From collection Creating Acadia National Park: The George B. Dorr Research Archive of Ronald H. Epp

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Park Street, Boston-Bullfinch Row & The Wards
Park Street Boston :
Bullfirich Row The Wards
Park St., C. 1815; Park Street Church (at right),
More details
Unknown author - Simons. Boston beheld: antique town and
Publ
country views. UPNE, 2008. https://books.google.com/books?
File: ParkSt. ca. 18
id=eA7FjMq4JDoC
Simonsl
Created: circa
Art work by an anonymous artist, of Park Street, Boston,
QS:P,
00T00:00:00Z/9,P1480,
ca.1815
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Title: Park Street, ca. 1858 [graphic].
Primary Material: Visual Material
Publishing Details: [18--]
Description: 1 photographic print : b&w ; image 18.2 x 23.3 cm., mount 20.2 x 26.8 cm.
Location: Prints and Photographs Dept.
Call Number: (photo) AA B64B6 St.pa.(no.2)
Number of Items: 1
Status: Available
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Main Author: Hawes, Josiah Johnson, 1808-1901, photographer.
Title: [Park Street from the State House lawn, ca. 1859] [graphic].
Linked Resources: Scanned image available here
Primary Material: Visual Material
Publishing Details: Boston : Josiah Johnson Hawes, [ca. 1859]
Description: 1 photographic print : b&w ; sheet 26.9 x 36.8 cm.
Location: Prints and Photographs Dept.
Call Number: (photo) B B64B6 St.p.(no.1)
Number of Items: 1
Status: Available
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GENERAL INFO
OLD STATE HOUSE
RESEARCH
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EDUCATION
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Conservation Program
VW0001/-#000896
Number:
Collection
Boston Streets photograph collection, ca. 1855-1999
Title:
Item
000896
Number:
Creator:
Unknown
Title:
Park Street looking towards Beacon Street, ca. 1860-
1900
Dates:
1860
ca. --1900
ca.
Form/Genre: Albumen prints
Description: Street-level view northwest of Park Street looking
towards Beacon Street. The dome and facade of the
Massachusetts State House, located on Beacon
Street, are visible in the background of the
photograph. Awnings and wrought iron railings adorn
the facades of buildings lining the northeast side of
Park Street. The southwest elevation of the Park
Street Church, located on the northwest corner of
Park and Tremont Streets, is visible along the right
side of the photograph. The Boston Common, visible
along the left-side of the photograph, is separated
from Park Street by a wrought iron fence. A horse-
drawn wagon is visible along the northeast side of
Park Street, which is lined with street lights.
Geographic: Massachusetts -Boston (Mass.) --Washington Street
Shopping District --Beacon Hill (Mass.) --Park Street
Topic:
Buildings --Dwellings --Houses --Government
buildings --Domes --Awnings --Fences --Horse-drawn
vehicles --Carts and wagons --Railings
Personal:
Corporate:
Notes:
Back to List
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SOFTWARER
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The Bostonian Society © 2009
The Bostonian Society receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
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 I (617) 720 1713
massculturalcouncil.org
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GENERAL INFO
OLD STATE HOUSE
RESEARCH
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Fellowships
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Conservation Program
VW0001/-#000895
Number:
Collection
Boston Streets photograph collection, ca.
Title:
1855-1999
Item
000895
Number:
Creator:
Unknown
Title:
Park Street looking towards Beacon Street,
ca. 1860-1900
Dates:
1860 -ca. -1900 ca.
Form/Genre: Albumen prints
Description: Street-level view northwest of Park Street
looking towards Beacon Street. The dome and
facade of the Massachusetts State House,
located on Beacon Street, are visible in the
background of the photograph. Buildings line
the northeast side of Park Street. Wrought-
iron railings adorn their southwest-facing
facades. The Boston Common, visible along
the left-side of the photograph, is separated
from Park Street by a wrought-iron fence. A
horse-drawn carriage waits curbside along the
northeast side of Park Street. Street lights line
both sides of Park Street.
Geographic: Massachusetts --Boston (Mass.) --Washington
Street Shopping District --Beacon Hill (Mass.)
--Park Street
Topic:
Buildings -Dwellings -Houses --Government
buildings --Massachusetts State House --
Domes --Hand-railing --Fences --Horse-drawn
vehicles --Carts and wagons
Personal:
Corporate:
Notes:
Back to List
Searching provided by:
Re: discovery
New Search Advanced Search Browse Terms Catalog Main
Search the Catalog I Photo Reproductions I Become a Member I Mailing list I Contribute Calendar
The Bostonian Society © 2009
The Bostonian Society receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
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 I (617) 720 1713
massculturalcouncil.org
http://rfi.bostonhistory.org/boston/default.asp?IDCFile=/Boston/details.idc,SPECIFIC=950..
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GENERAL INFO
OLD STATE HOUSE
RESEARCH
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EDUCATION
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Fellowships
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VW0001/- #000899
Number:
Collection
Boston Streets photograph collection, ca. 1855-
Title:
1999
Item
000899
Number:
Creator:
Soule, John P.
Title:
Park Street looking towards Beacon Street in
winter, ca. 1860-90
Dates:
1860
ca. -1890
ca.
Form/Genre: Cartes-de-visite
Description: Street-level view northwest of Park Street looking
towards Beacon Street. The dome and facade of
the Massachusetts State House, which is located
on Beacon Street, is visible along the center-right
side of the carte-de-visite. The Boston Common,
which is separated from the southwest side of Park
Street by a wrought-iron fence, is included in left-
half of the photograph. Street-lights line the
northeast side of Park Street. Snow blankets the
ground, trees and buildings included in the
photograph. Two pedestrians stand on both
sidewalks lining Park Street.
Geographic:
Massachusetts --Boston (Mass.) --Washington
Street Shopping District --Beacon Hill (Mass.) --
Park Street --Beacon Street --Boston Common
Topic:
Buildings -Government buildings -Massachusetts
State House --Parks --Commons --Boston
Common --Fences --Street lights --People --
Pedestrians --Snow
Personal:
Corporate:
Notes:
Back to List
Searching provided by:
Re:discovery
New Search I Advanced Search I Browse Terms I Catalog Main
Search the Catalog Photo Reproductions I Become a Member I Mailing list I Contribute I Calendar
The Bostonian Society © 2009
The Bostonian Society receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
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 I (617) 720 1713
massculturalcouncil.org
http://rfi.bostonhistory.org/boston/default.asp?IDCFile=/Boston/details.idc,SPECIFIC=871. 12/2/2009
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Title: [Park Street] [graphic].
Primary Material: Visual Material
Publishing Details: [1894]
Description: 1 photographic print : cyanotype, b&w ; image 11.6x15.1 cm.
Location: Prints and Photographs Dept.
Call Number: (photo) AA B64B6 St.pa.(no.1)
Number of Items: 1
Status: Available
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2/8/2010
A Topographical and Historical Desription of Boston.
Nathaniel B. Shurtleff.
Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1871.
History of the Boston Common, Pp. 294-368.
The Granary Burying-Ground was originally part of the Common but in 1660 the
graveyard was established. In 1662 public buildings were erected on its southwest
corner (now Park Street) known as the Bridewell, Almshouse, and House of
Correction and Granary. Currently bounded for 297 feet on southwest rear of
houses fronting Park Street. (pg. 211). Park Street was formerly known as Centry
(or Sentry) street and sometimes misspelled Century.
Within the old burying ground "lie many of the most notable of the worthies of
Boston. No yard here has given rest to the mortal remains of more distinquished
persons than this." (p. .216) The oldest tombs were built near the back part of the
yard.
0
1814 MAP
C O M
M
O
N
Containing
The Crooked E Narrow
Streets of the
Town of Boston
1630-1822
by
Annie Haven Thwing
MJC
Boston
Marshall Jones Company
MD CCCC XX
SUMMER STREET, WASHINGTON AND WINTER STREETS
TRINITY CHURCH
STREET
(Water Line)
CEDAR
(Southac St.) (George St
ST
COPPER
WORKS
ST.
GROVE
ANDERSON (Centre St.)
ST.
S
IRVING (Buttoiph StJ
ST
BARTONS
NORTH RUSSELL
ST.
ARTON'S
POINT
SOUTH RUSSELL
ST.
COMMON
ROPE WALK
(wittshire St)
ST.
JOY
(Clapboard
St.)
(Belknap St.)
ST.
CHAMBERS (Shute St.)
ROPE
WALKS
(Turner St.)
ST.
ST.
LEVERETT
HANCOCK (George St.)
WEST
0
ST.
ROPE WALK
RIDGEWAY
CHURCH
ROPE WALK
STATE
HOUSE
ST
STANIFORD
ST
TEMPLE
(Middlecott St.)
ST.
BOWDOIN
BOWDOIN
SQUARE
ST.
GRANARY
BOWLING
GRANARY
GREEN
BURYING GROUND
SOMERSET
ST.
Side)
SECTION IV
WEST END
SECTION IV
THE WEST END
T
HIS section extends west of Sudbury and Tre-
mont streets and north of Boylston Street. It
is noted for the spot which the first white man,
William Blackstone, selected as the site for his cottage,
where it is thought that for many years he lived alone.
Also for the Common, the Granary Burying Ground, Alms-
house, Bridewell Workhouse and Granary, and for rope-
walks and distill houses north of Beacon Street. The great
natural feature was the hill, with its three peaks which for
a time gave the name to the town, "Tra mount," and the
peaks were called "Beacon Hill," "Cotton Hill" and "West
Hill." Beacon was the center one, and the highest, one
hundred and eighty-five feet above sea level, at first called
"Sentry Hill." March 4, 1634-5, it was ordered that a
beacon be set up on Sentry Hill, to give notice to the coun-
try of any danger. Several beacons succeeded, and the
one blown down in 1789 gave place to a plain doric column
of brick and stone, designed by Charles Bulfinch. It had
a large eagle of wood, gilt, on the top. The height,
including the eagle, was sixty feet, and the pedestal eight
feet. In I753 "the Selectmen find that the hill on which
the beacon stands and which belongs to the town is six
rods square." Five years later it was found that Mr.
Hudson, who had purchased part of the hill was digging
it away, and an application was made to restrain him,
but it was not until I774 that he proposed that the dispute
between him and the town should be settled by arbitra-
197
198 THE CROOKED AND NARROW STREETS
OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON
I99
tion. In 1807 the Mill Pond Corporation was formed
and later, "West Boston." It was the section
and soon after began the digging away and leveling of
devoted to pastures and mowing ground, and land
the hill to fill up the Mill Pond. In 1855 Thomas Bul-
was granted to those deserving of a grant for some service
finch writes, in answer to one of "Gleaner's" articles: "At
rendered, or who had been an adventurer in the common
my earliest recollection the appearance of the hill was
stock, or for some good reason, from two to twenty acres
this; a grassy hemisphere SO steep that one could with
each. The district was chiefly noted for its ropewalks,
difficulty mount its sides, descending with a perfectly
distilleries, and sugar houses. There were fourteen rope-
regular curve to the streets on the southwest and north.
walks here. There was only one church, the West Church,
On the east it had been encroached upon and the contour
a windmill, and as far as known only one tavern, the
was broken. Just opposite the end on Coolidge Avenue
White Horse Tavern, which in 1789 was somewhere on
now Derne Street, there was a flight of wooden steps, ten
Cambridge Street.
or fifteen in number, leading part way up the hill. After
CAMBRIDGE STREET originally extended from Sudbury
that, one had to climb the rest of the way by aid of the
Street to the water, ending in a marsh, the present Charles
footholes that had been worn in the surface, along a wide
Street. It was not until after 1800 that that part between
path worn bare by the feet to the top, where was also a
Bowdoin Square and Sudbury Street was included in
space some fifty feet square, worn bare of sod. In the
Court Street. According to the Book of Possessions the
midst of this space stood the monument."
estates were in the New Field. In 1647 there was ordered
Cotton Hill, the eastern peak of Tramount, is now the
"a highway of twelve feet through Mrs. Stoughton's
site of Pemberton Square, and the West Hill sloped down
ground and Richard Cook's and Thomas Buttolph's to the
Mount Vernon Street to the water, now much reduced in
end of the lots to Thomas Munt's ground." It was known
height. At or near the foot was what was called "Black-
by various names- "The lane leading to several men's en-
stone Point."
closures," "highway leading into Century Field among
Mr. Nathaniel I. Bowditch, the noted conveyancer,
the pastures," "common way leading to the Bowling
has so graphically told the story of the estates of the early
Green," "way running by the windmill"; in 1708 named
inhabitants north of Beacon Street and west of Tremont
Cambridge Street.
and Sudbury streets that it would be superfluous to go
over the same ground here, and the following items con-
We will begin with the estates lying north of Cambridge
Street and west of Sudbury Street. James Hawkins, brick-
cerning the pastures are in a great measure taken from his
articles signed "Gleaner," in the Boston Transcript
layer, bought the house and garden of William Kirby in
1652, and laid out a lane to accommodate his children's
of 1855, and reprinted in the fifth report of the Record
houses. It was called "the highway leading to Hawkins
Commissioners. For many years this part of the
town remained unimproved with the exception of
pasture," and "an eight foot way that runs to Captain
the estates on Tremont and Beacon Streets. The
Gerrishes pasture"; also called "Tattle Street," and, in
tract was called "Sentry Field," or the "new field"
1732, HAWKINS STREET. Part of this pasture through
the Kneeland branch remained in the family until 1791.
OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON
215
was twice married and had five children by his second
wife, who later married Rev. Richard Mather, and his
daughter Maria married Mather's son, Increase Mather.
Cotton died in 1652.
In 1664 the heirs of Cotton sold the south part of the
estate to John Hull and in 1677 Hull bought the
residue which had been sold to Nicholas Paige.
In 1683 Samuel Sewall and wife Hannah (Hull)
inherited, and the house was occupied by various ten-
ants, but apparently not by Sewall himself. May
1716, a letter from Christopher Taylor to Sewall
says: "Your house is now altered into two tene-
ments. I have let the lower part to Mr. Harris,
the minister, who comes in this day: I live in
the upper end." In 1729 Sewall's daughter, Judith,
wife of William Cooper, inherited, and at her death
in 1758 all was conveyed to William Vassall, who was a
prominent royalist and lived here until the Revolution.
In 1790 Patrick Jeffrey bought this with adjoining prop-
erty and it was sold to Gardiner Greene in 1803. He was
one of the wealthiest men in the state, and made a beauti-
ful estate on this spot. It has often been described and
pictured. He lived here until his death in 1832, and Pat-
rick Jackson bought it for investment in 1835. Patrick
Jeffrey married Mary Haley in Boston in 1786. She was
the widow of Alderman Haley of London, and sister of the
celebrated John Wilkes. It was a case of a rich widow
and a young husband. She soon returned to England,
while he remained in Boston and died in Milton in 1812,
aged sixty-four. Gardiner Greene married for his second
wife the daughter of Copley, the artist.
Daniel Maud, who was admitted to the church in 1635,
and who was the first school teacher next to Pormount,
had his house and garden, next south of Cotton, and also
220
THE CROOKED AND NARROW STREETS
OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON
221
which Thomas Hancock bought in 1737 and where he built
Blackstone released all his land to the town except
the historic Hancock house, which his nephew John Han-
six acres which he sold to Richard Pepys, as
cock inherited in 1764. March 30, 1776, Edmund Quincy
deposed by Anne Pollard in 1711, who said that
wrote to his daughter Dorothy, wife of John Hancock,
Pepys built the house and rented it to her hus-
that General Pigot, who lived in the house during the
band, William Pollard, and that Blackstone frequently
winter, had left it in a cleanly state. About 1828 it was
resorted to their house during the fourteen years they
a boarding house, and it was torn down in 1863.
lived there. All of this came to Thomas Bannister in
In 1692 Samuel Sewall bought what he called his "Elm
1708-9, house, barn, stable, orchard, etc. Bannister now
pasture." It was purchased from various owners, and
owned from Walnut Street to Charles Street, and gave it
streets were laid out for development, but these proved to
the name of Mt. Pleasant. The old house which Bannister
be merely streets on paper, and the plan was never carried
bought with the East Pasture is now the site of the Somer-
out. The pasture consisted of about five acres and ex-
set Club. Nathaniel Cunningham acquired the whole
tended from Joy Street to just west of Walnut Street.
property through foreclosure of a mortgage, and his in-
Thomas Bannister bought it in 1732 and in 1791 the part
ventory mentions house, land, and pasture at the bottom
west of Walnut Street went to John Joy, who then owned
of the Common. A legal battle followed, and in 1769
all between Joy and Walnut Streets. In I770 Copley
Peter Chardon, as administrator of Cunningham, conveyed
bought the west part of the pasture.
it all to John Singleton Copley. In 1796, Copley,
The Francis East pasture was two and one-half acres,
then living in London, deeded his estate to Jonathan
and extended from Spruce Street to about halfway to
Mason, Harrison Gray Otis, and others, called the
Walnut Street. Thomas Bannister bought this in 1694,
"Mt. Vernon Proprietors," - rather a shrewd investment
and there was a house on the lot. John Singleton Copley,
on their part, as it was known to them that
the portrait painter, finally became the owner of
the new State House was soon to be built in
about eleven acres, made up of three divisions.
the neighborhood. In 1798 John Vinal on the west and
The west half of Sewall's Elm Pasture, the Francis
Charlès Cushing east of him were the owners and occupiers
East Pasture, and the Blackstone lot of six acres.
of two houses on this estate. The bounds of the Copley
Blackstone was a clergyman of the Church of England,
estate were approximately Beacon, Walnut, Pinckney, and
and was not in favor of the Puritans. He told them that he
Charles Streets.
could not join their church, for he left England to escape
PARK STREET was once a part of the Common. In I733
from the lords bishops, and would not serve the lords
openings into the Common were ordered, but in 1737
brethren here. He therefore removed from their juris-
the Common was "much broken by means of carts, etc.,
diction and went to Rhode Island. He and Roger Williams
passing and repassing on it, and it was ordered that there
were the first in that state, as he had been first in the
be but one entrance or passage for carts, coaches, etc., out
town of Boston. There is no actual evidence how
of Common Street into the Common to be left open near
long he had been in New England, nor in Boston.
the Granary to go up along by the Workhouse to Beacon
222
THE CROOKED AND NARROW STREETS
OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON
223
Street and that the other gaps be closed." It was called,
ready for occupation in I739. It was placed at the south-
late in the eighteenth century, Center Street and Sentry
west end of the house of correction and was one hundred
Street: in 1808, Park Street. In the early days it was
and forty by twenty by sixteen feet and built of brick.
set apart as the place for public buildings.
It was to be improved for the reception and employment
The almshouse stood on the northeast corner of Beacon
of the idle and the poor of the town.
Street. It was erected in 1660 by legacies and gifts, and
In 1712 a little house on Fort Hill was let by the town
the selectmen "were empowered to compound with work-
to Joseph Callender, for a granary. From that time the
men for the erecting and furnishing it." This building was
records show many orders for opening and leasing gran-
burned in 1684, and rebuilt of brick and stone in the form
aries, and their management. There was one at the North
of an L one hundred by one hundred by fourteen feet and
End, near the North Mill, at the end of Prince Street,
two stories high. "This to be a place where those in need
and that of Arthur Mason was on the east side of Tremont
of alms be sent to work." Before long it grew to be a
Street, between Winter and Bromfield Streets. In 1728
bridewell and house of correction, and in 1713 there was
it was voted to build a granary in the Common, next/the
a movement to restore it to its primitive and pious design
Burying Ground. It was near the corner of Tremont and
for the relief of the necessitous, and to build a house of
Park Streets and a few years later it was moved nearer
correction to separate those put in for vice and disorder.
the Burying Ground to accommodate the workhouse, and
But, with the exception of considering the subject, nothing
make the appearance and prospect better, Corn, rye,
was done until I72I. In I735 the ministers of the various
and flour were purchased and sold to the poor. It held
churches in the town were asked to take turns in preach-
twelve thousand bushels. In 1788 it was let to a com-
ing the gospel to the poor in the almshouse. In I742
pany of sail-cloth manufacturers, and in I791 Dr. Town-
there were IIO persons there, and in 1769, 230, with 40
send, the inspector of ashes, was the occupant. In 1796
in the workhouse proper subjects for the almshouse. In
the land was sold to Henry Jackson, all except the build-
I795 a committee of the town reported that an entire new
ing, which was to be removed. In 1798 it is in the tax
set of buildings should be erected and they had found a
list as owned by James Swan and occupied by five tenants
suitable location at West Boston, on the north side of
in stores. It was of four stories and of wood. Park Street
Leverett Street, at Barton's Point.
Church was built in 1809, The Granary was taken down
In 1721 the bridewell or house of correction was ordered
and removed to Commercial Point at the corner of Free-
to be erected by the County of Suffolk. It was placed next
port, Union, and Neponset Streets. It was fitted up for
to the Almshouse and the dimensions were about fifty by
a hotel called the "Tinion."
twenty by fourteen feet, and built of brick. Beside the
In 1801 the first three lots on "Centrey Street" next that
master, there was to be a whipper constantly in attend-
sold to Henry Jackson in 1796 were sold by the town
ance. A little later part of the house was given up for
to Arnold Welles, Peter C. Brooks, and Thomas H. Per-
the insane.
kins, and in 1803 the next two to Thomas Amory, which
The workhouse was first proposed in 1735, and was
included the Almshouse lot.
224 THE CROOKED AND NARROW STREETS
OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON
225
In 1637 there was a pound, and Richard Fairbanks was
about 78, Francis Hudson about 68, and William Lyther-
poundkeeper, and to be paid in proportion. In 1654-5
land about 76, being antient, and inhabitants of the town
Thomas Woodward sold land lying over against the new
of Boston from the time of the first planting and contin-
pinfold, at the entrance of the training green, which placed
uing so until this day, depose that about the year 1634
the pound on the west side of Tremont Street, a little
the then present inhabitants did treat and agree with Mr.
south of Beacon Street. In 1720 it was voted "to remove
William Blackstone for the purchase of this estate and
the pound into the common nigh the upper end of the
right of any lands lying within the sd neck of land called
burying place." This was not far from the almshouse.
Boston, and for the sd purchase agreed that every house-
In 737 "the most convenient place for erecting the pound
holder should pay six shillings which was accordingly col-
is at the northeast corner of the pasture belonging to the
lected, none paying less and some considerably more than
heirs of the late Thomas Fitch, and ordered placed there."
six shillings, and the sum collected was paid to Mr.
This was near Boylston Street. In 1786 it was placed at
William Blackstone to his full content and satisfaction.
the North End, where the granary was, and it was still
In consideration thereof he sold to the then inhabitants
there in 1798, when it was to be repaired.
and their heirs and assigns his whole right in all lands
DAVIES LANE ran across the State House lot to the
within the Neck, reserving only unto himself about
orchard of Humphrey Davy, which later became the
six acres of land on the point commonly called Blackstone's
property of James Allen. In 1798 it was "the way from
Point, on part thereof his dwelling house stood. After
Beacon Street to Allen's orchard." It is now built over
which purchase the town laid out a place for a trayning
or included in other streets.
field which ever since and now is used for that purpose,
CHESTNUT and WALNUT STREETS were both laid out
and for the feeding of cattle. We further testify that
by the Mt. Vernon Proprietors in 1799.
Mr. Blackstone bought a stock of COWS with the money he
CHARLES STREET. In 794 the Selectmen were to lay
received and removed and dwelt near Providence."
out a street sixty feet wide from Pleasant Street along the
The original bounds extended to Beacon Street its full
easterly side of land granted for ropewalks, over the
length, and the first infringement was in 1660, when the
marsh, towards Beacon Street, in order to meet a road
almshouse was built and the Granary Burying Ground
that may be opened from West Boston Bridge.
laid out. The houses on Tremont Street between School
and Boylston Streets, were considered as in the Common,
which included the gun house and schoolhouse. Many
THE COMMON
orders were passed concerning the Common. All who
were admitted inhabitants were to have equal rights of
"I April 1633 it was agreed that Mr. William Black-
commonage. There was a COW keeper and a town bull.
stone shall have fifty acres of ground set out for him near
In 1649 Thomas Painter had leave to erect a mill on Fox
to his house in Boston." "June IO 1684 the deposition of
Hill, which was on what is now the Public Garden. In
John Odlin, age about 82 years, Robert Walker
1652 James and Peter Oliver had leave to set up a wind-
226 THE CROOKED AND NARROW STREETS
OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON
227
mill on the top of the hill between the town and Fox Hill.
to the Common." September I, 1794, "a piece
In 1703 "a watch house and a centry house were to stand
of marsh land and flat at the bottom of the Common
nigh the powder house on the Common."
is granted to the owners of the ropewalks, which were
The training was a great source of recreation as well
burned in Pearl Street, including the whole or such part
as discipline, and great importance was attached to the
of Fox Hill as may fall within the bounds specified."
militia, largely made up of volunteers. The Common was
These ropewalks were repurchased by the city in 1824.
their training field. It was the playground of the town,
There were five of them, and they extended from Pleasant
and it would not be possible to tell in a short space of all
Street across what is now the Public Garden.
the happenings on this historic spot. In 1676 there were
eight Indians shot to death upon Windmill Hill. There
has been much speculation as to the gallows. We do
know that it was on the neck, and the only time that
the records mention gallows on the Common was Novem-
ber 21, 1787, when "Sheriff Henderson hath liberty of a
gallows at the lower end of the Common for the execution
of one Shean." In 1723, "sixty-three chiefs came from
Albany. They had an OX given to them, which they killed
with bows and arrows, and in the evening a fire was made
on the Common, and a kettle hung over it, in which part
of sd OX was boiled, and they danced after their own man-
ner." At the entrance of the eighteenth century, Jan-
uary I, 1700-I, just about break of day, Jacob Amsden
and three other trumpeters gave a blast with their trum-
pets on the Common in rear of Mr. Alford's. Duels were
frequently fought here. In 1756 land was bought of
Andrew Oliver, Jr., late Colonel Fitch's pasture, at the
bottom of the Common for a burying place. This was
on Boylston Street. September 21, 1740, George Whit-
field preached to about fifteen thousand people on
the Common, and again October I2. October 799
"several male and female rogues were publicly
whipped and pilloried on Friday last," says the
Boston Gazette. "We are glad that the scene for
their punishment has been removed from State Street
2/26/19
PH0006416
Form 10-300
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
STATE:
(Rev. 6-72)
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Massachusetts
COUNTY:
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
Suffolk
INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM
FOR NPS USE ONLY
ENTRY DATE
(Type all entries complete applicable sections)
MAY 1 1974
1. NAME
COMMON:
Park Street District
(use Sor publication)
AND/OR HISTORIC:
SAME
APR
2. LOCATION
STREET AND NUMBER:
8. and
Tremont Street, Park Street, Beacon Streets
CITY OR TOWN:
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
Boston
9th
STATE
CODE
COUNTY:
CODE
Massachusetts
025
Suffolk
025
3. CLASSIFICATION
CATEGORY
ACCESSIBLE
OWNERSHIP
STATUS
(Check One)
TO THE PUBLIC
District
Building
Public
Public Acquisition:
Occupied
Yes:
Site
Structure
Private
In Process
Restricted
Unoccupied
Both
Being Considered
Unrestricted
Object
Preservation work
No
in progress
PRESENT USE (Check One or More as Appropriate)
Agricultural
Government
Park
Transportation
Comments
Commercial
Industrial
Private Residence
Other (Specify)
Educational
Military
Religious
Cemetery
Entertainment
Museum
Scientific
4. OWNER OF PROPERTY
OWNER'S NAME:
Public and Private
STREET AND NUMBER:
CITY OR TOWN:
STATE:
CODE
Boston
Massachusetts
025
5. LOCATION OF LEGAL DESCRIPTION
COURTHOUSE REGISTRY OF DEEDS, ETC:
Registry of Deeds
STREET AND NUMBER:
Suffolk County Court House
CITY OR TOWN:
STATE
CODE
Boston
Massachusetts
025
6. REPRESENTATION IN EXISTING SURVEYS
TITLE OF SURVEY:
(1) Inventory of Historic Assets of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
DATE OF SURVEY:
Federal
State
County
Local
DEPOSITORY FOR SURVEY RECORDS:
Massachusetts Historical Commission (617) 727-8470
NUMBER
STREET AND NUMBER:
40 Beacon Street
CITY OR TOWN:
STATE:
CODE
Boston
Massachusetts
025
8. SIGNIFICANCE
PERIOD (Check One or More as Appropriate)
Pre-Columbian
16th Century
18th Century
20th Century
15th Century
17th Century
19th Century
SPECIFIC DATE(S) (If Applicable and Known)
AREAS OF SIGNIFICANCE (Check One or More as Appropriate)
Aboriginal
Education
Political
Urban Planning
Prehistoric
Engineering
Religion/Phi.
Other (Specify)
Historic
Industry
losophy
Agriculture
Invention
Science
Architecture
Landscape
Sculpture
Art
Architecture
Social/Human.
Commerce
Literature
itarian
Communications
Military
Theater
Conservation
Music
Transportation
STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
The Park Street District is significant as reflecting a plan by
Charles Bulfinch to improve the eastern outskirts of the Boston Common
and southern approach to the newly constructed State House.
By
intro-
ducing the European system and standards of town planning, he designed a
residential block of nine buildings which complimented the new State
House and combined two existing urban spaces: the Common and the
Granary Burying Ground Bulfinch's plan was strictly adhered to since
he held the post of Chief Selectman which he used to support his archi-
tectural and design recommendations. The result, an elegant avenue
lined with Federal -style houses, initiated the transformation of the
entire surroundings Residents were some of the most respected leaders
of the 19th century, such as: Governor Christopher Gore; Governor Henry
Joseph Gardner; Peter Chardon Brooks; George Cabot; Samuel Dexter. The
Park Street Church designed by Peter Banner in 1809 solidified the
block.
40 date, only the Church and the Armory-Ticknor house, 9 Park
Street, remain from the original development; yet the principal elements
of design set by Bulfinch can still be recognized. The later buildings
which replaced the Federal style forbearers have been designed to respect
the two original structures located on each corner. A continuity is
existant due to similarity in set back, material, height, and scale.
The arrangement provides a distinguished architectural frame for the
eastern section of the Common and border of the Granary Burying Ground;
the church with its commanding steeple still marks the well-known
Brimstone Corner from many other parts of Boston. The main feature of
this district lies in its unquestionable grace and dignity appropriate
for the environment around the State House.
(See continuation sheets #3 & 4)
Park Street District
Form 10-300°
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
STATE
(July 1969)
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
APR
Massachusetts
3
1974
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
COUNTY
INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM
Suffolk
FOR NPS USE ONLY
#1
ENTRY NUMBER
(Continuation Sheet)
DATE
MAY
(Number all entries)
T. Description
(2) Park Street Church, 119 Tremont Street
The Park Street Church was designed by Peter Banner in 1809, imme-
diately after the town Granary was cleared from the site. This red-
brick church with wooden steeple is in the form of a New England meeting
house. The nave extends along Park Street and is marked by tall round
headed windows set in embrasures which relate to the Palladian window above
the main entrance. The central entry on Park Street is flanked by two
bowed vestibules. The most commanding feature is the wooden Wren type
steeple which rises 217' above the ground. The steeple with classic
ornament is composed of three polygonal belfrys, a small polygonal
lantern, and spire.
(3) Amory-Ticknor House, 9-10 Park Street, 22-22A Beacon Street
The Amory-Ticknor House, built in 1804, was originally a large
brick Federal style mansion of four stories on the corner of Park and
Beacon Streets. The basic cube mass was broken by three stories of
rectilinear shaped windows and the characteristic square fourth story
windows. A balustrade over the simple dentil cornice concealed the
roof. The prominent decorative feature of the front facade (Park Street)
consisted of wrought iron balconies around the first and second story
windows. Two bay windows set in slightly relieved archways were on each
side of the center Park Street entrance, which consisted of a semi-
circular fan light with side lights flanking the door. Extending over
the entry was an Adam-style porch approached by curving steps with a
light iron railing. In 1812, a Greek Revival porch was constructed on
the Beacon Street facade to indicate a recent division in ownership.
To date, alterations which occurred during the late 19th century
have remained. The ground floor level of both Beacon and Park Street
facades was changed by the addition of projecting display windows,
leaving only the Park Street porch and steps. Queen Anne style oriels
were added to the third and fourth story windows of both facades. The
dentil cornice was replaced with a heavy iron cornice and only a small
section of the balustrade remains under an addition of three gable dor-
mers to the Park Street roof.
MINOR ELEMENTS
(6) Union Club, 7 and 8 Park Street
These two red brick structures, both five stories, were united in
1896 by the architect Henry B. Ball to provide the Union Club with
larger facilities. To date, the structure appears as one, with similar
facade treatment on both units, seven bays wide in total, with con-
tinuous wrought iron balconies on the upper stories. Distinction
between the two structures can still be observed at the roof line. At 7
Park Street, the fifth story windows are set in brownstone posts and
capped by a brownstone balustrade. Number 8 Park Street features a
front gable (constructed over two dormer windows) on one side of the
roof placed next to two dormers, which still exist from the original
design.
GPO 921.724
Park Street District
Form 10-300a
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
STATE
(July 1969)
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Massachusetts
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
COUNTY
INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM
Suffolk
FOR NPS USE ONLY
(Continuation Sheet) #2
ENTRY NUMBER
DATE
MAY 1
1874
(Number all entries)
7. Description
(7) Claflin Building, 18-20 Beacon Street
This brownstone structure, designed by William G. Preston in 1883,
stands six stories high. The second story windows are set into three
prominent round headed embrasures, between which are two small copper
medallion portraits of Jan Van Eyke and Albrect Durer. The three middle
stories have oriels flanking paired double hung windows, while the final
story is comprised of windows set between brownstone posts.
(8) Congregational House, 14 Beacon Street
This eight story red-brick, sandstone trim building was erected in
1898 from the designs of Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge. The main body of
the three bay structure is organized in three round headed embrasures
which end with a stone balustrade over a bracketed stone cornice. Four
carved stone tablets at the second storey are bas-reliefs of scenes from
colonial history which illustrate fundamental principles of religion,
education, law and worship.
APR
S
974
Park Street District
Form 10-300a
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
STATE
(July 1969)
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Massachusetts
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
COUNTY
Suffolk
INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM
FOR NPS USE ONLY
#3
ENTRY NUMBER
DATE
(Continuation Sheet)
1
1974
(Number ell-enfree)
8. Significance
MAJOR ELEMENTS
(1) Granary Burying Ground, 83-115 Tremont Street
The Granary Burying Ground was established in 1660 when the King's
Chapel Burial Ground became over-crowded. First called the South Burial
Ground, its subsequent name was derived from its geographic location
next to the town Granary which stood on the site of the Park Street
Church. Within this cemetery are the remains of more distinguished
Bostonians of the Colonial era than any other burial ground in the city.
Amongst the most eminent buried here are: Peter Faneuil, Uriah Cotting,
Robert Treat Paine, Paul Revere, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin's
parents, and the victims of the Boston Mastacre.
The designs carved on the major monuments, as well as those on the
slate markers of the ordinary citizens, are excellent examples of early
New England gravestones and provide an illustrated history of this folk
art.
(2) Park Street Church, 119 Tremont Street
In the colonial settlement, the lot of the Park Street Church was
occupied by the town Granary, a repository of grain for the poor and
needy, located next to the Granary Burying Ground. Its demolition in
1809 provided ample space for the newly founded Park Street Church
Society's new meeting house. The resultant red-brick church with its
graceful steeple remains a tribute to its English architect, Peter
Banner, and his adaptation of a Christopher Wren design. The delicately
carved capitals of the steeple are the handiwork of Solomon Willard,
architect of the Bunker Hill Monument.
The church has long been associated with important civic, educa-
tional, and social issues. During the War of 1812, brimstone, used in
making gun powder, was stored in the crypt which lead to the name
"Brimstone Corner" for this locality. (However, Boston legend attri-
butes the origin of "Brimstone Corner" to the fervid doctrines preached
within the church). In 1829, William Lloyd Garrison gave his first
abolitionist address in Boston here. Many well-known societies reflecting
important social movements were founded in this church: in 1815, the
Handel and Hayden Society of Boston; in 1824, the Prison Discipline
Society; in 1826, the American Temperance Society; in 1889, the Animal
Rescue League.
(3) Amory-Ticknor House, 9-10 Park Street and 22-22A Beacon Street
The Amory-Ticknor house was the first house on Park Street erected
from the plans of Charles Bulfinch in 1804. Designed for Thomas Amory,
Esq., a Boston Merchant, it was referred to as "Amory's Folly' because
of its unusual size and pretentiodsness. Financial losses forced Thomas
Amory to dispose of the dwelling soon after its completion and the house
was divided into two units to defer expenses. Among the many notable
occupants, George Ticknor's residency in the easterly portion is best
known. Mr. Ticknor, the author of "History of Spanish Literature" and a
founder of the Boston Public Library, remained there from 1830 to 1871.
GPO 921-724
Park Street District
Form 10-300a
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
STATE
(July 1969)
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Massachusetts
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
COUNTY
Suffolk
INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM
FOR NPS USE ONLY
(Continuation Sheet) #4
ENTRY NUMBER
DATE
MAY
(Number all entries)
8. Significance
MINOR ELEMENTS
(6) Union Club, 7 and 8 Park Street
The exact date and architect of these two red brick buildings
remain unknown. The estate at 8 Park Street was best known in the 19th
century as the residence of the Honorable Abbott Lawrence, whose family
remained there from 1836 to 1863, when the property was leased to the
Union Club.
The original property and subsequent estate at 7 Park Street was
owned by financier John Gore since 1803. In 1896, after a succession of
prominent owners, 7 Park/Street was purchased by the Union Club and
joined with 8 Park Street. The Union Club was established in 1863 by
former members of the Somerset Club who were politically adhorent of the
criticism of President Lincoln and his abolition policy.
(7) Claflin Building, 18-20 Beacon Street
The structure was designed by William Preston in 1883 for Governor
William Claflin, Governor of Massachusetts between 1869 and 1872.
During his lifetime (1818-1905) he was identified with many philanthropic
movements and educational institutions including Boston University and
Wellesley College.
(8) Congregational House, 14 Beacon Street
The Congregational House was designed by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge
in 1898 to meet the expanding spatial requirements of the American
Congregational Association. The Association was founded in 1853 to
gather within one building all the Congregational societies located in
Boston and also to establish a library to protect the original Puritan
literature.
APR 3 1974
GPO 921-724
Park Street District
Form 10-300g
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
STATE
(July 1969)
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Massachusetts
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
COUNTY
Suffolk
INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM
FOR NPS USE ONLY
(Continuation Sheet) #5
ENTRY NUMBER
DATE
1
1974
(Number all entries)
9. Bibliographical cont'd.
6. Drake, Samuel Adams; Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston,
Charles E. Tuttle Co., Rutland, Vermont, 1971.
7.
Kirker, Harold; The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, Harvard University
Press, 1969.
8. Kirker, Harold and Kirker James; Bulfinch's Boston, 1787-1817; New York:
Oxford University Press, 1964.
9.
Lawrence, Robert M. ; Old Park Street and Its Vicinity; Boston, 1922.
10. Newton Graphic, Obiturary of Governor Will Claflin, Newton, 1905.
11. Photographic Collections: Bostonian Society; Boston Athenaeum.
12. Thorndike, F. Lothrop; Past Members of The Union Club and A Brief
Sketch of the History of the Club, Boston, 1893.
13. Whitehill, Walter M., , The Neighborhood of the Tavern Club, 1930-1971,
Bostonian Society Picture Book, 1971.
14. Williams, Alex; A Social History of Greater Boston Clubs, Barre,
Massachusetts, 1970.
6. Existing Surveys cont'd.
(2)
Title: Historic American Building Survey, Mass.-175; Mass. -631/
Date: 1934, 1935; n.d.
Federal Survey
Depository: Department of Prints, Library of Congress
Address:
Washington, D. C. 20540
Code:
011
GPO 921-724
Park
Street
#4 Park Street residence
at
1/26/2005
The
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Robert Shackleton. 1917.
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CHAPTER IX
THE DISTINCTIVE PARK STREET CORNER
HE unusual prominence of monuments to ministers in Boston might at first
thought, be ascribed by some to the fact of this being a woman's city; but
of course, as any Bostonian would at once tell you, it is really because of
the unusual prominence of ministers in the development and life of the city.
There is the memorial to Phillips Brooks beside his church, at a busy edge
of Copley Square, he being set within a canopied marble niche, garbed in
his bishop's robes, with an angelic figure behind him: and not far away,
at
the nearest corner of the Public Garden, there is niched, like a cinque-cento
saint, the long-gowned figure of William Ellery Channing. Entirely unlike both of these, in its
exceedingly un-saint-like appearance, is the monument to another minister, Edward Everett
Hale, at a Charles Street entrance to the Public Garden, for he stands in wait in the shrubs, just
inside the gate, in every-day clothes and long loose overcoat, stooping, as if pausing for a
moment in his walk, with his old-fashioned beaver hat in one hand and his cane in the other; a
man honorably known to all Americans for his "Man without a Country."
To commemorate not only the clerical profession but the medical, there is within the Public
Garden a monument that gave Holmes the inspiration for a brilliant bit of wit. The monument
was designed to commemorate the discovery of Ether, the mastering of the whole problem of
consciousness of pain in surgery, but while it was under construction a fierce and never-to-be-
settled controversy arose as to which of two claimant physicians was really the discoverer, and
SO the monument was completed with the name of the man omitted, which led Holmes promptly
to suggest, with that obviousness which marks all great wit, that it was not SO much a
monument to Ether as to Either.
There is an exceedingly prominent monument, the big equestrian of General Hooker, set up
in front of the State House, which is also interesting on account of what is left off, for there is
nothing but the single word "Hooker"; as if, one may fairly suppose, when they came to the
matter of inscription, it was remembered that the only battle of consequence in which General
Hooker commanded was the terrible defeat of Chancellorsville. It is sometimes delightfully
wise to have brief inscriptions on statues. After all, New England was not fortunate in
developing great military leaders in the Civil war, in spite of her prominence in the events and
discussions preceding the struggle and in spite of the vast number of her men who gallantly
went to the front; she developed no Grant or Thomas or Sherman; and already she has
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practically hidden, off on one side of the State House, statues of the never-prominent
General Banks and General Devens. But monumenting in haste and repenting at leisure is
something far older than America. And it is a favorite Boston belief, long held and often
expressed, that if she should set up statues to all her distinguished sons there would be no room
left in which people could move about.
Diagonally across from the Hooker monument, just away from the corner of Park and
Beacon Streets, close to the altered Ticknor homestead, is a little house, tucked in among
towering business buildings and faced by a great hotel: and this house, still a home, is filled
with paintings collected years ago in Europe. It stood before the Revolution (its front has been
changed), and about 1830 was the home of Chester Harding, the New England-born,
backwoods artist who, after making his success in Paris - but it was a Paris in Kentucky -
painted the great ones of America and of England, including judges and senators and some half
dozen of the dukes, and then came back to Boston. For some time while in Boston he SO
eclipsed Gilbert Stuart that that great painter was wont to ask, looking at his own empty studio
and knowing that Harding's was thronged, "How rages the Harding fever?"
Close by is the Athenaeum, most charming and delightful of libraries, full of serenity and
repose and rich in its great collection of books. Not only does it possess the workable and
readable books of recent years, but precious prints and books and manuscripts of the past, and
such treasure as the greater part of the library of George Washington, each book, with his
signature and bookplate, deposited here after its purchase in 1849 by "seventy gentlemen of
Boston, Cambridge and Salem," who contributed fifty dollars each to obtain it. To the
Bostonian of tradition, the Athenaeum still proudly represents the essence of the city; the
building is admirably impressive outwardly, it is attractive and full of atmosphere within, and it
is rich in the very spirit of the best of Boston. Its main entrance has a replica of Houdon's life-
size statue of Washington, a replica, modeled by Houdon himself, of the original, which was
made for the State of Virginia and is preserved at Richmond; Houdon having come to America
to make a statue of Washington, at the request of Franklin, who knew him in Paris.
The main reading-room, occupying the great upper floor, is of unusual architectural beauty,
with its vaulted roof, its pillars and alcoves, its general fineness and comfort. The library is
peculiarly fitted to the needs of the scholar, and membership in it, to be a "proprietor," as is the
term, is highly esteemed.
The great rear windows of the Athenaeum look down into the ancient deep-shaded Granary
Burying Ground, and off at one side, also looking down into the burying-ground, are the
windows of that monthly, the Atlantic, which is itself another of the treasured belongings of
Boston: and especially is the bowed window noticeable when one learns that it is the window of
the oval room in which James Russell Lowell reigned as editor, and where he still looks down
benignantly from the wall, like a patron saint: and although one may do full honor to his
memory and to his fine influence, the profuse and double-pointed whiskers do rouse the
recollection of the little girl who asked: "But what are the points for?"
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There are few more impressive burying-grounds in the world than the Granary, fronting out
on busy Tremont Street and hemmed in on its other sides by towering business structures, by
the phalanxed windows of the quiet Athenaeum, by the publishing buildings, and by the old
Park Street Church. The Granary has impressiveness, it even has beauty, and it has an aloofness
that comes from its being some three feet or SO above the level of the thronging sidewalk that it
adjoins.
Anciently a granary actually stood here, but the place long since came to be a crowded
human granary instead; and what a roll of fascinating old-time names might be called here!
Hancock, Sewall, Bellingham, Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Franklin (the parents of Benjamin
Franklin are buried here), Cushing, Phillips, Otis, Revere! There are royal governors, patriot
governors, signers of the Declaration, orators, leaders among the citizens - it would be a long,
long roll! And there would be a strange unexpectedness if responses should come, for many of
the stones in this graveyard were long ago indiscriminately changed about. At one time they
were even tidied and set in rows to meet the landscape-gardening and grass-mowing proclivities
of a city official! There was some mild objection to this, but nothing was done to check or
correct the changing, and when, long afterwards, people began to speak strongly about it, it was
too late, for records had not been kept.
Although Boston thinks a great deal of the people of the past, they would seem to have
acquired somewhat careless habits of caring for their remains. Gilbert Stuart was mislaid. Major
Pitcairn was lost, and it was probably a substitute body that was sent back to England as his, to
rest in Westminster. The stones on Copp's Hill were changed about or used for doorsteps. And
here in the Granary the municipal idiosyncrasy has been even more striking. It was Oliver
Wendell Holmes who remarked of this graveyard, that the stones really tell the truth when they
say "Here lies."
But although this carelessness of the past needs to be known it does not affect the dignity,
the solemnity, the impressiveness of the place. It merely means that the visitor must be content
to honor these worthies of the past in mass rather than in detail. They are all there. They all lie
somewhere within the broad enclosure. Upon their confused resting-places the tall office
buildings look down, and beside them the public go hurrying along the crowded sidewalk. They
are somewhere here, beneath the shade of the thickly clustered horse-chestnuts and honey
locusts, and it really is not worth while to try and pick out the still properly marked graves from
the mistaken ones.
One of the two young duellists of whom Holmes wrote, who fought to the death on the
Common, is buried here, and it is curious that this seems to be better remembered, by most
people, than does the fact that here were buried SO many great and famous folk, although that
young duellist has no claim to fame except that of dying in a duel which seized upon the
imagination of the man whose personality permeates all Boston.
A high, open, iron fence standing on a low, dark retaining wall, separates the burying-
ground from the street, and the entrance is through a black and gloomy stone arch, with a
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Book of Boston: Chapter 9
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suggestion of the Egyptian in style, flanked at either end of the wall by a black stone pillar.
It is pleasant to notice that with such a great area of office buildings looking down into this
resting place of American dead, there is scarcely a business sign to be seen, although the
opportunity and temptation are SO great. It is a fine example of business restraint. Indeed, one at
first thinks that there is absolutely no sign at all, for it is only by carefully looking for them that
two or three very little ones are found.
From the Athenaeum itself, from a little high-perched coign of vantage there, a little outside
summer reading-place which fairly overhangs the back of the Granary graveyard, the most
striking of all views of the inclosure may be had, for from this point one looks down through
the treetops on curving lines of little dull-colored headstones, standing shoulder to shoulder on
the green dark grass, under the gloomy trees, like gloomy spirits of New England consciences
forever looking out, with drooping shoulders, through the great iron fence, upon the passing of
their descendants and successors.
The Granary burying-ground antedates the church beside it, the fine old building, with
Christopher Wren-like steeple, known as the Park Street Church. And one is tempted to think of
this church as, on the whole, the most typically Bostonian building of Boston. On its prominent
corner at the foot of the slope leading up to the State House, and with its windows looking out
on one side over the Common, and on the other one the Granary ground, it seems as if it had
grown there, SO natural it is, SO easy, SO graceful, SO felicitous, standing there in SO sweet a
pride.
The delightful spire is notable, not only for the perfection of its upper proportions but also
in not rising from the building itself but, instead, forming the extension of a tower that itself
rises from the ground, church and tower being connected by pillared curves, quadrant-like,
which architecturally unite them into an indivisible whole, with no sign of separation. There
could not be a more charmingly picturesque corner, for the Common, than is made by this SO
charming and picturesque a church.
For many years the building was painted, and even in its dull drab was attractive, but it has
recently been vastly improved, as a number of other old Boston buildings have similarly been
improved, by the cleaning of all the paint from the brick and by the painting anew of all the
wood; thus restored to its original design the church now positively sparkles in its white paint
and mellow red brick.
Park Street Church is not SO old as are several others in Boston, for it dates back only to a
little more than a century ago, but in its short life it has not been without claims to distinction;
the first public address of William Lloyd Garrison was delivered in this building, and here for
the first time the hymn "America" was publicly sung.
Beneath the church are a gay-looking flower-shop and picturesque tea-rooms, and they
seem pleasantly Bostonian in their churchly location, for until recent years a bookstore was
quartered in the basement of the Old South Church, and I have noticed a furniture-packing shop
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Book of Boston: Chapter 9
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beneath a church at the foot of Beacon Hill, and it used to be, when the Hollis Street Church
was standing, that its pastor, a powerful advocate of prohibition, used to deliver attacks on drink
at the same time that the vaults beneath his feet were rented by three pillars of his church,
distillers, for the storage of casks, giving rise to the still-remembered epigram:
"Above, the spirit Divine,
Below, the spirits of wine."
The corner where stands SO felicitously the altogether attractive Park Street Church has
itself given rise to a flash of real wit, especially notable as showing that Holmes did not utter
every witty Boston saying. For this came from a certain long-ago Appleton, brother-in-law of
Longfellow, famed as a humorist and bon vivant, a man of wealth and family but whose humor,
still remembered reiteratively, usually - took some such form as sailing for Europe, without
telling any one, on the very day that he was expected to be host or guest at a dinner. However,
the corner beside Park Street Church really inspired him to one excellent jest. For it is a very
windy corner, one of the windiest in all Boston, and Appleton dryly remarked one day that there
really ought to be a, shorn lamb tethered there!
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Search the Photograph and Manuscript Collection
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GENERAL INFO
OLD STATE HOUSE
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Item
Conservation Program
VW0001/-#000902
Number:
Collection
Boston Streets photograph collection, ca.
Title:
1855-1999
Item
000902
Number:
Creator:
Unknown
Title:
10-1 Park Street from the grounds of the
Massachusetts State House, 1919
Dates:
1919
Form/Genre:Albumen prints
Description: Elevated view east-southeast from the
grounds of the Massachusetts State House of
Park Street at the intersection of Park and
Beacon Streets. (Right to left) Flags, awnings
and wrought iron railings adorn the facades of
1-10 Park Street, which face southwest. The
Ticknor Building, located at 9 Park Street, is
visible along the left side of the photograph,
while Boston Common is included along the
right side of the photograph. Buildings lining
the west-northwest side of Tremont Street are
visible at the far southeast end of Park Street.
The Park Street Church steeple, located at the
northwest corner of Park and Tremont Streets,
is visible in the upper-portion of the
photograph. A fountain, street light, wrought
iron fencing and a statue of Daniel Webster
are located on the southeast grounds of the
Massachusetts State House. Automobiles fill
both Park and Beacon Streets, and
pedestrians are included in the photograph. A
man adjusts the light bulb that tops the street
light located on the northeast corner of
Beacon and Park Streets.
Geographic:
Massachusetts --Boston (Mass.) --Beacon Hill
(Mass.) --Washington Street Shopping District
--Beacon Street --Park Street --1 Park Street -
-3 Park Street --4 Park Square --5 Park Street
--6 Park Street --7 Park Street --8 Park Street
--9 Park Street --10 Park Street --2 Park
Street --Boston Common
Topic:
Buildings --Commercial buildings Businesses
--Flags --Awnings --Statues --Fountains --
Fences --Street lights --Parks --Commons
Government buildings --Trees -Automobiles -
-People --Pedestrians --Men -Steeples --
Railings
Personal:
Webster, Daniel --Ticknor, George
Corporate:
Notes:
Ticknor Building built, 1804
http://rfi.bostonhistory.org/boston/default.asp?IDCFile=/Boston/details.idc,SPECIFIC=873. 12/2/2009
MHs. Endicott tanily Papers. 1335.t. 22.
(Text after 1816 letters)
This house on Park Street, one of the best residences in
Boston at that time, looking out west acros3 the Common, became
my grandfather's home for the remainder of his life. His home
following his marriage to my grandmother had been in Pearl Street
and it was in Pearl Street that his and his wife's first children
were born, my mother's older brother, Samuel Gray Ward, being
their first child to be born in Park Street.
My grandfather prospered so well during his connection
with Mr. Goodhue that, with bad times threatening and having
had experience of the dangers and uncertainties involved in
the business of that period, largely still confined to long
sea voyages and the risks connected with them, he decided to
devote himself to the good management of what he had and to work
of a public nature, to his own satisfaction and bringing him the
regard of others.
When Thomas Wren Ward began, late in life, as he tells in
bis journal of that time, to gather together his early letters
and papers, he found many lost, leaving the record fragmentary,
with long gaps between. The following letters tell what little
we do know of that period, including the attitude he had taken
in his mature life on the subject of religion:
Insert letters from TWW to Wm.Ward of
Nov. 3, 1820, July 30, 1825
[GBDORR]
OLD PARK STREET AND
ITS VICINITY
PREFACE
BY
THE development of Park Street, from the time of its
origin in 1640 as a rude pathway leading across the
ROBERT MEANS LAWRENCE, M.D.
easterly part of the Common, through the present
State House grounds to the Beacon, may be con-
veniently divided into four periods. In the early
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
days the pressure of bovine hoofs was doubtless an
important factor in its maintenance as a well-trodden
trail up the incline to the summit of the hill. The
building of the Almshouse in 1662 marked the be-
ginning of the second period, which lasted about one
hundred and forty years, when Centry Street was
BIEN
lined with public buildings devoted to the care of the
worthy poor, vagrants, and criminals. Space was also
reserved for the impounding of stray animals. The
third or residential period included practically the
whole of the nineteenth century, when Park Street
was built up with the homes of many prominent cit-
izens. The houses numbered one to four, as also
number nine, the Amory-Ticknor dwelling, were
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
built in 1804, and the others shortly thereafter. Some
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
of these were reconstructed wholly or in part by later
The Riberside Press Cambridge
owners in conformity with the Bulfinch style of ar-
1922
chitecture. Finally, within recent times, mercantile
interests have acquired control of a majority of the
vii
Note: The definitive study of
the location, residences, and
family inter -relations lips of
the) exceptional location.
PREFACE
estates; and the year 1907 marked the disappearance
of the last resident on this street. Park Street Church
was built in 1809 on the site of the Granary.
Among the many to whom the writer is indebted
CONTENTS
for assistance are J. Collins Warren, M.D.; Bernard
P. Verne, Esq.; Walter K. Watkins, Esq.; Miss Mar-
BEACON HILL
1
garet Fitzhugh Browne, Miss Katharine P. Loring,
BEACON STREET
11
Miss Jane L. Motley, Mrs. Charles H. Gibson, Mrs.
THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF THE STATE
Francis J. Moors, Miss Annie H. Thwing, Dean Rous-
HOUSE
20
maniere; and Messrs. Charles K. Bolton, Alexander
PARK STREET
24
Corbett, Jr.; Frank H. Chase, George Francis Dow,
THE ALMSHOUSE
32
Edward Dunham, William Lyman Johnson, Julius
THE TOWN POUND
37
E. Tuttle, Charles F. Read, George A. Sawyer,
THE BRIDEWELL
39
Francis Manning, Andrew McCance, and William
THE WORKHOUSE
41
THE PUBLIC GRANARY
B. Clarke.
45
THE GRANARY BURYING-GROUND
47
NUMBER ONE PARK STREET
177 Bay State Road, Boston
51
APRIL, 1922
NUMBER Two PARK STREET
55
NUMBER THREE PARK STREET
58
NUMBER FOUR PARK STREET
62
NUMBER FIVE PARK STREET
64
NUMBER Six PARK STREET
69
NUMBER SEVEN PARK STREET
75
THE UNION CLUB HOUSE
79
THE AMORY-TICKNOR HOUSE - NUMBER NINE PARK
STREET
81
REMINISCENCES OF PARK STREET, BY J. COLLINS
WARREN, M.D.
98
PARK STREET CHURCH
115
ix
CONTENTS
THE ESTATES NUMBERED EIGHTEEN AND TWENTY ON
THE SOUTH SIDE OF BEACON STREET
123
NUMBER SIXTEEN BEACON STREET
125
NUMBERS TWELVE AND FOURTEEN BEACON STREET
130
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE ATHENEUM LOT - NUMBER TEN AND A HALF
BEACON STREET
131
PARK STREET CHURCH AND PARK STREET ABOUT 1812
THE MOLINEAUX ESTATE
133
Colored Frontispiece
THE BOWDOIN ESTATE
139
From a fireboard in the Collections of the Bostonian Society
THE BROMFIELD HOMESTEAD
143
PARK, BEACON, AND TREMONT STREETS IN 1722
24
THE HINCKLEY MANSION-HOUSE
147
From an ideal sketch based on Bonner's Map and surveys in the
THE SEARS ESTATE
152
City Engineer's Office, Boston. By courtesy of Dr. James B.
Ayer
THE LLOYD MANSION-HOUSE
154
THE PADDOCK ELMS
157
VIEW OF PARK STREET FROM THE STATE HOUSE
52
THE TREES ON THE COMMON
160
THE OLD GATE AT THE CORNER OF PARK AND TRE-
THE GINGKO TREE ON THE COMMON
162
MONT STREETS
98
ULMUS CAMPESTRIS VENERABILIS
164
PARK STREET CHURCH ABOUT 1870
116
INDEX
165
From a photograph owned by Dr. J. Collins Warren
Old Park Street and its Vicenity
NUMBER THREE PARK STREET
Robert u. Lowrexee, U.D.
of John Sullivan, of Limerick, Ireland; and a son of
Boston: Houghton Hifflin Co., 1922
James, who was Attorney-General of the Bay State
in 1790. Richard Sullivan was a native of Groton,
NUMBER THREE PARK STREET
and a member of the Harvard Class of 1798. He
served as an Overseer of the College for thirty-two
PETER CHARDON BROOKS, a distinguished merchant
years. He was admitted to the Bar in July, 1801;
and philanthropist, of Boston, appears to have been
but having an independent fortune, did not continue
the first owner of this property. He was a son of Ed-
long in the practice of law. During the War of 1812
ward Brooks, A.M., of Medford. Beginning business
he was second in command of a cavalry troop, called
as an insurance broker, he became President of the
the Hussars, formed by the Honorable Josiah Quincy,
New England Insurance Company. After holding
the elder. The troop was well mounted, and their
this position for several years, he retired. Mr. Brooks
uniforms were brilliant and effective. "The members
was also President of the Massachusetts Hospital
were thoroughly drilled, and being under strict disci-
Life Insurance Company, and a member of the State
pline, they made an imposing display." Their dress
Senate. In later life he was active in charitable work.
included a short overcoat or spencer, which was left
The estate passed from Mr. Brooks to Jonathan
unbuttoned and thrown back, revealing a gorgeous
Davis, merchant, November 10, 1802; and the latter
vest; and their headgéar consisted of a square-topped
sold it, April 25, 1804, to George Cabot, Esq., being
hat, with tassels and a plume. During the political
"a lot of land on Centry Street, now Park Street,
campaign of 1807, when James Sullivan was a candi-
near the Common or Mall in Boston." Mr. Cabot
date for Governor, an article appeared in the "Cen-
was a leader of the Federalist Party; he served one
tinel" reflecting upon his character. Thereupon his
year as Secretary of the Navy during the Revolu-
son, Richard, waylaid the editor, Benjamin Russell,
tionary War, and afterward five years as United
on the street, and struck him with a cane.1
States Senator. He was one of a group of prominent
On October 4, 1816, Mr. Sullivan transferred the
men who contributed political articles to the Boston
title of his Park Street estate to Lydia, the wife of
newspapers of those days; his communications ap-
Thomas Wren Ward, a well-known merchant; and
pearing in the columns of the "Columbian Centinel."
here the Wards made their residence for many years.
In April, 1809, Richard Sullivan, Esq. (1779-1861),
Mr. Ward was the Boston agent of Messrs. Baring
paid Mr. Cabot sixteen thousand dollars, and became
1 S. A. Drake, Historic Landmarks.
owner of the premises. Mr. Sullivan was a grandson
59
58
1816-1863, word family occupancy
OLD PARK STREET AND ITS VICINITY
NUMBER THREE PARK STREET
Brothers & Company, of London. The following cor-
bor, "six selected ears of our corn. If you have any
respondence explains itself:
with husks on, braid them up handsomely." 1
On March 12, 1863, Mrs. Ward conveyed the prop-
3 PARK STREET, BOSTON, September 16, 1852
erty to Augustine Heard, of Ipswich, a well-known
The Hon. Daniel Webster,
DEAR SIR, Mr. Thomas Baring will dine with me on
merchant; and on November 30, 1895, the premises
Monday next at five o'clock, with some of your friends
were sold at auction, under foreclosure of a mortgage,
and his; and we shall be honored and obliged by the pleas-
to John Duff, the highest bidder, for sixty-seven
ure of your company.
thousand dollars. The latter's heirs retained the es-
I am, dear Sir, with the greatest respect,
tate until May 31, 1916, when it was bought by the
Yours
Warren Institution for Savings. The dwelling-house,
T. W. WARD
built in 1804, was razed, and the present handsome
structure erected.
Mr. Webster replied as follows:
1 The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster. Edited by Fletcher
GREEN HARBOR, MARSHFIELD, September 17, 1852
Webster.
It would give me sincere pleasure, my dear Mr. Ward,
to dine with you on Monday, and to meet Mr. Baring.
But I am stationed here by my Commander, Doctor
Jeffries, in the recruiting service; and he bids me not to
leave my post until I receive his official permission.
Always very truly yours
DANIEL WEBSTER
Mr. Webster did visit Boston on the day of the
Dinner, and he appeared at Mr. Ward's table during
the dessert course, remaining but a short time. The
next morning he returned to Marshfield. His death
occurred there October 24, 1852. About two years
before, Mr. Webster had written from Washington,
D.C., to his farmer, Porter Wright, directing him to
send Dr. J. C. Warren, Mr. Ward's next-door neigh-
60
MHS. Endicott Family Papers. B35.f. 22.
(Text after 1816 letters)
This house on Park Street, one of the best residences in
Boston at that time, looking out west acros3 the Common, became
my grandfather's home for the remainder of his life. His home
following his marriage tc my grandmother had been in Pearl Street
and it was in Pearl Street that his and his wife's first children
were born, my mother's older brother, Samuel Gray Ward, being
their first child to be born in Park Street.
My grandfather prospered so well during his connection
with Mr. Goodhue that, with bad times threatening and having
had experience of the dangers and uncertainties involved in
the business of that period, largely still confined to long
sea voyages and the risks connected with them, he decided to
devote himself to the good management of what he had and to work
of a public nature, to his own satisfaction and bringing him the
regard of others.
When Thomas wren Ward began, late in life, as he tells in
bis journal of that time, to gather together his early letters
and papers, he found many lost, leaving the record fragmentary,
with long gaps between. The following letters tell what little
we do know of that period, including the attitude he had taken
in his mature life on the subject of religion:
Insert letters from TWW to Wm.Ward of
Nov. 3, 1820, July 30, 1825
[G.B.Dan]
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File:TicknorHouse1.jpg
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Description Ticknor House (left), Park Street, Boston MA. Photographer: Southworth & Hawes. 1858. View from
grounds of the State House on Beacon Hill; Ticknor House on left, Boston Common to right. Print
made circa 1898 from original Southworth & Hawes photograph.
Date 1858
Source originally posted to Flickr as Looking down Park Street
http://flickr.com/photos/24029425@N06/2884581409)
Author BPL (http://flickr.com/photos/24029425@N06)
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Amory-Ticknor House - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Page 1 of 5
Amory-Ticknor House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Amory-Ticknor House in Boston,
Massachusetts was built in 1804 by businessman
Thomas Coffin Amory, and later owned by scholar
George Ticknor. It sits atop Beacon Hill, across
from the Massachusetts State House on Beacon
Street and the Boston Common on Park Street.
Numerous tenants have occupied various parts of the
house through the years, including Samuel Dexter,
Christopher Gore, John Jeffries, Harrison Gray Otis,
Anna Ticknor's Society to Encourage Studies at
Home, and temporarily in 1824, Lafayette.
Contents
Amory-Ticknor House, Park Street, Boston. 19th-c.
photo by Southworth & Hawes
1 History
1.1 Architecture
1.2 Owners & tenants
2 See also
3 Notes
4 References
5 Works cited
6 Further reading
7 External links
History
Shortly after the house was built, its owner Thomas Amory met financial trouble and subsequently sold
the property. The building was then "enlarged, and divided into 4 dwellings, whereof 2 had entrances on
Beacon Street. The other 2 fronted on Park Street. [1]
When Lafayette visited Boston in 1824, he stayed at the Amory house. "Soon after his arrival General
Lafayette appeared upon the balcony above the entrance of the Amory mansion, to receive the greetings
of the populace. He was escorted on either side by Governor William Eustis and by the former Governor
John Brooks, each wearing Continental uniforms.
On the evening of August 30, 1824, Lafayette held
a reception in his apartments at the Amory house; and this function was attended by many prominent
ladies of Boston. [2]
"In 1885 the entire structure was given over to trade, and to-day it is the abode of many firms in various
lines of business. "[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory-Ticknor_House
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Page 2 of 5
Architecture
Around 1804, architect Charles Bulfinch designed the entirety of
Park Street, including the Amory mansion. [4][5] The building
represents an example of Federal architecture. Its "enriched window
caps" typify the style, with "a carved eagle in the center panel and a
not-convincingly-well-done bracket of the inverted acanthus leaf
type at either extremity of the cap, but with a beautiful thin cornice
which, when repeated in a series of 5 windows
forms a very
beautiful feature.
The original
structure has
been altered
over time.
Around 1885 it
Interior, ca. 1885
was
"remodeled
Amory-Ticknor House, Park St., Boston, 1935
with 2-story Queen Anne-inspired oriel windows of
black-painted pressed metal and fanciful dormers on
the Park Street roofline"[7] and "a set of black metal shop fronts that reach out and down to the falling
sidewalk "[8]
By 2008, "the once great mansion stands barely recognizable, although the basic brick volume and
Adam entrance portico with fanlight and curving granite steps (one half is missing) are more or less
intact. Many ground-floor shop extensions have been added, along with Queen Anne-style oriel
windows and dormers on the upper floors. Though out of character, the Victorian predations had a
certain disheveled charm when they were filled with odd antiques, curiosity shops, and tearooms. "[9]
Businesses that occupied the building's storefronts over the
years have included Trefry & Partridge Jewelers, Ann's
Breakfast & Sandwiches restaurant, Fill-A-Buster restaurant
(now located at 142 Bowdoin St. on Beacon Hill), Au Bon
Pain, a Cheers merchandise store, Curious Liquids
coffeehouse, and currently No. 9 Park Street restaurant and a
FOX25NEWS
WFXT TV studio.
Owners & tenants
Fisher Ames
Thomas Amory (1804-1807)
Thomas Coffin Amory, Jr.
Catherine Carter
Richard Cobb (1831-1836)
Katherine Dexter (ca.1816-1831)
Samuel Dexter (1807-ca.1816)
WFXT's news bureau in the Amory-
Christopher Gore
Ticknor House.
John Jeffries (1806-1807)
John G. Mitchell (ca. 1.1884, leased from Mrs. Curtis Burritt Raymond)
[10][nb 1][11][12][12][13][14][15][16][17]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory-Ticknor_House
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Page 3 of 5
Harrison Gray Otis
William Payne
Mrs. Lydia Newell Osgood Raymond .1853)
2][18][19][17]
Andrew Ritchie
Matthias Plant Sawyer (1836-ca.1853)
[nb
3][17][20]
George Ticknor (1830 1871)
Mrs. Ticknor (1871-18
|}
See also
Society to Encourage Studies at Home
Notes
1.
^ Curtis Burritt Raymond, (June 18, 1816-February 23, 1893) was a native of Sherburne, Chenango County,
New York. He was the son of Philander Raymond and Cynthia Rose. His father was the founder of Toledo,
Ohio and the Brady's Bend Iron Works which opened at Brady's Bend, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania in
December of 1839. He was also the great grandson of Rev. Blackleach Burritt. He attended the school
established by Baron von Steuben at Steuben, Oneida County, New York, where he excelled in his studies,
standing especially high in the classics. He was educated at the Polytechnic Institute at Chittenango, in
Madison County, New York, and at Columbia College. After a period of European travel, and spending some
time in Paris, France, where he became proficient in his French studies, he became a resident of Boston about
the year 1844, and a member of the firm of Rice, Hall & Raymond, dry goods, at 54 Milk Street. In the
Directory of 1839 his name appears as President of Brady's Bend Iron Company, 30 City Exchange. He
became an early railroad investor and landowner and in 1854, he was an incorporator as well as a major
investor in the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad. Mr. Raymond was prominent in military circles, and
attained the rank of Major. He was well versed in the science of tactics, and revised Spencer's Manual for the
First Corps of Cadets. This Manual, as revised by him, was afterward adopted for use in the Russian Army.
He was also for several years a member of General Benjamin F. Edmands's staff. He was also placed in
command at Fort Warren, Mass. Major Raymond also drilled several regiments of volunteers at the camp in
Lynnfield early in the Civil War. An intimate friend described him as having "a wonderful memory, a
superior mind and talents of a high order. He knew no fear, and his love of truth and honor and justice shone
forth transparent in his character; while his amiable, gentle, sympathetic nature made him beloved by all and
a favorite wherever he went. He was also an enthusiastic explorer, and lover of the White Mountains. In 1863
he first blazed the way along the trail which leaves the carriage-road at the second mile-post, on the Glen side
of Mount Washington, and leads upward to the so-called Snow Arch. This trail was improved by him in
1891, and is known as the Raymond Path.
2.
^ Lydia Newell Osgood was born on August 21, 1821 at Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts and died on
April 30, 1907 in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts and is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, in
Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Samuel Gerrish Osgood and
Rebecca Noyes Follansbee and the adopted daughter of Matthias P. Sawyer. By his will, dated April 5, 1853,
he bequeathed to his adopted daughter the mansion-house on the corner of Beacon and Park Streets. She was
a descendant of Col. Moses Gerrish, who was born in 1656 in Newbury, and married Jane Sewell, the sister
of Chief Justice Sewell of Massachusetts. Their son, Col. Joseph Gerrish (1682-1765), also lived in Newbury
and was a member of the colonial legislature for 20 years. He also was elected to a seat in the Provincial
Congress. His daughter, Sarah Gerrish (who was adopted by Judge Samuel Sewall) married Moses Newell,
and were the grandparents of Lydia Newell Osgood Raymond. She became the wife of Curtis Burritt
Raymond and were married in New York, March 29, 1849 at St. Thomas's Episcopal Church by Bishop
Henry John Whitehouse. She also owned the Titcomb-Raymond House in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She
and her husband were art collectors and patrons of the arts and part of their collection is now housed in the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She and her husband were avid travelers and the earliest works in the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory-Ticknor_House
9/15/2012
Amory-Ticknor House - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Page 4 of 5
collection were accumulated from their trips to Europe which included 'Virgin and Child', by Antonio
Veneziano, ca. 1380. Her collection included several works by John Singleton Copley, including The Return
of Neptune, ca. 1754 and Galatea, ca. 1754.
3. ^ Matthias Plant Sawyer, son of Dr. Moses Sawyer and Hannah Little, was born in Newbury, Massachusetts
July 11, 1788. At the age of 12, he moved to Portland, Maine for six or eight years, and then became
interested in commercial affairs in Boston, Massachusetts, and owned profitable real estate. He was a very
successful wine merchant, a railroad promoter and was a major investor in the Bradys Bend Iron Company in
Brady's Bend, Pennsylvania. Mr. Sawyer never married; but had an adopted daughter, Lydia Newell Osgood,
of Newburyport, who became the wife of Curtis B. Raymond. He died on March 31, 1857, at Boston,
Massachusetts, and by the terms of his will gave to the city of Newburyport the sum of five thousand dollars
(US$127,000.00 in 2009 dollars) the income to be used in the purchase of books for the Public library. He is
buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
References
1.
^ Lawrence, pp. 81-82
2. ^ Lawrence, p. 95
3. ^ State Street Trust Company. Forty of Boston's historic houses. 1912.
4. ^ Ellen Susan Bulfinch. Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston
and New York 1896; .314.
5. ^ http://www.unionclub.org/history.htm
6.
^ Joseph Everett Chandler. The colonial house, rev. ed. R.M. McBride & company, 1916; p.221.
7. ^ Anthony Mitchell Sammarco, James Z. Kyprianos. Downtown Boston. Arcadia Publishing, 2002; p.41.
8. ^ Lyndon, Donlyn. The City Observed: Boston: A Guide to the Architecture of the Hub. New York: Vintage
Books, 1982, p. 24.
9.
^ Susan Southworth, Michael Southworth. AIA Guide to Boston, 3rd ed. 2008; p.3-4.
10. ^ MD Raymond, pp. 102-105
11. ^ Raymond, Marcius D., p. 31
12. Raymond, Marcius D., p. 32
13. S.Raymond, p. 14
14. ^ Hillstrom, p. 63
15. ^ Hillstrom, p. 64
16. ^ Day, p. 94
17.
rabc Lawrence, pp. 83-85
18. ^ Hale, p. 82
19. ^ Hale, p. 84
20. ^ Burrage, p. 455
21. ^ Lawrence, p. 85
Works cited
Burrage, Henry Sweetser. Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume 1. New
York: Publisher Lewis Historical Pub. Co., 1909.
Day, Sherman. Historical collections of the State of Pennsylvania: containing a copious selection
of the most interesting facts, traditions, biographical sketches, anecdotes, etc., relating to its
history and antiquities, both general and local, with topographical descriptions of every county
Publisher: G. W. Gorton, 1843.
Dexter, Franklin Bowditch.Biographical sketches of the graduates of Yale college with annals of
the college history Volume 3 of Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with
Annals of the College History Publisher: Holt & Company, 1903.
Hale, Albert. Architecture; Architecture, Colonial Old Newburyport houses. Publisher: Boston,
Click the blue globe to open an
Massachusetts, W.B. Clarke Company 1912.
interactive map.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory-Ticknor_House
9/15/2012
Amory-Ticknor House - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Page 5 of 5
Hillstrom, Kevin. The industrial revolution in America, Volume 2 Publisher:
ISBN 1-85109-620-5.
Lawrence, Robert Means. Old Park Street and its Vicinity Boston: Publisher Houghton Mifflin
company, 1922.
Raymond, Marcius Denison. Gray genealogy : being a genealogical record and history of the
descendants of John Gray, of Beverly, Mass., and also including sketches of other Gray families.
New York: Higginson Book Company, 1887.
MD Raymond. Souvenir of the Sherburne Centennial Celebration and Dedication of Monument to
the Proprietors and Early Settlers, held on Wednesday, June 21, 1893. New York: M.D.
Raymond, 1892.
Raymond, Marcius D. Sketch of Rev. Blackleach Burritt and related Stratford families : a paper
read before the Fairfield County Historical Society, at Bridgeport, Conn., Friday evening, Feb.
19, 1892. Bridgeport : Fairfield County Historical Society 1892.
Raymond, Samuel. Genealogies of the Raymond families of New England, 1630-1 to 1886. With a
historical sketch of some of the Raymonds of early times, their origin, etc. New York: Press of J.J.
Little & Co., 1886.
Further reading
Robert Means Lawrence. Old Park Street and its Vicinity
http://www.archive.org/stream/oldparkstreetits1922lawr#page/n9/mode/2up)." . Houghton Mifflin,
1922
External links
Historic American Buildings Survey (http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.ma0898), , Library of
Congress. Amory-Ticknor House, 9 Park Street, Boston, Suffolk County, MA.
No. 9 Park Restaurant (http://www.no9park.com/)
Retrieved from"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amory-Ticknor_House&oldid=5018368347
Categories: Houses completed in 1804 Houses in Boston, Massachusetts Beacon Hill, Boston
History of Boston, Massachusetts
This page was last modified on 12 July 2012 at 05:19.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms
may apply. See Terms of use for details.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit
organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory-Ticknor_Hous
9/15/2012
N°2
Park Street
HOUCHTON
MIFFLIN
COMPANY
Jabhishers
Source: Clayton Harper. Email 10-25-17 Saved jpeg 2 Parte St.
10/25/2017
XFINITY Connect Inbox
Dorr on Park Street
CLAYTON
10:42 AM
To eppster2@comcast.net
1 attachment View Open in browser Download
Hi,
Good to chat with you during your Arnold Arboretum event a few weeks back.
I worked in the marketing department of Houghton Mifflin's trade division during it's last years on Park Street. No.
2 and 3 Park were internally connected on the lower four floors at that time, though they were offset by a couple of
steps due to the slope of the hill. As I recall, most of No. 3 had lost its original character internally and was divided
into a warren of small offices and early cubicles. My office was little bigger than a desk at that time, and shared a
paper thin wall that bisected one of the third floor windows overlooking the Common. The top floor of Mo. 3 had a
sort of solarium with airy windows that had previously been used as space for the Art department. By then it
housed a dusty collection of 10-12 large file cabinets containing years of press clippings. It served mainly as a
pass-through for Friday evening Happy Hours on the Two Park roof. We climbed out the windows to enjoy the
views, the sunset, the steeple, and the cocktails!
As promised, attached is a photo of one of the two identical bronze plaques that graced the entrance of No. 2 until
the offices were moved to 222 Berkeley in the mid-1990s. It was given to me as a parting gift when I left HM after
nearly twenty years. Measuring 20" X 26" X 1.5" and surely close to 60 lbs, it is a bit of a burden, but much loved.
When the time comes I will find an appropriate place to pass it on - perhaps the BPL or Houghton Library at
Harvard where many of the company's early treasures reside. Its pair is still in the corporate offices.
Clay Harper,
former Marketing Director, HMco
10/25/2017
XFINITY Connect Sent
Re: Dorr on Park Street
Ronald Epp
9:21 PM
To CLAYTON
Hi Clayton,
Delighted to hear from you! I just returned to Pennsylvania from my other home in Simsbury
CT, carrying with me the heavy Ellen Ballou Building of the House, the title you
recommended when we met in Jamaica Plain. I was unaware of it and secured it through ILL
and have made progress through the establishment in 1880 of HM at #4 Park Street, the
property beside the Bulfinch residence that Thomas Wren Ward from 1816 until his death in
1858. His wife Lydia owned the property from its purchase date until she moved to
Commonwealth Avenue in 1863 when the property then passed to merchant Augustus
Heard; foreclosed in 1895 the property passed to John Duff whose heirs retained it until
1916, when according to Robert M. Lawrence's Old Park Street and Its Vicinity (1922), the
property was razed by its new owner, a local bank. The historical record goes cold at this
point and I hope to learn more from Ballou about the new #3 structure that you recall SO
many decades later. I confess to something shy of an obsession with the history of Park
Street and its residents.
If you are curious about the origins of Park Row, Harold Kirker authored in 1969 The
Architecture of Charles Bulfinch which includes architectural renderings of the properties
both external and internal; Robert Shackleton's essay in The Book of Boston (available
online) describes Park Street Corner. And of course you know well the wonderful Bliss Perry
essay on Number 4 Park Street in his Park-Street Papers (1908). I recently uncovered the
fact that Dorr's uncle Samuel Gray Ward was one of the founders of the Union Club of
Boston, headquartered at #7 and #8, the location of the houses built for the Lawrence and
Lowell families. These are just a few of the prominent Bostonians who resided on this strip of
real estate that was held in little regard the decades before Bulfinch's efforts.
In preparing the Jamaica Plain talk I uncovered new findings about the Ward and Dorr
families on the periphery of the Common. I'm thinking about approaching the Boston
Athenaeum about a talk there next year. I'd certainly like to incorporate the history of HM as
well. Your recollections certainly are important to that end. Let us keep up the conversation.
If you do not have a copy of Creating Acadia National Park, might I send you a copy? If so,
please send address.
Most appreciatively,
Ron
Sassanas DI.
Lebanon, PA 17042
717-272-0801
eppster2@comcast.net
And: 124 Sawyers Path
Simsbury, CT 06070
603-491-1760
On October 25, 2017 at 10:42 AM CLAYTON wrote:
Hi,
Good to chat with you during your Arnold Arboretum event a few weeks back.
I worked in the marketing department of Houghton Mifflin's trade division during it's last years on Park Street.
No. 2 and 3 Park were internally connected on the lower four floors at that time, though they were offset by a
couple of steps due to the slope of the hill. As I recall, most of No. 3 had lost its original character internally
and was divided into a warren of small offices and early cubicles. My office was little bigger than a desk at that
time, and shared a paper thin wall that bisected one of the third floor windows overlooking the Common. The
top floor of Mo. 3 had a sort of solarium with airy windows that had previously been used as space for the Art
department. By then it housed a dusty collection of 10-12 large file cabinets containing years of press
clippings. It served mainly as a pass-through for Friday evening Happy Hours on the Two Park roof. We
climbed out the windows to enjoy the views, the sunset, the steeple, and the cocktails!
As promised, attached is a photo of one of the two identical bronze plaques that graced the entrance of No. 2
until the offices were moved to 222 Berkeley in the d-1990s. It was given to me as a parting gift when I left
HM after nearly twenty years. Measuring 20" X 26" X 1.5" and surely close to 60 lbs, it is a bit of a burden, but
much loved. When the time comes I will find an appropriate place to pass it on - perhaps the BPL or Houghton
Library at Harvard where many of the company's early treasures reside. Its pair is still in the corporate offices.
Clay Harper,
former Marketing Director, HMco
https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/#!!&app=io.ox/mail&folder=default0//qj%7Bo5Xlp%7D
2/2
Paul Brooks
From Two Park Street
"A book contract is an
Two
both the author's and the
author is committing his
cherished offspring, turing
forth must be not that of
young, but that of the to
Park
sand and leaves them ii)
The publisher is also acting
of the book, faith in the 400mg
instances-that the book
"The author-publisher
(par
Street
relationship is a professional
sense of 'not purely commo
It is compounded of friend
patience, understanding,
holding, prodding, rupiers
against the rest of the world
sound professional relationship
6-82054
A Publishing Memoir
4/22/2015
Park Street Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coordinates: 42°21'25"N 71°03'44"W
Park Street Church
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Park Street Church (founded in 1809) in downtown
Boston, Massachusetts is an active Conservative
Congregational church with 2,000 in Sunday attendance and
around 1,000 members [1] at the corner of Tremont Street and
Park Street. The church is currently pastored by Gordon P.
Hugenberger.
Contents
1 History
2 Today
3 Senior ministers (1811-present)
4 References
5 Further reading
6 External links
Park Street Church, Boston, 2006
7 Images
History
Park Street Church is a historic stop on the Freedom Trail. The founding of the church is predated to 1804
when the "Religious Improvement Society" began weekly meetings with lectures and prayer. [2]
The society
organized the charter of the church on February 27, 1809 by twenty-six local people, mostly former
members of the Old South Meeting House, who wanted to plant a church with orthodox Trinitarian
theology.
The cornerstone of the church was laid on May 1 and construction was completed by the end of the year,
under the guidance of Peter Banner (architect), Benajah Young (chief mason) and Solomon Willard
(woodcarver). Banner took inspiration from several early pattern books, and his design is reminiscent of a
London church by Christopher Wren. Park Street church's steeple rises to 217 feet (66 m), and remains a
landmark visible from several Boston neighborhoods. [3] The church was the tallest building in the United
States from 1810 to 1846.
The church is located adjacent to the historic Granary Burying Ground. It had its first worship service on
January 10, 1810. The church became known as "Brimstone Corner", in part because of the fervent
missionary character of its preaching, [4] and in part because of the storage of gunpowder during the War of
1812.
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Street_Church
1/7
4/22/2015
Park Street Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Park Street Church has a strong tradition of missions, evangelical doctrine, and application of Scripture to
social issues as well as a notable list of Firsts Edward Dorr Griffin 01 770-1837) served as the first pastor of
the Park Street Church and preached a famous series of Sunday evening sermons attacking the New
Divinity. [6] In 1816 Park Street Church joined with Old South Church to form the City Mission Society, a
social service society to serve Boston's urban poor.
In 1826 Edward Beecher, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and
son of Lyman Beecher, a notable abolitionist, became pastor of the
church. On July 4, 1829, William Lloyd Garrison delivered his
Address to the Colonization Society
(http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?
document=562) at Park Street, making his first major public
statement against slavery. From 1829-1831 Lowell Mason, a
notable Christian composer, served as choirmaster and organist. The
church hosted the debut of My Country, 'Tis of Thee, also known as
America, by Samuel Francis Smith on July 4, 1831. [7] Park Street
also played a role in founding the First "Homeland" or American
Mission to the then Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), where that
church still stands; the Handel and Haydn Society started there.
Benjamin E. Bates, an industrialist who founded Bates College in
Maine in 1855, was a Sunday school teacher and active attendant of
Park St. Church, 1904
Park Street in the mid-19th century. In 1857-58 evangelist, Charles
Finney led a revival at Park Street which led the pastor, Andrew
Leete Stone, to experience a spiritual awakening.
Gleason Archer, a prominent inerrantist theologian was the assistant pastor of Park Street from 1945 to
1948, and his father, Suffolk University founder Gleason Archer, Sr., served as president of the Park Street
Men's Club in the 1920s. In 1949 Billy Graham's first transcontinental mid-century crusade began at Park
Street. Harold J. Ockenga, notable theologian and co-architect of the (Neo-)Evangelical movement was the
senior pastor from 1936 to 1969, and during this time co-founded Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
with Billy Graham, co-founded Fuller Theological Seminary, the National Association of Evangelicals,
War Relief (which later became World Relief), and the Christian publication Christianity Today.
In 1974, the church built a Church Ministries Building at 1 Park Street beside the main edifice. Designed in
a modernist architectural style by Stahl/Bennett Associates with a concrete structure, window-walls and
purplish brick facing, the building is described by the Boston Preservation Alliance as follows: "The
Church Ministries Building Addition to Park Street Church breaks dramatically with its surroundings in
style, while relating coherently to it in materials. The building rises with large panes of glass stretching
across its narrow facade and handsome red brick covering the rest of the building. The ground floor is glass
and looks out to the Granary Burial Ground beyond the building to the rear." [8]
In the 1990s, the church purchased the 2 and 3 Park Street buildings from Houghton-Mifflin.
[9]
Today
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Street_Church
2/7
5/19/2020
1904_ParkSt_Boston.png (980x580)
11
AMT
CHURCH
with
Parte St., 1904. Awning adorns former residence
Thomas who resided and Lydia Ward, grand maternal parents of of DORR
here now and then between 1858-1862. G.B
5/19/2020
Winter scene in Park Street, by John B. Heywood - Park Street, Boston - Wikipedia
Winter scene, 19th century, Park Street
More details
Heywood, John B. -- Photographer - This image is
available from the New York Public Library's Digital
Library under the digital ID G90F309_052F:
digitalgallery.nypl.org digitalcollections.nypl.org
5/19/2020
John B. Heywood - Wikipedia
WIKIPEDIA
John B. Heywood
John B. Heywood was a photographer
in 19th-century United States. He worked
in
Boston,
Massachusetts, C. 1856-
1861.
[1][]]]]]]]
Examples of his photographs
reside in the New York Public Library[4]
and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Stereoscopic image of the Glen
References
House and Carter Range near
Mount Washington (New
1. Boston Directory. 1856, 1858, 1861
Hampshire) in the White Mountains
2. "Masonic Chit Chat." Freemason's
(New Hampshire)
monthly magazine (https://books.goog
le.com/books?id=iv8qAAAAYAAJ).
June 1858
3. Merrill D. Peterson. John Brown: The Legend Revisited. University of
Virginia Press, 2004
4. "Name: Heywood, John B. (d. 1870 )" (https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/se
arch/index?filters%5bnamePart_mtxt_s%5d%5b%5d=Heywood%2C%20J
lohn%20B.%20%28d.%201870%20%29&keywords=&layout=fals). New
York olic Library, Retrieved 27 August 2016.
External links
Flickr(https://www.flickr.com/photos/oclbishopcollection/3797907471/).
Hand-colored daguerreotype of Nathaniel Holmes Bishop at age 23,
credited to Heywood & Heard of Boston, 1860.
Image gallery
4/28/2018
The Beecher Tradition : Edward Beecher
AN AMERICAN FAMILY
THE BEECHER TRADITION
PREV.
NEXT
EDWARD BEECHER
Edward Beecher was born in 1803 and was slated to
follow in the tradition of his father. He graduated from
Yale and studied briefly at the Andover Seminary. He
became the pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, in
1826, and in 1830 he became the first president of
Illinois College at Jacksonville. The college grew under
his leadership and he remained president for fourteen
years. The reform spirit took hold of Edward and he
organized the first anti-slavery society in Illinois. He
resigned his presidency in 1844 after financial
misfortune; religious controversies and opposition to
his anti-slavery beliefs made the offer of the position of
Edward Beecher. Picture
pastor of the Salem Street Church in Boston seem very
courtesy of The Harriet
desirable. He returned to the West in 1855, where he
Beecher Stowe Center,
became the pastor of the First Congregational Church
Hartford, Connecticut.
of Galesburg, Illinois, where he remained until 1871.
See larger image.
That year he moved to Brooklyn where he remained until his death.
The Park Street Church was organized in 1809 and dedicated in 1810. From
its beginnings it was missionary minded and it became known as the
"Brimstone Corner" because of the highly charged doctrines which were
preached inside its walls.
NEST
PREV
212
4/28/2018
Park St. Church eyes 2 buildings - The Boston Globe (Boston, MA) I HighBeam Research
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Park St. Church eyes 2
buildings
The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
The Boston Blobe
December 1, 1992 DJerry Ackerman,
Globe Staff I Copyright
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Members of Park Street Church will be asked to
vote Sunday on a proposal to buy two buildings
on Park Street now housing offices of Houghton
Mifflin Co., the book publisher.
The two structures contain about 35,000 square
feet of space and face Boston Common. They are
scheduled to be vacated in May when Houghton
Mifflin moves to the year-old 222 Berkeley St.
office tower.
Peter H. Brown, director of administration at
Park Street Church, said the buildings at 2 and 3
Park St. would be used for church programs.
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2/4
C II's BOSTON
Bullfinchs Boston : 1787-1817
t, the Mount Vernon Proprietors'
red and their architect's hopes did
Harold and James Kirker. (NM. OUP,1964)
VIII
10 first stage. But while his dream
19/14
or achieved, Bulfinch could feel
need Boston far along the path to
PARK STREET
one awaiting the architect as he
morial column and the new State
AND T H E COMMON
non Street to the intersection of
widened thirty feet in front of the
it is one of those New England
old sky, and the sun, setting over
THE SOUTHERN SLOPE of Beacon Hill is still the finest sight
on the new brick and fresh paint
in Boston. In the Federal period, however, the area to
e houses whose good proportions
which Bulfinch next turned his talents, Park Street, was
I clear light and set off to advan
almost as attractive. For though Park Street was the child
way to the Common. It is a mod
of Beacon Hill, an offspring of the architectural and social
impared to the London model, but
mood imposed by the Province House descendants on Cop-
architect's talent and the town's
ley's former lands, it was not a stepchild. The street com-
I America the scene was unique,
manded a superb view: the Common stretching away to the
nch could be content. He might
Charles River seen through a screen of English elms al-
ments of his own life in contem
ready old at the time Beacon Hill was reclaimed from a
, to his native place.
pasture land. These elms, the special trust of Adino Pad-
dock, were planted before the Revolution when Park was
called Sentry Street and contained the almshouse, work-
house, and granary. The town's affluent coachmaker, Pad-
dock lived on a part of Tremont Street then known as
"Long Acre." From the door of his workshop he kept a rest-
less eye on the young trees which had survived the long
voyage from England; his vigil, "Gleaner" recounts, often
sending him flying across the street to berate idle lads for
shaking the saplings. Paddock worried over the fate of his
trees until the Revolution released him forever from that
[ 164 ]
[165]
BULFINCH'S BOSTON
PARK STREET AND THE COMMON
anxiety. He was a loyalist who returned in 1776 to the
mansions on Beacon Hill. The house was designed by Bu
country where he and his trees originated.
finch for the junior Thomas Amory, whose mother was
The removal of the almshouse in 1801 and the disman-
member of the Coffin family, which included the last R
tling of the workhouse and the granary signaled the devel-
ceiver-General and Cashier of British customs in Bosto
opment of Park Street. With these grim buildings swept
This was a dangerous post to hold in the brawling yea:
away, a conspicuous property was suddenly available to
before the Revolution, and the Amory homestead, far 01
Bulfinch and his friends then engaged in transforming the
on the highroad to the Neck, was stoned by the Sons of Lil
outskirts of the Common into the finest residential section
erty. But the head of the house was actually a quiet loyali
of Boston, Park Street, or Park Place as it was called for
who took no part in the conflict and arranged the terms f
several years, was laid out by Bulfinch in 1804 after he
the British evacuation. For this service the elder Amor
had secured a town ordinance restricting building there to
was allowed to remain in Boston after the exodus swe]
a uniform height and style, For once Bulfinch had every-
away most of his wife's family. He was always suspecte
thing his own way. The result was a handsome avenue of
of being a Tory, however, and spent the critical war year
related houses rivaling the architectural continuity of the
in Watertown. The son, Thomas, Jr., was not so inhibited
Tontine Crescent. (The first four dwellings were erected
Like his contemporaries Thomas Perkins and Christophe
at the southern end of the street and became popularly
Gore, whose loyalist fathers also crept unobtrusively bac
known as "Bulfinch Row." Concurrently, four more houses
into Boston, Amory was prone to extravagance and wer
were constructed in a similar design. But these additional
bankrupt building the house in Park Street. The wine ce
houses, Numbers 5-8, ascended Park where the street
lar alone would have ruined almost any Federalist me:
climbs steeply into Beacon and the same uniformity in
chant. It contained a range of brick vaults constructed un
roof and floor levels could not be maintained. Yet even
der Beacon Street, the building of which was authorized
though the last four dwellings lacked the symmetry of
a special meeting of the Board of Selectmen. As it wa
Numbers 1-4, Park Street was wonderfully all of a kind.¹
Amory moved in and out of his mansion in rapid succe
The eight Bulfinch houses marched smartly up the hill to
sion, receiving news of his bankruptcy a few hours befor
meet the grandest dwelling on the block, the Amory man-
greeting his guests for the housewarming. If Amory's ai
sion at the corner of Park and Beacon (Plate 16).
chitect was present at this macabre ceremony, Bulfinc
Thomas Amory's house still stands on its enviable cor-
commiserated with his ruined patron from firsthand ex
ner, although in a state of indifference and neglect. Built
perience.2
in 1804 at the height of the Federalist experiment, it was
The mansion passed through a number of hands follow
the first house constructed in Park Street and left no doubt
ing the hasty withdrawal of its original owner. In 1806
as to origins among the neighboring intermediary family
was turned into a fashionable boarding house by Mr
166
167
BULFINCH'S BOSTON
PARK STREET AND THE COMMON
Catherine Carter, who is said to have maintained some
sixty guests, turning away twenty or thirty strangers a
Common and north on Beacon Street and was occupied fo:
day. One reason for the heavy demand was the proximity
the last ten years of this period by the sometime Federalis
of the dwelling to the new State House; during the legisla-
politician and lawyer, Samuel Dexter. A close friend an
tive sessions the capital town was hard-pressed to supply
Harvard classmate of Bulfinch, Dexter served in the Con
accommodations to the lawmakers. But Mrs. Carter was
gress of the United States as a loyal representative of the
not solely prejudiced in favor of politicians, one of her
Essex Junto and was John Adams's secretary of war an
treasury. When Jefferson took over the White House, Dex
guests was the painter Edward Malbone. Perhaps to atone
for the fiasco of the Amory housewarming several years
ter retired from the national scene to pursue a law practice
earlier, the residents of Mrs. Carter's establishment gave an
in the more compatible air of Boston. He made one more
"elegant and sumptuous Ball and Supper to a number of
trip to Washington, however, when he represented the
Ladies and Gentlemen of this Town" in the spring of
merchants of Massachusetts in their attempt to have the
1806.ª Among the four hundred guests so honored was Ad-
embargo declared unconstitutional, a hopeless endeavor
miral Isaac Coffin of the British navy, a nephew of Amory's
and just about the last task Dexter performed for the Fed
mother and the son of a loyalist grandee who died shortly
eralists. One of the mavericks who placed nation above
before the Revolution. It was a symptom of the English ob-
party during the War of 1812, he bolted Boston's sacred
session of Federalist Boston that a member of an exiled
cause to join the Republicans. But even before this uncom-
family should be welcomed back as an honored guest.
mon act Dexter showed his lack of stability, by Federalist
Equally characteristic was the setting in which the exiled
standards, in departing from his old party's invariable pos-
hero was entertained: a Bulfinch mansion designed for a
ture-drinking-to become president of the first temper-
Province House descendant.
ance society in Boston. His high-living cronies, men like
Mrs. Carter and her family of sixty-odd remained in the
Otis, Mason, and Gore, doubtless considered temperance as
mansion hardly longer than the original owner. In 1807
great an evil as Republicanism. The pipes of Madeira and
she carried her brood away to a new abode on Howard
sherry exactingly stowed away in Boston ships, often cross-
Street, close to the Bulfinch family stronghold of Bowdoin
ing many oceans before reaching Bulfinch houses on Bea-
Square. The Amory house was then enlarged and divided
con Hill and Park Street, were an inseparable part of politi-
into four dwellings with entrances on Beacon as well as
cal dinners, described by Henry Adams as occasions when
Park. The Park Street entrance was the one designed by
"gout and plethora waited behind the chairs." Such meals
Bulfinch, and the fine Adam porch and fan-light still re-
were generally preceded by a devastating punch served
main more or less in their original form. The most desir-
in a great bowl, a trophy of the China trade. The Feder-
able of the four converted dwellings faced west on the
alists' hatred of Napoleon was reflected in the absence of
champagne on their tables.
I 168 I
169 ]
BULFINCH'S BOSTON
PARK STREET AND THE COMMON
The course of Federalism and Madeira went unchecked
sion, however, by building a splendid country house in
in the second best of the four dwellings converted from the
Waltham. Although not of the colonial aristocracy, Gore
Amory mansion, the one next door to Dexter and running
was allied to Province House families. His father was a loy-
along Park Street. Utterly free of turncoats and prohibi-
alist who departed in the British evacuation and lived in
tionists, it was occupied successively by Fisher Ames,
exile in London for ten years. Luckier than the other Bos-
Christopher Gore, and Harrison Gray Otis's son-in-law,
tonians who crowded the New England Coffee House on
Andrew Ritchie. Even here, though, these early tenants
Threadneedle Street or met weekly in the Adelphi, the sen-
seemed to live under a curse imposed by the luckless
ior Gore was permitted to return to the future Federalist
Amory. And while this portion of the house subsequently
capital, a decade before his son went to England as a com-
became famous as a nest of Federalists, it was first briefly
missioner to settle American claims under Jay's treaty. In
the home of an old Tory, Dr. John Jeffries, who lived there
the first years of his father's exile Gore remained in Boston,
less than twelve months. The next tenant, Fisher Ames,
impoverished but ambitious. Clever and popular, he was
occupied the house only one year before dying in 1808.
described by his contemporary, Anna Eliot Ticknor, as
Ames's political career began at the same time Bulfinch
"the young, beautiful, and excellent Christopher Gore."
returned from his architectural tour of Europe. A tireless
Thus endowed he had little trouble getting ahead. Joining
worker in the formation of the Federalist party, he led the
his fortunes to the Federalist party, Gore was admitted to
battle to get the Constitution ratified in Massachusetts.
the inner circle of the Essex Junto and was its successful
Ames served in Congress during Washington's two terms,
candidate in the gubernatorial election of 1809.
spinning an oratorical web that ensnared even Republi-
As it turned out, Gore's penchant for splendor was too
cans. His political star soared so high that his neighbor
much even for Federalist Massachusetts. His acquired Prov-
Samuel Dexter, himself a fantastic orator, was forced to
ince House traits, held in check during the bleak years of
take a back seat. It was Ames who was chosen to make the
his father's exile, could not be suppressed forever. Added
supreme Federalist gesture-the eulogy to Washington
to this were eight years spent in England observing the
before the Massachusetts legislature. But Dexter had the
munificence of the ruling class. Gore returned to Boston
last word; he delivered Ames's eulogy in 1808.
determined to live in the style of an English country gen-
Fisher Ames was followed by another twelve-month
tleman. His country seat in Waltham is indubitably a
tenant, Christopher Gore. But Gore never felt at home in
grand place; its magnificence won condescending ap-
Park Street. He was SO exaggeratedly the Beacon Hill type
proval from the visiting British minister, Sir Augustus
that only the fact he was in England during the eight
John Foster, who called it "a very handsome comfortable
years the area was developed excused him from living next
house." But Gore's pride manifest in his house and appur-
door to Otis, Mason, or Perkins. He made up for this omis-
tenances brought about his downfall. The house, isolated
E 170 ]
[ 171 ]
BULFINCH'S BOSTON
PARK STREET AND THE COMMON
amid lawns and gardens, woods and meadows, even pos-
sessing a "deer park," might have survived gossip if Gov-
troops in Boston; the neighboring house was occupied by
ernor Gore had not insisted on driving out for all the world
Mrs. Arnold Wells, daughter of General Joseph Warren,
the patriot hero slain at the battle of Bunker Hill.
to see in an orange coach with footmen and out-riders in
blazing livery. This flashy equipage, which caused only
The Warrens were the one family on Park Street who
minor rumblings in the politically "safe" town of Boston,
probably scoffed at the coach that carried Gore to political
boomeranged when the governor made a state journey
ruin. Somewhat good-natured scorn, though, as Mrs. John
through Massachusetts with a constellation of aides and
Collins Warren was a daughter of Jonathan Mason, a
cavalry. The wide-eyed but thinking farmers promptly
Mount Vernon proprietor, who did not lag behind Gore
turned him out of office in the next election.
in his love of luxury. But two members of the earlier gen-
But the occupants of the Amory house and their neigh-
eration very much responded to the equivocal symbolism
bors saw nothing outrageous about the bright orange
of Gore's carriage. One was old Dr. John Warren of Revo-
coach so familiar a sight in Park Street. On the contrary,
lutionary fame, who lived in the house on Park Street with
they rather liked it, and some of them, or their relatives on
his son and daughter-in-law; the other was his sister-in-
Beacon Hill, had carriages hardly less ostentatious. Family
law, Mercy Otis Warren. Although both Dr. John and
connections on Beacon Hill or associations with the Amory
Mercy Warren lived actively through most of the Federal
mansion were the key to Park Street. The crowding of rela-
period, they were children of the Revolution. Neither for-
tives of Amory house occupants into the eight Bulfinch
got nor diminished the greatness of their respective broth-
houses below was extraordinary. Number 8 was built by
ers, General Joseph Warren and James Otis, even though
Jonathan Amory, Jr.; Number 4 was the residence of
the memory of these patriots was dimmed in an age epito-
Amory's sister, Mrs. Jonathan Davis. Two of the houses
mized by Gore's house and carriage. When Copley's son,
were owned by members of the Gore family, although one
the future Baron Lyndhurst, was in Boston in 1796, he
of them, 7 Park Street, was occupied by Mrs. Artemus
wrote home: "Shall I whisper a word in your ear. The bet-
Ward, sister of Samuel Dexter. Another resident of the
ter people are all aristocrats. My father is too rank a Jaco-
street, William Payne, swept the gamut: his mother was
bin to live among them. Samuel Adams is superannuated,
an Amory and his sister Mrs. Christopher Gore. Only one
unpopular, and fast decaying in every respect. ,,8 Evidently
family figured massively in the early history of Park Street
he did not meet the two Warrens, Mercy and old Dr. John,
without associations in the Amory house-the Warren
both of whom sat for his father in the days when Samuel
family, the most distinguished residents of "Bulfinch Row."
Adams's name was electrifying. These older Warrens were
Number 2 Park Street was the home of Dr. John Collins
a cut of the same cloth; they never relinquished the be-
Warren, son of the brillant surgeon to the Continental
liefs their brothers shouted from the halls and taverns of
colonial Boston.
172 ]
173
BULFINCH'S BOSTON
PARK STREET AND THE COMMON
The early evolution of the publishing house of Hough-
ton Mifflin Company is graphically presented in the
chart on the following page. The Old Corner Book
Store, founded in 1828 as Carter, Hendee & Company,
became, successively, Allen & Ticknor, William D. Tick-
nor, William D. Ticknor & Company, Ticknor, Reed &
Fields, and finally the celebrated firm of Ticknor &
Fields, which for eleven years carried on with great dis-
tinction a combined publishing and bookselling business
at the Old Corner. In 1865 the retail business was sold
to E. P. Dutton & Company, and the publishing busi-
ness, under the continuing style of Ticknor & Fields,
was removed to I24 Tremont Street. Thirteen years
earlier, however, an enterprise was initiated which was
to become the solid foundation upon which the rising
fabric of a great publishing house was to be erected -
to wit: the founding in 1852 of The Riverside Press by
Mr. Henry O. Houghton.
a
428
THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE
Roger L. Scaife's 1902 window display of Mary Johnston's Audrey
in the new bookroom at 4 Park Street.
Cutting down on newspaper advertising, as Houghton, Mifflin
now intended, was no way to keep authors happy. Many of them
kept careful tab on the extent to which their books were being
pushed. To a writer like F. Hopkinson Smith, news of Mary
Johnston's handsome sales was infuriating. That his Caleb West
had failed to approach her record even though it had been on the
market two years was his publisher's fault. Mifflin, he believed,
was ignorant of the fundamentals of his business. He was pocket-
ing profits that should be spent in bruiting the works of F. Hop-
kinson Smith.
F. Hopkinson Smith, architect, engineer, and contractor, had
become identified with Houghton, Mifflin in the 1880s as an illus-
trator. Not until he was forty-eight did he attempt authorship, and
then at Scudder's suggestion he prepared a text to go with some of
his travel sketches. In those days he had protested, "I sorter kinder
look on you all as my firm. My object is not to get money out of
you or myself or anybody else. If anybody thinks that let them try
E.B.Ballou. The Building of the Haese.
Boston H.M. Co., 1970.
Park-Street Papers.
PY
Bliss Perry.
Bustm Houghton Mifdlin,
Number 4 Park Street
1908.
IN the days before the souvenir postal card was
employed to advertise every corner of the globe,
it was always a pleasure to receive one of those
tinted cards decorated with a sprawling picture
Follon 10 years as editor
of some German town, and bearing a word of
hearty German greeting. Gruss aus Heidelberg !
Or perhaps it was Jena, Munich, or Nurem-
of Atlantic lemthly
berg that furnished the cheap little picture and
friendly word that wished you welfare and good
cheer. How that pleasant custom warmed one's
heart toward the far-away, thrifty city, and the
old friends and old ways ! It refreshed one's
memory better than any Baedeker, - that sim-
ple, big-chested, deep-throated word Gruss!
And it emboldens the Atlantic's Toastmaster
to voice in similar fashion the salutation of
the magazine to its readers. Greeting, Cheerful
Readers all! Let it be a greeting from Num-
ber 4 Park Street.
[ 3 ]
University
PARK-STREET PAPERS
NUMBER 4 PARK STREET
And what and where is Park Street ? The
halfway up the street, between the Scotch suit-
Atlantic prints those words upon its cover, but
ings and the Book Room. Poets often pass it
gives no souvenir picture of the place. It is a
with haughty and averted face, - the face of
short, sloping, prosperous little highway in what
the Temporarily Rejected, - and yet some-
Rufus Choate called our "denationalized" Bos-
times, on the Atlantic's publication days, they
ton town. It begins at Park Street Church, on
may be detected standing outside the show win-
Brimstone Corner. (If you ever happened to
dows of the Book Room, and reading their
read, on a chilly Sunday afternoon in boyhood,
names upon the fresh cover of the magazine with
the sermons of the Rev. Dr. Edward Dorr
that bland emotion of publicity which makes
Griffin, the first minister of Park Street Church,
the whole world kin. Park Street is a more
you will perceive how Brimstone Corner won
quiet abiding-place than the early home of
its name.) Thence it climbs leisurely westward
the magazine in the Old Corner Bookstore, or
toward the Shaw Memorial and the State House
the later quarters on Tremont Street. Even
for twenty rods or so, and ends at the George
within the substantial walls of Number 4, built
Ticknor house, on the corner of Beacon. The
as it was for a family mansion, and long iden-
street is bordered on the south by the Common,
tified with a widely honored name, the maga-
and its solid-built, sunward-fronting houses
zine used to flit upstairs and down like a rest-
have something of a holiday air, perhaps be-
less guest. Mr. Howells's tiny sanctum was on
cause the green, outdoors world lies just at their
the second floor; and many a delighted caller
feet. They are mostly given over, in these lat-
remembers that third-floor back room, looking
ter days, to trade. The habitual passer is con-
out upon the Granary Burying-Ground, where
scious of a pleasant blend of bookshops, flowers,
Mr. Aldrich was wont to mitigate the severi-
prints, silverware, Scotch suitings, more books,
ties of his position with an Irish setter and a
more prints, a club or two, a Persian rug, - and
pipe.
then Park Street is behind him.
As these words are written, the restless
Number 4 is the round-arched doorway
guest has settled down for a while in a spa-
[ 4 ]
[ 5 ]
PARK-STREET PAPERS
NUMBER 4 PARK STREET
cious sunny room on a level with the elm-
for instance, the view from these sunny win-
tops. Once, at least, in its century-old history,
dows. They look down upon the mild activities
the room was the chamber of a bride. Here are
of Park Street, to the left upon the black lines
her initials, scratched upon the window-pane
of people streaming in and out of the Subway,
with her ring, while she was waiting for the car-
in front toward the Common with its fountain
riage to bear her to the church, more than forty
that never flows and its Frog Pond gleaming
years ago. Later, it was the nest of a quaint
through the elms, and to the right toward the
old pair of abolitionists, who, when the days of
monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Is
their warfare were accomplished, here lived out
all this fairly typical of American life, - its work
their lives in peace. Many pairs of eyes have
and play, its resourcefulness and its careless-
gazed into the plain marble fireplace, or out
ness, its tolerant respect for the past, its post-
across the treetops toward the open country,
humous honors gladly paid to the leaders of
without leaving behind them any memory or
forlorn hopes? Or is it merely a view of Boston,
sign. The walls of the room now speak of lit-
something local, provincial; and our outlook
erary associations merely. They are hung with
from the Park Street windows, instead of sum-
portraits of former editors, and with autograph
marizing and symbolizing the American, the
manuscripts of the brilliant group of writers
human spectacle, is it only "Frogpondium"-
who gave to the Atlantic its early fame. Yet
as the scoffers have dubbed it - after all
some human quality other than literary, some
It is an interesting question, and one which
touch of the ardor, the curiosity, the silent en-
the readers of the magazine must answer for
durance of the men and women who have lived
themselves. Very likely they can determine,
within the stout brick walls of Number 4, may
better than any observer stationed at Number
still be present here, secretly fashioning the for-
4 Park Street, whether the Atlantic is provin-
tunes of the Atlantic of to-day.
cial or national. Or rather, since every maga-
Does this lurking genius loci affect the maga-
zine is necessarily provincial in some sort, it is
zine, whether its conductors will or no? Take,
for them to say whether the Atlantic's provin-
[ ]
[ 7 ]
PARK-STREET PAPERS
NUMBER 4 PARK STREET
cialism is of that honest kind which is rooted in
to give expression to the best thought of the
the soil, and hence is truly representative of and
whole country, and an examination of the long
contributory to the national life.
rows of its bound volumes is the most convinc-
Certain it is, on the one hand, that the Atlan-
ing evidence of the cosmopolitan character of
tic has always been peculiarly identified with
Boston. "Our Boston magazine," Emerson
its articles. In the earlier years of its existence,
it is true that the majority of the best-known
called it somewhat proudly, shortly after the
first number was published. "Of Boston, Bos-
American writers were living within twenty-five
miles of the Massachusetts State House. These
tonese," wrote a New Orleans critic the other
day, - full of visionary ideals, impressed by
authors, by reason of their unsigned, but easily
a certain dogmatic scholarship, and when not
recognized contributions, gave the magazine
the reputation which it has been fortunate
riding any one of its literary hobbies, pro-
enough to maintain. But before the Civil War
foundly intellectual." Other contemporary no-
was over, the number of different writers for
tices are not always so gracious in their iden-
tification of Bostonian characteristics with the
the Atlantic had greatly increased, and the "red-
eyed men" - as Emerson called them-who
traits of the Atlantic. The faithful clipping
bureaus furnish a choice collection of denunci-
examined the manuscripts which were sub-
atory epithets, aimed partly at Boston, partly at
mitted to it found themselves struggling, like
their successors to-day, with a flood of black-
Number 4 Park Street, whenever the politics
and philosophy of the magazine are not such as
ened paper from every quarter of the country.
There is no longer any "literary centre" in
our journalistic friends approve.
Yet neither the original founders of the
America. The publishing centre is New York,
Atlantic Monthly, nor any of its conductors,
but our writers cannot now be "rounded up" in
have ever purposed to make it an organ of
the old easy fashion. All of the greater Ameri-
Bostonian or New England opinion. Its aim
can magazines disclaim a special "sphere of
from the first has been national. It has striven
influence." They pride themselves upon their
national quality, and fear the provincial note.
[ 8 ]
[ 9 ]
PARK-STREET PAPERS
NUMBER 4 PARK STREET
The publishers of many periodicals have rea-
Ohio, and Indiana." This is very charming.
soned that the readiest way of acquiring the air
But Poe, while assenting to the proposal, and
of cosmopolitanism is to give their magazine
incidentally borrowing from his new publisher
the imprint of the commercial capital of the
fifty dollars on account, balks at that ominous
country. Witness the opinion of that shrewd-
word Oquawka. submit to you," he replies,
est of prospectus-makers, Edgar Allan Poe.
'whether it be not possible to put on our title-
In the last year of his life he was invited by a
page Published simultaneously at New York and
Mr. E. H. N. Patterson to become the editor
St. Louis- something equivalent."
of a new magazine. In Mr. Patterson's judg-
There speaks, with unashamed frankness,
ment, "The Boston Reviewers are, generally,
your seasoned editor and author. To live in
too much affected by local prejudices to give
Oquawka, and yet to convey the impression
impartial criticisms; the Philadelphia maga-
of being "Published simultaneously at New
zines have become mere monthly bulletins
York"! What a dream it is! And how it makes
for booksellers." He therefore proposes to
cowards of us all! The Atlantic, at least, owns
found, under Poe's editorship, an "influen-
to its Oquawka; it puts "4 Park Street, Bos-
tial periodical" at Oquawka, Ill. "Oquawka,"
ton" in bold-faced type upon its cover, and
he admits, "is comparatively an unimportant
prints "New York" in diminutive italics.
point, but I think that such being the case
But rusticity will betray itself; your man
would not injure at all the circulation of the
from the provinces remains a provincial to the
magazine.
Here I can enjoy every mail
end. Very possibly that lurking genius loci
advantage that I could at St. Louis, being but
controls the Atlantic, and makes it, not an All-
thirty hours' travel from that city, and being
American, as one would like to think it, but
situated immediately upon the Mississippi,
only a Boston magazine. In vain, perhaps,
with daily connection with the Northern Canal
does it summon men reared in Ohio, North
and St. Louis, and directly upon the great daily
Carolina, or New York to become its editors;
mail line from the East, through Pennsylvania,
in vain does it select its writers from every state
[ IO ]
]
PARK-STREET PAPERS
NUMBER 4 PARK STREET
in the Union. Doubtless the influence of the old
be, with the characteristics of its physical envi-
brick mansion, in the pleasant provincial street,
ronment. An up-to-date journal has just re-
pervades, like a subtle spell, every editorial act
marked that "the venerable Park Street publi-
of invitation, acceptance, or rejection. One can-
cation has bats in its belfry." Very likely. But
not escape it even by that simple device of put-
is not its habitation just back of the steeple of
ting a few hundred miles between oneself and
Park Street Church? Do not its rear windows
one's desk. Number 4 Park Street still keeps
look out upon a graveyard, and its front win-
its viewless, immitigable grip upon the fleeing
dows upon that sorriest symbol of New Eng-
editor. It gives him what the Atlantic's pros-
land sterility, a fountain which has long since
perous Christian Scientist neighbors call 'ab-
forgotten how to flow? Isa mere magazine to be
sent treatment." In vain does he mingle with
luckier than the New Englander himself? He
"common fowlers, tobacco-takers, and other
too, poor soul, tries to be friendly with all the
persons who can give no good account of how
world, but he cannot learn that trick of the
they spend their time"; in vain does he seat
"glad hand," so easily acquired elsewhere. He
himself at noontide upon some stump in the
would like to be hospitable, but somehow his
North Country, light an innocent pipe, and
fountains do not spontaneously bubble with oil
count the fish in his basket. Telegrams find
and wine. By nature he is no hater of his kind,
their way through; the very birds of the air
and yet Heaven has placed him in a climate
keep twittering of articles; Park Street and
best described by Cotton Mather: "New Eng-
"the traditions of the Atlantic" are with him
land, a country where splenetic Maladies are
still. The skies change, but not that habit of
prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any
trying all things-even - the trout in one's bas-
other, hath afforded numberless instances, of
ket - by the test of availability." It is a case
even pious people, who have contracted these
of cxlum non animum.
Melancholy Indispositions, which have unhinged
Well, so let it be! Here is the Atlantic for
them from all service or comfort; yea, not a
better or worse, - stamped ineffaceably, it may
few persons have been hurried thereby to lay
[ 12 ]
[ 13 ]
PARK-STREET PAPERS
NUMBER 4 PARK STREET
Violent Hands upon themselves at the last.
long after the fads of the present hour have given
These are among the unsearchable Fudgments
place to others. If ghosts of dead abolitionists
of God."
still haunt its sanctum, they are honest ghosts,
If the Atlantic shares these inexplicable de-
and will do the editorial policy no harm. And
fects of the New England qualities, will not its
if the outlook from its windows is only upon
readers accept its greetings none the less? For
Boston Common instead of upon one of the
the Atlantic, upon the word of the Toastmas-
great arteries of the world's trade, here, never-
ter, means well. Jesting aside, it is mightily
theless, upon the corner of that Common, is
proud of its own little corner of the world. It
something which far more than makes amends.
has a stubborn affection for the simple ways of
No magazine that has the Shaw Memorial be-
the older American life. It loves the memory
fore its windows can be quite indifferent to hu-
of the gentlemen and scholars and men of let-
man liberty, or be persuaded that commercial
ters who once frequented Park Street. It is
supremacy is the noblest ideal of an American
housed more happily in the ancient Quincy
citizen.
mansion than in any tall office-building of Gath
or Askelon. The skyscraper has not yet be-
come the sacred emblem of America, nor has it
been proved that the vortex of the mob is the
best place wherein to observe and comment
upon the growth of our civilization. Park Street
is somewhat apart from the insane whirl which
is miscalled "progress." Yet the magazine
published at Number 4 somehow made a place
for itself before the days of "commercial inva-
sions" and "world records" and "Anglo-Saxon
domination"; and it will continue to prosper
[ 14 ]
9/21/2015
The Union Club of Boston - A Club History
UNION CLUB OF BOSTON
A Brief History of the Union Club
Early in 1863, a group of Boston's intellectual and civic leaders formed a club to support
the Union cause during the American Civil War. That was a dark period for the Union. In
early 1862, General McClellan's campaign against Richmond was a failure. That summer
the Union army was badly beaten at Manassas, and General Burnside was later
ignominiously defeated at Fredericksburg. The elections in the fall of 1862 had not gone
well and doubts began to rise in the North, not only about the conduct of war, but also
about its very continuation. Issues such as the recruitment of African-American regiments
and the acceptance of commissions in such regiments were among the debates which
raged in Boston.
It was in those dark days that the Union Club was formed by Bostonians who wished to
support the Union and create a place where like-minded men could meet and converse.
And this, Article I of the club provided unequivocally: "The condition of membership shall
be unqualified loyalty to the Constitution and Union of the United States and unwavering
support of the federal government in efforts for the suppression of the Rebellion.' The
club's newly elected president Edward Everett had served as president of Harvard,
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James's, U.S. Secretary of State, and U.S.
Senator. The formal inauguration of the club took place on April 9, 1863. Dr. Everett made
a speech, the delivery of which is said to have taken the better part of two hours. This
preceded an equivalent effort at Gettysburg later that year.
http://www.unionclub.org/history.htm/
1/6
9/21/2015
The Union Club of Boston A Club History
LONGFELLOW, EMERSON, AND DANA
New club members today sign the same book preserving the signatures of almost five
hundred founders and early members, Edward Everett, James Russell Lowell, Robert
Bennet Forbes, John Murray Forbes, Civil War Govemor John Andrew, Richard Henry
Dana, and Oliver Wendell Holmes among them. United States senators, congressmen,
Supreme Court justices, Massachusetts governors and jurists, Harvard and M.I.T.
presidents, a United States president, ambassadors to the Court of St. James's, and
mayors of Boston have joined eminent literary figures, China traders and members of the
Boston legal and business community over the years to "maintain the old, esprit of this
offspring of Eighteen Sixty-Three." The club continued from its earliest days to celebrate
its Civil War heritage. According to a sketch of the club's history done in 1893, thirty years
after its founding: "As the war drew to an end, the celebration of its closing scenes, and the
presence here from time to time during the following years of those who had been its
heroes, will be remembered as among the most interesting events in the career of the club.
One need only recall the night of Lee's surrender and the receptions to Grant, Sherman,
Sheridan, Meade, Hancock and Farragut."
FORBES, AGASSIZ, AND HAYES
The Union Club did not exist, however, merely to perpetuate the memory of the Civil War. It
was, indeed, from the very beginning, a club where people could relax, dine, and enjoy
each other's company. In 1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson returned to the city with a visiting
Scotsman after a busy day, and they decided to spend the rest of the evening at the Club.
Emerson's guest, David McCrae, reported in his Americans at Home: "Longfellow was
there; old Dana, the poet, with his snow white hair and patriarchal look; Oliver Wendell
Holmes, sprightly, nervous, and lively; Lowell, with his classic head, brown curling beard
and moustache, and hyacinthe locks; Hayes, the Arctic voyager, small black-haired with
quick dark eye and resolute face; Agassiz, big, jovial, and ruddy; and Fields, the publisher,
with one or two of his partners." These and others were men of great distinction in the
fields of government, education, business, literature, science, medicine, and the arts. In
the words of former club president Robert Montgomery, "It is an inspiring list. It has no
parallel elsewhere."
http://www.unionclub.org/history.htm
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The Union Club of Boston - A Club History
Convivial evenings over the years have produced notable orations, odes, and debates
ranging from the serious to the humorous. Historian Bruce Catton presented a significant
speech on the occasion of the club's 100th anniversary. On a lighter note, a debate took
place at the Annual Meeting of the club in 1951, on the resolve that the Union Club, having
won the Civil War, should adopt another serious cause. Robert Montgomery, speaking for
the negative, concluded that the only good and serious cause not already adopted by
founders and members of the club was Temperance, and that since club members "were
not men to despise the social glass or to refuse long potations when there were long
orations
that this is the very one that we cannot seriously adopt." Members' spouses
have been welcome guests at the Union Club for many years. Women have been
welcomed as members since 1980, and now represent about one-tenth of the Union Club
membership. And SO club men and women continue to gather in the Granary, overlooking
the graves of Paul Revere, Sam Adams, John Hancock, and Mother Goose, raise a toast
to all who have preceded them, and then address the causes of the day."
The Clubhouse, 1875
The property which is now 7 and 8 Park Street was originally purchased by Thomas Amory,
and Thomas Handasyd Perkins, the "Merchant Prince," at public auction in 1801. In 1804,
Charles Bulfinch, the State House architect, laid out Park Street, or Park Place as it was
first called, in the place of the old Sentry Street. As a Boston selectman, Bulfinch had
language inserted into town deeds requiring a uniformity for houses to be built on Park
Street, and that they be "of brick or stone and covered with slate or tile or some materials
that will resist fire." He was responsible for the construction of the houses known as
Bulfinch Row at 1-4 Park Street, and for the Amory House built on the corner of Park and
Beacon Streets.
The Union Club is located on the site of the houses built for the Lawrence and Lowell
families. The Lawrence side, at 8 Park Street, was built in 1809, and was acquired in the
Fall of 1863, shortly after the founding of the club, from the family Abbot Lawrence, the
head of one of the greatest American mercantile houses of the day.' GridleyJ. F. Bryant,
architect of the Old City Hall, prepared alterations to the house appropriate to a club. In the
1880's Peabody and Steams added a floor and the elevator to 8 Park Street, and
http://www.unionclub.org/history.html
3/6
9/21/2015
The Union Club of Boston - A Club History
strengthened the walls of the old building. Next door, at 7 Park Street, Henry Gardener, the
"Know Nothing" party Governor, had lived from 1854 to 1856. In 1869 the house was sold
to John Amory Lowell, from whose estate it was acquired by the club. It was then
demolished, and a new building designed and erected in 1898. Club member A. Lawrence
Lowell, president of Harvard, was a distinguished grandson of the two families who once
owned 7 and 8 Park Street. His mother is pictured as a child playing a harp in a silhouette
in the Lawrence Room representing the family in its early years in the house which would
become the club.
Club rooms bear the names of soldiers of the Civil War, most of whom were founders or
members of the club, and many of whom died in battle. Among those remembered are
Colonel Norwood P. Hallowell (who was second in command of Colonel Robert Gould
Shaw's famous 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, and who subsequently commanded
the 55th Massachusetts Colored), and his brother, Brigadier General Edward Needles
Hallowell (who succeeded Norwood under Shaw, was wounded during the assault on Fort
Wagner, and subsequently assumed command of the 54th after Shaw's death on the
parapets of that fort). The nobility of these regiments is recorded in the Robert Gould Shaw
monument across the street from the club; John Murray Forbes, an early member of the
club, chaired the monument committee.
http://www.unionclub.org/history.html
4/6
9/21/2015
The Union Club of Boston - A Club History
din
Dia
VIEW OF PARK STREET FROM THE STATE HOUSE
Showing Ticknor House and the Union Club on the left and the sidewalk along the
Common.
Brigadier General Charles Russell Lowell, one of the Club founders, was commissioned as
a Colonel in April 1863. About the founding of the Union Club, he wrote, "Clubs have, in all
trying times, been great levers for moving events along." Married to the sister of Robert
Gould Shaw, he was engaged in operations in the Shenandoah Valley with Sheridan, where
he had thirteen horses shot from under him. He died in battle, in October 1864. Major
General Charles Devens, whose portrait hangs in the Reading Room, was one of the
Massachusetts lawyers who volunteered for the war. After his service, he was appointed to
the Supreme Court, before becoming attorney general of the United States in the Hayes
administration, and a member of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, where he
served until his death. Major General Charles Jackson Paine was admitted to the bar in
1856, severely wounded at Port Hudson on the Mississippi in 1863, rescued by his African-
American troops, many of whom lost their lives in the effort, and eventually returned to
Boston where he participated in three successful America's Cup defenders, totally
supporting the cost of the Mayflower and the Volunteer. These and others are
commemorated by memorial plaques in each Club meeting room.
The Andrew Room is named for John A. Andrew, active in anti-slavery efforts from
boyhood, and the much-beloved Governor of Massachusetts at the time of the founding of
the club. He provided key support to Lincoln. The Needham Room was named to honor
Daniel Needham, Jr., who was its distinguished president at the time of his death in 1992.
"
Material for this brief history has been drawn from the club's "125th Anniversary History,
edited by Crocker Wright and Asa E. Phillips, Jr.; from speeches to the membership by
former Union Club Presidents John M. Harrington, Jr., and justice Paul C. Reardon; from an
ode by Oscar Haussermann, Jr.; and from Richard B. Johnson's 1976 essay on the
"History of the Buildings." Prints courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.
5/6
http://www.unionclub.org/history.html
AMC[sarah wyman whitman[1,1017,2,3,3,3,4,6,5,100,6,1]] (3-1)
Page 1 of 3
Records 3 through 3 of 16 returned.
Author:
Houghton Mifflin Company.
Title:
Correspondence and records, 1832-1944.
Description:
169 boxes (64 linear ft.)
LC Call No.: MS 82-628
Notes:
Records of Houghton Mifflin and its predecessors,
containing papers relating to both the printing and
publishing branches of the business. Includes a voluminous
file of incoming letters, chiefly post-1870, from authors
published by the firm; some correspondence with other
publishers; a few compositions; and a small file of editorial
correspondence of The Atlantic Monthly.
Houghton Mifflin Correspondence (bMS Am
1925-1925.4) Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Houghton Mifflin Company, publishing house of
Boston, Mass., traces its roots back to the firm of Ticknor
and Fields, the premier "literary" publishing house in the
United States during the middle years of the nineteenth
century. Ticknor and Fields originated in the firm of Allen
and Ticknor, established in 1832. The partners in Ticknor and
Fields were William D. Ticknor (one of the partners in Allen
and Ticknor) and James T. Fields, who entered the firm as a
junior partner in 1843. After a series of changes, Ticknor
and Fields evolved into Houghton, Mifflin and Company. The
succession of corporate names was as follows: Allen and
Ticknor (1832-1834); William D. Ticknor (1834-1843); William
D. Ticknor and Co. (1843-1849); Ticknor, Reed and Fields
(1849-1854) Ticknor and Fields (1854-1868); Fields, Osgood
and Co. (1868-1871) James R. Osgood and Co. (1871-1878) ;
Houghton, Osgood and Co. (1878-1880) Osgood and Co.
(1871-1878) , ; Houghton, Osgood and Co. (1878-1880); Houghton,
Mifflin and Co. (1880-1908) and Houghton Mifflin Co. (since
1908). Henry Oscar Houghton began as a printer in Cambridge,
Mass. and established H. O. Houghton and Co. in 1852.
Houghton's printing establishment on the Charles River in
Cambridge was known as the Riverside Press. In 1864 he formed
a publishing partnership in the firm of Hurd and Houghton. In
1878 the business merged with James R. Osgood and Co. as
Houghton, Osgood and Co.
Electronic finding aid available (545KB)
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:F .Hough:hou00009
Unpublished printed finding aid available in the
Houghton Accessions Records, 1999-2000, under *99M-43.
Gift of Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991; deposit
1943 and after.
Subjects:
Allen & Ticknor.
Fields, Osgood and Company.
H.O. Houghton & Company.
Houghton Mifflin Company.
Houghton, Osgood and Company.
Hurd and Houghton.
James R. Osgood and Company.
Riverside Press.
Ticknor and Fields.
Ticknor, Reed, and Fields.
William D. Ticknor & Co.
The Atlantic monthly.
ehttp://www.loc.gov/cgi-bin/zgate?present+1560778+Default+3+1+F+1.2.840.10003.5.10+96+/cgi..5/24/2005
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Seven and eight Park Street :
a brief history of the home of the Union Club of Boston, 1976.
Richard B Johnson
1976
English
Book 20 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.
Boston, Mass. : Union Club,
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Title: Seven and eight Park Street :
a brief history of the home of the Union Club of Boston, 1976.
Author(s): Johnson, Richard B. 1914- (Richard Brigham),
Corp Author(s): Union Club of Boston.
Publication: Boston, Mass. : Union Club,
Year: 1976
Description: 20 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.
Language: English
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: Buildings - Massachusetts -- Boston.
Named Corp: Park Street (Boston, Mass.)
Geographic: Boston (Mass.) ww Buildings, structures, etc.
Note(s): Author: Richard B. Johnson.
Document Type: Book
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100th anniversary celebration , the Union Club of Boston /
Milton Frederick Kimball
1964
English
Book 53 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Boston : Union Club of Boston,
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Title: 100th anniversary celebration , the Union Club of Boston /
Author(s): Kimball, Milton Frederick.
Corp Author(s): Union Club of Boston.
Publication: Boston : Union Club of Boston,
Year: 1964
Description: 53 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Language: English
Class Descriptors: LC: HS2725.B7
Responsibility: edited by Frederick Milton Kimball.
Document Type: Book
Entry: 19930927
Update: 19950704
Accession No: OCLC: 28898404
Database: WorldCat
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3/22/2016
Park Street Papers! I Open Letters Monthly - an Arts and Literature Review
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Park Street Papers!
By Steve Donoghue
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PARK-STREET PAPERS
BLISS PERRY
Our book today is Park-Street Papers, a charming 1908 volume made by Bliss Perry, the sweetest-natured man ever to run
the venerable Atlantic Monthly (with all due apologies to the shade of the almost equally venerable Edward Weeks, who
ran a wonderful shop for a long time but who would have readily admitted that he could have fuzzy days just like plain
folks). Perry helmed the magazine from 1899 to 1909 and was its genial "Toastmaster," writing signed and unsigned
commentary and patter for every issue, dealing with the endless stream of authors who visited Number 4 Park Street, trying
to keep the budget from flying apart at the seams, and maintaining throughout it all the disposition of a saint, often stealing
quiet moments to sit and look out The Atlantic's big bow windows at the city beyond:
They look down upon the mild activities of Park Street, to the left upon the black lines of people streaming in
and out of the Subway, in front toward the Common with its fountain that never flows and its Frog Pond
gleaming through the elms, and to the right toward the monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Is all this
fairly typical of American life - its work and play, its resourcefulness and its carelessness, its tolerant respect
for the past, its posthumous honors gladly paid to leaders of forlorn hopes? Or is it merely a view of Boston,
something local, provincial; and our outlook from Park Street windows, instead of summarizing and
symbolizing the American, the human spectacle, is it only "Frogpondinium" - as scoffers have dubbed it -
after all?
He himself was never in any real doubt as to the answer to that question, and the excerpt - from early on in Park-Street
Papers, shows both how friendly his prose always was and how easy it was. He was fond - over-fond, perhaps - of those
big, simple writing conceits that smarter authors tend to avoid: organizing a piece around the things he can see from his
desk, organizing a piece around the view out his windows, organizing a piece as though it were a banquet - that sort of
thing came ready-made to his hand.
Most of the pieces collected in Park-Street Papers began life as "Atlantic Prologues" in the magazine itself. There are
grinning tributes to the magazine, as well as several examples of Perry's strongest suit as a writer: long, loving profiles of
authors. He writes with insight and affection about such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, and
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/park-street-papers/
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3/22/2016
Park Street Papers! I Open Letters Monthly - an Arts and Literature Review
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and he's at his best - in fact it's the best thing in this book - when writing about Francis
Underwood, "The Editor Who Was Never An Editor," a quiet, unassuming man who was present at the legendary 1857
dinner party at which The Atlantic was created (these things seem always to happen over food) and who remained
something of a presiding spirit there for many years.
Perry was just such a presiding spirit himself, and although he only served for a decade, he did more than anybody else to
PARK STREET PAPERS
set The Atlantic's attitude,
that curious mixture of serenity and agitation that has always
characterized it at its best. His secret? Avoid the pointlessness of slavish imitation in search of a larger audience:
The Atlantic has many competitors. The more the better. Each of them fulfills some public service peculiar to
itself - even if it be only to serve as an "awful example." Each of them reaches many persons whom the
Atlantic cannot reach without changing its character and aim. The colored illustrations of one, the
unimpeachable innocuousness of another, the agility of a third in jumping to the majority side of every
question, do not arouse the Atlantic's envy.
Park-Street Papers brims with just that kind of quiet confidence, in the faith that good writing will always find good
readers. Ironically, that faith isn't borne out by Perry's own writing (who reads Whittier anymore? Or Aldrich? Or Perry
himself, for all that?), but it doesn't matter: the faith itself is the important thing. And if you're lucky enough to come
across this merry, optimistic volume on the bargain carts of my beloved Brattle Bookshop (or, you know, the electronic
equivalents), don't hesitate to spend the $3 - it's a glimpse into a publishing, writing, and editing world that no longer
exists and whose like may not come again. Here lives again a list of authors whose names were once on the lips of every
conscientious reader, and here also lives again a Boston of a cruder, gentler, slower time - also now gone, except for some
of that remaining exquisitely reserved Yankee architecture.
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XFINITY Connect
Re: Dorr on Park Street
CLAY HARPER
8:54 AM
To Ronald Epp
Thanks for the offer, but I happily purchased a copy at the event - though I haven't yet had
the opportunity to begin in earnest.
During our twice annual Sales Conferences when the new lists were presented to the
sales reps, the week was always capped with an Old School sort of formal dinner with
roasting and toasting. During those "last days at Park Street" the company still had a few
of the earlier patrician, polite "Gentleman's Club" traditions being kept alive in a friendly
way by the Old Guard. Consequently, some of those dinners were held at the Union Club
(or at the Club of Odd Volumes). Truly lawful food, as I recall, but it created in the younger
turks like me a strong sense of the continuity and legacies of what was then still the
largest independent publisher in the land (counting back through it's friendly merger with
Ticknor & Fields and the Riverside Press in 1880).
Paul Brooks, in his publishing memoir "Two Park Street", says No. 2 had been a Christian
Science Reading Room, and a goldsmith shop before Houghton arrived. The architectural
highlight was certainly the dark and clubby conference room adorned with beautiful (if
fanciful) panoramic French wallpaper by Zuber et Cie called "Scenes of North America" -
the very same to be found in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House.
One of my former colleagues is a much stronger lore-master when it comes to HM on
Park than I am, and I'm going to check in with him to see if he minds being included here -
I'm almost certain he'll be delighted.
Clay
On October 25, 2017 at 9:21 PM Ronald Epp wrote:
Hi Clayton,
Delighted to hear from you! I just returned to Pennsylvania from my other home in
Simsbury CT, carrying with me the heavy Ellen Ballou Building of the House, the title
you recommended when we met in Jamaica Plain. I was unaware of it and secured it
through ILL and have made progress through the establishment in 1880 of HM at #4
Park Street, the property beside the Bulfinch residence that Thomas Wren Ward from
1816 until his death in 1858. His wife Lydia owned the property from its purchase date
until she moved to Commonwealth Avenue in 1863 when the property then passed to
merchant Augustus Heard; foreclosed in 1895 the property passed to John Duff whose
historical record goes cold at this point and I nope to learn more from Ballou apout the
new #3 structure that you recall so many decades later. I confess to something shy of
an obsession with the history of Park Street and its residents.
If you are curious about the origins of Park Row, Harold Kirker authored in 1969 The
Architecture of Charles Bulfinch which includes architectural renderings of the
properties both external and internal; Robert Shackleton's essay in The Book of Boston
(available online) describes Park Street Corner. And of course you know well the
wonderful Bliss Perry essay on Number 4 Park Street in his Park-Street Papers (1908).
I recently uncovered the fact that Dorr's uncle Samuel Gray Ward was one of the
founders of the Union Club of Boston, headquartered at #7 and #8, the location of the
houses built for the Lawrence and Lowell families. These are just a few of the prominent
Bostonians who resided on this strip of real estate that was held in little regard the
decades before Bulfinch's efforts.
In preparing the Jamaica Plain talk I uncovered new findings about the Ward and Dorr
families on the periphery of the Common. I'm thinking about approaching the Boston
Athenaeum about a talk there next year. I'd certainly like to incorporate the history of
HM as well. Your recollections certainly are important to that end. Let us keep up the
conversation. If you do not have a copy of Creating Acadia National Park, might I send
you a copy? If so, please send address.
Most appreciatively,
Ron
Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D.
532 Sassafras Dr.
Lebanon, PA 17042
717-272-0801
eppster2@comcast.net
And: 124 Sawyers Path
Simsbury, CT 06070
603-491-1760
On October 25, 2017 at 10.42 AM CLAYTON wrote:
Hi,
Good to chat with you during your Arnold Arboretum event a few weeks back.
I worked in the marketing department of Houghton Mifflin's trade division during it's last years on Park
Street. No. 2 and 3 Park were internally connected on the lower four floors at that time, though they were
offset by couple of steps due to the slope of the hill. As I recall, most of No. 3 had lost its original
character internally and was divided into a warren of small offices and early cubicles. My office was little
bigger than a desk at that time, and shared a paper thin wall that bisected one of the third floor windows
overlooking the Common. The top floor of Mo. 3 had a sort of solarium with airy windows that had
previously been used as space for the Art department. By then it housed a dusty collection of 10-12 large
https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/#!!&app=io.ox/mail/detail&folder=default0/INBOX&id=419945
2/3
historical record goes cold at this point and I hope to learn more from Ballou about the
new #3 structure that you recall so many decades later. I confess to something shy of
an obsession with the history of Park Street and its residents.
If you are curious about the origins of Park Row, Harold Kirker authored in 1969 The
Architecture of Charles Bulfinch which includes architectural renderings of the
properties both external and internal; Robert Shackleton's essay in The Book of Boston
(available online) describes Park Street Corner. And of course you know well the
wonderful Bliss Perry essay on Number 4 Park Street in his Park-Street Papers (1908).
I
recently uncovered the fact that Dorr's uncle Samuel Gray Ward was one of the
founders of the Union Club of Boston, headquartered at #7 and #8, the location of the
houses built for the Lawrence and Lowell families. These are just a few of the prominent
Bostonians who resided on this strip of real estate that was held in little regard the
decades before Bulfinch's efforts.
In preparing the Jamaica Plain talk I uncovered new findings about the Ward and Dorr
families on the periphery of the Common. I'm thinking about approaching the Boston
Athenaeum about a talk there next year. I'd certainly like to incorporate the history of
HM as well. Your recollections certainly are important to that end. Let us keep up the
conversation. If you do not have a copy of Creating Acadia National Park, might I send
you a copy? If so, please send address.
Most appreciatively,
Ron
Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D.
532 Sassafras Dr.
Lebanon, PA 17042
717-272-0801
eppster2@comcast.net
And: 124 Sawyers Path
Simsbury, CT 06070
603-491-1760
On October 25, 2017 at 10:42 AM CLAYTON wrote:
Hi,
Good to chat with you during your Arnold Arboretum event a few weeks back.
I worked in the marketing department of Houghton Mifflin's trade division during it's last years on Park
Street. No. 2 and 3 Park were internally connected on the lower four floors at that time, though they were
offset by a couple of steps due to the slope of the hill. As I recall, most of No. 3 had lost its original
character internally and was divided into a warren of small offices and early cubicles. My office was little
bigger than a desk at that time, and shared a paper thin wall that bisected one of the third floor windows
overlooking the Common. The top floor of Mo. 3 had a sort of solarium with airy windows that had
previously been used as space for the Art department. By then it housed a dusty collection of 10-12 large
10/26/2017
XFINITY Connect
file cabinets containing years of press clippings. It served mainly as a pass-through for Friday evening
Happy Hours on the Two Park roof. We climbed out the windows to enjoy the views, the sunset, the
steeple, and the cocktails!
As promised, attached is a photo of one of the two identical bronze plaques that graced the entrance of
No. 2 until the offices were moved to 222 Berkeley in the nid-1990s. It was given to me as a parting gift
when I left HM after nearly twenty years. Measuring 20" X 26" X 1.5" and surely close to 60 lbs, it is a bit
of a burden, but much loved. When the time comes I will find an appropriate place to pass it on - perhaps
the BPL or Houghton Library at Harvard where many of the company's early treasures reside. Its pair is
still in the corporate offices.
Clay Harper,
former Marketing Director, HMco
Park-Street papers : Perry, Bliss, 1860-1954 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
a
Park-Street Papers
By Bliss Perry
TOVT BIEN
ov RIEN
River,Mide
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
1908
1/6
Park-Street papers : Perry, Bliss, 1860-1954 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
PREFACE
Aldricb, one of the vivid and delightful figures in
the already shadowy line of Atlantic editors, was
written immediately after bis deatb in 1907. /
have also included in this volume, which begins
Contents
and ends with the Atlantic, a paper prepared for
the Fiftietb Anniversary number, in November,
1907, dealing with F. H. Underwood, whose
ATLANTIC PROLOGUES
sbare in founding the magazine bas never received
Number 4 Park Street
3
quite adequate recognition.
Catering for the Public
16
B. P.
CAMBRIDGE, 1908.
The Cheerless Reader
30
"A Readable Proposition"
39
Turning the Old Leaves
52
THE CENTENARY OF HAWTHORNE
63
THE CENTENARY OF LONGFELLOW
105
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
141
WHITTIER FOR To-DAY
171
THE EDITOR WHO WAS NEVER THE EDITOR
203
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