USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 2 > Part 34
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These reciprocal enjoyments and opportunities in 1930, both within and without the City of Boston, are causing the rapid upbuilding of the suburbs and of towns lying at a greater distance. The increasing appreciation by the country districts of the attractiveness of life in Boston has stimulated civic improvements in and near the heart of Boston for the use of the suburban man as well as of the city man. Within the city there is a corresponding interest in outdoor recreation, made possible by the hill, the lake, the park and the forest park and reservation, lying near at hand or made easy of access. The winter and summer streams of excursionists never cease to flow in and out of the city. Walking clubs, mountain clubs, country clubs, organizations for rowing, canoe- ing, fishing, yachting, motor boating and automobiling, abound not only in Boston but within the whole metropolitan area and throughout the state.
In 1930 we may say that the "back-to-nature" urge is becoming the view- point of sane men in all parts of the state, but this is not a hermit's cry of dis- satisfaction with man's handiwork in the cities. It does not forecast a doom for cities. It is rather an awakening of every man wherever he lives, in city or country, to the need of a more fully rounded life. The country man of 1930 is often as oblivious to the beauty and opportunities of the natural world near him as is the city man of the metropolis.
CHANGES ON BOSTON COMMON
The great Paddock elms along Tremont street were cut down before 1880. Punch and Judy shows and hawkers' stands were abolished on the Tremont Street Mall before 1890. Goat carts for children were barred from the Charles Street Mall about the same time. The delightful old broken-down apple- women who sat under the elm trees were ordered off the Common forever with their baskets of fruit and candy about the time the bluebirds and martins de- parted from the city. Shortly thereafter the deer park was abolished; and the astronomer with his long brass telescope, pointed at the daylight sky, dis-
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appeared. Subways showed their concrete backs through the greensward in the 90's when electric traction ploughed its way through the graveyard and showed its many heads here and there in protruding subway stations.
Balloon ascensions were the great day-spectacle of the Fourth of July celebrations on the Common until the novel airplanes came, but the impres- siveness of the ascensions of the great slow-moving spheres has not been equaled to a hundredth part by the new noisy little machines which require ' too long a run to rise from the parade ground. Bicycle races were held in the mornings of the late SO's before the afternoon balloon ascensions. Fireworks displays within a decade or two went to the Charles River Basin from the Common. Cast-iron drinking fountains with tin dippers came with Cochituate water but they were removed when the sanitary bubble fountains were built. Tar foot-pavements appeared before the Civil War, concrete blocks in the late SO's, concrete slabs in 1910. Tar pavements appeared again in 1929.
The interesting wooden seats with cast-iron ends were replaced with con- crete `cantilever seats about 1908. The Liberty Mall was built in 1917. Soil improvement, systematic tree planting, and walk improvement came with the Parkman gift. Not everyone approves the march of improvements on the Common. Many men dislike the permanent walks of concrete, the smooth gutters which replaced cobblestones, the new steps and gates, the paths relocated for directness, the subway entrances, the lack of Tremont street fences, and the general air of 1930 neatness. Many men would restore the Common to its condition in 1840 when it was more rustic in aspect, more fully fenced, more vigorous in its tree growth (thanks to the purer atmosphere then) and mellow with the glamor of a Boston culture which perhaps can never return.
Rain still greets the annual parade on the Common of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Association. The school regiment parades once a year. The firing of cannon and the mass firing of small arms are restricted nowadays because the sound waves break the great single sheets of glass used in nearby windows. Coasting on sleds in winter, once popular, is considered dangerous to pedestrians, though a revival was made in 1928 by the erection of an elevated wooden coast on Monument Hill. Bathing for children is permitted nowadays in the summer in the Frog Pond. The ancient battles between hundreds of boys armed with sticks and stones and grouped in small opposing armies, known as "Northenders," "Westenders" and "Southenders," no longer take place on the Common as they did in the late 70's and early 80's.
FROM PRIVATE HAND MESSENGERS TO PUBLIC CARRIERS ON WIRES AND ON THE ETHER
Boston, because it has endured for three centuries, has lived through the epoch when messages were carried from settlement to settlement by the Indian runner coursing with the white man's letter at eight miles an hour. The pack horse, the stage coach, the packet, the locomotive, the steamboat, the automo- bile and the airplane have successively or together carried the Boston letter, the merchandise and the inan himself. Boston has known all the methods of transmitting intelligence by signal fires, lanterns, bells, semaphores, steam sirens and the telegraph.
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YACHT RACING ON THE FROG POND (Courtesy of Community Service of Boston)
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But among discoveries and deviees for carrying intelligenee from man to man, Boston has played a part greater than that of a mere onlooker or a most ardent patron. Our city was destined in this field to make a contribution to human advancement more important and more inclusive than any other ever devised by man. Boston men, experimenting in acousties during the early 70's for the aid of deaf mutes, invented a practical telephone which in Boston for the first time transmitted spoken sentences by electric impulses carried through a wire. Forty years later these impulses, under greater tension, leaped off the wires of transmission to the ether, and traveling upon the ether enabled men to converse with other men near at hand, or at the ends of the earth.
CANDLE POWER
Though eandles are not used in 1930 except for ornament or whimsical light, yet their flame reekons the modern light. An incandescent eleetrie lamp of sixteen eandle-power ealled bright in 1895 is called dim now. Thirty eandle- power is called bright enough if you will sit by it to read. In 1930 your home, if it is ordinary, ineludes many lamps of fifty, your office many of a hundred; your store, if it is large, totals hundreds of thousands of candle-power. Millions of eandle-power gleam offshore from lighthouses.
In the old days, say 1840, a modest Boston home kept a half dozen tallow eandles alight. Then came flames of about the same brightness fed by whale oil, then followed brighter flames of kerosene, shielded with glass lamp chimneys to stop the intolerable smoking of the wicks. Illuminating gas eame later to the homes and added to the vapors of combustion. It added also to the cost, and to the hazard of fire and explosion, but labor was reduced. Finally the electrie light eame, first to the laboratories, then in the early 80's to the lecture halls. Later in the same decade, on Boston Common, a single are light with its energizing engine and dynamo was set up near the end of Spruce street as a curiosity for the publie to see. The tents of Barnum's Cireus were lighted by electricity as an unprecedented spectacle at that era.
Aneiently the moon, when it shone, lighted the streets of Boston. Beams of light gleamed from windows and from lanterns hung here and there. Mineral oil was used for lighting in 1880 in the outlying villages, then eame the more general use of "gas lights" with naked flames, followed by incandescent man- tles in 1900. To our eyes in 1930 the city lights are dazzlingly bright. How bright will our city lights seem by comparison to the eyes of 2030? To us the street plan of the central City of Boston and the pattern of all the streets of the outlying eities and towns glow with light. The cost of this display of eleetrie energy is willingly defrayed by taxation. We deelare that publie safety and convenience require the expense even to the smallest alleyway and the countryside lane. Wherever you go, the electric light pierees your eyes and puts out the stars and the moon.
Huge advertising signs, painted with thousands of eleetrie light globes, rise up above the building tops to seize the attention of the eye and tell the dazzled reader that certain goods exeel all others. The gilded dome of the State House has been electrically lighted by night for a quarter of a century. Now the whole building glows with the reflected beams of flood-lights hidden
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behind fences and shrubbery. The novelty of scarchlights has waned in twenty years. Few swing their beams about nowadays except from battleships.
There is talk of shading the street lights to make them less blinding. Street lights are almost as painful to the eyes as is the glare of the parabolic headlights of the automobiles. To us it seems that we of 1930 are blinded. Posterity can study our engineers' plans of 1930, which show where each light is placed and its candle-power or wattage. A judgment can be made, when the next century comes, of the degrec to which we of the present are really blinded or are, after all, relatively benighted.
THE CHANGING NOISE OF POUNDING HORSESHOES
Before 1890 the great and the universal noise in the city was the pounding of iron horseshoes on the street pavements. That sound began before dawn when the milk carts came by thousands into the city from the outlying farms. By nine o'clock the tens of thousands of horses, including those that drew the cars of the horse railways, the carriages of the physicians and merchants, the tip carts of the street cleaners and the long drays of the sugar refiners and the wool merchants, were on the move. The horses of the street railways dangled bells from their collars. Dray horses had bells. Therefore much bell music was mingled with the pounding street noise. Every street and the alleys resounded with the clatter of the iron-shod fect and the roar of iron wheel-tires running on the rough pavements. At sunset the noise abated, but through the early night the pounding and the sound of iron tires rolling on stone and gravel went on.
Soon after 1885 a new, louder, roaring street sound began to confuse the simple staccato of hoofs. This new sound came from the gearing of the electric street railway cars which in thirty years gradually replaced horse-drawn cars. The thousands of horses which slowly vanished during a decade left the car barns vacant. These buildings, which were notable for their vast size, were remodeled to accommodate the new electric cars and the name "barn" clung to them. Today, twenty years after the last horse of the railways went to his nightly rest in the stall, the name "car barn" denotes the home of the latest electric machine of the street railways.
But the fundamental change in the noise of the horseshoes pounding began in 1895 with the growing presence of automobiles. Little by little those machines with their new noises and smells have replaced the horses. In 1930 there are few horses to be heard or seen on any strect, therefore when a horse goes by you sce the citizens point to him. Some point with derision that a horse should have been left among modern improvements, others point with sadness that so beautiful a creature is not oftener seen among the iron robots which roll along.
However, in 1930, in and near the country clubs, where his zeal, strength and beauty make him beloved as a good companion, the horse is coming into his own. Yet on the farms, even in the back country, the horse is beginning to disappear as a beast of draft and burden. The tractor and the truck, which plough, harrow and haul, are seen in rapidly increasing numbers among the furrows and on the roads.
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The ox vanished between about 1870 and 1875. The roving gypsies who flourished as horse dealers in 1880 are roving still, but now they deal in second- hand automobiles. They weave and sell baskets. They tell fortunes as persistently as ever. The March wind raises less dust to plague the eyes now- adays, since the smooth, hard motor roads arc dustless. The English sparrow has dwindled with the horse.
VANISHING HAY
Hay came to Boston in vast quantities for the horses of the 90's. Balcd hay came by rail from the West, salt-marsh hay (mostly for bedding) came from all the tidal areas within fifty miles of Boston. The raising of Ipswich hay for horses kept the hills of Ipswich bare of trees for decades. Hay moved into Boston by barges, by ox-carts (before 1875), and by horse riggings, during all the months of the year. Straw, baled and in bulk, came in for bedding.
Nowadays, since there are no horses, no hay moves in. The tidal marshes are not mown as they were in 1895. The staddles are ruinous. Woodlands and orchards are creeping over all the Ipswich hayfields. No straw comes in, no oats, no corn. In their place come oil, gasolene and coal for the trucks, for the private motor cars and for the power plants.
The stables which occupied the rears of the lots of a very great number of Boston residences no longer spread out their straw to dry. Stables are changed to garages, hand-ball courts, garden houses, laundries and storehouses. The old-fashioned smithy, dim, mysterious and picturesque, with its glimmer- ing forge, stamping cart-horse and stooping smith, is hard to find; in its place the oil filling station, garishly painted, beckons the motorist at every turn.
HORSE SENSE AND SUBURBAN HIGHWAY CHANGES
The phrase "horse sense" was made to illustrate directness in human reasoning. Horse and man with sense of this kind, applied to their own needs and their strength, determined the streets of early Metropolitan Boston. Need required that all roads for man must lead to Boston. Strength of the beast required that steep hills, soft swamps, and deep river crossings must be detoured. As a result of these requirements, a system of radial highways was developed automatically for Boston and for its great environs upon the varied topography of the metropolitan area. These radial highways which were built in the era of no planning (1630 to about 1907) could hardly have been bettered if planning had determined their general location, their distribution, and their gradients.
But where all horses and all men did not combine in the single unifying effort to go to Boston, the resulting highway lines were irrationally laid down. For example, the man and horse going on a partial circuit around Boston from Revere to Woburn were not of the same mind as the pair going from Woburn to Lexington or the pair going from Lexington to Waltham,- and so on around the circle. As a consequence, the circumferential roads jogged at every city and town. The endurance of the horse and the interest of the men in the early days were not exerted continuously around the circles through the towns, there- fore the resulting circumferential highway routes of the greater Boston area
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were botched for lack of planning Vast treasure could have been saved and vast resources conserved for us of 1930 if planning had been brought in to eke out horse sense in the early days on the great circumferential routes.
CHANGES INCIDENT TO THE POWER OF MOTOR CARS
When the motor cars came, about 1900, the neighborly interests of men widened. The man of 1930 in Revere desires to visit neighbors briefly in Waltham via Woburn and Lexington. He is irritated by the jogs and their delays. He requires either that the jogs shall be smoothed out or that the intervening towns shall be detoured. His demands are multiplied by the number of men who wish to take this route, also by the number of men who live at the jogs and who are annoyed or endangered by the traffic dangers and congestions there.
On the other hand, the power of motor vehicles in 1930 enables them to surmount the steepest hills to avoid the detours once made by horses. There- fore many a pleasant residence community which has lain in quiet for centuries on the hills, aloof from the main streanis of horse traffic, is invaded now by the strong noisy rush of the dangerous motor car. Changes follow; the residents move away. Pity is that planning did not detour the modern motor car, either by making the hill route steeper or more crooked, or by providing a way around. wide, smooth and more gentle in gradient. Pity is that the most forethoughtful planning cannot decide even in 1930 whether a change like this would be on the whole a loss or a gain for the whole community.
The motor vehicles in 1930 are smoothing out the ancient street jogs. Curiously enough, however, these very machines are now showing a disposition to create detours of vast size for their own accommodation. We see detour motor roads in process of construction around dozens of the cities and towns and around the heart of Boston. The detour road gives speed to the motor car by relieving its path of the local traffic of the towns. In 1910 the business men of the towns opposed such detours, fearing loss of trade from the vehicles, but in 1930 they pray that the streams of long-distance motor cars may be detoured from the shopping streets.
SNOWFALL AND TRAFFIC CHANGE
In 1895 the fall of six inches of snow brought out runners upon the roads to replace wheels. Over night all wheels vanished except those great vocal ones which sang in the morning when their bright steel tires told the snow of the weight of ash carts. Tens of thousands of runners appeared in the morning. These glided without noise. The sound of horses' hoofs was muffled almost to silence. Only the sound of the horse bells, the creaking of harness and the cherup of the drivers could be heard. Sleighs, pungs, booby-hacks and runner- drays appeared seemingly as a by-product of the snow. Much gladness came with the bells and the whiteness, but when the thaws began in a day or in a fortnight the horses suffered where bare ground stopped the runners. Bare ground made by the broad ploughs of the street railways also made all horses suffer except those that drew the cars of the street railways. Therefore, the
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end of the snow season and the time of return to wheels was hailed with joy by the drivers. Then the noise of iron on the ground rang out again with old intensity. All the detachable runners and the runner vehicles were stored away in the colossal stowage spaees arranged to hold them for another year.
The heyday of the runners was before the street railways. That was before 1870. Then there was no deep ploughing of street snow. Excellent going for sleighs lasted for months. Horse flesh did not suffer. Bulk trans- portation of passengers was aeeomplished by omnibuses on runners, but the runners were exelianged for wheels after the snow passed in Mareh.
Men who are twenty-five years old have seen the change which the auto- mobile has wrought with the snow. Because our motor-driven cars eannot be run on snow, therefore the snow must go. We behold the fabulous task of 1930 when all the snow of the city streets must be ploughed off and laboriously trueked away and dumped. True, the extra cost of a universal equipment of runners is saved by this great labor and the storage space for that equipment is saved. Snow nowadays is an eneumbranee. Bells no longer greet it. It must be met resolutely with the harsh sound of the iron shovel and the traetor plough. Witness the eost to the eities and to the state for the great mileage of outlying roads which also must be ploughed in 1930.
Witness the plight of the farmers in the far countryside who must buy motor vehicles because the farm horses eannot drag sleds on the roads cleared of snow. Witness the speed gained and the time saved for men who operate the motor vehicles. Witness the army of men who in 1930 spend their lives making such vehieles, repairing, tending, buying, selling, insuring, and finding metals, varnishes and oils for them. Some men in 1930 say that the motor vehicle is not a gain on the whole but a loss.
There was no haste in removing snow from the streets in 1880. The sleighs and haeks, the pungs and caravans moved over the snowy streets with tinkling bells. The streets, as we have seen, were full of hurrying horses. You heard the thud of hoofs, the breathing, the whinny, the sounds of hoofs inter- fering or of hoeks striking on the runners and whiffletrees. You heard sleigh- ing parties singing. There was much merriment and delight in the streets embanked with snow.
There is delight in the snow in the Boston streets in 1930, but the thought fills the mind that the beauty must be and will be cleared away quickly to give room and speed for motor ears. Delight within the motor cars is hidden - you cannot see it or hear the singing (if there is any) beeause the covers of the ears hide the riders, who are also separated from the flakes and from the erisp air. There is no sign or sound of the old winter-time merriment on the roads of modern Boston, which are snowy only until the ploughs bare them.
AVALANCHES OF SNOW
To shed water and to make snow slide off, the roofs of early Boston dwell- ings, lofts, churches and schools were built with steep slopes covered with wooden shingles or slates. These sloping roofs are characteristie of the older parts of the city today and, in combination with the moderate building height of four to six stories, they give a pleasant unity of appearance in which the
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necessity of combating the weather is expressed. Until within twenty years the downtown district of Tremont Row, Cornhill, Cambridge street, much of the northerly half of Beacon Hill, South Boston, Charlestown and Dorchester were roofed in this agreeable fashion, but in 1930 sloping roofs of this kind are being replaced with flat roofs in most new buildings, because the economy of space of the flat roofs (made possible by modern water-tight roof coverings) is a vital consideration. No outward relation of roof to weather is expressed, except a disregard.
The impressive thunder of roof-snow falling in avalanches is not heard in the new parts of the city. Dormer windows and roofs of slate and shingle do not greet the eye there. Buildings are built from ten to twenty stories high. They tower above ancient spires and belfrics. Within doors the attic and the loft, which were characteristic of the sloping roof, are not found. Dark, cool cellars are not found. Modern basements are well lighted and heated. They are not used nowadays for the storage of vegetables and salt fish and the piles of cord-wood which awaited the saw and axe in the 80's. The cat is disappearing, since rats and mice do not approve the modern construction. The roaches of the 90's are vanishing. Bats cannot live for want of com- fortable crannies, but the night-hawk makes his home on the bare flat roofs. He is the only occupant of these sunny lofty places which are cool and sightly. They are free from the noise and danger of the streets below. Yet, in 1930, hardly a dozen Boston men make good use of the modern roof as a living place.
THE CHANGE TO CROWDS MOVING ALOFT ABOVE THE GROUND
During the 90's the speed of the increasing numbers of horse cars, carriages and bicycles was hampered for lack of sufficient space in the streets. The costly expedient was adopted of building elevated railways on iron frameworks over the streets. New York had built such elevated accommodations in the 70's. Everyone knew what darkness and noise would result to the streets of Boston if these facilities were provided aloft, but the promised penalty was accepted as a reasonable price to pay for the greater speed; therefore, shortly after, the crowds in the elevated stations and on the rapidly moving trains looked down on the roofs and chimney tops. In a few years many long extensions of these structures to more distant points in the environs of Boston were made, with the resulting shade, noise and cost, all of which seemed justified to the crowds on the ground and moving aloft on the iron trestles in sun, rain and snow. In 1930 the fashion has changed. Now we are building subways. These cost more but they do not encumber the streets, and they are free of ice, snow and rain. They do not look down upon roof tops. Some of them look into the brilliantly lighted basement windows of enterprising stores.
SPEED OF MOTOR TRAVEL AND BOSTON CHANGES
Speed of motor travel has brought the suburbs of Boston nearer to one another and to Boston. The ancient half-hour from Boston to Cambridge by horse or bicycle has changed to seven minutes by motor. Wellesley has changed from an hour and a half to twenty minutes on the highways. Therefore, you
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