Fort Hill

Boston, 1630 - Fort Hill labeled Corn Hill at bottom.


When the Puritans settled Boston in the 1630s, there were three elevated areas on the Shawmut peninsula. Beacon 'Hill,' then a series of three peaks, Copp's Hill to the north, and Fort Hill to the south. The map above, made later but representing the area at the time of settlement, shows Fort (or Corn) hill at the edge of the harbor. With it's location along the water facing the harbor, the southern hill was a good place for a fort, and was used as such.


Fort Hill with Washington square at the peak, 1852.


As the town of Boston grew in population, the flat lands near the docks were settled first, with the slopes of the hills left mostly empty. In time, space pressures drove people up the hills, and both Beacon and Fort hills were settled by the well to do. Settlement by the well to do began in the early 19th Century, but by 1850 Irish fleeing the famine had congregated around the sides of the hill.

By the Civil War, the hill was a warren of tenements, shantys, and even holes dug into the side of the hill to house the poorest of Boston's poor. Much of the hill was given to drunkenness and crime, and was considered a disease-ridden slum. Over time, calls were made to clear the hill, level the land, and turn it over to commercial interests to serve the city's growing warehouse needs.




Fort Hill, before its removal.


Fort Hill before demolition.


Boylston school, circa 1850.

This school was to the right and behind the two views above.



Fort Hill demolition, 1871.


Work started in 1866. The first work brought Oliver street down to grade level, but the expected gravel turned out to be hard-packed earth, less valuable for land-filling projects going on around the city at the time. After a pause, the project resumed, with the former hill being used to create the new Atlantic avenue along the harbor. With the help of steam shovels, the work was completed, although the financial depression of the early 1870s slowed development of the new district. Over the next decade, the new streets were built out with exactly the warehouses and businesses they were planned for.



1883,



Fort Hill Square, contemporary with the map directly below.


Fort Hill Square, 1938.


While Boston's West End urban renewal project is now notorious in urban planning circles and in the popular mind, Boston had it's first urban renewal project almost 100 years earlier. The Irish were removed, and their homes given over to moneyed interests. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

City of Immigrants, City of Churches

Scotch Presbyterian Church, Warrenton street, 1917.


Boston was a city of diversity long before the current usage of the word was coined. In the early 20th Century, Boston's diversity had a European base. In contemporary media, Boston is considered first as an Irish city, then Italian, Jewish, and 'other.' In fact, there were colonies of many nationalities in the city before assimilation and the suburbs watered them down and dispersed them away.



Portugese Catholic Church, North Bennett street, 1902.


Many of the immigrants who came to Boston were Catholics, and the Archdiocese allowed them to build their own churches and hold mass in their own languages.



Ohabei Sholom Synagogue, Union Park street, South End, 1902.

Not all of the immigrants were Catholic, and not all were Christian. There were Synagogues in the North, South and West Ends, and Roxbury as well.



Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church, Emerald street, 1917.

When you think of Boston immigrants, do you think of Swedes? Both of my mother's parents were Swedes, and they had other Swedish friends in the city and nearby. Although most Swedes were Lutherans in the old country, my mother's family attended a Congregational church in Jamaica Plain. There must have been enough Swedes in the South End to maintain a church for a time.



St John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church, Union Park, 1938.

Plenty of Greeks in Boston, and indeed they still keep their identity in the city, with a group centered in Roslindale.




French Catholic Church, Isabella street, 1902.

This would be French Canadian I imagine. Canadian may be the immigrant group that gets the least respect in Boston. Canadians from the Atlantic Provinces and Quebec came to Boston for work, and were one of the largest immigrant groups of the 19th Century. Men from Nova Scotia came to this country with carpentry skills, and filled the house-building trade. French-Canadians were major contributors to the mill towns of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and settled in Boston as well.



First Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church, Ferdinand street, 1902

Not all Swedes were Lutherans, apparently.



Holy Trinity German Catholic Church, Shawmut avenue, 1918.


Germans were one of the major immigrant groups in Boston. Like many European nationalities, Germans tended to arrive in Atlantic ports and then move on to the Midwest. Some, however, stayed and settled down. Those who came from the north of Germany were mostly Protestant, and the southerns were usually Catholic. They organized social clubs and schools to maintain their language and traditions, and in the case of the Catholics, requested permission of the Archdiocese to build their own church. The building still stands in the South End, but is no longer active.


St Peter's Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church, W. Fifth street, South Boston, 1910.

South Boston and Irish go together in the public mind like peanut butter and jelly, but the district was also the center of Boston's Lithuanian population. Lithuanians and Latvians both emigrated from their homes to flee the anarchy and oppression of the Russian revolutionary period. St Peter's is still an active parish.

Boston Museum

Boston Museum, 1852.


Boston Museum, Tremont street, 1888.


The Boston Museum was one of the leading theaters of 19th Century Boston. The first building was erected in 1841 at Tremont and Bromfield street, and its immediate success lead five years later to a new, larger building being constructed, again on Tremont street, this time between School street and Scollay square.




The Boston Museum was founded by Moses Kimball. Kimball first bought the New England Museum, and then transferred its contents to the new Boston Museum. The facility actually was a museum, containing stuffed birds and animals, and other natural curiousities. During the 1840s, Kimball became a friend and associate of P.T. Barnum, and often shared exhibits with him. The (in)famous Feegee Mermaid was one of these, a half-orangutan/half fish construction that had a great popularity.


Entrance Hall.

In spite of its origin as a Barnum-type curiousity showplace, the Boston Museum is best remembered as a theater. It is suggested that the facility was given the name museum to avoid the opprobrium of Purtian Boston. More likely, it truly was a museum at the beginning but over time the Museum became one of the country's leading theaters. The first American productions of both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and H.M.S. Pinafore occurred on the Boston Museum stage.

Moses Kimball died in 1895, and the Boston Museum closed in 1903.

Boston City Hospital

Boston City Hospital, from Harrison avenue.

The official history of Boston City Hospital begins in 1861, when money was put aside to build a facility for the 'worthy poor.' The site chosen was filled land already owned by the city in the new South End. Unfortunately, it also sat adjacent to Roxbury Canal, which carried sewage from that town to Boston harbor. The main campus of the hospital consisted of 10 acres of land. This property had previously been known as the Agricultural Fairgrounds (!), and regularly flooded over at high tide.

Over the years, many buildings were added to the facility, including more patient's wards, a power plant, nurse's housing, medical laboratories, a mortuary and an ambulance headquarters.



Panoramic view of Boston City Hospital from Harrison avenue, 1901 (snapshotsofthepast.com Flickr page).



Boston City Hospital, 1929. Dome of central administration in seen in the center of the complex (BPL).



Boston City Hospital 1883 . The two top images are oriented from Harrison avenue, at the upper left of this map, looking towards the lower right.



Boston City Hospital 1888. Buildings have been added at the lower corner of the property.


Boston City Hospital 1895. More buildings added, and East Springfield street and the land between the hospital and Massachusetts avenue has been taken by the city and added to the campus. There is also now a south campus on the opposite side of Massachusetts avenue. Note the Roxbury Canal, yet to be filled in, at the lower right corner.


Boston City Hospital 1938.


Convalescent Home, 1890.



Convalescent home, Lower Mills.


City Hospital had auxiliary facilities at opposite ends of the city. The city purchased a country estate of 14 acres on Dorchester avenue near Lower Mills in 1890 to serve as a convalescent home for women and children - apparently, men were on their own. Patients were being sent home too early, and returning soon after. They raised vegetables on the property to serve patients, and flowers from the gardens were sent to City Hospital. Four cows and a chicken house provided milk and eggs for the patients as well. This property would later be sold to the Archdiocese of Boston, which used it to build the new Carney Hospital.



Ambulance parade, 1905.


I just like the idea of an ambulance parade, don't you?


Relief Station, Haymarket Square.



Relief Station, Haymarket Square, 1902.


After many requests for a hospital facility in the downtown district, a new Relief Station was built on land made available through eminent domain by the construction of subway tunnel access from North station. With the many train depots, electric streetcars and heavy horse-teaming, serious accidents were common in the district. The three story building was opened in 1902. In its first year, the Relief Station treated 20,000 patients.


Camp of tents and huts for sick soldiers, 1908.

So much went on at Boston City Hospital over the years that it's hard to know when to stop taking about it. The hospital, and other like it, had a long history of using tents during the summer for patients. As early as 1868 the facility was using tents to house a small number of patients. The air, and the hygiene, were probably better for them than that found in the wards. During the 1880s, up to 60 patients (always men) were cared for in tents. In 1898, four hundred soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War were housed in tents on the grounds.


Resource: A History of the Boston City Hospital

Lost Train Stations: Eastern Railroad

Eastern Railroad Depot, East Boston, 1852 (BPL).


The second Eastern Railroad Depot on Causeway street is at the far right in this cropped photograph. The Boston and Lowell depot is the larger building in the foreground.



Eastern Railroad Depot, Causeway street (second from left, beside the larger Boston and Lowell depot) 1883.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a photograph of the original Eastern Railroad Depot in East Boston. The Eastern, like all the early railroads, was built out of multiple mergers. While competing with the Boston and Maine as a Boston to Portland line, the Eastern followed the coast closer than the B&M line did. The Eastern was founded in 1836, running north through Salem, Lynn and Newburyport. The same track is still used by the MBTA for its Newburyport/Rockport line.

Unlike the Boston and Maine, the Eastern did not originally have a depot in Boston proper. The first depot, shown in the top map, was in East Boston, on a wharf beside that of the Cunard line. From there, ferries would carry passengers across to Boston. Right around the time that map was made (1852), the Eastern laid a connector line in to Boston, and built the Causeway street depot. Around 1884, the Eastern was leased by the Boston and Maine, and ceased to exist as an independent company.

In 1893, the new North Station (also called Union Station) would open on Causeway street, replacing the four older stations shown on the last map above. That depot would in turn be replaced by a new North Station, which would later be replaced by the existing facility. The two earlier North Stations will be the subject of another entry.

Link Time: History of Massachusetts

I've just come across a very nice new blog that I want to share with you: History of Massachusetts.

Recent topics: the Salem witch trials, the Mayflower and How Boston Lost It's Hills. Good information, nice graphics and links to references. I encourage you to check it out and say hi to Rebekah.

Urban Archeology

View Urban archeology location 2 in a larger map


Ever go for a walk in the woods and find an old foundation or a broken down wall or a concrete footing that once supported a mystery something that is no where in sight? Back in the 1990s, I was walking along the Charles river at Millennium Park in West Roxbury and I noticed some carved stone blocks on the ground. A recent fishing trip took me back to the site, and I'm taking this opportunity to expose my find and put out a call for information.

Millennium Park was created when an old city landfill was capped. The site sits along the Charles river, and the old hill of rubbish now provides a wonderful view of downtown Boston, the Blue Hills and the adjacent Charles river wetlands. While kite fliers and soccer players enjoy the top of the hill, dog walkers and canoe/kayakers use the lower parking lot to access a path along the river. And along this path, along the banks of the Charles, I found these two carved stone panels.

These panels are sitting on the ground at angles under trees, so it was hard to get good photos of them. As you see, the first is overgrown with vines. Both combine words, images and standard carved architectural details.


Machinery (click on photo for larger image).


Machinery (closeup).



The first is labeled 'Machinery.' above the word are two machine gears, and to the sides are two classical figures swinging hammers. In the middle of the stone is a large shield, with a smaller American stars and stripes shield above it. On a ribbon running behind the American shield are the words E. Pluribus Unum (with V substituted for U).


E Pluribus


Unum (closeup).



Leather.


The second block is labeled Leather. Again, there is an elaborate shield in the center of the carving. This time, the smaller shield at the top represents the shield of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.










Note the bow in the right hand of the Indian and the arrows in the left. Unfortunately, much of the motto on this block is lost. Luckily, we do have 'Plac,' which suggests the motto of the state: Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem - By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.

So here, at an old landfill at the edge of Boston, we have, together with assorted other construction rubble, two carved panels. Both represent an industry once fundamental to the state economy. One also honors the state, the other the nation. They represent a melding of patriotism and civic pride in local economic successes. The obvious questions? Where the heck did they come from, how did they end up under trees along the Charles river in West Roxbury, and when were they put there?

We can speculate reasonably on the second and third questions first. This was, after all, a city dump. Construction/demolition fill could have been trucked there any time the facility was in operation. For that fact, they could have been brought in after the dump closed in a night-time job. Of greater interest is the first question: what is their origin? Since it was a Boston dumping ground, we can guess that they probably came from a Boston site, or at least nearby. But what kind of building would have had such panels in it?

There could have been commercial building downtown with such celebrations of local industries, but my guess would be Mechanic's Hall, Boston's main exhibition space for many years. I've already discussed Mechanic's Hall here, so I'll just say that the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association seems to have been exactly the kind of booster group that would tie patriotism, both local and national, with the encouragement and celebration of industry.

Mechanic's Hall was torn down when the Prudential Center was built, and it seems entirely possible that some of the debris would end up in West Roxbury. Photographs of the outside of the building show no evidence of the panels, but they may have been inside. If anyone knows more about these long lost carvings, I'd love to hear about it.