USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston of to-day; a glance at its history and characteristics: with biographical sketches and portraits of many of its professional and business men, 1892 > Part 15
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The musical club is another peculiar Boston feat- ure. The pioneer of the modern singing-club was the Liedertafel, a German singing-society, organized in 1848, which in course of time was absorbed in the Orpheus Musical Society, established five years after. This was originally composed exclusively of Germans residing in Boston, but early in its career Americans were admitted as associate members, and now about half its members are Americans, although its tone remains German. It is a social as well as a musical organization, and its club-rooms on Boyl- ston street are the meeting-place of well-known mu- sicians and good fellows. During each season it gives several concerts, to which admission is ob- tained only through members. The Apollo, of about eighty singing members and five hundred as- sociate or subscribing members, was organized in 1871; it is devoted to the singing of part-songs and choruses composed for male voices. B. J. Lang has been its conductor from the beginning. The Cecilia, first formed within the long established Harvard Musical Association, for mixed voices,
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to take part in the Harvard symphony concerts, was in 1876 established as an independent club, with one hundred and twenty-five singing mem- bers; later, associate members were added, the limit being fixed at two hundred and fifty. It performs the larger works of the best composers, generally with orchestra accompaniment. B. J. Lang has been the conductor since its independent organization. The Philharmonic Society was organ- ized in 1880, with active and associate members, for the presentation of orchestral music, primarily to sustain the Philharmonic Orchestra, but subsequently, owing to divisions in the organization, the orchestra withdrew and continued as an independent organ- ization. The Glee Club was organized in 1881, for the singing of English glees. The. Boylston, the Euterpe, the Boston Orchestral, the Clefs and the Singers, notable clubs in their day, are no longer in existence. Of all the musical organizations in the city the famous Handel and Haydn Society is the oldest, dating from 1815.
Besides the bewildering variety of clubs above enumerated there is the " Turnverein," numbering several hundred German-American members, with its thoroughly equipped building on Middlesex street ; the Caledonian Club, the local organization of Scotchmen, dating from 1853, with rooms on Essex street, corner of Chauncy ; the English and American Club, established in 1886, "to promote and encourage friendly relations between the United States and Great Britain," and including in its membership Englishmen, Welshmen, Scotchmen, and Irishinen ; the St. Jean Baptiste Society, at No. 12 Kneeland street; the French-Canadian Club ; numerous rowing-clubs, among them the West End, the Dolphin, and the Crescent, with boat-houses on the Charles river, and the Shawmut and the Central, with boat-houses in the South bay ; yacht-club houses at South Boston and on Dorchester bay; the Bos- ton Lodge of the Elks on Hayward place ; bicycle clubs, tennis clubs, and the Chess Club, the latter the oklest of its kind in the country, established in 1857.
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here for dinner or supper. The club-house is open to members and their friends throughout the year, and the club has exceptionally good cuisine and service.
XII.
THE OUTLYING DISTRICTS.
EAST BOSTON, SOUTH BOSTON, ROXBURY, DORCHESTER, CHARLESTOWN, WEST ROXBURY, AND BRIGHTON.
F what are termed the "Outlying Districts " of the Boston of To-day, all but East Boston and South Boston have been acquired by annexa- tion within a quarter of a century. Although these towns and cities had developed independently, their absorption. by the metropolis was natural and fit- ting, for they were closely related. Roxbury, or " Rocksberry " as it was earliest called, recognized by the " Court of Assistants " as a town less than a month after Boston was named, had among its prin- cipal settlers some of those who had come out with Winthrop on the " Arabella;" in the order of the court declaring that " Trimountaine shalbe called Boston " Dorchester also was named, and here too some of Winthrop's associates " planted them- selves ; " the governor's or the " Great House," at which the Court of-Assistants had their first sittings, was in Charlestown; Brighton, set off from Cam- bridge in 1806, was included in the original ter- ritory of Charlestown; and West Roxbury was originally a part of Roxbury. The annexation of these "Outlying Districts" added to the area of the city founded on the " pear-shaped peninsula " 22,692 acres of valuable territory, and greatly in- creased its prosperity.
FAST BOSTON.
East Boston was "layd to Boston " as early as 1636, but it remained an island farm until 1833. Its development, then begun, was the enterprise of a local land company composed of a "syndicate," as we would say in these days, of about a dozen capi- talists, chartered as the East Boston Company. There was at that time but one dwelling-house on the island - the hospitable Williams farmhouse, then occupied by Thomas Williams, who, like his father before him, Henry Howell Williams, had made a tidy fortune here as a tenant farmer. The
Classed with Boston clubs should also be the Country Club. Though its house and grounds are situated without the city limits (in Clyde Park, Brookline), it is composed of Bostonians almost ex- clusively, members of several of the leading clubs in town. It maintains one of the best racing-courses in the neighborhood of the city, and its club house is a most picturesque and hospitable country mansion. It affords a pleasant rendezvous for members and their families and friends in the course of afternoon drives, and coaching-parties frequently bring up place had been generally called " Noddle's Island,"
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after one William Noddle, who had settled on it as live-stock on the island. A small detachment had early as 1629. But sometimes it was called been ordered to drive the stock off to Chelsea at low tide, out of reach of the British, and their move- ments being observed from the war-ships in the harbor, a schooner, a sloop, and a party of marines were despatched to stop them. The Americans fell back to a ditch and lay in ambush, from which they picked off several of the marines and then re- treated to Hogg (or Breed's) island, having suc- ceeded, however, in running off three or four hundred sheep, lambs, cows, and horses. Late in the evening reinforcements of about three hundred men arrived with two pieces of cannon, and the fighting was renewed, the British firing from the vessels, from the barges fixed with swivels, and from a hill on the island. Finally the schooner was aban- doned, and, grounding towards morning, a party from the Americans, after coolly taking out her guns and sails, burned her at daybreak under a fire from the sloop. Then later in the forenoon the sloop was disabled and towed off by the boats. After a few more shots the firing ceased and the Americans were victorious. They captured twelve swivels and four four-pound cannon. They didn't lose a man and had only four wounded, while the British loss was said to be twenty killed and fifty wounded. Dr. Joseph Warren was with the Americans serving as a volunteer. In compensation for his loss Wash- ington gave farmer Williams one of the Continental barracks at Cambridge, which he moved to the island and subsequently remodelled into a new mansion. "Maverick's," after Samuel Maverick, Gent., its most important settler, whom Winthrop's people found comfortably quartered here ; and again " Will- iams," after the Williamses, father and son, whose occupation of it covered seventy years. Of Noddle or whence he came little is know. Winthrop alludes to him as "an honest man of Salem," but he was probably one of the colonists sent out by Sir William Brereton, who obtained a grant of this island and its neighbor, Breed's (or Susanna, as it was first called, in honor of his daughter), from John Gorges in 1628. Finding Maverick in possession and indif- ferent to the orders of the Court of Assistants re- straining persons from "putting on cattell " and felling wood or shooting "att fowle" here, the island was formally granted to him in April, 1633, the conditions being that he should pay yearly " att the General Court, to the Governor for the time being, either a fatt weather, a fatt hogg, or xls in money," and "give leave to Boston and Charles Towne to fetch wood contynually as their needs re- quire from the southerne pte of s'ileland." Maver- ick constructed a rude fort, mounting " four great guns," for protection against the Indians, and within the enclosure built his castle. Here he lived for twenty-five years, not always at peace with his Puri- tan neighbors upon their peninsula, or free from petty persecutions, but. well and generously. He was one of the earliest negro slaveholders in Massa- chusetts, and at times worked several on his farm and in his household. A dozen years after he had moved from the island it was the place of refuge of the " First Baptist Church of Boston," while under the interdict of the colonial government from 1665 to 1675.
Nearly a century later " the comfortable Williams mansion," says Sweetser, "was the pride of the island. . . . The house was graced by six comely daughters, whose harpsichord was the fore- runner of musical Boston ; and the hills on the island gave pasturage to forty-three horses and 223 cattle." Then the horses and cattle were run off during the lively " Fight on Noddle's Island," of a May day and night in 1775, when the Americans under Put- nam worsted the British marines ; and a day or two after the mansion was burned. This skirmish, says Frothingham, " was dwelt upon with great exultation throughout the colonies," and " the news of it ar- riving in Congress just as it was choosing general officers, influenced the vote of Putnam for major general which was unanimous." And yet the fight was a petty affair as " fights" go. It was over the
For what Maverick was annually required to pay either a " fatt weather, a fatt hogg, or xls in money," the East Boston Company two centuries after paid $80,000. It purchased for this sum the entire island, embracing six hundred and sixty-six acres of upland and marsh and several hundred acres of flats, with the exception of four acres set apart, according to the terms of its charter, for public purposes. The territory was at once laid out in substantial streets and squares and house and building lots, and sales of lands begun. The success of the speculation was speedily assured. Within three years the tax- able valuation had increased from $60,000 to $So6,- 000, and the population from a half-dozen persons to six hundred. The next year, in 1837, the ter- minus of the Eastern Railroad was fixed here, and the Maverick House built ; three years later the C'u- nard Steamship line was established, and its docks on the island built. Meanwhile, large manufactories were set up, the pioneer being the East Boston Sugar Refinery, and ship-building was begun. This soon developed into a great industry. Between 1848 and 1858 more than 170 vessels were built
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in East Boston yards, of which 99 exceeded 1,000 tons each, and 9 were above 2,000 tons. Among them were the famous packet-ships, remarkable for their fine sailing-qualities. The " Great Republic," the largest wooden sailing-ship ever built, a three- decker with four masts, 4,556 tons, was turned out here in 1853, and she proved one of the swiftest vessels on the seas. Among other splendid East Boston built clipper-ships, mostly for the California service, were the " Flying Cloud," 1,700 tons, which made the quickest trips between New York and San Francisco, the " Flying Fish," 1,600 tons, which made her first passage from Boston to San Fran- cisco in 92 days, the " Empress of the Seas," 2,250 tons, and the "Staffordshire," 1,950 tons. Clippers were also built here for English houses -- one of the finest, the " Lightning," which made the voyage beween Liverpool and Melbourne in 63 days.
Then iron ship-building in its turn became an important industry, and in its turn also declined. But during the past four years the ship-building industry here has been undergoing a gradual and steady revival, while the dry docks and marine railways, seven in all, keep busy a small army of shipwrights and caulkers the year round. Several transatlantic lines of steamships discharge and load their cargoes at the Grand Junction wharves, where the Boston & Albany and the Boston & Maine and New York & New England rail- roads have freight terminals and sheds. The Cunard and the Warren are the principal steam- ship lines, the Beaver-line steamships landing only in winter. Several hundred skilled machinists find employment at the Atlantic works on Border street, where iron and steel vessels and marine and land engines are built. The Lockwood Manufacturing Company on Sumner street, and Webb & Watson also on Border street, makers of marine engines and propellers, are other large concerns. Boiler- makers and iron-workers are engaged at the Rob- inson Boiler Works on New street, the E. Hodge & Company Boiler Works on Liverpool street, and at the works of the Boston Forge Company on May- erick street, where steel shafts, anchors, etc., are made. Dyestuffs are manufactured in large quan- tities at the mills of the Boston Dyewood Company and of the Atlantic Dyewood Company, the one on Border street and the other on New street. These concerns receive their dyewoods at their own wharves direct from South American ports. Among minor manufacturing establishments are several planing and turning and wood-working mills, all on Border street. In the "fourth section " is the
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receiving station of the Standard Oil Company, under the name of the Maverick Oil Works, where oil in bulk from Philadelphia is received and re- fined. At Jeffrey's Point are several fish curing and smoking establishments. The Bagnall & Loud Com- pany have a great block and pulley manufacturing place on Condor street. The Boston Tow Boat Company has immense coal pockets and coaling station on Border street near the Chelsea end. There is an extensive whiting manufactory on May- erick street. The population of the East Boston district in 1890 was thirty-six thousand.
SOUTH BOSTON.
South Boston, formerly part of Dorchester, was originally separated from the main peninsula by an arm of the harbor reaching to Roxbury, and con- nection was made by a primitive ferry, or by the roundabout journey through Roxbury and over the Neck. When it was annexed it had an area of about five hundred and seventy acres of lowlands and bluffs, including the historic Dor- chester Heights, and its entire population con- sisted of but ten families. Its annexation was part of a real-estate speculation originated by Joseph Woodward, who had moved here from Tewks- bury and bought a large tract of land. He saw the advantages of its location when brought into closer communication with Boston by bridges and im- proved, and he interested William Tudor, Gardiner Greene, Jonathan Mason, and Harrison Gray Otis, several of whom had engaged in the successful Mt. Vernon Improvement on Beacon Hill.' These gen- tlemen also made large land purchases on Dorches- ter Neck, and then the movement for annexation was energetically pushed. The town of Dorchester vigorously opposed the project, but it was finally carried through the Legislature, the act being passed March 6, 1804. At the same time the construction of a bridge by the South Boston Bridge Corporation, Messrs. Tudor, Greene, Mason, and Otis incorpora- tors, was authorized, and after some contention over the question of location, it was built and opened with a grand military display on the first of October the following year. This was the first Dover-street bridge. Immediately after the passage of the an- nexation act the value of land rose enormously in the new district, but its growth did not meet the an- ticipations of its projectors. Agitation for a second bridge was begun immediately upon the completion of the first, but it was not until twenty years after that it was secured. This was the Federal-street bridge, the charter for which was granted in 1826. 1 Sce chapter on North and Old West Ends.
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It was opened in 1828 as a free bridge. Four years after, the old bridge was sold to the city for $3,500, and made free. It had originally cost its projectors $56,000, and had earned no dividends. In 1825, when the city began locating its reformatory institu- tions here, the population of the district was but 1,986. The opening of the second bridge, however, gave the place a new impulse, and in 1830 its popu- lation had increased to 2,860. Ten years later it had reached 5,590. During this period many fine
influences of wealth." With the introduction of the horse-railway system in 1856, population in- creased rapidly, new industries were established, and building became brisk ; but the prediction re- specting the "court end " was never fulfilled. Fash- ion had set strongly in the direction of the South End, and was already interested in the plans then developing for the finer Boston on the "New Lands" yet to be created. The pleasantest resi- dence-quarters are now on the hills and their slopes
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BUILDING OF THE S. A. WOODS MACHINE COMPANY.
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dwellings were built and parks and streets embel- and towards the Point, the most easterly part of the lished. In 1837 the great Mount Washington district. House (now occupied by the School for the Blind), On the Point the water-front esplanade is one of the most interesting parts of the new park system of the city now developing, and the long iron pier extending far into the harbor towards Castle Island is a popular feature. Off the Point several yacht-clubs have their moorings, and in the summer time the water sparkles with this joyous craft. The attractive club-houses on the shore add to the picturesqueness of the place. It is a great yacht- ing-station, and here the crack " Burgess " and other racers have been built in recent years. Of other with its broad entrance from a high flight of steps and its generous piazzas affording a superb harbor- view, was opened. The prediction that the district would ultimately be the " court end of Boston " was confidently made and long clung to. In the Boston Almanac for 1853, Dr. J. V. C. Smith, afterwards Mayor Smith ( 1854-56), in urging the filling of the flats, expressed his belief that it was destined to be- come " the magnificent portion of the city in respect to costly residences, fashionable society, and the
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parks in the district the most important are Thomas park on Telegraph Hill, once Dorchester Heights, and Independence square on upper Broadway. The famous redoubt the sudden appearance of which, looming up threateningly on the morning of March 5, 1776, so astonished the British in Boston and precipitated the evacuation of the town, is unmarked saved by a granite tablet in the park on the crest of the heights. The most noteworthy institutions within the district, besides those of the city, are in this neighborhood, -- the great Carney Hospital (Catholic, established in 1865, founded on a gift of land and a fund of $56,700 from the late Andrew Carney) and the noble Perkins Institution for the Blind, organized in 1832 by the devoted Dr. Samuel G. Howe, and first established in the Pearl- street (old Boston) mansion-house of Col. Thomas W. Perkins, removing to South Boston, having se- cured the Mount Washington House, in 1839. The School for Idiotic and Feeble-minded Children, an outgrowth of the Perkins Institution, and now a State institution, is in the rear of its buildings.
South Boston now is a great industrial centre. The foundry business was begun here as early as 1809, and one of the pioneers was Cyrus Alger, in later years of the great Alger Iron Works. In 18II flint-glass manufacture was begun here, the first successful attempt in this part of the country. Ship- building was begun the next year ; Noah Brooks's ship-yard was established in 1822 ; and twenty-five years later, in E. & H. O. Briggs's yard, the ship " Northern Light" was built, which scored the quickest time ever made by a clipper ship from San Francisco to Boston - in seventy-five days. In 1835 the Fulton Iron Works -were established. Then followed other great foundries, locomotive works, and lead works. The great establishment of Harrison Loring, the City Point Iron Works, from which much important government work, including naval cruisers and tugs, has been turned out, dates from 1847. Other great concerns are the Walworth Works, where heavy iron and brass castings are made; the Washburn Car-wheel Company ; the South Boston Iron Works, where heavy ordnance is made ; the steel works of Billings Brothers, formerly the Norway Iron Works; the Howard Foundry Company ; the South Carlton Iron Company ; the Ingols Brass Foundry : the Whittier Machine Company, the makers of elevators : the S. A. Woods Machine Company, manufacturers of wood-working machines ; the Boston Button Company ; the Boston Cooperage Company : great boiler works ; the im- mense works of the Boston Cordage Company ; fire- brick works; the great Standard and Continental
Sugar Refineries ; the plant of the Jenney Oil Com- pany. Here also are the excellent terminal piers of the New York & New England Railroad and for- eign steamship docks. The population of South Boston in 1890 was 66,790.
ROXBURY DISTRICT.
The Roxbury district is a city of homes. Until well within the present century it was a charming rural place of hills and vales, having but a single bustling " main " street, local shops, a few manu- factories, clusters of houses about the centres, many of them with fine gardens and orchards, and rich outlying farms. It was yet a " faire and handsome towne, having a cleare fresh brooke running through " it, and " up westward something rocky whence it hath the name of Roxberry," as William Wood quaintly described it in his " New England Prospects," only three years after its settlement. Originally its territory included not only the present West Roxbury district with Jamaica Plain, but the present town of Brookline, known in the early days as " Punch Bowl Village." During the Revolu- tionary period it had scarcely 2,000 inhabitants, about 200 dwellings, 3 meeting-houses, and 5 schools ; in 1800 its population had increased but 700, and twenty years after it had reached but 4,100. During the next ten years more of the airs of a modern town were assumed, and the place was brought into closer connection with Boston. In 1824 Roxbury street, now a continuation of Wash- ington street, then the one thoroughfare through the town, was paved and brick sidewalks laid ; the same year the Norfolk House was completed and opened ; the first newspaper, the " Norfolk Gazette," was started ; and three years after hourly coaches, the first in this part of the country, began regular trips to and from Boston. But the population increased slowly, in 1830 numbering less than 5,300. Im- provements and changes continued, new streets were laid out, new business blocks, shops, and dwellings built : and at length the tide was turned in this direction. The growth thereafter was rapid and substantial. In 1840 the population was given as 9,089, and six years after the town government was abandoned and Roxbury became a city. In 1860, four years after the street-railway system was established, it had 25,000; in 1867, when it was annexed to Boston and became the Roxbury district, it had 28,400 ; in 1870, 34,700 ; in 1880, 57,000 ; and in 1890, 78,400. When it was annexed to Boston it had a number of fine old mansion-houses left over from the Provincial and the Revolutionary periods, but before very long these were nearly all swept
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away to make room for more contracted and less picturesque modern dwellings. There yet remains, however, the historic old church in Eliot square oc- cupying the site of the first meeting-house, " a rude unbeautified structure " built soon after the formation of the " First Parish " in 1632. It is the fifth meet- ing-house of the society and was built in 1804, re- placing that which was used as a signal station by the Continentals during the siege of Boston town. Although it has been from time to time extensively
death in 1833, that the church became Unitarian. Dr. George Putnam, who succeeded Dr. Porter, hay- ing first been associate pastor for three years, also served a long period, his pastorate also closing with his death, which occurred in 1876. James de Nor- mandie is the present pastor.
On Highland street, which extends from Eliot square, are a number of the few old-time houses yet standing in the district. In one of these Will- iam Lloyd Garrison lived during his later years :
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