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    Boston: A Historic Walking Tour
    Boston: A Historic Walking Tour
    Boston: A Historic Walking Tour
    Ebook215 pages1 hour

    Boston: A Historic Walking Tour

    By Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

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    About this ebook

    Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the Massachusetts State House as the Hub of the Universe. In Boston: A Historic Walking Tour, readers are guided on a series of downtown walking tours that radiate out from this Boston landmark. Featuring different excursions that explore Boston s prominent neighborhoods and districts, visitors and natives alike will see how this city has become one of the country s oldest cultural destinations. Boston s growth and development in the 19th and 20th centuries has contributed to it becoming the unofficial Capital of New England ; its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region is far reaching. Although Boston is known for its notoriously crooked streets and narrow alleys, it is a mecca for walkers looking to take in historic sites and surround themselves with history. Walk along Tremont, Washington, Beacon, and Summer Streets to explore downtown Boston. Saunter down Beacon Street on Beacon Hill and Boylston Street in the Back Bay to take in the city s most beloved sites.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 16, 2013
    ISBN9781439643983
    Boston: A Historic Walking Tour
    Author

    Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

    Anthony Mitchell Sammarco is a noted historian and author of over sixty books on Boston, its neighborhoods and surrounding cities and towns. He lectures widely on the history and development of his native city.

    Read more from Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

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      Book preview

      Boston - Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

      Rosenberg.

      INTRODUCTION

      Boston, Massachusetts, was settled in 1630 by men and women from England seeking religious freedom, as well as liberty, from the oppressive policies of King Charles I. Known as Puritans, meaning those who sought to purify the English church from within, they had been marginalized by society and sought a New Zion in the new world that they would call New England. They settled in what they referred to as a city upon a hill, which had been called Shawmut by the Massachusetts Indians. Literally translated, Shawmut means a spring of water, so when the settlers chose the peninsula, it had both a source of water as well as three prominent hills that were referred to as Trimount, which were to become known as Mount Vernon and Beacon and Pemberton Hills. Trimount was later to become Tremont in both spelling as well as in pronunciation and has been perpetuated by a major street in the city by that name today.

      In September 1630, the new settlement was to be renamed Boston, after the Lincolnshire town in England; it was a midsized town of 800 acres, surrounded by water on three sides and connected to the mainland at Roxbury by a narrow isthmus of land known as The Neck. For almost two centuries, Boston would have its center of town government in the present Old State House, at the head of King (now State) Street, with the North End and the South End flanking it. As the area along the waterfront continued to be developed, as the lucrative mercantile economy of Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 18th century was directly tied to its growth and expansion, the area of Beacon Hill would conversely remain undeveloped until the late 18th century. By the early 19th century, Boston was to see the beginning of tremendous topographical changes culminating with the infilling and creation of new lands, such as that around Quincy Market and the new South End and the Back Bay neighborhoods. Created with new grid plans of streets, these newly created lands were a necessity as Boston’s population continued to increase through both births as well as immigration beginning in the 1840s, which continued unabated through the early 20th century.

      Boston was incorporated as a city on March 4, 1822, when the town citizens cast their ballots at a special election. The first mayor was John Phillips, a respected attorney and former president of the Massachusetts Senate; he was followed by Josiah Quincy, whose municipal reforms were to include public health, creation of new lands, and the building of Quincy Market as the first supermarket in the city with stalls selling all sorts of fresh foods, produce, meats, and fish. These two men created a sense of municipal duty that most subsequent mayors strove to emulate, but in the decades prior to the Civil War, Boston had the eyes of the nation upon it with great strides and developments in education, prison reform, abolition of slavery agitation, and the creation of workhouses for the poor. Boston was often and justly referred to as the Athens of America, a city of staunchly democratic ideals held in high regard not only locally, but also throughout the nation. The coining of the term the Hub of the Universe by Oliver Wendell Holmes advanced the high and lofty ideals to which Bostonians held themselves to and continue to do so to this day.

      As Boston’s population continued to increase and new neighborhoods were either created by infilling or by annexing former cities and towns surrounding Boston between the Civil War and World War I, the population shift from downtown Boston dramatically changed the character and composition of the area. No longer were Summer Street and Tremont Street the formerly elegant residential neighborhoods; with the rapid development of four- and five-story commercial buildings replacing former residences, the neighborhoods have dramatically changed in character. The city swiftly evolved in the 19th century and truly did become the thriving, energetic hub of the New England economy, a burgeoning nexus drawing on its new as well as old resources—its citizens. The city, regardless of however fast it actually changed, would still surprisingly retain remnants of its illustrious history and architecture, which seemed to be almost bookmarked between the newer, taller, and often grander buildings of the late Victorian city.

      When I was asked to write a new walking tour of Boston, I immediately thought of my many students at the Urban College of Boston, a two-year college located on Tremont Street opposite the Boston Common. For 16 years, I have taught a course, among others, on the history of Boston, which, through readings, lectures, and walking tours, explains the history and development of the city. Because this is an accelerated evening class held during the summer semester and most of my students have worked during the business day, getting out of classroom and exploring the city has a dual purpose. It first allows the student to see what they have been reading about in the assigned texts and handouts, but it also acts to stimulate their minds, as there is nothing better than an evening walk in the summer. These students, who take the course as a humanities elective, are often surprised and pleased by the walks that take them along the city streets that are so familiar to them but now take on a new meaning as they learn of the rich overlay of the city’s history and architecture. I hope that you too will enjoy these walks to the Old North End and the South End, most of which are along one street such as Washington, Beacon, Summer, Cambridge, Tremont, and Boylston Streets or the fascinating Ladder Streets of the city. Whatever order you take the walks, enjoy the rich overlay of architecture, history, and development of this truly special place that we call Boston.

      One

      THE OLD NORTH END

      Salem Street, seen from Cross Street, in Boston’s North End is a narrow street that has embraced every new immigrant arriving in the city. A predominantly Italian American neighborhood in the 20th century, the area was known as Little Italy and is today a place of restaurants, small bars, and pastry shops. (Author’s collection.)

      Beginning at the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, the highest point in the North End, this tour meanders through a neighborhood often called Little Italy.

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