cows are gone, but the Frog Pond remains. It is not, to be long enough to present a certain aspect of antiquity. As the build- sure, the rural pool which the beginning of the century found there, ing in which Dr. Smith's "America" was first sung, it has long pos- with shelving banks, and partly shaded by a pollard-willow leaning sessed a distinctive association. It must have found waiting for it out across the water. The boys of Boston can no longer believe, the winds for which in turn waited the excellent mot that makes its like those of a hundred years ago, either that it is unfathomable or oft-repeated cry for the tethering of a shorn lamb on Brimstone that a frigate could be floated upon it. In 1826 its shores were Corner. The meeting-house and the winds, tempered somewhat by curbed, and the introduction of city water in 1848 robbed its sources the familiar jest, have even lent themselves to the increase of local of mystery. But a Bostonian still living in 1910 could recall story. The era of good feeling between the older and the newer drawing "shiners" and even horn-pout from its depths - or shal- branches of the Congregational order could hardly have begyn when lows; and continued to associate with the Frog Pond, as Dr. the story was first told. A rhymed version of it is called Holmes himself might conceivably have done, the couplet Oh, what are the prizes we perish to win To the first little "shiner" we caught with a pin! 44 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 45 A LEGEND OF BRIMSTONE CORNER But it was the hand of man, and not the winds or any word of The Devil and a Gale of Wind man concerning them, which made of the Common and its sur- Danced hand in hand up Winter Street. roundings the admirable stage and setting for so many salient mani- The Devil like his demons grinned To have for comrade so complete festations of Boston life during the nineteenth century. It is both A rascal and a mischief-maker inevitable and refreshing to find that the chief associations of the Who'd drag an oath from any Quaker. Common, ever since the departure of the British troops, have been The Wind made sport of hats and hair those of enjoyment. More than at any earlier time it became the That ladies deemed their ornament; local theatre of public ceremonies and spectacles, and of healthy With skirts that frolicked everywhere play. A few glimpses of characteristic scenes will suggest something Away their prim decorum went; of the extent to which these valuable purposes have been served. And worthy citizens lamented The public spectacles presented. Lafayette's visit in Boston in 1824 stands forth in local annals as an occasion of special splendor. The civic, academic, and social The Devil beamed with horrid joy, celebrations in honor of the visitor were not enough. On Monday, Till to the Common's rim they came, Then chuckled, "Wait you here, my boy, August 30, a great militia review took place on the Common, where For duties now my presence claim two hundred tents were pitched, besides a great marquee for the In yonder church on Brimstone Corner, shelter of twelve hundred persons at dinner. On the preceding Where Pleasure's dead and lacks a mourner; Friday there had been a smaller ceremony in which Lafayette him- "But play about till.I come back." self bore a picturesque part. The New England Guards, a "crack" With that he vanished through the doors, And since that day the almanac company of the day, invited him to attend their artillery practice Has marked the years by tens and scores, on the Common. A target floated in the Back Bay, somewhere in Yet never from those sacred portals the neighborhood of the present Berkeley or Clarendon Street. Returns the Enemy of Mortals. From the side of Flag-Staff Hill the cannon was pointed out across And that is why the faithful Gale the marshes and water extending beyond Charles Street. The Round Park Street Corner still must blow, Governor and the visiting General "honored the company," as the Waiting for him with horns and tail - At least some people tell me so - "Advertiser" expressed it, "by firing each a gun with his own hand." None of your famous antiquarians, The popular enthusiasm which every act and word of Lafayette's But just some wicked Unitarians. excited is almost beyond present comprehension. It may well be 46 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 47 imagined, then, with what interest his aim at the mark was watched, to look as warlike as possible. Let the original narrator go on with and with what delight the crowd soon saw that he had struck the the story: "We mounted and proceeded to the field in good order; target just a little above the centre. With such a friend, no wonder but the moment we reached the Common the tremendous discharge our War of Independence had succeeded! If he had missed - but of artillery which saluted the President scattered the Cabinet in all no, the mind refuses to face such a possibility. When he returned directions. Van Buren was a good horseman and kept his seat; but, to Boston, to be present at the laying of the corner-stone of the having neither whip nor spur, found himself completely in the Bunker Hill Monument, on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, power of his terrified animal, who, commencing a series of retro- June 17, 1825, it was from the Common - the point of departure grade movements of a most unmilitary character, finally brought of the British soldiers a half-century before - that the local troops up with his tail against the fence which then separated the Mall started in the early morning on their march to Charlestown. from the Common, and refused to budge another inch. In the In 1833 another distinguished visitor, General Andrew Jackson, meantime the President and his staff had galloped cheerfully round came to Boston, and much has been written about the circumstances the troops and taken up their position on the rising ground near the connected with his receiving the degree of LL.D. at Harvard. But foot of Joy Street, to receive the marching salute. 'Why, where's the Common again took its place as the background of picturesque the Vice-President?' suddenly exclaimed Jackson, turning to me incident, recorded in the pages of Josiah Quincy's "Figures of the for an explanation. 'About as nearly on the fence as a gentleman Past." In his capacity of special aide-de-camp to the President of his positive political convictions is likely to get,' said I, pointing during his visit, and in preparation for the review of the Boston him out. I felt well enough acquainted with Jackson by this time Brigade to take place on the Common on the afternoon of June 21, to venture upon a little pleasantry. 'That's very true,' said the Mr. Quincy had secured trained parade-horses for the use not only old soldier, laughing heartily; 'and you've matched him with a horse of General Jackson, but of the Vice-President, Martin Van Buren, who is even more non-committal than his rider.' and members of the Cabinet and presidential suite. In the morning In the year of General Jackson's visit, 1833, the Indian chief Van Buren announced that he and the other members of the Cabinet Black Hawk was released from the imprisonment which had fol- and suite would not appear at the review, and the horses, no longer lowed his defeat, the year before, in the Black Hawk War. Four required by the visitors, were promptly engaged by officers of the years later, in 1837, he visited Boston with a company of his Sacs local militia. At the last moment the Vice-President and the others and Foxes. The community which had entertained so notable an changed their minds, and such horses as could then be found were Indian fighter as Jackson was hospitable also to the conquered got for them, and with the help of military trappings were made Indians. On October 30, 1837, they were received at the State 48 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 49 House. The "Advertiser" of the next day tells something of the Cochituate was first rendered available for the daily uses of Boston ceremony, and goes on to say that "the Governor and suite, with citizens. A highly variegated procession paraded the streets, the Indian delegation, and the public officers, were escorted to an bringing its march to an end on the Common. There the Frog Pond open square in the Common, where, for a considerable length of became literally the centre of the stage, for the Mayor and other time, the warriors performed a great variety of war-dances, to the dignitaries took their place on a platform over the middle of it. great amusement of an immense concourse of spectators. We have When the water was turned on, and the fountain leaped high into rarely witnessed SO vast and dense a crowd, as were assembled about the air, the school-children, assembled with representatives of every the State House, on the Common, and in the streets adjoining it. other element of the population, sang Lowell's Ode, written for the The crowd was often so excessive as apparently to endanger the occasion, beginning "My Name is Water"; the bells rang, cannon lives of women and children, yet we have not heard that any one were fired, rockets soared aloft; Eieering, laughter, and even tears was injured." An eye-witness of the scene is reported as writing: paid their spontaneous tribute to the completion of a great under- "Their dresses of the skins of wild animals with the horns upon taking. Thirty-five years later, a school-boy's remembrances of them, their weapons decorated with everything in savage use that the day provided the theme for an effective stanza in the verses could make a clatter and a frightful show, their hideous and gro- read by the Honorable Robert S. Rantoul at a Latin-School dinner: tesque manoevves, their wild onsets, their uncouth motions in the Behold the stately pageant wind along the choking street! dance, and their unearthly yell, made them a most impressive From mart and house-top streaming flags our civic feast-day greet! spectacle." Emerson wrote of them in his Journal as "Our Picts," By the dark Frog-pond's mimic flood I see our cohorts drawn, looking "as if the bears and catamounts had sent a deputation." As, line on line, by Beacon Hill, they tramp the sloping lawn. I feel October's eager air toy with each silken fold They were attended by "several companies of the élite of the Of that bright flag whose "P.L.S." our modest legend told. militia" - but the central fact that the crowd and the soldiery I hear the bells, with clangorous tongue the waning day ring out; gathered to see a war-dance of authentic Indian braves on Boston I watch the rockets' fiery trail - I catch the exultant shout That rolled - it seems but yester-e'en - along the Park Street crest Common is what renders the occasion memorable. Just as the red Autumnal sun sank in the purple west, In the following decade the "Water Celebration," October 25, From State House dome, down Flag-Staff Hill, to lazy Charles's banks 1848, marked a civic achievement of the highest order. We take The wild huzza that scaled the sky from out those school-boy ranks, so completely for granted to-day our water-supplies in town and When from its base of molten bronze the crystal column rose! Long Pond, at last, by Blackstone's Spring, in iron arteries flows! country that the introduction of a system of city water seems a And Boston claims her destined bride, the fair Cochituate, commonplace. It was a different matter when the water of Lake As Quincy turns the water on, in Eighteen Forty-Eight! 5° Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 5I In September of 1851 the city celebrated with three days of I knew that it had its 'merchant princes,' but I did not know until festivity, known as the Railroad Jubilee," the opening of railway to-day, that it had its mechanic noblemen of nature." The "me- connections with the Canadas and the West. From Washington chanic noblemen" who had carried in the procession such mottoes came President Fillmore, with members of his Cabinet; and from as "A New Way to Raise the Wind," over the exhibit of the bellows- Canada, Lord Elgin, then Governor-General of British North makers, and "The Country's Safe," over a truck-load of "Sala- America, with his suite. On the first day, September 17, the Com- mander Safes," must have regarded the President as a worthy mon was merely the scene of a military review by the President. fellow-craftsman, in phrase-making. On the third day, Friday the 19th, it was the terminus of an elab- The visit of Lord Renfrew, as King Edward VII of England styled orate military, industrial, and civic procession, which passed, just himself when he visited Boston in October of 1860, called the Com- before disbanding, between lines of five thousand school-children mon again into requisition for a military review. At one o'clock on lining the Park Street, Beacon Street, and Charles Street Malls. Thursday the 18th, the Prince of Wales, dressed in the uniform of a "The appearance of this array of intelligent and happy boys and colonel of the British Army, and mounted on Colonel T. Bigelow girls, extending more than a mile," says the writer of the official Lawrence's horse "Black Prince," which the sculptor Ball after- account of the Jubilee, "could not fail to make, upon every reflecting wards used as the model for the bronze charger of General Washing- mind, a deep and most delightful impression." The reflecting mind, ton in the Public Garden, reached the foot of Flag-Staff (now Monu- however, was not all that required satisfaction, and the parade was ment) Hill under an imposing escort, and was greeted by a salute followed by a dinner for thirty-six hundred persons in a mammoth of artillery. At about the same time a procession including the pavilion erected on a level space adjoining the Tremont Street Mall, Mayor, representatives of the city government, and invited guests opposite West Street. The flags of Great Britain and the United arrived on the small elevation south of Flag-Staff Hill. The Prince, States adorned it without and within, where also a profusion of attended by the Governor and his staff, and the members of his own mottoes, some of them calling for the reciprocity of trade which is suite, many of them in British uniforms, rode up and down the line still an object of desire, prompted the diners to noble sentiments. of troops extending the whole length of the parade-ground and the There was no less a profusion of oratory - from Lord Elgin, Governor Beacon Street Mall, and received the usual salutes. Then the entire Boutwell, Edward Everett, Robert C. Winthrop, and others. Presi- division passed in review before the Prince. If the learned that the dent Fillmore himself, obliged to leave the banquet early, called Independent Boston Fusileers left the line with all their officers forth applause and cheering of special vigor when he declared: "I because they imagined themselves wronged in the position assigned thought, when I entered your city, that I saw Boston in all its glory. them, and that the captain of a Braintree company was placed under 52 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 53 arrest for bringing his men to the Common in their new gray uni- three rows of tents - "the easterly row for candy-sellers, the middle forms in defiance of an order to appear in the regulation dress worn generally for cake and bun-venders, and the westerly row for the by the other companies of their regiment, it may be hoped that he ancient election beverages, which were the freest liquid used on gala knew also of the military executions required to maintain the dis- days." From the other attractions of the place the Punch and Judy cipline of the British troops encamped on the same field eighty-five shows long survived, and the exhibitor of astronomical wonders - - years before. Dr. Holmes's "Galileo of the Mall" - still swept the skies in 1910. These céremonies, with others which are best recalled through The public conscience was less sensitive in earlier days than at old-time prints, were the exceptional splendors of the Common. present, and on July 4, 1810, the town itself is reported to have Every year there were lesser glories, diminishing, to be sure, as supplied four hogsheads of rum for public consumption. Children the century wore on. The General Election of State officers was were allowed a latitude of diet which would CII a modern parent with moved from the time-honored last Wednesday in May. The annual consternation. It is no wonder that Dr. Hale, after describing in Muster or Training of local militia, formerly held in October, has his "New England Boyhood," the mélange of tamarinds, dates, passed with the passing of the "fuss and feathers" period in mili- oysters, candy, "John Endicotts," ginger and spruce beer, in which tary life; yet the parade-ground is still of service in the long after- the boys of his generation indulged themselves, exclaimed, "Why noons of spring for the drilling of local companies of the State we did not all die of the trash we ate and drank on such occasions, militia. The Artillery Election, early in June, has an importance I do not know." But the community and the boys seem to have relatively far smaller than of old. Even the Fourth of July, with the been all young and happy together, and never to have realized what increased facilities for getting away from city celebrations, and now perils they were escaping. As everything grew older and more re- with a River Basin for the display of fireworks, is by no means what spectable, the grog and gambling and other doubtful diversions were it was. Through a considerable part of the nineteenth century, banished, and the visitor to the Common upon a modern Fourth of however, all of these festivals were enthusiastically observed upon July must needs add to the spectacle of booths and holiday-makers the Common - for the time being a place of special delight to the a liberal mixture of imagination if he would see the Common in its juvenile members of the population. The Malls, separated from former glory. the rest of the Common by fences, were crowded with "attractions." Between the two election days - the General and the Artillery Between the inner and outer fence - on the edge of the street - there was a deep gulf fixed. The first, absolutely democratic, the venders of holiday refreshments put up their tents and plied was vulgarly called "Nigger "Lection." On the second, white persons their trades. On the Tremont Street Mall, we are told, there were only were allowed on the Common. The injustice of the distinction 54 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 55 so exasperated the negro cook and steward of the ship Canton custom to perform certain ritual observances in the belief that Packet, belonging to the Perkins brothers, that when he was left wishes made upon their completion would come true. There was ILL? in charge of the vessel while the captain and crew went to the the popular sport of kite-flying. Mr. J. D'W. Lovett, in his admir- Common for the enjoyment of the Artillery Election day of 1817, able "Old Boston Boys and the Games they Played," tells of the he fired a pistol into the ship's powder and blew her, and himself, special skill of Dr. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, mayor and historian, to pieces. among the gentlemen who made and flew kites for their children, For the losses of picturesqueness more or less directly affecting and recalls especially several kites "which resembled owls with large, the Common during the past century, there have been some com- blinking eyes, and which were most effective in the air." There was pensating gains. Dr. Hale described the four chief functions of the hockey, and there was baseball. Mr. Lovett, a famous player in his Common in his boyhood as (1) a pasture for cows, (2) a playground day, records even the part which the devotres of the national game for children, (3) a place for beating carpets, and (4) a training-ground as played on the Common took in a city election. The ground was for the militia. On the first and last of these uses something has ploughed up in the spring of 1869 and the game discontinued. In already been said. On the third it is hardly necessary to dwell. December came the election of Mayor and Aldermen. The ball- The second, on the contrary, might almost serve by itself as the players set about to do what they could for the choice of candidates subject for a small volume. At a time when there was little of known to favor athletic sports and the old uses of the Common. Boston except "Boston Proper," when the present outlying parks, They printed a non-partisan ticket, under the emblem of a red ball, avenues, and water-fronts were unknown, inaccessible, or remote distributed this ballot with proper exhortations at the polls, and from population, the Common provided the inevitable outlet for had the satisfaction of seeing Mayor Shurtleff, antiquary and maker the energies of the young. It is safe to say, moreover, that just of kites, returned to office. because it was the playground of s& many Bostonians of the older Above all there was coasting Again in Mr. Lovett's pages it is generation, it has taken a hold upon their affections and imagina- graphically pictured. The sleds, beautifully made, and bearing tions which time has not relaxed. They look back upon it, much as such fanciful names as "Comet," "Cave Adsum," and "Dancing they remember the country holidays of childhood, with a peculiar Feather," were objects of admiration and pride. Racing was the order fondness. And why should they not? There was the Frog Pond for of the day. The cry of "Lullah" cleared the track. The "Long the water-supply of firemen's play-outs, for the sailing of toy boats Coast," from the corner of Park and Beacon Streets to the West in summer, for skating in winter. There was the Wishing Stone near Street entrance and along the Tremont Street Mall, was the fav- the Joy Street gate, a rough rock on and round which it was the orite course, though the Beacon Street Mall, the path from Joy 56 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 57 Street, and the hill still dedicated to coasting, were also used. In nitely useful. In one of them Emerson urged upon Whitman the earlier times, when Dr. Hale was young, the smallest boys coasted omission of portions of his "Leaves of Grass," and Whitman, know- on the Park Street Mall. In the seventies the double-runner, or ing that he could never hear the argument better presented, went double-ripper, came into popularity. Sleds of this type were often his way unmoved. In another, the Long Path, the Schoolmistress elaborate structures. In the "Globe" for January 27, 1875, the and the Autocrat began their walking of the long path of life to- first appearance of the "Highlander" on the Common was described: gether, and were greeted by the old gentleman who "said, very "It is a long double-runner of the usual pattern, painted red, with charmingly, 'Good-morning, my dears!" As early as 1821 a a head-light like a juvenile locomotive, and a steering apparatus on "Surveyor and Topographer," John G. Hales, printed in his "Survey the tiller principle. It is cushioned quite elegantly, and has side of Boston and Its Vicinity" a "Table showing the rate per hour a rests for the feet of the coasters, of whom it will accommodate eight person is moving by the time taken to pass the long Mall from the or ten. A large white streamer ornaments the prow, and there are fence on Park Street to the fence on Boylston Street." The first of brass trimmings and handles along the sides." The "Herald," of twenty entries shows that a speed of one mile an hour is attained the same day places the cost of the "Highlander" at two hundred by taking 19 minutes 8.86 seconds for "passing through the Mall." and fifty dollars. With the increase of these monster sleds, the This snail's pace is gradually quickened till ten miles an hour is roping-off of the coasts became a necessity for safety; and where the scored by covering the distance in 1 minute, 54.85 seconds. To see lengthwise paths of the Common crossed the coasts, bridges for a good Bostonian, with Hales's little book and an open watch in his foot-passengers were erected. But in spite of precautions, accidents hands, making his ten miles an hour down the Tremont Street Mall became too frequent, and coasting in this more elaborate form was would have been quite as exciting as the later spectacle of coasting. stopped. Though life and limb were henceforth more secure, one Safer even than walking were the pleasures of watching the ani- of the most characteristic local spectacles disappeared. mals in the Deer Park which from 1863 to 1882 was maintained on A safer employment of the Common was made by the many the Boylston Street Mall between the Burial-Ground and Tremont Bostonians of the nineteenth century who made a practice of walk- Street; and of repairing to the Smokers' Retreat or Circle which ing round the outside of it every morning before breakfast. Daniel flourished soon after the middle of the century for the benefit of Webster is remembered as one of these, and Edward Everett, with lovers of tobacco forbidden to enjoy it on the Common as a whole. his son William fitting his boyish stride to the paternal measure. The pomp and circumstance of special events, the daily pleasures Rufus Choate in this morning promenade is said to have studied and pursuits of Boston life, ran their course on the Common through his German. The walks of the Common have, indeed, been indefi- the nineteenth century just as the men of that vanished and vanishing 58 Boston Common time led their individual lives. The life of every nineteenth-century American whose period of maturity included the four years of the Civil War is inevitably scrutinized for the part he bore in the con- flict, or at least for his attitude towards it. But places as well as men may be subjected to this special scrutiny - and the Common emerges from it as a place of poignant association with the ardors and the pathos of the war-time. Even before the storm broke, there was a foretaste, in the summer of 1860, when Ellsworth's Zouaves visited Boston, of what was coming. Their drill on the Common, on July 23, must have given an unfamiliar impression of fighting men. Not only their bizarre uniform, but their remarkable dexterity in the manual of arms, distinguished their exhibition sharply from previous military per- formances. The spectators are said to have numbered fifteen or twenty thousand, including many ladies and representatives of local military bodies. The visitors, after the manner of La Tour's Frenchmen in 1643, brought their drill to a sensational close, ac- cording to the "Advertiser" of the following day, "with a grand zouave charge in which they made a violent rush towards the spec- tators, accompanied with a savage yell, which caused them to beat a hasty retreat, but the order to halt was given before the bristling bayonets reached the line." The interest in the entire spectacle could hardly have been keener had it been known that Colonel Ells- worth himself, within a year, was to be among the first of the con- spicuous officers to perish in the Union cause. The days were indeed at hand when the Common was to be used less for mimic warfare than for a rallying-point of soldiers departing The Nineteenth Century 59 for actual battle or returning from it. The immediate response of Massachusetts to the President's first call for troops on the fall of Fort Sumter gave scanty time for display. But for a severe storm on Tuesday, April 16, the gathering companies would have as- sembled on the Common, instead of in Faneuil Hall. On Wednes- 1861 day the 17th Governor Andrew gave God-speed from the steps of the State House to the first armed troops moving from the North - to the Sixth Regiment, about to fight its way through Baltimore, to the Fourth and the Third, sailing direct for Washington and Fortress Monroe. At noon of the 19th the Light Artillery fired a salute on the Common in memory of the Battle of Lexington. Later in the day the companies of the Fifth Regiment began to gather there, and from this time forward the thoughts of "battles long ago" gave place to the immediate concerns of the country. It would be impossible in the present space to chronicle all the fare- wells to departing regiments, the offerings of rest and food to Maine and New Hampshire troops on their passage through Boston, the delight of boys permitted to fill the soldiers' canteens, the recruiting activities, the receptions to returning regiments, the musterings-out all the war-time scenes enacted on the Common. The records of the period overflow with them. Here it must suffice to point out a few of the most salient and characteristic. I The day on which the first departure from Boston of a regiment enlisted for three years took place - June 15, 1861 - was hot and sultry. Wearing their overcoats, the men of the First Massachusetts Regiment marched in the early morning from Camp Cameron in North Cambridge to the Common. Exhausted as they were on 60 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 61 their arrival, there were trying experiences ahead. A multitude of 18, 1861, from Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, to receive a banner. friends, parents, wives, and sweethearts, assembled on the borders The speech of presentation was made by Edward Everett, and of the parade-ground, roped off on all but the Charles Street side. Colonel Webster replied on behalf of his regiment. There was a From the "Advertiser" of June 17 it appears that the crowd on this drill both before and after the generous "collation" which the side began the advance upon the troops. "The line swayed to and city provided for the men under the trees of the Beacon Street fro a few moments," writes the regimental historian, "and then, Mall and for the officers under a large marquee. The legend that over the rope, in every direction, the earnest and excited mass of the song of "John Brown's Body" was first sung on Boston Common humanity plunged; and much more speedily than it takes to write has its origin in the doings of this day. Apparently the song was it, officers, soldiers, and civilians were mixed up in one immense made at Fort Warren by members of the Second Battalion of Massa- throng of people, weeping, laughing, embracing, clinging to one chusetts Infantry, known as "The Tigers," many of whom enlisted another, and presenting here and there scenes SO affecting, that the in the Twelfth Regiment. "It was this regiment," says Mr. Louis recollection of them is as fresh and vivid to-day as on the evening C. Elson, in "The National Music of America," "that bore the song when they transpired." A veteran officer of the regiment, now an to popularity." As they marched down State Street from the octogenarian, said recently in describing the scene: "I myself did Common on the evening of July 18, to reembark for Fort Warren, what I should never think of doing now - I kissed several young "the order 'route step' was given" - said the "Advertiser" of the women I had never seen before." At last about two thirds of the next morning - "and the men broke out into the now popular regiment fell into line, and the remainder straggled along with the 'John Brown Army Hymn,' by way of enlivening the rest of their crowd of spectators to the Providence Station, where a banner which march." The words "now popular" indicate clearly that the song could not be given to the regiment in the confusion on the Common was already making its way. The regiment was soon ordered to the was duly presented. Nearly three years later, on May 28, 1864, front - and Mr. Elson writes that he "has spoken with many the First Massachusetts was mustered out of service on Boston people who first heard the tune, and in a manner which imprinted Common. it forever in their memory, on Boston Common, when Colonel A month after the departure of the First Massachusetts, the Fletcher Webster's men marched across it on their way from Fort Twelfth, known as the Webster Regiment and commanded by Warren to the Providence depot, to take cars for New York." Daniel Webster's son Fletcher, came up to the Common, on July They sang it again, says Mr. Elson, on Broadway in New York, 1 and "sang it into the war." From the "History of the Twelfth When these words were written, Dr. Samuel A. Green, to whom they refer, was still living. Massachusetts Volunteers" we learn that on the day of final depar- 62 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 63 ture from Fort Warren (July 23) the song was sung on State Street thusiastic meetings took place towards the end of July. At one of and "again near the Common." Whether "near" or "across" them, on the 28th, a dissenter from the patriotic expressions of preserves the accurate truth of history, surely this association of Mr. Patrick Rafferty of the Thirty-Third Regiment was seized by the song with the Common may be held in close companionship the crowd and thrown into the Frog Pond. The largest meeting with the first singing of "America" in Park Street Church, within of all occurred on August 27. "On no occasion which the war has hearing distance of the same plot of ground. given rise to," said the "Advertiser," "has the expression of the The catalogue of departures might be extended to great length, people been so general and so marked by patriotic fervor as in the but it may not be cut short without at least a mention of the passing grand celebration of yesterday. Business was universally suspended of Colonel Shaw's Fifty-Fourth (colored) Regiment before Governor by common consent, and the suggestion for a procession and mass Andrew on the State House steps, May 28, 1863, its march down meeting in aid of the city recruitment met with a hearty response. Beacon Street in front of strongholds of conservatism which looked The affair was essentially popular; men in citizens' dress and with doubtful eyes upon the affiliation of black and white, its re- distinguished only by the badges of their respective callings, and the view upon the Common, where Frederick Douglass saw two of his colors and mottoes which symbolize the common cause, united in sons in the ranks. In spite of the doubting few, the heart and soul the long procession, and listened to the eloquent appeals from the of the community marched with the regiment to Battery Wharf various stands on the Common Early in the afternoon the in the afternoon, and followed the white officers and their black various associations proposing to join in the procession began to men into the fateful South. The feeling not only of this day, but assemble on the Common near Park Street The various civic of those others when the Fifty-Fifth Infantry and the Fifth Cavalry and military organizations entered the Common by the West Street started from the Common to the front. lives on in the bronze of gate and were at once conducted into line by the Marshals. The Saint-Gaudens. procession was formed and paraded through the city in accordance In the summer of 1862 the Common became an important head- with the well-arranged programme." There were stirring addresses quarters for recruiting. On the Fourth of July the President called from the three stands on the Common by Governor Andrew, Edward for three hundred thousand men to enlist for three years, or until Everett, Robert C. Winthrop, and others, including a Kentucky the war should end. A Citizens' Committee of One Hundred and general and a California Senator. Fifty took the matter in hand. A recruiting tent was put up oppo- If the assembling and dispatching of troops to the South provoked site West Street on the Common, and on the parade-ground music- enthusiasm, the spirit in which they were welcomed home again stands and platforms for speakers were erected. A series of en- may well be imagined. The receptions to returning regiments 64 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 65 began very early in the war, for the first enlistments were for the their feelings no longer. Propriety gave way to nature, and they briefest of periods. The Third and Fourth Regiments were back in rushed with open arms upon lovers, brothers, husbands, sons - Boston on July 23, 1861; the Fifth and Sixth returned on July 30 and perhaps cousins - a female avalanche of streaming ribands and August 1 respectively. Of course they were marched to the and fluttering silks. The brave fellows stood the shock like men. Common, reviewed and cheered by the excited crowd. But before They deployed as skirmishers and attempted to foil the attacking the mustering-out - followed in many cases by immediate reenlist- party with their own weapons, but were presently captured and ment - the men were fed at tables on the Beacon Street Mall. led, willing prisoners, to the refreshment-tables, where a tempting After the "bountiful collation" mentioned in the "Advertiser" of array of flowers and edibles was presented. The male relatives August 2, 1861, describing the reception of the Sixth Regiment, it presently came in for their share of the greeting. After an hour or is said that "the soldiers strolled about the Common, talking with so spent in social conversation, in affectionate questions and affec- friends and acquaintances. Those who were so unfortunate as not tionate answers, the men were again brought into line and went to have any, soon succeeded in making both out of the crowd who through with a dress-parade, to the great satisfaction of the spec- were anxious to hear all the news that was to be heard." These tators. The regiment was then dismissed and the men will have a earliest regiments returned far less impaired than those which fol- furlough till Monday, when they will probably go to Readville and lowed them. The thinned ranks, the torn and blood-stained flags be mustered out of the service." soon began to make their piteous appeal on the Common. It is In addition to all these occasions involving an element of strong easy to picture it all, and remembering those who looked in vain for personal feeling, there were observances of great events in the prog- the unreturning, to fill in many details of personal tragedy. ress of the war. On April 11, 1862, a few days after the battle of These spectacles were presented over and over again, even until Shiloh, a salute of one hundred guns was fired on the Common in the summer and autumn of 1865. A typical reception - and one honor of recent victories. On July 8, 1863, the news from Gettys- shall speak for many - is described in the "Advertiser" of Thursday, burg and Vicksburg gave the excuse for a national salute of thirty- June 11, 1863, telling of the return of the Forty-Fourth on the five, guns. The Emancipation Proclamation was celebrated by a preceding day. The regiment was marched to the Common, where salute of a hundred guns. When the sailors from the Russian war a great crowd, especially on the Charles Street Mall, was gathered vessels Vitiaz and Osliaba visited Boston Common on June 8, 1864, to greet it. There were military salutes and an exchange of speeches their reception, the collation, the greeting of the Latin and High between the Mayor and Colonel Lee. "The guns were then stacked, School boys, all gave expression to a national response to the friend- and the men broke ranks. At this moment the ladies could restrain liness of the great northern power. The news of the fall of Rich- 66 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 67 mond on April 3, 1865, was celebrated by a salute on the Common; crowded it at night to see a display of fireworks which was to have and then to Boston, as to all the North, came the sudden turning been unusually splendid, but because of a high wind proved a dis- from joy to sorrow. The minute guns on the day of Lincoln's funeral, appointment. The loss of what might have been was, however, a April 19, were as unlike those of a fortnight before as the tolling can slight affair compared with the loss of so beloved a possession as the be unlike the pealing of bells. In the afternoon the citizens of the Great Elm. On February 15, 1876, this ancient tree, already badly six northern wards of the city met on the Common. Again there mutilated by storms of 1860 and 1869, fell before a high wind. The were stands for speakers, but the words were the words of mourning. newspapers of the succeeding days are fairly humid with the tears of Again there was music, but the bands were playing dirges. Here, as local poets. A glory had indeed departed from Israel. The measure- everywhere else, the national grief was touched with that strange ments of the tree by the City Engineer in 1855 showed its height to personal quality always inseparable from the influence of Lincoln. be seventy-two feet, six inches; its girth one foot above the ground, With the transfer of the battle-flags of Massachusetts regiments twenty-two feet, six inches; the average diameter of its spread where to the keeping of the Commonwealth, on December 22, 1865, when the branches were broadest, one hundred and one feet. Whether the the military representative of the State established his headquarters true scion of the Old Elm is now growing in its place, or - as there for their reception on the Park Street Mall, the specific war-time is good reason to believe - at a point near by and unmarked, the uses of the Common may be said to have come to an end. In no making of such another tree is a work for the centuries to accomplish. period of all its history have four successive years seen it so vitally The loss of the Old Elm may have served a good purpose in bound up with the inmost life of the community. The bas-reliefs making the community more tenacious of all its other possessions at the foot of Martin Milmore's Army and Navy Monument, in the Common. Salvations from one threatened encroachment erected on Flag-Staff Hill in 1877, tell something of the great events after another have occupied many Bostonians for a generation which these pages have sought to recall; and the noble words of past. A Western observer looks reverently upon it as "a civic President Eliot's inscription pass the meaning of them on to future ornament for which people have fought, bled, and written letters generations. to the 'Evening Transcript.'" As early as 1869 the city gave its There were few events in the remaining years of the nineteenth permission for the erection of a building for a great musical festival; century which call for extended chronicle. In the centennial year, but the popular feeling against such an employment of land on the 1876, the celebration of the Fourth of July thronged the malls with Common was so strong that the famous "Peace Jubilee" took place booths, the Common itself with multitudes of holiday-makers. It elsewhere. After the Boston fire of 1872, when merchants strewed was estimated that between fifty and a hundred thousand persons the Common with the rescued contents of their warehouses, the 68 Boston Common The Nineteenth Century 69 building of temporary stores was authorized. It was not found prac- One violence there was, of a rather gruesome sort. When the ticable or necessary to take advantage of the permission, though Boylston Street Mall was opened in 1836 it covered a num- on this occasion local sentiment would probably have acquiesced. ber of tombs and graves in the Common Burial-Ground. In Not so in 1873, when the demand for more horse-car tracks on the excavation for the Subway these were necessarily disturbed. Tremont Street led to the removal of the Common fence: the next The care of the human fragments which came to light was entrusted year it was restored. Again, in 1877, the Massachusetts Charitable to Dr. Samuel A. Green, who estimated that the bones brought Mechanics' Association was warmly supported in its appeal for together and decently reinterred represented more than nine hun- the right to put up a temporary exhibition building on the parade- dred persons. Among them - as if justice were always to have its ground. But the project was quite as warmly opposed, and those poetic vindication - must have been the progenitors of an owner who opposed it, in public hearings, remonstrances, spoken and of one of the Boylston Street tombs who violently resisted the im- written, won the day. Whenever the Common cried out to be saved, provements of 1836. He is said to have told the Mayor that "he there was an army ready to save it. would stand at the door of his tomb with a drawn sword before it As the century drew to a close the conduct of a modern city should be closed, or the bones of his ancestors removed!" Persuaded raised new problems. With a large business population sleeping finally to accept in exchange one of the new tombs along the walk out of town and carried by electric cars to the high office-buildings from Park Square to West Street, he replied to the Mayor's sugges- rising on every hand, the conditions of street-traffic, especially on tion that a sexton be engaged to make the solemn transfer: "Mr. Tremont Street, became unbearable. Various solutions of the dif- Mayor, you don't suppose I'm going to have my new tomb dirtied ficulty were proposed - the widening of Tremont Street, the exten- up with those old bones! No, close up the old one and let 'em be!" sion of surface cars across the Common in a line with Columbus New tombs and old bones - the moralist could draw his parallels Avenue, or through an open trench with overhead bridges for without number from these starting-points. But that attempt at pedestrians. "Save the Common" again became a slogan - and draughtsmanship shall not be undertaken here. Between 1800 and the form of salvation finally adopted, as the plan involving least 1900 the old Common gave place entirely to the new. The essen- of actual loss, was the building of the present Subway, begun in tials were still there when he nineteenth century ended, and in 1895. The chief loss of outward beauty lay in supplanting the ven- general they had gained much from the passage of time and from erable trees along Tremont Street with the broken row of Subway pious care. With this gain there was also transmitted to the twen- stations. But the problem was, to face the future without doing tieth century a rich store of memories and associations making the more than the inevitable violence to the past. Common dearer than ever to its inheritors. George Santagara Persons + BOSTON SOCIETY aces. U21 2. [The Hiddle Span] 113 able from the flowing mass of the rich and fashionable all the world over. 1945. Conversation in society, for me at least, was almost exclusively CHAPTER VI with ladies; but whenever I found myself by chance among elderly men, as for a while after dinner, I became aware of living in a BOSTON SOCIETY commercial community. Talk reverted from banter to business worries, if not to "funny stories." The leaders were "business men," and weight in the business world was what counted in their HEN in the year 1858 my mother heroically ful- W estimation. Of course there must be clergymen and doctors also, filled her promise to her late husband and first went and even artists, but they remained parasites, and not persons with to live in Boston, she knew what she was doing, for whom the bulwarks of society had any real sympathy. Lawyers she had spent some months there two years before were a little better, because business couldn't be safeguarded with- and had made the acquaintance of all the Sturgises and their out lawyers, and they often were or became men of property them- friends. And yet I think she had expectations that were never selves; but politicians were taboo, and military men in Boston realised. If not for herself-since she had lost all interest in society non-existent. Such persons might be occasionally entertained, -at least for her children, she pictured a perfect amalgamation and lauded rhetorically in after-dinner speeches; but they with all that was best in Boston. This amalgamation never took remained strangers and foreigners to the inner circle, and place. I have described the difficult position that my sister Susana disagreeable to the highly moralised and highly cultivated Bos- found herself in, and her ultimate return to Spain; and my brother tonian. Robert, though a thorough American in all externals, never made My contacts with this society were neither those of a native a place for himself in good Boston society. This society, in my nor those of a visiting foreigner; nor could they be compared with time, was on the one hand clannish, and on the other highly my relation to Harvard College, where I was as much at home as moralised and highly cultivated. The clannishness was not one of anybody, with a perfectly equal and legal status. In order to have blood: you might almost say that all the "old families" were new. slipped no less automatically and involuntarily into Boston society, It was a clannishness of social affinity and habit; you must live I should have had to go to a fashionable school, and my family in certain places, follow certain professions, and maintain a certain would have had to occupy the position that I imagine my mother tone. Any adaptable rich family could easily enter the charmed had dreamt of. As it was, I skirmished on the borders of the circle within one generation. Money was necessary, not in itself polite world, and eventually limited myself to a few really friendly but as a means of living as everybody else did in good society; and families. Yet at first my lot fell, as was natural, within the circles those who became too poor fell out within one generation also. As to of the Sturgises, especially of the children and grandchildren of the other characteristic of being cultivated and high-principled, it Russell Sturgis of London. was not indispensable for individuals already in the clan; but it In the summer of 1889, when living at my mother's at Roxbury was necessary to the clan as a whole, for a standard and a leaven. and preparing my first course of lectures, I received an invitation I suspect that the lack of those qualities may have dissolved the to spend a few days at Manchester-by-the-Sea, with Russell Sturgis, society that I speak of, and allowed it to become indistinguish- Jr., and his family. I had never seen this elderly cousin, or any of 112 114 THE MIDDLE SPAN BOSTON SOCIETY 115 his younger children: only once, many years ago, his eldest son. 1 his younger sons, who were younger than I? And if I were From Susana's satirical gossip of years before I had learned not the right sort, why shouldn't he prove a saving influence something about her cousin Russell. He was very Evangelical, dis- over me? tributed tracts entitled "Do you love Jesus?" and would send us When I turned up, I don't know what his first impression may Christmas cards-he never came to see us-wishing us joy and have been; he and the whole family were certainly very kind. "one more year of leaning upon Jesus' breast." There was always They seemed to accept me as an adopted relative. But gradually some religious motto printed on his note-paper, which once hap- my defects must have become evident. No, I didn't swim, and I'd pened to be "Ye are bought with a price"; and he having inad- rather not take a dip in the sea before breakfast, as he and the vertently written to Judge Gray on that paper, his letter was boys did every morning even in winter. I didn't say so, but it returned as a libel by the insulted magistrate. Apart from his cost me an effort to be shaved and dressed in time for the evangelical work "Cousin Russell" appeared to have no occupa- inevitable family breakfast. Lazy, soft, luxurious young man, and tion; and he was known to have spent the winter at Manchester- a poor young man, too, which makes vice SO much worse and so by-the-Sea for economy, which precluded daily attendance to busi- much less excusable! However, these thoughts were as yet only ness, if he had any. He may also have thought that on moral in embryo. I got down to breakfast in time-a very nice break- grounds, as a discipline and a tonic, a winter in the bleak country fast, all sorts of hot things, not unwelcome when one has got up might be a good thing. The "kindred points of heaven and home" early-but after it there was a strange, awkward silence; everyone might there seem more precious than ever. We are always so was standing up and no one leaving the room except to move into near the abyss, and the wintry ocean might remind him of it. the drawing-room, which was separated only by a screen. The But why suddenly ask me to stay at his house, when he had never servants now came in, and stood uncomfortably in a corner. seen me and there was no real bond between our families? Had There were to be family prayers! They were after breakfast, as he heard that I was about to begin teaching at Harvard? If I were "Cousin Russell" afterwards frankly explained, because if they had the right sort, might I not prove a useful acquaintance for been before breakfast, everybody would have been late or would have missed prayers altogether; but after breakfast, there you had 1 This had been in the year 1876, when I was twelve years old. Robert and I had gone to Philadelphia to see the Centennial Exhibition. I remem- them all, and no escape. Filled and soothed as I was by that abun- ber only two things seen in Philadelphia, both architectural: the Fine Arts dant oatmeal, I rather liked the idea of prayers. I should have a Building and the odd features of the typical Philadelphia houses: the white peaceful quarter of an hour, speculative, digestive and drowsy. wooden shutters outside, and the ingenious arrangement of the stairs, making a bridge between the body of the house and a long wing behind, Chairs, big and little, were arranged in a circle round the room. entered from the landing. The stairs could be lighted^ through a large In lieu of ecclesiastical objects, the broad sea and sky were visible window at the side, and the wing would supply various rooms, the dining- through the long open windows. We might enlarge our thoughts, room especially, half-way between one storey and another of the house proper. For some reason, on our return, Robert wished to stay in New York. while "Cousin Russell" read a chapter of the Bible, not at all in Young Russell Sturgis, 3rd, then nineteen years old, offered to look after a clerical voice, but familiarly and dramatically, to bring out the me on the way home. We travelled by the Sound Boat-another interesting good points, and make us feel how modern and secular it all discovery in construction-a vast flat-bottomed steamer with a hall in the middle, surrounded by galleries and rows of little doors to private cabins. really was. The book closed, he rose and we all rose automatically If we had only been quadrupeds, we should have fancied ourselves in to attention-he had been a major in the Civil War-we executed Noah's Ark. a sharp right-about-face, fell on our knees, and buried our faces BOSTON SOCIETY 116 THE MIDDLE SPAN 117 in the warm chairs where we had been sitting. He recited, and the sandier, flatter, poorer region than the Massachusetts "North rest half murmured, the Lord's Prayer, with some other short Shore," with few summer residents, and little but scrub pine things from the Prayer-Book, and a benediction. Then we all rose woods, straggling farms, and ghostly, gaunt natives who "made again, the servants disappeared, and a programme of healthy pleas- remarks." On the other hand the Codmans, in spite of their name ures was announced for the rest of us for the morning. In the so appropriate to Cape Cod, seemed almost to be living in Eng- afternoon there would be an excursion and in the evening (not land, with all the freedom, largeness, and tact of good society. preannounced) there were to be parlour-games. You were taken for granted, put at your ease, made materially Never having been in an army, in a nursery, or in an Evangel- and morally comfortable. Conversation was spontaneous, unpre- ical family, I found all this rather odd and exacting; but I was tending, intelligent; you could talk about what interested you- out to learn something of the world, and this was a part of it. On if you did SO with discretion and briefly; and you were not asked that occasion, for two or three days, I tried to do my duty; but for your opinion on things you cared nothing about. The house duty in my ethics means a debt, an obligation freely undertaken; was agreeably furnished, not over-furnished: there were flowers, and I saw at once that I was unfit to live under a free government a little music, enough wit to make express entertainments unneces- where other people voted as to what I should do. My unfitness sary. The father and the two elder sons were away-kept in must have transpired, for I was never asked again to Manchester- Boston by their work; but the youngest son, Julian, sometimes by-the-Sea, nor should I have been tempted. When later I knew took me out sailing in a cat-boat in very smooth water, a peaceful how the other children of "Uncle Russell" lived in England, somnolent amusement very much to my taste. He was destined to although, as I was informed, all had equal fortunes, this family become the most confidential of all my young friends in the seemed to belong to a different social class. Among the truly following years, and I have already described him, his career, and noble, as for instance in Spain, there was grandeur without much the perfect sympathy there was between us. Julian, with the cat- luxury or comfort; under the plutocracy, in which "Cousin Rus- boat, comes under the head of friendship, not of Boston society: sell's" English brothers lived, there was luxury without grandeur; and it was not on his account that I was invited to Cotuit. and in the bourgeoisie, which "Cousin Russell" himself had I had been expressly summoned in order that I might make the joined, there was comfort without luxury. Comfort, in his case, acquaintance of Howard Sturgis, "Cousin Lucy's" youngest was stiffened by Spartan and athletic austerities, yet in sentimental brother, who might well have been her son, being then thirty- directions he was soft enough. He was pleased with his appear- three years of age. Howard, too, comes properly under the head ance, being well built, portly, with fair side-whiskers that flew of friendship, since I began the next year to make him almost backward as he marched about; and of a summer evening he and yearly visits, sometimes reduplicated, at his house in Windsor: his wife would stand embraced by the window, gazing alter- but since I first saw him in America, and it was my Sturgis con- nately at each other and at the sunset over the sea. I knew this nection that established a kind of family intimacy between us, I was a form of evening prayer, a wordless Angelus, and I stood dis- will say something about him here. creetly aside. He had come to America for a complete change of scene, hop- At about the same time I made a first visit to another of "Uncle ing it might help to heal the wound that, in his excessively tender Russell's" children, "Cousin Lucy Codman" and her family, at heart, had been left by the death of his mother. She had not their country house at Cotuit on Cape Cod. It was a much softer, been, from all I have gathered, at all a remarkable woman, but 118 THE MIDDLE SPAN BOSTON SOCIETY 119 luxurious and affectionate, surrounded in London by a few rich became wedded to them, and all his life, whether he sat by the American friends, especially the daughters of Motley, the his- fire or in his garden, his work-basket stood by his low chair. His torian, who were married to Englishmen, and surrounded beyond needlework was exquisite, and he not only executed gorgeous them, more by hearsay than acquaintance, by the whole British embroideries, but designed them, for he was clever also with the aristocracy. Howard had been her last and permanent baby. The pencil. Imitation, or a sort of involuntary caricature, sometimes dear child was sensitive and affectionate, with abundant golden went further with him. He would emit little frightened cries, if hair, large blue eyes, and well-turned chubby arms and legs. Her the cab he was in turned too fast round a corner; and in crossing boudoir became his nursery and his playroom. As if by miracle, a muddy road he would pick up the edge of his short covert-coat, for he was wonderfully imitative, he became, save for the accident as the ladies in those days picked up their trailing skirts. of sex, which was not yet a serious encumbrance, a perfect young Some of these automatisms were so extreme and so ridiculous lady of the Victorian type. He acquired a good accent in French, that I can't help suspecting that there was something hypnotic German and Italian, and instinctively embraced the proper liberal or somnambulistic about them. He was too intelligent and too humanitarian principles in politics and history. There was an satirical to have done such things if he could have helped it. absolutely right and an absolutely wrong side in every war and There may have been some early fixation at work, probably to his every election; only the wicked, selfish, and heartless still pre- mother, of the kind that induces dreams, and develops into vented the deserving from growing rich, and maintained an absurd grotesque exaggerations and symbolic fancies. He mimicked peo- and cruel ascendency of birth, superstition, and military power. ple, sometimes on purpose, but often involuntarily: and his imag- These were the sentiments of the Great Merchants, economists ination penetrated their motives and thoughts, as his novels show, and reformers of the early nineteenth century, and Howard would not necessarily with truth, but plausibly and with an endless have embraced them in any case because they appealed to his capacity for extensions. He may have been at times the victim of heart, and his feminine nature would never have allowed his intel- this dramatic fertility in his own person, and found himself lect, no matter how keen, to do anything but defend his emotions. playing a part that the real circumstances did not call for. When women's opinions waver, it means that their hearts are not He had not yet written his best novels, only an ultra-pathetie at rest. Let them once settle their affections and see their interests, story about a little boy "Tim"; but one morning we found him and theoretical doubt becomes impossible for them. Howard's sitting in the porch outside the living-room, on one of the wicker affections and interests were inextricably bound up with the chairs with red-cotton cushions that adorned it, and that he copied liberal epoch; and no evidence would ever have convinced him later in the addition made to Queen's Acre; and we found him that this was the only ground for his liberal dogmatism. armed, not with his usual work-basket, but with a red leather This was not all that he imbibed from his mother's circle. He writing case. He had an absorbed and far-away air. He was writ- was not only imitative, but he also had a theory that there was ing poetry: verses about the loss of his mother. We asked him to nothing women did that a man couldn't do better. Pride there- read them: he would not have brought them downstairs if he fore seconded inclination in making him vie with the ladies and wished them to bloom and die unseen. He read them very nicely, surpass them. He learned to sew, to embroider, to knit, and to without self-consciousness or affectation: the sentiment was inti- do crochet; these occupations were not only guiltless of any mate, but the form restrained and tactful. country's blood, but helped to pass away the empty hours. He Courage and distinction will save a man in almost any predica- 120 THE MIDDLE SPAN BOSTON SOCIETY I2I ment; and Howard had been at Eton, where he acquired distinc- tion and showed remarkable courage. Sending him there must for a house, and had finally taken a small one, with a nice garden have been a last desperate measure insisted on by his brothers, on the outskirts of Windsor Park. Its name had been Queensmead, to cure him of his girlishness. A cruel remedy, it might seem, as if but there was a Kingsmead next door, and seeing that the land he had been sent to sea before the mast. Why hadn't his father was little more than an acre-at least the part of it visible from and mother corrected him sooner? His father's mind had been the house-he re-christened it Queen's Acre, familiarly and iron- ically abbreviated to Quaker. The nearness of Eton, and of the growing feeble, and his mother probably thought the lad sweeter as he was. After all, too, they were Bostonians; and would it have Aingers, had attracted him, for as often happens, he retained a been right to correct dear little sweet Howard for girlishness, much greater affection for his school than for his College or Uni- when girlishness wasn't morally wrong? Let him go to Eton, prop- versity. In those first years his garden and his table were often erly safeguarded, if his brothers thought it absolutely necessary. enlivened by groups of Eton boys. To some of them he gave pet And this heroic remedy didn't prove in the least cruel, or in the names, such as The Lion, The Bear, or The Babe; this last being Willie Haines Smith, a distant cousin of his, who became his least efficacious. Young Howard calmly defied all those school-boys with his feminine habits and arts, which he never dreamt of dis- adopted younger brother and companion for life. guising. He was protected by his wit and intellectual assurance; All this lay in the future, and in England. For the moment at while his tutor, Mr. Ainger, author of the Carmen Etonense, and Cotuit, although Howard was the guest of honour, the ruling the two Misses Ainger, adopted him and screened him from the spirits were the ladies. There were two daughters, both in the rude mob. Besides, Howard attracted affection, and however aston- early twenties. Something, I hardly know what, seemed to desig- ished one might be at first, or even scornful, one was always won nate the one in whom I ought to be particularly interested. I liked over in the end. them both; but to choose a wife was the last thing that I was After Eton, Trinity College, Cambridge was plain sailing, and thinking of; my friends knew it, and this delicate question, never confirmed his humanitarian principles and aristocratic habits. His spoken of, was left hanging in mid-air, until years later, when studies don't seem to have been serious; but he remembered what one day Julian deliberately asked me why I didn't marry. I replied he had read of belles-lettres, just as ladies do. He had even dipped that I wished to be free and didn't intend to live always in into Berkeley's philosophy and had laid it aside, not unwisely, as America. Whether Julian's mother had prompted him to ask that an academic curiosity. To see interesting people, or at least fash- question, I don't know, perhaps not, since she had no reason to ionable people, and to hear about them, made his chief entertain- desire me for a son-in-law, and her daughters, on approaching ment later. Of course he had travelled abroad and seen everything the age of thirty, made reasonable and more suitable marriages. Yet, out of sheer kindness, she seems to have taken an interest that everybody should see; he remained old-fashioned, without preraphaelite affectations, in matters of art. His novels were ex- in my happiness, as she conceived it ought to be; for she took quisitely felt and observed, full of delicately satirical phrases, and pains to go and tell my mother, whom she seldom visited, how not without an obvious moral aimed against domestic prejudice strongly she felt about certain things one of which was the sad and social tyranny: but his writing had hardly force enough, mistake that a poor young man made sometimes in backing away either in style or in thought, to leave a lasting impression. from a rich girl, simply because she was rich, when they sincerely In what he felt to be his homeless plight, he had looked about cared for each other. This arrow was of course aimed at a par- ticular target, but couldn't regard "Cousin Lucy's" daughters, 122 THE MIDDLE SPAN BOSTON SOCIETY 123 since they were not rich: so far from rich, indeed, that a poor or children except by accident: they would not belong to his young man couldn't have married them, no matter how often he people. I know that there are some who accept this consequence, had popped the question and been accepted. It would have meant even pretend to have become Protestants, and bury as deep as a long engagement, with an eventual descent into another level possible the fact that they were born Catholics or Jews. But I am of society. not a man of that stamp. I have been involuntarily uprooted. I I think I know what "Cousin Lucy" had in mind. She was accept the intellectual advantages of that position, with its social spinning a romance out of a nascent sympathy between a certain and moral disqualifications. And I refuse to be annexed, to be distinguished heiress and me; it never went beyond agreeable con- abolished, or to be grafted onto any plant of a different species. versations about books, operas, plays, and travels, merely at dinners This feeling was absolutely fixed in me from the beginning, but and other social functions. Had I been in love with her, and didn't prevent me from liking the Boston ladies, though I never pressed my suit, she might have made the mistake of accepting courted any of them. I liked the elegance, the banter, the wit and me, to the consternation of her numerous relations; but I didn't intelligence that often appeared in them. I liked to sit next to them allow myself to fathom the question whether I was in love with at dinner, when conversation flowed more easily and became more her or not. The barrier was not her person nor the fact that she civilised in the midst of lights and flowers, good food and good was rich; this fact was precisely what might have encouraged me, wines. The charm of the ladies was a part of that luxurious scene, because I should not have been imposing any material sacrifices of that polite intoxication: for me it was nothing more. But people upon her; but she would have been imposing upon me her whole didn't understand that this could be all: even my sister Susana background, her country, her family, her houses, her religion. Not didn't understand it and more or less seriously looked about for that I had any fault to find with these things for her; but a someone with whom to pair me off. This was when we were chil- déraciné, a man who has been torn up by the roots, cannot be dren; later when I began to find my real affinities, Susana had replanted and should never propagate his kind. In the matter of returned to Spain, and perhaps had seen that I had not thought religion, for instance, I found myself in this blind alley. I was of marrying anyone in Boston, not even among the Catholics. not a believer in what my religion, or any religion, teaches My real affinities were with three or four elderly ladies, who dogmatically; yet I wouldn't for the world have had a wife or never appeared off the social stage, and who like me were more children dead to religion. Had I lived always in Spain, even with or less spontaneously playing a part, as it were, in public, while my present philosophy, I should have found no difficulty: my their real and much less interesting life lay hidden beneath, like family would have been Catholic like every other family; and the water-supply, the drains, and the foundations of their houses. the philosophy of religion, if ever eventually discussed among They were all childless, or had lost their children, and their hus- us, would have been a subsequent private speculation, with no bands, when living, either didn't appear at all in the same scenes, direct social consequences. But living in a Protestant country, or played a subordinate, comic, errand-boy part in them. The the free-thinking Catholic is in a socially impossible position. He invisible husband might be, in his own world, an important per- cannot demand that his wife and children be Catholics, since he son, esteemed as much or more than his wife in hers: but like is not, in a controversial sense, a Catholic himself; yet he cannot royal spouses occupying opposite wings in a palace, they had bear that they should be Protestants or freethinkers, without any their own exits and entrances, their own hours and their own Catholic tradition or feelings. They would not then be his wife friends. This was the case with two leading ladies in the Boston of 124 THE MIDDLE SPAN BOSTON SOCIETY 125 my time, Mrs. Gardner and Mrs. Whitman. Often as I lunched beautiful, but she knew that this was no obstacle to dressing and visited at Mrs. Gardner's, both in town and country, I hardly magnificently and boldly, or being positively alluring: her clothes ever saw her husband; and it was only after years of acquaintance (for the evening) filled Boston with alarm and with envy. She with Mrs. Whitman that once, at a week-end party by the sea, I was not of good family, although professedly related to the royal caught sight of Mr. Whitman: not that he was living in the house house of Stuart; but she gave Boston a lesson in being aristocratic, or belonged to the house-party, but that he had come, as if by and surrounded herself with interesting people, strangers, artists, chance, in his yacht, and had looked in upon us. musicians, and anyone who was either distinguished or agree- These two ladies had individual vocations; their husbands had able. If the old Bostonians didn't like it, they needn't come; but their own position, their own work, and their own friends, and they came, if they were asked. having ample separate means they amicably cultivated separate She followed the fashion of the 1890's in collecting real or gardens. Mrs. Gardner was not a Bostonian: her vocation was to alleged works of the Old Masters, and also of some modern show Boston what it was missing. Instead of following the fash- painters; but here the state of society in the twentieth century and ion, she undertook to set it. It wasn't followed; Boston doggedly in America prevented her from collecting as an aristocrat might, stuck to its old ways and its old people: yet it couldn't ignore for his own pleasure, to enhance the surroundings of his life and Mrs. Gardner; her husband was an old Bostonian and always the heritage of his family. She collected to collect; and such col- countenanced, supported, and (invisibly) stood by her; and she lections can have only one end, a public museum. This fatality, had an indefatigable energy and perseverance that, in spite of all imposed by circumstances, worked a slow and subtle change in murmurs and hesitations, carried the day. When she became a her bearing and in her satisfactions. She became an agent for her widow and built her Venetian palace in The Fenway, as Egyptian own museum. At least, SO she seemed in her public capicity, for monarchs built their tombs and went to live in them, she became by building her museum she became a public character: but her an acknowledged public benefactor. Criticism was hushed: and personality never was quite transformed. I may say that I have there was something moving in beholding this old lady, whose never really seen her collection; for she would insist on showing pleasure it had been to shock, devoting herself more and more me everything, instead of letting me-as a true grande dame modestly to preparing and completing her museum, to be left to might have done-ramble about without her and study what the town that she had startled when younger, that had long caught my eye; and when she showed her treasures, she would looked at her askance, and that she was now endowing with all tell something about them, where she found them, or their history, her treasures. and there would always be the personal play of conversation be- What her inner life may have been, her religion (she was out- tween her and her guest: so that the guest had a charming half- wardly a very High Church Anglican) or her sentiments regard- hour with her, but never saw any of her things. I should have ing Boston, her husband, or the child she had lost, and regarding bought a ticket and gone to her museum on the days when it was the works of art and the artists that she devoted herself to collect- open to the public; but I dislike museums and never did so, ing, I do not know: but it is easy to perceive the figure that especially as I heard that sometimes she walked about even on she wished to cut in the world. She modelled herself on the great public days and acted as cicerone. Her palace and her pictures had ladies of French and Italian society, as she had seen them in her become the last costume and the last audacity by which she travels or during her residence in Venice. She was far from would vanquish old Boston. 126 BOSTON SOCIETY THE MIDDLE SPAN 127 Mrs. Gardner, though she defied prudery, practised the virtue inane conclusion that art is green might acquire a pregnant mean- most difficult for a brilliant woman in a hostile society: she spoke ing. Art would appeal to the mind in general as the colour green ill of nobody. She joined kindness to liberty; and she played the appealed to the eye of Mahomet, and for similar reasons. We queen and the connoisseur with so much good nature that in her must consider human nature and the radical predicaments of the masquerade she was aware of no rival, while in the real world living arts if we are to recover definite taste or artistic power. The she scattered substantial favours. aestheticism of the nineteenth century was a symptom of decay, More in the spirit of Boston, more conscientious and troubled, aggravated by the pathos of distance. was Mrs. Whitman. Not content merely to love the fine arts, she Mrs. Whitman was a great friend of William James. They had became an artist and designed stained-glass windows. There were similar impetuous perceptions and emotions, a similar unrest, and echoes in her of Transcendentalism, but no longer imageless nor a similar desire to penetrate to the hidden facts, the submerged countrified. It had become symbolic, ritualistic, luxurious. I re- classes, the neglected ideas, unpleasing to the official world. The member the high wax candles, as on an altar, decorating her generosity of all this was evident: less evident was the fruitful- dinner table. She didn't make a point of entertaining itinerant ness of it. The field was vague and so was the mind of the re- artists or other celebrities; but devoted herself to instilling the formers. One day James asked me to come to a supper that he higher spirit of the arts and crafts into the minds of working- was giving for his more advanced pupils, about thirty of them. girls. Our good works, alas, are often vainer than our vanities. Mrs. Whitman was coming. He wished me to come too-without 'What did Mrs. Whitman talk to you about?" somebody asked dressing, of course-and help Mrs. Whitman to feel at home. And after a lecture. And one of the girls replied: "She said that art I was placed at her right hand, James sitting opposite, in the was green." It is true that Mrs. Whitman was partial to that middle of the other long side of the table. Neither Mrs. James colour, and Mahomet expressed the same preference, for an easily nor any other member of the family was present: it was to be a assignable reason: but when we express preferences, though we philosophical conclave, a semi-religious semi-festive mystery. Why may diffuse those preferences by mere suggestion or hypnosis, we did James conceive such a supper? Out of kindness, to be hos- incite others to express their contrary preferences, and to nurse pitable and fatherly towards his disciples. But why did he ask Mrs. every preference, instinctive or imposed, out of pure doggedness. Whitman, or why did she wish to come? Mrs. James could have This is not an incitement to learn, but to be content without been equally hospitable and kind. Perhaps it was not from the learning: the great temptation of freedom. Mrs. Whitman's lec- young men's point of view, but from Mrs. Whitman's, that he ture, in the case of that working-girl, was a complete failure. If saw the desirability of inviting her. She was interested in diffusing she had reported the explicable fact that Mahomet thought green high aspirations among the people: here she would see a chosen the most beautiful of colours, something might have been gained; group of ambitious young men, and perhaps scatter some good because the working-girl's casual preference for pink or for blue seed or get some hint or some encouragement in her work. The would have been not merely challenged but undermined. For if young men were of course impressed, some of them no doubt Mahomet loved green, because he constantly travelled through dazzled, by James in his own library, walled completely with deserts, looking for the palm trees of some oasis, what desert are books, save for his father's portrait in oils over the mantelpiece, you, poor working-girl, travelling through, that causes you to long and by the lordly supper-with a touch of the Kneipe about it, for pink and blue ribbons? If you reflect upon that, the apparently for we all had beer, except Mrs. Whitman. For her a half-bottle 128 THE MIDDLE SPAN BOSTON SOCIETY 129 of champagne was provided, which, as James said, would not be this was at Mrs. Gray's, who had been a Boston "beauty"-he said good for the rest of us. Above all they must have retained a he didn't like to walk in Beacon Street, Every door seemed to striking image of Mrs. Whitman, beautifully dressed, not in an him the tombstone of a dead love. This was one direction in which evening gown, but in a green velvet bodice with long sleeves, the Justice unbent; but his mind was plastic also in speculation. delicately set off by gold braid, an ample white silk skirt, and a Being an exceptionally successful man he could be pessimistic in large bunch of violets. She was not particularly beautiful, nor philosophy, and being an old Bostonian he could disinterestedly the opposite (as Mrs. Gardner was) but she had that vivacity advocate democratic reforms. After I had left America he sur- and intelligence, added to the discreet arts of the toilet, that keep prised me by writing in high terms about my Winds of Doctrine, French ladies from ever looking old. I doubt that she said any- especially the first page in which there is nothing not common- thing that any of those young men would note or remember. I had place except perhaps the tone in which moral and political revolu- been summoned expressly to entertain her, and spare her the tions are spoken of, as natural episodes in a transformation with- effort of having to make talk with shy uncouth youths all the out end. It is or it was usual, especially in America, to regard evening; for there were no speeches. In philanthropic and propa- the polity of which you happen to approve as sure to be presently gandist directions I doubt that anything was accomplished: but established everywhere and to prevail forever after. To have the feast was rather beautiful in itself, and certainly cannot have been forgotten by any of those who were there. It was an instance escaped this moralistic obsession, at least for a moment, evidently was a pleasure to Judge Holmes. He had a really liberal, I mean of the manner in which those two distinguished spirits, William a truly free, mind. James and Mrs. Whitman, failed to diffuse their intended influ- There was another local celebrity whom I once heard discourse ence, and yet succeeded while failing: for they added something about politics at a dinner, not in a set speech, but in ordinary pleasant and pure to the world. conversation. Everybody else stopped talking in order to listen to As to the male element in Boston society, it would perhaps be him because, by a rare exception in his class, he had gone into Roger better for me not to say anything. I knew few of them well, be- politics and been Governor of Massachusetts. His name was Roger Wolautt cause most of my friends, even at Harvard, were not Bostonians, Wolcott, and in his young days he had been regarded as the hand- and those who were Bostonians were seldom seen at parties. The men went there to see the women, and were like fish out of water somest man and the greatest beau in Boston. He was attacking the New York Nation, a weekly paper which I always read. Its poli- in regard to one another. Besides, Boston society was dominated tics were radical, but the book reviews were written by professors, by the very young, except in staid elderly circles that met only often professors of foreign languages, about subjects that inter- at dinners. Sometimes, being a conveniently unattached bachelor, ested me. The views of the professorial class, or intelligentsia, are I was honoured by an invitation to small parties of that sort, at naturally literary and captious; Roger Wolcott, as a man and as houses where I was not intimate. On such occasions I might make a practical politician, detested them. He said The Nation had a the acquaintance of representative elderly men, or hear them talk, when conversation became general. One distinguished Bos- very bad influence in the country, especially among the young men. It gave them a false idea of what government was and tonian that I came to know in this way was Judge Holmes. His ought to be. It made them ignorantly critical, supercilious, un- wife never went anywhere, and he, still rather youngish with a patriotic. As far as I remember, Wolcott didn't go beyond bare sweeping blond moustache, would play the bachelor. One day- denunciation; he was probably not speculative, like Judge Holmes; THE MIDDLE SPAN might seem to have been guided merely by club spirit or le corps like so many Lodges and Greek Letter Fraternities burished in America without representing any genuine CHAPTER VII interests. On the other hand, his experience may have im some true intuition of the fated movement and destiny AMERICANS IN EUROPE country, and his "stalwart" politics may have been only a cover for something heroic: I mean, for the courage and E sharing the life of his country, in soul as well as in body. M ORE than with any other class of people, fate has associated me with Americans in Europe. Even when I was still living in the United States, it was people at home in Europe, socially and morally, that most readily became my friends. Not that being at home in Europe or at home in America counted in itself in my true friendships. That which counted in that case was exclusively the individual man or woman, the body and the soul. A field of action and of thought was essential, but only as a language is essential for conveying a thought: for when the thought is absorbing, the language is not noticed, and seems indifferent. Yet a common language, a common social and moral idiom, becomes in itself a great bond when you are travelling in strange places, among people with whom you cannot communicate. The common language draws you together, even if what each will say may eventually not prove important or acceptable to the others. Now with Americans in Europe I had a common field of experi- ence, a common social and moral convention, and we were for the moment in the same boat. A travelling acquaintance may of course disclose a vital affinity: but I think this was not the case with any of my American friends in Europe: either no vital affinity existed or we had discovered it in America, and it was independent of all accidents of residence. With converts of any kind, with American women married to Englishmen, with ex- patriates, with aesthetic souls that fled from America because the voices there were too rough, I never had much sympathy. It was persons who were thoroughly European or thoroughly American that held the first place in my esteem. In my esteem, but not in 131 5/28/2017 - Ballplaying and Boston Common: A Town Playground for Boys and Men John Thorn Follow John Thorn is the Official Historian for Major League Baseball His most recent book is in Garde Nov 26, 2012 9 min read Ballplaying and Boston Common: A Town Playground for Boys and Men The article below, by Brian Turner, appeared in print in a special issue of the journal Base Ball. Brian works at Smith College and is conducting research on ballplaying in the Colonial, Federalist, and New Republic eras. His past baseball publications include The Hurrah Game: Baseball in Northamption 1823-1953 (co-authored with John Bowman: Historic Northampton, 2002) and articles in The National Pastime and Base Ball. His article, like others from the special Protoball issue, appears courtesy of the publisher, McFarland and Company. Each article is keyed to the larger chronology appearing at Early Baseball Milestones at mlb.com. For example, the article below, indexed as 1726.2, reflects that it is the second entry for the year 1726. As the journal's editor, I encourage you to consider subscribing. For details, see: Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game Base Ball is a peer-reviewed journal published annually. Offering the best in original research and analysis, the wwwmefarlandbooks.com Item 1726.2, Ballplaying and Boston Common: A Town Playground for Boys and Men Brian Turner Sam. Hirst got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with him and went into the (Boston) Common to play at Wicket. [1] Since 1634, Boston Common has been celebrated as "the outdoor stage on which many characteristic dramas of local life have been enacted.' '[2] One such drama-cited in Protoball 1856.20 and 1858.35 was the duel between the Massachusetts version of baseball and that of New York. In 1856 the Olympic Club of Boston conducted "trial" matches of the Massachusetts game on the Common[3] in 1858, the Common hosted the first New England match by New York rules. [4] Those games, unambiguously baseball, were the culmination of two centuries of Boston ball-play. Protoball 1700C.2 refers to much earlier games played on the Common. Two histories present identical assertions, but neither gives a source: Mary Farwell Ayer (1903) and Samuel Barber (1916) write that in the late 1600S and early 1700S the "favorite games" were "wicket and flinging the bullet [bullit, in Barber's version, probably the original spelling]. [5] (The latter involved throwing cannonballs. We know less about 17th century wicket.) Protoball 1700c.2 to Protoball 1858.35, therefore, encompass Boston ballplaying from "wicket" to the New York game. Evidence that wicket was played in Boston before 1700 comes from Cotton Mather's autobiographical manuscript Paterna. Born in 1663, Mather recalled that he began preaching "at an Age wherein I See Many Lads playing at their marbles or Wickets in the street."[6 Mather's remembrance places "Wickets" as early as the mid-1670s. The name wicket could refer to the stumps in cricket, or arise from a meaning well known at the time, i.e., a small opening in a fortified gate, large enough to duck through. The term was often used as a metaphor to convey the narrowness of the opening through which one might enter heaven's gate. We don't see Wickets (or Wicket) again until fifty years later. In his 1726 diary, in an entry that qualifies as primary evidence, Samuel Sewall expressed displeasure when his grandson, then 20, skipped morning prayers "to play at Wicket on the Common.' "[7] H. L. Mencken defined Puritanism as the "haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Historians have painted a more nuanced portrait of colonial attitudes toward pleasure and recreation, which, in moderation, had their place. If ball-play broke the Sabbath, however, a Reverend or a Magistrate brought out his diary to take note; [8] such disapproving voices have dominated the historical record. One need not be a Puritan to regard life in New England as a struggle: Winters were long; summers short. A Boston man who stood watch on Beacon Hill in the 1630S would have gazed east upon the Atlantic and west into wilderness. His emotions cannot be known, but https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/ballplaying-and-boston-common-a-town-playground-for-boys-and-men-3068419e59ab 2/7 5/28/2017* Ballplaying and Boston Common: A Town Playground for Boys and Men exhilaration and terror would have been reasonable. Would he have scouted for "a place leavel enough to play ball"? [9] Not yet, I suspect. A ceaseless labor awaited him, from which no one was exempt, not even his children. Some children were fortunate enough to go to school. In 1635, the Public Latin School opened on the north side of School Street. Where students played then isn't clear, but the Common beckoned. As the conditions of life improved, and grandfathers and fathers pushed back the wilderness, children had more of a chance to play. Of schoolboys in the 1700s, Edward Ellsworth Brown wrote, "In the few hours that could be given to out-door sports, they had skating and coasting in winter, and in summer swimming, and a variety of games, including some with bat and ball. '[10] More schools started, more schoolboys flooded onto the Common as classes let out. In time, Boston Latin's "playground was that corner of Boston Common lying between the path from West Street to the Old Elm, and Park Street and Beacon Street. "[11] As long as anyone could remember, "Boston Common was the playground of the Boston School Boys."[12] In 1831, the young Samuel Gray Ward observed, "There are a great many boys all the time on the Common now playing bat and ball."[13 In 1840, a former Bostonian recalled in the Honolulu Polynesian, "There's good old bat and ball, just the same as when [we] ran from the school house to the 'Common' to exercise our skill that way "[14] Between 1851 and 1854, J. Pierpont Morgan attended Boston English School and "in between school and work, played 'bat and ball' on Boston Common. "[15] Boyhood play gave rise to nostalgia, which resulted in positive accounts of ballplaying that offset news of boys crushed beneath the wheels of a wagon during a game of ball or adult men struck down by "surfeit, playing ball." '[16] James D'Welf Love: Thomas Wentworth Higginson and James DeWolf Lovett, from Cambridge and Boston respectively, celebrated their sporting days. During the early 1830S Higginson was fitted for Harvard in the private school of William Wells, [17] an Englishman. "Athletic sports, as well as the humanities, were warmly encouraged by Mr. Wells, and the afternoons spent in cricket, football, and skating on Fresh Pond "[18] The cricket recalled by Higginson, Harvard Class of 1841, "was the same then played by boys on Boston Common very unlike what is now called cricket. Balls, bats, and wickets were all larger than in the proper English game; the bats especially being much longer, twice as heavy, and three-cornered instead of flat "[19] Higginson was many things: an abolitionist, Civil War officer, women's rights advocate, and author of many books and articles James DeWolf Lovett, by contrast, was first and foremost a sportsman who wrote one book, Old Boston Boys and the Games They Played (1906). Lovett's descriptions have a substance previous accounts lack, partly because society no longer looked down upon a sportsman's enthusiasms: "The ready-made ball of those days, for sale, was either a mushy, pulpy feeling thing, with a soft cotton quilting over it which wore out in a few days; or else a rubber one, solid or hollow, as one preferred; but all equally unfit for batting purposes."[20] Clearly, this ball could be used for hitting the runner without risk of injury. That such a ball was available in stores implies that customers purchased them for games familiar and popular. Lovett was restless with the "mushy" ball, SO his father made him a lively one: "The balls my father taught me to make were made of tightly wound yarn, with a bit of rubber at the core, quilted with good, rough twine, and would last a long time; and when needed new jackets could be put upon them " His father made him "a little bat of black walnut. I can see it now; it had a round handle for about a foot and gradually widened out into two flat sides, being perhaps an inch and a half thick." '[21] Lovett expressed impatience with the batting that resulted: "This mode of back-striking was carried SO far that bats not more than twelve or fifteen inches long with a flat surface were used, and instead of making any attempt to strike with it, this bat was merely held at a sharp angle and the ball allowed to glance off it, over the catcher's head."22 The Common was Lovett's playground. "A lot of mechanics, firemen, etc. of the West End occasionally used to meet on the Common for a game." The conditions there suited some games but not others. "The Common was an impossible place for cricket, the hard baked ground making a good wicket or crease out of the question I and others drifted into baseball."[24 Later, after his baseball career ended, Lovett joined the Longwood Cricket Club. Even before Lovett made the transition to the New York game, he yearned for another style of play: "the black walnut bat broke; but by this time I had outgrown it and wanted one like the others in use, that is, round and not square."[25 When he did play the New York game, his ball club, the Lowells, called the Common its home field. In the end, the Massachusetts game, like Boston itself, was eclipsed by New York. But Boston games have their story to tell and much to tell historians of baseball. Notes 1. Protoball 1726.2: "Diary of Samuel Sewall," in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 7, ser. 5 (p. 372). https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/ballplaying-and-boston-common-a-town-playground-for-boys-and-men-3068419e59ab 4/7 5/28/2017 Ballplaying and Boston Common: A Town Playground for Boys and Men 2. DeWolfe, M. 1910. Boston Common: Scenes from Four Centuries (p. 7). 3. Protoball 1856.20. A letter to a newspaper, cited in this Protoball entry, evokes "round ball" as precursor of the Massachusetts game. Many Protoball "round ball" entries come from Henry Sargent, based on his letters to the Mills Commission in 1905. The earliest reference to "round ball" remains Robin Carver's Book of Sports: "It is sometimes called 'round ball.' But I believe that 'base' or 'goal ball' are the names generally adopted in our country" (Protoball 1834.1). Carver no doubt had cause to mention "round ball," yet he presents the name gingerly, as if unsure of its general usage. 4. Protoball 1858.35. A telling sidelight to the advent of the New York rules in Massachusetts comes from James DeWolf Lovett's Old Boston Boys and the Games They Played (1906), In addition to the Tri- Mountains of Boston, four other Massachusetts clubs played the New York game in 1858 (p.42). The apostate cities were Westfield (Atwater), Springfield (Pioneer), and Northampton (Union and Nonotuck), roughly 90 miles west of Boston. Why such a cluster of clubs using New York rules? The answer, in part, is that these cities dated to the 1600s, when the earliest settlers followed the seacoast and rafted up the Connecticut River long before attempting the state's interior wilderness. By 1858, of course, river travel was less common. But railways followed the path of least resistance, along the Connecticut River. Hence, New York rules came to western Massachusetts almost as soon as they came to Boston. 5. Ayer, M. 1903. Boston Common in Colonial and Provincial Days (p. 8). Barber, S. 1916. Boston Common: A Diary of Notable Events, Incidents, and Neighboring Occurences (p. 47). 6. Mather, C. (ed. R. Bosco). 1976. Paterna (p. 25). 7. Protoball 1726.2. 8. Mather and Sewall participated in the 1692 Salem witch trials. 9. Altherr, T. 2000. ""A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball': Baseball and Baseball-type Games in the Colonial Era, Revolutionary War, and Early American Republic," Nine (p. 15). Altherr's title comes from Henry Dearborn's journal, written in 1779. 10. Brown, E. 1905. The Making of Our Middle Schools (p. 138). 11. Abbot, E. 1902. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 57 (p. 300). 12. Barber 1916, 238-239. The quote is from Curtis Guild's address to the Sixth Reunion of the "Old Boston School Boys" (1885). 13. Samuel Gray Ward papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. 14. Protoball 1840.38. 15. Carosso, V., and R. Carosso. 1987. The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854-1913 (p. 41). 16. "Deaths," New York Spectator: Sept. 11, 1811. 17. Wells, as it turns out, was the grandfather of William Wells Newell, who compiled Games & Songs of American Children (1883). Indeed, at the time Newell published his book of games, he lived in the same rambling structure in Cambridge that had once housed his grandfather's school. 18. Higginson, M. 1914. Thomas Wentworth Higginson: The Story of His Life (p. 15). 19. Protoball 1840c.39. I invite readers to imagine a three-cornered bat. I can't picture anything other than a triangular post-like object, certainly not the shovel or spoon-like bat of Berkshires-style wicket. 20. Lovett, J. 1906. Boston Boys and the Games They Played (p. 133). 21. Ibid., 134. 22. Ibid., 132. 23. Ibid., 137. 24. Ibid., 72-73. Lovett also reported playing "Tip-cat" on Boston Common in the 1850s, though his description is limited to the specific feat of "Charlie Troupe a fine player of the old 'Massachusetts' game of baseball. With the three strokes which were allowed in this game, I have seen a cat sent from the Spruce Street path on the Common over the Public Garden fence" (46-47). 25. Ibid., 137. https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/ballplaying-and-boston-common-a-town-playground-for-boys-and-men-3068419e59ab 6/7 THE CITY-STATE OF BOSTON The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865 MARK PETERSON 2019 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton & Oxford D'Amour Library Western New England University 1215 Wilbraham Road Springfield, MA 01119 from 00 B