Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 24

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802

USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 24

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R. from Quincy St. into Kirkland St.

35. The Germanic Museum or Adolph Busch Hall (1917) (open weekdays except holidays from 9-5; Sun. 1-5), corner of Divinity Ave., is a curious and very interesting stucco and limestone building with red-tile roof. It was done from designs by Prof. Germain Bestelmeyer of Munich, in the pre-war Munich 'kunstlerisch' style, the designs then being adapted to local conditions by Dean H. Langford Warren of the Harvard School of Architecture. The low clock-tower is not unimpressive, the outdoor courtyard, with a cast of the Brunswick Lion, charming, and the interior affords an admirable progressive survey of the characteristic features of Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance styles. It contains also a collec- tion, outstanding in America, of reproductions of great medieval sculpture. L. from Kirkland St. into Divinity Ave.

36. The Semitic Museum (open weekdays 9-5; Sun. 1-4.30) houses col- lections which relate to the history and arts of the Arabs, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians. Among Assyrian reproductions are bas-reliefs from the palace of Ashurnazirpal, King of Assyria (884-860 B.C.) and the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (860- 825 B.C.). In the Babylonian collection is the oldest known map (dating

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from 2500 B.C.) and discovered by a Harvard expedition. Of importance in the Palestinian collection is a model of the hill of Zion with its modern buildings and a tentative reconstruction of Herod's Temple, made, in 1903, by Dr. Konrad Schick of Berlin. Other conjectural reconstructions include the Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon.

37. The Biological Laboratories, housed in what is certainly one of the most distinguished of the university buildings, form a three-sided court five stories in height, and offer a superb example of modern 'functional' architecture. Largely the design of Henry Shepley (Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbott), and built in 1931 with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, this lovely brick building, with its harmoniously spaced tall windows and exquisite use of plane surfaces, is a gentle reminder of what might have been done with Widener Library. The frieze of animals carved in the brick of the upper facing by Miss Katherine Lane, and so skillfully done that the shadows resulting from the slant-cut carving enhance the effect of the line, affords just the requisite offset of richness to the beautiful simplicity of the building as a whole; and Miss Lane's colossal bronze rhinos and carved doors complete a distinguished archi- tectural unit.

L. from Divinity Ave. by footpath to Oxford St.

38. The University Museum (open weekdays 9-4.30; Sun. 1-4.30), opposite Jarvis St. is a six-story rambling brick structure. Its most celebrated and popular exhibit is that of the Glass Flowers. Glass models of the humbler flowers of field and wood are. realistically produced with an astonishing delicacy of detail and complete botanic accuracy. The secret of this art was discovered in the 19th century by a German family named Blaschka, and it remains with them.

Stuffed specimens of North American Birds form one of the most com- plete collections and the Harvard Forest Models depict the history of land-clearing and reforestation.

L. from Oxford St. into Jarvis St.

39. The Children's Museum of Cambridge (open weekdays except Sat. 8.30-4.30; Sun. 1-4.30; closed on Sat.), 5 Jarvis St., is a small red wooden building, a department of the Cambridge Public Schools and indirectly connected with Harvard University through the study privileges accorded at University Museum. The Children's Museum is less an exhibition hall than a classroom and club center for visual education in geography and nature study. Some of the instruction is given at the museum, some at the public schools, and much of it in the fields. There are, however, Indian and Eskimo models, small collections of mineral and stuffed birds, and exhibits of such popular hobbies as postage stamps and air- plane modeling.

L. from Jarvis St. into footpath at W. end of Children's Museum.

40. The Harvard Law School mainly occupies Langdell Hall, a long two- story limestone building with an Ionic colonnade. This is the oldest law

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school now in existence in the United States. Its library of over 460,000 volumes is claimed to be the most complete law library in the world, and contains the statutes, judicial decisions, and legal treatises of every country on the globe. Portraits of eminent lawyers and judges within its walls include canvases by Lawrence, Raeburn, Romney, Lely, and Stuart.

R. from footpath into Cambridge St .; L. from Cambridge St. into Peabody St .; straight ahead on Massachusetts Ave. through Harvard Square.

4I. A Tercentenary Marker, corner of Dunster St., marks the Site Of The First Meeting House, where Thomas Shepard, that 'holy heavenly sweet affecting and soul-ravishing' preacher, held forth.

This same corner is the Site Of The House Of Stephen Daye, the first printer in British America, who arrived here in 1638 and set up his press under the auspices of Harvard.

R. from Massachusetts Ave. into Linden St.

42. The 'Bishop's Palace' (Apthorp House) (private) is half hidden in a courtyard, reached by a footpath. It is a fine three-story mansion with white clapboards, dentiled cornice, and large inner chimneys, built in 1760 by the first minister of Christ Church (Episcopal) and named irreverently by Provincial dissenters. It now serves as the residence of the Master of Adams House, the nearest to the Yard of the 'New Houses.'

R. from Linden St. into Mt. Auburn St .; L. from Mt. Auburn St. into Holyoke St .; L. from Holyoke St. into Holyoke Place.

43. These 'New Houses,' seven in number, lie between Winthrop St. and the Charles River, from north to south, and between Boylston Street and McCarthy Road, from west to east. Something more than dormi- tories for the three upper classes, they serve as units for special types of study concentration, with resident masters and tutors, and their own libraries and dining-halls. Some of them were built originally as Fresh- man dormitories, but their amalgamation into the Houses has done a good deal to shift the center of the University toward the river, and has created a little university town of great charm. Of the completely new Houses - Lowell (1930), Dunster (1930), and Eliot (1931), all designed by Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbott - perhaps Lowell, which is the largest, is also the handsomest. In all of them may be seen the following-out of the Georgian Colonial motif, with now and then a heavy leaning on Holden Chapel (as in the frequent use of arms and mantling on the gables) and University Hall (as in the dining-hall of Lowell, which bears a close resemblance to the Faculty Room). The rapidity with which they were built has made them possibly a shade too uniform, despite the deliberate attempt of the architects to vary them.

Retrace Holyoke Place; L. from Holyoke Place into Holyoke St .; L. from Holyoke St. into Mill St .; R. from Mill St. into Plympton St.

44. Across the Charles River from Memorial Drive is the Harvard Business School (graduate), visible on the opposite shore like another

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fine group of the 'colleges within the college,' extending on either side of the white-columned Baker Library (open) with its white steeple. The establishment of the school in 1902 was accompanied by a sharp protest from scholars in the liberal arts against its association with cultural Harvard, but such comment has now largely disappeared. Baker Library contains 135,000 volumes and pamphlets relating to commerce and trade.

45. The Harvard Stadium, rising 60 feet in air and approximately two city blocks in length, is impressively visible across the river, just west of the Business School. It is not the largest in the country but was the first, and is still considered, with its ivy-clad arches and classic colonnade, one of the most beautiful. It seats 22,000 on the concrete, and with additional steel stands and temporary seats can accommodate a total of 57,750. It was constructed under the direction of Prof. Lewis Jerome Johnson, Class of 1887, and Joseph Ruggles Worcester, Class of 1882. The general architectural design was worked out by George Bruns de Gersdorff, Class of 1888, under the direction of Charles Follen McKim, Master of Arts, Harvard 1890. The stadium, 570 feet long by 420 feet wide, encloses a field 478 by 430 feet on which are held, in addition to the usual athletic events, part of the Class Day festivities and outdoor theatrical performances of note.

Tourists especially interested in Harvard University are referred to the following additional points of interest:

Radcliffe College (10), First Parish Church (4), in list above; Mt. Auburn Cemetery (47), Cambridge Observatory (51), and the Botanic Garden and Gray Herbarium (52), below; also the Harvard Medical School and Arnold Arboretum (see Bos- ton), the Thayer Bird Museum (see Tour 7, LANCASTER) and the Harvard Astronomical Observatory (see Tour 7, HARVARD) and the Black Brook Planta- tion (see Tour 1A, HAMILTON.

CAMBRIDGE MOTOR TOUR-6m.

SW. from Harvard Square through Brattle Street; R. from Brattle Street into Mt. Auburn St.

46. Elmwood (private), corner of Elmwood Ave., was the home of James Russell Lowell. It is a fine three-story yellow clapboarded mansion with white roof-rail and square yellow chimneys.

The house was built in 1767, and was first the home of Lieutenant Governor Oliver, the last of the royal deputies in Massachusetts, who in 1774 was forced by 4000 Cantabrigians to write his resignation and seek safety in Boston. In 1810 Elbridge Gerry lived here while he was Governor, just before becoming Vice-President in 1812. Lowell was born here and made it his lifelong home, except for his absences as United States minister to Spain and England (1877-85). Here he wrote his 'Vision of Sir Launfal' and the first of the 'Biglow Papers.'

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47. Mt. Auburn Cemetery (free map at gate) has famous graves of nearly every one of note who has died in or near Boston for the past hundred years.

Individual graves may be found by circling left from the gate, as follows: Mary Baker Eddy, Halcyon Ave .; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lime Ave., in the Jackson plot of his wife's relatives; James Russell Lowell, Fountain Ave., next to the stone of the child immortalized in 'The First Snowfall'; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Indian Ridge Path, next to Gay Alice of 'The Children's Hour' (Laughing Allegra and Edith with Golden Hair became Mrs. Thorp and Mrs. Dana, respectively); Charlotte Cushman, Palm Ave. (the trustees of the cemetery would be glad to hear of any of her heirs); Charles Sumner, Arethusa Path; Louis Agassiz, Bellwort Path, under a boulder taken from a glacier near his birthplace in Switzerland; Margaret Fuller, Pyrola Path; Edwin Booth, Anemone Path; Phillips Brooks, Mimosa Path; William Ellery Channing, Greenbrier Path.

In Mt. Auburn are buried also Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward Everett, Hosea Ballou, Joseph Story, Rufus Choate, and the historians Prescott and Park- man.

The reason for the choice of Mt. Auburn by the families of so many celebrities, before it became so historically noted, was that it was for many years the only garden cemetery in the environs of Boston. It is still one of the two most beautiful. Its grounds are thickly wooded with rare trees and shrubs, landscaped with occasional ponds, and they rise to a commanding hill, from which is a dreamy view of the winding Charles River, Cambridge, Boston, and distant hills.

Retrace Mt. Auburn St .; L. from Mt. Auburn St. into Brattle St.

48. The Nichols-Lee House (private), 159 Brattle St., is a heavy-set oblong three-story dwelling, clapboarded, except for a stone west end, in cinnamon color, with ivory-colored wood quoins, and surmounted by a roof-rail and a central chimney 12 feet wide, with six hoods. The 20-paned windows have brown blinds. A broad doorway, ivory colored, with pilasters in the Doric, fronts upon a lawn enclosed by a picket fence. The house dates from 1660, and was occupied at the time of the Revolution by Joseph Lee, a mild and kindly Tory who thought best to flee, but who was such a general favorite as a citizen that he was allowed to return after the war without confiscation of his property. When he died at over 90 years of age the entire city mourned.

49. American Thomas Lee's House (private), 153 Brattle St., is one of several sumptuous and beautiful old mansions to be seen hereabout. It is a three-story, clapboarded house (1685), with mansard roof, dormer windows, white roof-rail, and massive chimneys painted white with black hoods. It is set behind an ornamental white picket fence, on a lawn shaded by horse chestnut trees, and broken by a terrace with a low white rail.

50. Baroness Riedesel's House (private), 149 Brattle St., is of interest as having been the home of the Baron and Baroness Riedesel, prisoners of war in the days of the Continental Army's second major success. The Baron was Burgoyne's chief staff officer at Saratoga, and the Baroness's gay and vivid letters about her social life in Cambridge are evidence that the city treated her well, in spite of its Revolutionary sympathies. After

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the Baroness left, Washington gave the house to 'English Thomas Lee,' a former Tory who changed over to the American Cause. English Thomas was so named to distinguish him from his neighbor 'American Thomas Lee.'

L. from Brattle St. into Craigie St .; R. from Craigie St. into Concord Ave .; L. from Concord Ave. into Garden St.

51. The Cambridge Observatory of Harvard University (open weekdays 9-5; closed Sun. and holidays), 60 Garden St., is in the unmarked hilly land- scaped grounds just across the street from the Botanic Garden (see No. 52, below).

There is a public exhibit of Astronomical Pictures on glass plates lighted from behind. These are magnified examples of some of the famous collec- tion of 400,000 glass plates which the University has made in studying motions, magnitudes, and variations of celestial objects. This collection is studied by astronomers from all over the world, and some of the plates come from another observatory of the University in South Africa. The beehive-like houses in the Cambridge grounds are shelters for powerful photographic telescopes and sky-patrol cameras, which on every clear night swing the circuit of the universe, noting everything that happens for some billions of miles.

52. The Botanic Garden of Harvard University (open weekdays 9-5; closed Sun. and holidays), corner of Garden and Linnaean Sts., was established in 1807 for the cultivation of all herbaceous plants hardy in this climate. From 1842 to 1872 Asa Gray, the celebrated botanist, was director. There are a rock garden, a rose garden, a water garden, and a greenhouse. In the grounds is the building of the Gray Herbarium (open only to botantists), containing 750,000 sheets of mounted specimens.

Retrace Garden St .; L. from Garden St. into Linnaean St.

53. The Cooper-Frost-Austin House (open Thurs. 1-5; adm. 25¢), 21 Linnaean St., built in 1657, is the oldest house in the city, except possibly for one block of the Belcher House at 94 Brattle St. It is a two-and-a-half- story clapboard dwelling with lean-to and central chimney, furnished in early Colonial style and owned by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

R. from Linnaean St. into Massachusetts Ave.

54. The Site of Oliver Wendell Holmes's Birthplace is marked by a granite tablet within the triangular green opposite the Common. Here as a young physician he first displayed his shingle, on which he considered inscribing: 'The smallest fevers thankfully received.'

L. from Massachusetts Ave. into Peabody St .; R. from Peabody St. into Kirkland St .; L. from Kirkland St. into Irving St.

55. Shady Hill (private), 136 Irving St., is a broad two-story mansion of 1790 with a long front piazza, crowning a landscaped knoll. Its chief interest lies in its occupancy by Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), Harvard Professor of Art, and personal friend of Browning, Ruskin,

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Carlyle, and the pre-Raphaelites. Norton was one of the most admired American scholars of the 19th century, and exerted a profound influence on all Harvard graduates of his day. Like Ruskin, however, he was deeply concerned with the moral implications of art, and it was once slyly said that his art courses were 'Lectures in Morals as Illustrated by Art.'

Retrace Irving St .; R. from Irving St. into Cambridge St .; L. from Cam- bridge St. into Felton St .; L. from Felton St. into Broadway.

56. The Cambridge Public Library (open 9-9), corner of Trowbridge St. (1889), is in the Romanesque style, of granite trimmed with sandstone. Murals in the reading room depict 'The Evolution of the Printing Press.' A collection of copies of paintings by old masters includes subjects by Correggio, Domenichino, Van der Werff, Murillo, and Raphael, and an original painting 400 years old (artist unknown), 'St. Jerome Interpreting the Scriptures.'

R. from Broadway into Inman St.

57. The Site of General Putnam's Headquarters during the Siege of Bos- ton is marked by a tablet near the rear of City Hall. Putnam's troops had erected a small earthworks, known as Fort Washington, on the present Waverly Street, and had on the present Otis Street a battery which fired by mistake on the Brattle Square Church in Boston.

L. from Inman St. into Massachusetts Ave .; L. from Massachusetts Ave. into Main St.

58. New Towne Court, corner of Windsor St., a Federal Housing project, is an attempt to provide attractive low-cost homes for people of small incomes. It consists of six large and two small brick apartment buildings, entrance to all of which is gained from the court, which runs from one end of the unit to the other. It contains 294 modern apartments of three, four, and five rooms, with a central heating plant. Rentals are moderate and include the utilities: heat, water, electricity, gas, and refrigeration. On the corner stood the house in which Elias Howe, in- ventor of the sewing machine, lived and perfected his model.

Retrace Main St .; L. from Main St. into Massachusetts Ave.

59. The Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, corner of Memorial Drive, occupies an 80-acre campus in a beautiful location facing the broad terminal basin of the Charles River and, across this, the Boston skyline. Its 46 so-called separate buildings, of limestone and yellow brick, in restrained neo-Classic style, are in reality almost a single massive unit, connected by interior corridors, forming a U-shaped hollow square. A terraced lawn spreads before them, landscaped by rhododen- drons, poplars, and small elms, and ornamented by formal rows of decorative lamp-posts. The central or administration building, with a low central dome and Ionic portico, is known simply as 'Number 10.' All the buildings are illuminated by flood-lights at night, and with their reflection in the beautiful waters of the Charles they constitute an out- standing attraction of Boston and Cambridge.

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To scientists, every department of the Institute contains equipment and exhibits of absorbing interest. The general public, however, finds special features of more comprehensive appeal. In the lower right hand corridors of Building 10 are repre- sentative exhibits, changed frequently, from the Institute's noted ceramics collec- tion, which comprises beautiful pottery and glass from all ages and lands, including specimens from the Chinese dynasties from 206 B.C. to A.D. 1850. In the dome of Building 10 is the Library, one of the best in the United States in scientific and engineering subjects.

In Building 5 is a Ship Model Museum, a part of the Institute's distinguished School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, which fosters one of Tech's most popular sports, sailboat-racing in the Charles River Basin. In Building 4 is The Colossus of Volts, a giant electrostatic generator which created the highest steady direct voltage ever achieved by man. In the basement of Building 6 is The Round Table of Light Camera, a great circular table, hollow at its core, with a grating of optical glass, which has no rival as an apparatus for spectroscopy.

The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (Separate Building No. 35) has interest- ing wind-testing machines. Adjoining this laboratory, in Separate Building 20, is a large Model of the Cape Cod Canal, through which water is operated at the various levels and forces of the tides in the actual canal.

The Walker Memorial, a separate unnumbered building, is the student social and athletic center, distinguished by a lofty and handsome restaurant hall adorned with a vast mural by Edwin H. Blashfield, representing 'Technology Saluted by the Hosts of Science.' The building contains also reading rooms and a gymnasium.

Four main schools, the School of Science, the School of Engineering, the School of Architecture, and the Graduate School, together offer over 900 subjects of instruction. In the words of President Compton, the Institute 'pioneered in extending the laboratory method of instruction as an indispensable educational technique. It virtually created the modern profession of chemical engineering. Its courses in electrical and aeronautical engineerings and in applied physics were probably the first in the world.'

CHELSEA . City of Transformations

City: Alt. 29, pop. 42,673, sett. 1624, incorp. town 1739, city 1857.

Railroad Station: Washington Ave. and Heard St. for B. & M. R.R. Bus Station: Markel's Drugstore, Chelsea Square, for Greyhound Lines. Accommodations: Inns and boarding-houses.

Information: Chamber of Commerce, 445 Broadway.

CHELSEA is a city of transformations. Humbly beginning as a trading post, it has been successively a manorial estate, an agricultural com- munity, a ferry landing, a summer resort, a residential suburb and finally an industrial city. Its principal manufactures today are rubber, elastic webbing, boots and shoes, and paper stock.

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In 1624, Samuel Maverick, a youth of twenty-two, saw possibilities in a permanent trade with the Indians of Winnisimet, now Chelsea, and with some followers he set up his homestead, the first permanent one on Boston Harbor.

Ten years later he sold out his large holdings to Governor Richard Bellingham, one of the most extensive landowners about Boston. A leader in the political affairs of the Bay Colony, he must have been some- what scandalously erratic from the Puritan point of view. Quite soon after his first wife's death, he married a woman betrothed to another man, performing the ceremony himself. When prosecuted for this breach of law and decorum, he, being a judge, refused to leave the bench, thereby trying and freeing himself.

With equal independence, he adopted a procedure with regard to his land which was not customary in New England. Dividing it up into four farms in manorial fashion, he leased out each quarter to a tenant farmer.

When in his eightieth year the old Governor was gathered to his fathers, he left behind him as his final self-assertion a last will and testa- ment that was to torment legal minds for a century to come. The contest over this memorable will had no parallel in the country, and by tying up the property it effectively retarded the development of early Chelsea.

Though the original Bellingham purchase transformed Chelsea from a fur-trading post into an agricultural community, geographic location singled it out for another and more impressive function. Boston, practi- cally insular until after the Revolution, was reached by land from towns to the north by a route which entailed a whole day's journey. For north- country folk, the nearest point of mainland to Boston was Winnisimet (Chelsea) but a mile distant by water. Consequently, the General Court enacted a subsidy to encourage a ferry route between Boston, Charles- town and Winnisimet. This was the first ferry in New England and probably in North America.

The Court also kept an eye on the ferry business, regulating fares and schedules and imposing suitable penalties for neglect of duty. The con- venience and safety of the passage was a matter of vital concern to these early legislators. The difficulties they themselves experienced in crossing are vividly described in Cotton Mather's diary: 'A fearful hurricane and thunderstorm overtook us, just as we got out of Winnisimet Ferryboat (a ferry three miles wide), which, had it overtaken us four or five minutes earlier, we had unquestionably perished in ye waters.'

The hazards of wind and tide often delayed travel; so, before long, taverns sprang up near the ferry, where, besides a night's lodging, 'strong waters' might be had to console or embolden the traveler.

Throughout much of the nineteenth century Chelsea was a well-known summer resort, offering not only country landscape, but also three miles of beautiful sandy beach (now Revere).

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Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 24

Author: Publication date: 1937 Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company Number of Pages: 802

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802