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 8
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met by a fund raised by friends of the school and of the University. It was completed in 1883.
The standard of the Harvard Medical School was raised in 1875, and it is now the highest in the country. The school dates from 1783, and its establishment was the result of the delivery of a course of lectures before the Boston Medical Society by Dr. John Warren, a brother of Gen. Joseph Warren. It was established in Cambridge and was moved to Boston in 1810, "to secure those ad- vantages for clinical instruction, and for the study of practical anatomy, which are found only in large cities." From 1846 until its removal to the Back Bay it occupied the quaint building on North Grove street, near the Massachusetts General Hospital, now occupied by the Harvard Dental School.1
The Normal Art School building, Exeter and Newbury streets, of brick with stone trimmings, in the Byzantine Romanesque style of architecture, is the work of H. W. Hartwell and W. C. Richardson, the architects of the " Spiritual Temple " across the way. The principal entrance, from Newbury street through the arched porch, leads directly into a large, well-lighted lobby. In the first story are the museum and the class-rooms, for instruction in architectural and mechanical drawing and model- ling in clay; and in the basement, immediately below the modelling-room, the works here modelled are cast in plaster. In the second story are the rooms of the class in painting in oil and water colors and a lecture-room; and in the third are those of the preparatory class, another lecture- room, and studios. The Exeter-street entrance opens on a corridor running through the building parallel with Newbury street, traversing in its way the lobby into which the main entrance leads. The school is a State institution, established in 1873, primarily as a training school for teachers of industrial drawing in the public schools of the State, a law of 1870 making free instruction in such draw- ing obligatory in the public schools of towns and cities of over 10,000 inhabitants; but it also ad- mits other students in special branches. George H. Bartlett is now the principal, and the school is under the supervision of a Board of Visitors of the State Board of Education. Its establishment was the outcome of the work of the late Walter Smith, the eminent English art instructor, the first prac- tical director of drawing in the Boston public schools.
The Prince School building (named for Ex- Mayor Prince), on the opposite corner, north, is the
1 Sec chapter on North and Old West Ends.
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first adaptation in New England of the German and Austrian plan of school building, by which the rooms are placed on one side of a long corridor instead of grouped around a common hall in the middle. By this plan the width of the building is the width only of a school-room and the corridor, and better air, better light, and a more direct connection between corridors, staircases, and entrances are secured than by the more common one. Long and low, it is but two stories high, and with its dark brick walls decorated with ivy, it presents an attractive exterior, which cannot be said of school buildings in general. Its design is a central and two end pavilions, con- taining twelve school-rooms and a large exhibition hall. It was dedicated in November, 1881. An- other attractive school building (completed in 1890) is its neighbor on the south side of Newbury street, that of the Horace Mann School for Deaf- Mutes. Built, the first story of block freestone and the second and gables of the third story of Philadelphia face-brick, the conspicuous feature of the façade is the high arched entrance-way from the heavy stone landing. The interior is admirably arranged. This school is part of the public-school system, and the work it accomplishes is remarkable. The pupils are taught to communicate by articu- lation rather than by signs, Prof. A. Melville Bell's system of visible speech being employed as an aid in the teaching. Training is also given the pupils in the use of pencil, crayon, Sloyd carving, and other industrial arts, as well as penmanship. The school was founded in 1869, and the name of "Horace Mann" was given to it in 1877. The Sarah Fuller Home (named for the devoted princi- pal of the Horace Mann School) in West Medford gives care and instruction to -deaf children too young to enter the regular school. This is sup- ported by private aid.
The great exhibition building of the Charitable Mechanic Association, on Huntington avenue and West Newton street, covers a space of upwards of 96,000 square feet, and the front on the avenue is 600 feet. It is admirably planned, and more at- tractive in design than such buildings generally are. On the avenue front the arches of graceful curves and the adjacent walls laid in red brick, with sills and caps of freestone and terra-cotta ornaments, are effective. The head of Franklin on one side of the main arch is intended to typify electricity, and that of Oakes Ames railroading. The arm and the hammer of the seal of the association appear in the spandrels, with palm, oak, and olive branches sur- rounding them. In the octagonal tower at the east- erly end of the building, the two wide entrances are
well designed ; and the carriage-porch, constructed of brick and stone, with open-timbered and tiled roof, is a good piece of ornamentation. The Adminis- tration building adjoins the tower, the great ex- hibition hall extends therefrom down the avenue, and the main hall, with entrance from the avenue, forms the west end. The latter is popularly called " Mechanics' Hall," and is frequently occupied for public meetings, and occasionally for opera and con- certs. It has sittings for 8,000 people. The Char- itable Mechanic Association, which owns the building, founded in 1795, is one of the honored institu- tions of Boston, and its great industrial fairs, given at irregular intervals, averaging every three years, are the most extensive and important held in the country. Other great exhibitions have been given in its building, the most notable in recent years being the successful " Food and Health Exposition " of the autumn of 1891, modelled after the great London " Healtheries."
The first church built on the "new lands" was the Arlington-street (Congregational-Unitarian ; completed December, 1861), the successor of the old Federal-street Church, made famous by the preaching from its pulpit of William Ellery Chan- ning. Built of New Jersey freestone, with finely designed tower and lofty spire steeple placed sym- metrically in the middle of the front, it recalls old London churches of the style of the time of Sir Christopher Wren. The interior, divided into a nave and two aisles by a superb range of Corin- thian columns, is modelled upon the Church of Sta Annunziata at Genoa, by Giacomo della Porta. The five arches above the columns on each side of the nave spring with their mouldings directly from the capitals of the columns, and without the inter- vention of a square bit of entablature over each column. By this expedient, adopted from the Genoese church, the supporting effect of the column is here carried up in a series of panelled and ornamented piers to the full Corinthian entablature above, the arches between being formed by sunk and raised mouldings and having their spandrels and soffits decorated. The chime of bells, hung in the tower, was the gift of Jonathan Phillips, long a prominent member of the congregation. There are sixteen in all, eight fitted for round ringing as well as chiming, the others for chiming only. The largest, or tenor bell, weighs 3,150 pounds. Each bears an inscription from the Scriptures. For many years a thick mass of American ivy covered the Boylston-street side of the church, producing a charming effect, especially during the early autumn months, when it took on brilliant
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colors ; but this was entirely removed not long ago, as it was found that it was a means of injury to the stone. The Arlington-street was the pulpit of Dr. Ezra S. Gannett, John F. W. Ware, and Brooke Herford.
The ' second church building here, Emmanuel (Protestant Episcopal; completed in 1862), on Newbury street, is built of the local Roxbury pud- ding-stone. It is one of the smallest churches in the quarter, picturesque in design and most note- worthy for its rich and brilliant interior. The society was organized shortly before this church was built, to furnish a parish for the Rev. Frederick D. Huntington (now Bishop of Central New York), who had been pastor of the South Congregational Church (now Rev. E. E. Hale's) and Plummer Pro- fessor at Harvard College, and had left the Uni- tarian fold for the Protestant Episcopal Church. A large medallion tablet of bronze, designed by St. Gaudens, in honor of the late Dr. Alexander H. Vinton,' the second rector of Emmanuel's, is con- spicuously set within the church. It displays a portrait of heroic size, with a biographical inscrip- tion. Leighton Parks, the present rector, succeeded Dr. Vinton.
The Central Church (Congregational-Trinitarian ; completed in 1867), on Berkeley and Newbury streets, the third Back Bay church building, is the successor of the Winter-street Church, which so long stood near the present main entrance to Music Hall. It also is of Roxbury stone, with sandstone trimmings. Of elaborate design, in the Gothic style, with turrets and steeple, its distinguishing feature is the finely proportioned spire pointing the tallest in the city. The interior, showing the open pitched roof, is bright and cheerful, although an excess of color is displayed in the decoration. The cost, including the land, was $325,000. The pastors of the church since its location here have been John De Witt and Joseph T. Duryea. Most famous of those who occupied the pulpit of the old church in Winter street were William M. Rogers and John E. Todd.
Within the next year the fourth Back Bay church was finished, -the First Church ( Congregational- Unitarian ; completed December, 1868), on Berke- ley and Marlborough streets. As the successor of the first meeting-house in Boston, the rude structure of wood and earth which served the colonists for nearly eight years, it stands one of the best speci- mens of the finer church architecture of this latter day. Beauty is disclosed in every detail of its ex- terior, and in its rich interior good taste is dis- played. Its style is the English Gothic freely
treated ; cruciform, with chapel in the rear. Here again Roxbury rubble is the material employed in the walls, with dressings of Nova Scotia and Con- necticut sandstones. Especially fine features of the exterior are the corner tower and spire, the car- riage-porch over which they are built, and the ves- tibule on Berkeley street. The columns of the main porch on Berkeley street and of the cloister- porch on Marlborough street have polished shafts of Aberdeen granite, and capitals carved in leaves and flowers of native plants. The interior of the church is broad and open. The nave roof, sixty-six feet from the floor to the apex, is open-timbered, and the Berkeley-street end of the nave is a gable with a pointed rose-window filled with tracery. At the west end of the church is the chancel, occupied by the pulpit, carved communion-table, and font. The woodwork is black walnut throughout, with panels and friezes of butternut. The rich colored-glass windows, several of them memorial windows, gifts to the church, were executed in London from the architects' sketches, and the organ was built in Germany by the makers of the great organ con- structed for Music Hall.' This is the fifth building of the "First Church of Christ in Boston." The first, that of wood and earth, stood where Brazer's buikling now stands, on State street, corner of Devon- shire. The second was on Cornhill, now Washing- ton street, nearly opposite the head of State street, where the Rogers building now stands ; this was of wood, built in 1639 ; in 1711 it was burned down. The third, on the same spot, was built in 1712, of brick ; and the fourth, on Chauncy street, was built in 1807. The list of the ministers of the church is remarkable, for all but one were college men. When the Back Bay house was built, Dr. Rufus Ellis had been the pastor for more than thirty years (he was installed in 1835, succeeding Dr. N. L. Frothingham, whose service had also been long). Dr. Ellis died in Liverpool, England, on the 23d of September, ISS5. On the 29th of December, the following year, Stopford Wentworth Brooke, son of the well-known English clergyman, Stopford Brooke, of London, was ordained as Dr. Ellis' successor. The cost of the present church building was $275,000.
The Brattle-square Church, now the First Baptist, on Commonwealth avenue and Clarendon street, next completed (in 1873), is most remarkable for its massive Florentine square tower, rising majesti- cally nearly 180 feet, with the band of figure-sculp- ture surrounding it near the summit, between the belfry arches and the cornice. The four groups,
1 See chapter on Some Noteworthy Buildings; paragraph on Music Hall.
BUILDING OF THE AMERICAN LEGION OF HONOR.
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one on each side, are designed to represent baptism, communion, marriage, and death, and the statues at each angle typify the angels of the judg- ment blowing golden trumpets. The figures were carved by Italian sculptors, from models by Bar- tholdi, after the rough stones had been set in place. This building also is of Roxbury stone, in the form of the Greek cross ; and its exterior well expresses the idea which the architect had in its design, - mas- siveness and solidity. The interior is in the south- ern Romanesque style, with high walls surmounted by a basilica roof of stained ash. Before it was finished according to the architect's plans, work was suspended, as the society had become heavily in debt, and after a few services the church was closed. Subsequently the society dissolved, and the property was purchased by the First Baptist Society. Thus one historical church organization was succeeded by another ; the " Brattle-square " descending from the famous " Manifesto Church," formed in 1699, and the " First Baptist," from the First Baptist Society, formed in 1665. It was the old Brattle-square Meeting-house, the " pride of the town," finished in 1773, but two years before the Siege, and occupied during that time by the British as barracks, which bore the " cannon-ball breastpin " fired into it from a battery in Cambridge on the
night of the evacuation. It was long a cherished 'above. The elaborate stained-glass windows are
landmark ; and when in 1872 it was sold and re- moved to make way for a business structure, many good citizens were sorely grieved. Of the eminent pastors of the church were Joseph Buckminster, Edward Everett, John G. Palfrey, and Samuel K. Lothrop, the last of the line. After the First Baptist had acquired the present church, the galleries called for in the architect's plans were put in and its acous- tic properties improved ; and in 1882 the new vestry and lecture-room were added, additional land being purchased by the society. The present pastor is Philip Moxom.
The Old South (Congregational-Trinitarian), Dartmouth and Boylston streets, successor of the Old South Meeting-house, dates from the next year, 1874. It has the distinction of being one of the costliest of the Back Bay churches, and one of the most ornate. The buildings consist of church, chapel, and parsonage, the former occupying two- thirds of the rectangle on which they are placed. The church fronts about ninety feet on Dartmouth street and two hundred on Boylston. Here again the material used is Roxbury stone, with brown Connecti- cut and light Ohio freestone trimmings ; and the form is the Latin cross. The style of architecture is the North Italian Gothic. The most striking features
of the exterior are the tower, rising 248 feet, with rich combinations of colored stones and graceful windows, terminating in a pyramidal spire ; the lantern in the roof at the intersection of the arms of the cross, twenty feet square, pierced with large arched windows, and covered by a pointed dome of copper partly gilded ; the richly decorated and deeply recessed main entrance through the front of the tower; and the arcade, sheltering inscribed tablets, running thence to the south transept. Added to these the belt of gray sandstone along the outside walls, delicately carved to represent vines and fruits among which birds and squirrels are seen, and an effect is produced unusual and unique in our modern church architecture. The vestibule, paved in red, white, and green marbles, is separated from the nave by a high arched screen of Caen stone delicately carved, supported on columns of Lisbon marble and crowned by gables and finials. The interior is finished in cherry and brilliantly frescoed. Panels of Venetian mosaic fill the heads of the arches leading from the doorways. The roof is open-timbered, with tie-beam trusses, further strengthened by arched braces above and below the beam, coming forward to the walls in four broad low-pitched gables, the ridges from which meet in the roof and carry the open lantern referred to decorated to represent biblical scenes ; that back of the pulpit, which is in a broad recess at the Dartmouth-street end of the church, represents the announcement to the shepherds of the birth of Christ. The closely clipped lawn in front of the chapel, and the rich growth of ivy on this portion of the structure, give an air of finish and age to the work. The entire cost of the building was half a million dollars.
The same year, 1874, the Second Church (Con- gregational-Unitarian), on the Boylston-street side of Copley square, was completed. Built in part of the stones of the former church-building on Bed- ford street, which was taken down when business encroachments compelled a change, its modest freestone front is unpretentious; yet, with its ivy- covered chapel adjoining, it is one of the most picturesque structures in the neighborhood. The broad and lofty interior, showing the open-timbered roof, is finished in rich, dark colors. Set up by the pulpit is the memorial tablet to Dr. Chandler Rob- bins (placed by his daughter), whose service as pastor covered a period of more than forty years ; and a companion tablet to the memory of other former pastors, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Ware, who were colleagues, is contemplated. The
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memorial organ, built by Hutchins, one of the finest in the city, was given by S. A. Denio, in memory of his daughter. Among the treasured possessions of the church is the rich communion service, contain- ing some very old pieces, and the baptismal basin, which has been in use since 1706. . By the side of the pulpit stands the chair once used by Cotton Mather. The Second is the famous " church of the Mathers," Increase, Cotton, and Samuel, founded in 1649 ; and it was its second meeting-house in North square which the British soldiers pulled down and used for firewood during the Siege. During the pastorate of Edward A. Horton, which extended from 1880 to 1892, a debt of $45,000, which had been hanging for years, was lifted. Mr. Horton's resignation taking effect the ist of February, 1892, was greatly regretted by his people.
Next rose Trinity (Protestant Episcopal; conse- crated Feb. 9, 1877), occupying the triangular- shaped lot bounded by Copley square, Clarendon street, and St. James avenue, the masterpiece of Richardson. In its design, a free rendering of the French Romanesque, as seen in the pyramidal towered churches of ancient Auvergne, its great central tower dominating the whole composition, it is the most imposing piece of church architecture we have in the country to-day. Cummings, in the " Memorial History," commends it as "a striking example of the round-arched architecture of the south of France," and Mrs. Van Rensselaer, in her " Recent Architecture in America," with more warmth and enthusiasm, pronounces it "the most beautiful structure that yet stands on our side of the ocean." Of the style which inspired the design,,- that of the school that " flourished in the eleventh century in Central France, the ancient Aquitane," and developed " a system of architecture of its own, differing from the classical manner in that while it studied elegance it was also constructional, and from the succeeding Gothic in that although con- structional it could sacrifice something of mechani- cal dexterity for the sake of grandeur or repose," as Richardson, in his own description, characterizes it, - the examples shown in the "peaceful, en- lightened, and isolated cities of Auvergne " were selected as best adapted for a building fronting on three streets. "The central tower, a reminiscence, perhaps, of the domes of Venice and Constanti- nople," was in Auvergne, Richardson says, fully de- veloped, so that in many cases it "became, as it were, the church, and the composition took the outline of a pyramid, the apse, transepts, nave, and chapels forming only the base to the obelisk of the tower." With the ordinary proportion of church
and central tower, he contends, "either the tower must be comparatively small, which would bring its supporting piers inconveniently into the midst of the congregation, or the tower being large the rest of the church must be magnified to inordinate pro- portion. For this dilemma the Auvergnat solution seemed perfectly adapted. Instead of a tower being an inconvenient and unnecessary addition to the church, it was itself made the main feature. The struggle for precedence, which often takes place between a church and its spire, was disposed of by at once and completely subordinating nave, tran- septs, and apse and grouping them about the tower as the central mass." In plan, the church is a Latin cross, the arms of the cross short in propor- tion to their width, with a semicircular apse added to the eastern arm, itself forming the chancel. The tower, supported by four great piers placed close to the angles of the structure, thus causing no obstruc- tion to the sight, stands on the square at the inter- section of nave and transepts, and is closed in the church, at a height of one hundred and three feet, by a flat ceiling. The aisles are mere passage- ways ; "they would be very narrow for a Gothic church," the architect observes, " but are in charac- ter for the Romanesque." The clear-story is car- ried by an arcade of two arches only. The gallery carried above the aisles across the arches, is dis- tinguished from its position by the name of the . "triforium gallery," and it serves as a passage to connect the main galleries one across either transept, and the third across the west end of the nave over the vestibule. The robing-room opens from the north-east vestibule as well as from the chancel. The main western vestibule is fifty-two feet long, the width of the nave; or, counting the lower story of the western towers which virtually form a part of it, upwards of eighty-six feet. The main portal, and the secondary doors opening into each of the towers, give three entrances into the west front ; the north-east vestibule serves as entrance both from the street and from the cloister communicating with the chapel adjoining, itself with its open outside stairway a picturesque piece of architecture ; and the south-eastern vesti- bule is entered from St. James avenue. The in- terior of the church is finished in black walnut and lighted by brilliant pictured windows; and all the vestibules are in ash and oak. But the rich effect of color produced by the decorative work of John la Farge is the great feature of the interior. The frescos are in encaustic painting. The colossal figures painted in the great tower, of David and Moses, Peter and Paul, and Isaiah and Jeremiah,
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with the scriptural scenes high above, and the street, and is now transformed into the Hollis-street fresco in the nave, of Christ and the woman of Theatre.1 The first meeting-house of the society was built in 1751-52, and the first minister was the " Tory, wit, and scholar," Mather Byles. The South Congregational Society (founded in 1827), Rev. Edward Everett Hale's, purchased the church in 1887, and moved into it in October that year, when the two societies were practically united.
Samaria, are especially fine. Of the exterior of the church the details are artistic in design, and the color also is effective, the yellowish Dedham and Westerly granite, of which the walls are mainly con- structed, harmonizing well with the rich brown of the Longmeadow freestone employed in the trim- mings and the cut-stone work. The stones from St. Botolph Church, in old Boston, Lincolnshire, presented by its authorities to Trinity, which are placed in the cloister between the church and chapel, are interesting memorials. Those hav- ing a fondness for statistics will be interested to know that 4,500 piles support Trinity, that the great tower weighs nearly 19,000,000 pounds, and that the finial on the tower is 211 feet from the ground. In the construction of the foundations of the church, stone saved from the ruins of the old church on Summer street, which went down in the great fire of 1872, were utilized. The cost of the new Trinity and buildings was about $800,000.
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