The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV, Part 4

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Boston : Osgood
Number of Pages: 760

USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 4

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A devotion to the higher interests of its inhabitants characterized the later years of the town of Boston. It was rich in individuals who looked beyond the pursuits whose end was self-aggrandizement, and sought to dis- cover the pressing wants of their fellow-citizens, that they might labor to supply them. Our honorable institutions of religion, charity, and learning bear testimony to their zeal. We owe to them an inheritance which re- quires us merely to maintain, not to create, a reputation for public spirit and private munificence. They held a high conception of the duties of citizenship, and, according to their light, were prompt to fulfil them. The bitterness of their political animosities testifies to the honesty and positive- ness of their convictions. The intelligent Democrat of to-day must rever- ence the noble twelve years' work of the Federal party, and honor its vigorous and useful protests during the earlier part of this century. First, an honest opposition ; then, a passive acquiescence ; finally, a joyous sym- pathy,-this is the necessary sequence by which what is best in the old modifies and renders possible the ideal of the new. The Boston of a. healthy Democracy, which our descendants may one day perfect upon the cherished site, will be deeply indebted to the good old Federal town that preceded it.

Josiah Phillips Quincy.

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CHAPTER II.

TOPOGRAPHY AND LANDMARKS OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.

BY EDWARD STANWOOD.

A T the close of the Revolutionary period, Boston was topographically what it had been from the beginning.1 Its three hills were as Nature had made and left them. None of the numerous coves and inlets that once indented the shores of the peninsula had been obliterated. The last century has been the witness of all the great physical changes which have wrought upon Boston such a transformation as no other great city of the world has ever undergone at the hands of man., Not a trace of the original coast-line remains. The levelling tendency of the age has been a literal fact, so far as Boston is concerned, for its hills have been cut down and its low land raised. The area of dry land has been much more than doubled, and Boston proper is no longer, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a peninsula.

In studying the physical history of Boston, we have first of all to con- sider what Boston was when the changes began. The inhabited part of it was a true peninsula, almost exactly a square mile in area, connected with the main-land by a neck which was. at one point extremely narrow, and widening as it approached the Roxbury line. The superficial area of the Neck, and the land which lay south of it, was not far from one fourth of a square mile. The whole original area of Boston proper is put at 783 acres. The latest survey makes the area of dry land in original Boston 1,829 acres.

Boston has grown in area not only by reclaiming land from the sea, but by absorbing neighboring territory, - first, by the annexation of parts of the domain of adjoining municipalities; and latterly, by taking the whole, - extinguishing the separate municipal existence of the cities and towns absorbed. In this way South Boston (or Dorchester Neck as it was then called), Washington Village, Roxbury, Dorchester, Charlestown, Brighton,

1 [Compare the original peninsula, as indi- In 1789 the number of buildings in Boston is put cated on the map at the beginning of Vol. I., down at 2,639; and in 1791 the dwellings alone numbered 2,376, with 18,038 inhabitants. Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 249; and second series, ix. 204. with Page's map of 1775, as given in Vol. III., and Carleton's map of 1797, given herewith. See accounts of these in the Introduction to Vol. III. - ED.]

VOL. IV. - 4.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

and West Roxbury have united their fortunes with their metropolitan neigh- bor; so that at present the area over which the city government has juris- diction is nearly 23,700 acres, or thirty-seven square miles.

The first extensive improvement undertaken during the period now under consideration was the building of a bridge to Charlestown. Boston could be reached by the inhabitants of towns lying to the north and west only by circuitous land routes. As early as 1720 there was some discussion of the subject of connecting Boston and Charlestown by a bridge, but more than sixty years elapsed before the idea of this enterprise was revived. In March, 1785, a company was chartered to build the Charles River Bridge, John Hancock heading the list of incorporators. The company was em- powered to collect tolls (which were to be doubled on the Lord's Day) for a term of forty years, on condition of paying two hundred pounds annually to Harvard College, to compensate that institution for the loss of the ferri- age between Boston and Charlestown. Subsequently the right to take tolls was extended for thirty years, on account of the charter granted for the building of the West Boston Bridge; but the double Sunday toll was abolished. The capital of the company was fifteen thousand pounds, in shares of one hundred pounds each. The work was begun and prosecuted with great energy, and the bridge1 was opened to public travel on June 17, 1786, with as imposing a parade and ceremony as were possible in those days. A national salute of thirteen guns was fired at dawn from Breed's Hill, and answered from Copp's Hill, while the bells of both towns rang merry chimes. A procession, consisting of the corporation-officers of the town of Boston and most of the State officials and members of the Leg- islature, escorted by military, was formed at the Old State House, and marched to and upon the bridge amid the firing of cannon. The draw had been raised; but at a signal given by the president of the company it was lowered, and the procession passed over, to the music of the shouts and applause of twenty thousand spectators. The line of march was through the Square to Breed's (popularly Bunker) Hill, where a dinner " fit for the gods," as one chronicler declares, was served to about eight hundred people ; and the occasion of " festivity and sobriety " was protracted until six o'clock in the evening. The enterprise was financially successful, and con- tinued to be so until the Warren free bridge was built in 1828. Soon after that time the draw of Charles River Bridge was permanently raised, and the use of the highway was discontinued. In 1840 the State bought the franchise and property for $30,000, and re-established tolls for the purpose of keep- ing the two Charlestown bridges in repair. They both afterward passed into the hands of the municipalities of Boston and Charlestown jointly, and are now free highways maintained by Boston alone.

The West Boston, or Cambridge, Bridge 2 was next built, by a company chartered in 1792, and was opened to travel Nov. 23, 1793. It cost £23,000,

1 [ A contemporary view of the bridge is

given in Mr. Edes's chapter in Vol. III. - ED.]

2 [A view of this bridge, taken not long after its completion, is in a manuscript note-book by

TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.

and was an unfortunate speculation for its projectors. The Canal Bridge, now known as Craigie's, was built by a company incorporated in 1807, and opened to travel on Commencement Day, Aug. 30, 1809. Both of these bridges were sold in 1846 to the Hancock Free Bridge Corporation. At the end of January, 1858, tolls were abolished on both, and the occasion was duly celebrated by the city authorities and people of Cambridge.

Beacon Hill is still the most conspicuous landmark of Boston, although the last hundred years have witnessed a complete change in its form and aspect. What Beacon (or Sentry) Hill was originally, the readers of the first volume of this work already know, - a steep, rugged eminence, having threc summits, the highest of which was surmounted by a beacon, which gave its name to the hill. It is to-day, although still the highest ground in old Boston, merely a gentle elevation, crowned upon its single summit by the State House, and thickly covered with private dwellings and boarding- houses. In the interval it has been shorn of nearly half its height and all its picturesqueness; but no district of Boston has a more interesting his- tory, and by no means the least attractive part of this history is that of the period since the Revolution.

A century ago the beacon still stood upon the top of the hill. A part of the land forming its sides was owned by private citizens, and the rest was, or was supposed to be, the property of the town. At all events it was used as common pasture-ground. The beacon was blown down by a gale in November, 1789.1 The idea had already occurred to Mr. Charles Bulfinch, then but lately returned from Europe, where he had been prosecuting his studies in architecture, to remove the unsightly beacon, and to erect a handsome monument in its place. Accordingly, by means of subscrip- tions procured by himself it is supposed, he caused to be erected a pre- tentious structure, which was completed in 1790. It was a Doric column, resting on an appropriate pedestal, and surmounted by an eagle, the emblem of the new nation. It was built of brick and stone, encrusted with cement. The eagle was of wood, gilt. The entire height of the structure, from base to summit, was fifty-seven feet. On each side of the pedestal was a tablet, bearing an inscription.2

Robert Gilmor of Baltimore, preserved in the Public Library. It is taken from the Cambridge end, and shows the newly erected State House on Beacon Hill. See Isaac Livermore's Account of some of the Bridges over Charles River, 1858. This Gilmor note-book contains other views of interest, namely, - of Boston, from Dorchester Heights; Beacon Hill Monument; the State House ; the Mall, from the State House; Rox- bury, from the Mall ; Charlestown, from the west end of Cambridge Bridge. - ED.]

1 [It would appear that from about 1760 to 1768, views of the town lacked the accustomed beacon on its highest eminence. In the latter year it was re-erected, and remained till 1775,

when Gage removed it in making a fort. After repossessing the town, the authorities replaced the beacon on the hill, fixing it in the centre of the British fort. Here it remained till blown down. - ED.]

2 Those upon the north and west sides con- sisted of a catalogue of the events which led to the Revolution and of the war, while upon the south and east sides were carved the following felicitous sentences, the authorship of which has been attributed to Mr. Bulfinch himself. There is reason to believe, however, that Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap had a hand in fashioning them. He says he was consulted on the sub- ject. See Belknap Papers, ii. 233. The honor

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

This monument, upon the completion of which no public celebration took place, although the event was briefly referred to in the newspapers, was not destined to stand long. The hill was already doomed. Excava- tions had been made some years before at the northern base of the hill by an avaricious proprietor.1 In 1795 the work of building the State House was begun, and the preparation of the foundation rendered it necessary to make another unsightly 2 excavation in the hill-side. From that time on, events tended to the destruction of the hill. In 1804 the Mill-pond Cor- poration obtained from the town the right to remove gravel from it to be used in filling the pond. A few years later the protracted litigation between the town and the Hancock estate terminated in favor of the latter; and about the same time it was decided by the Supreme Court that an owner of land upon a hill-side had a right to excavate upon his own property without being liable for damages in the consequent destruction of any building erected by the owner of adjoining land. In 1811 the town, being in debt, voted to sell the land it owned at the top of the hill, which was fast becom- ing inaccessible by the removal of gravel from the sides. The sale was accordingly made for $9,300 to Samuel Spear and John Hancock,3 and the

is also claimed both for Judge Dawes and Gov- west, and north. On the east it had been en- ernor Bowdoin : - croached upon, and the contour was broken. (South side. ) Just opposite the end of Coolidge Avenue, on TO · COMMEMORATE THAT . TRAIN . OF . EVENTS WHICH . LED TO . THE . AMERICAN . REVOLUTION AND . FINALLY . SECURED Derne Street, there was a flight of wooden steps, ten or fifteen in number, leading part way up the hill. After that, one had to climb the rest of the way by aid of the footholds that had been worn in the surface, along a wide path worn bare by, LIBERTY . AND . INDEPENDENCE TO . THE . UNITED . STATES THIS . COLUMN . IS . ERECTED the feet to the top, where there was also a space of some fifty fect square, worn bare of sod. In the midst of this space stood the monument. Dc- BY . THE . VOLUNTARY . CONTRIBUTIONS scending by the south side, one followed a simi- OF . THE . CITIZENS OF . BOSTON MDCCXC. lar rough gravcl path to another flight of plank steps, leading down to the level of Mount Vcr- non Street, and terminating at about the po- sition of No. 13 Mount Vernon Street, the (East side.) · AMERICANS · first house of those facing south. The sport of batting the ball up the hill, and mceting it again WHEN . FROM . THIS . EMINENCE SCENES . OF . LUXURIANT . FERTILITY OF . FLOURISIIING . COMMERCE on its descent, was played by some ; but it was not so easy a game as one would at first sup- pose, on account of the difficulty of maintaining & . THE . ABODES . OF . SOCIAL . HAPPINESS MEET . YOUR . VIEW FORGET . NOT . THOSE one's footing on the hill-side, which was so steep as to require some skill even to stand ercct on it."

WIIO . BY . THEIR . EXERTIONS HAVE . SECURED . TO . YOU THESE . BLESSINGS.

1 [See Vol. II. p. 520 .- ED.]

2 The appearance of the hill at about this time is described by " T. B." in a letter to the Transcript, Sept. 24, 1855, drawn out by one of the " Gleaner " papers : " At my earliest recol- lection the appearance of the hill was this, - a grassy hemisphere, so steep that one could with difficulty mount its sides, descending with a per- fectly regular curve to the streets on the south,

8 The divisions subsequently made of the Spear and Hancock estates are among the most remarkable real estate transactions on record. Mr. Bowditch narrates in one of his " Gleaner " papers that a brother conveyancer made it a rulc, from which he would depart on no consider- ation, never to examinc a title that came through anybody named Spear. In fact, all the Hancock titles were more or less cloudy ; but the heirs were willing to take what they could get. In 1819 a partition of Beacon Street lands was made between the seven children of Mr. Spear

TOPOGRAPHY, ETC,, OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.

monument was taken down. The eagle was placed over the Speaker's chair in the Representatives' Hall, and the tablets were inserted in the easterly wall of Doric Hall, where they still remain. The excavation then pro- ceeded with fresh vigor, but progress was slow as compared with that of similar enterprises at the present day; and it was only in 1824 that the hill was levelled to about its present height, and the streets laid out substan- tially as they now are.

Each of the other hills, or summits, was afterward the basis of a large and successful speculation in real estate. Pemberton (or, as it was formerly known, Cotton) Hill became, by purchases from three owners between 1801 and 1824, the property of Mr. Gardiner Greene, the wealthiest citizen of his time, whose estate was one of the glories of Boston in the early years of the present century. Mr. Greene having died in 1832, his estate was sold a year or two later to Mr. Patrick T. Jackson, who purchased also several other es- tates lying on Beacon Street and Tremont Street (then known as Tremont Row from Howard to Beacon streets), and caused the whole to be graded and laid out. The material removed followed that from Beacon Hill proper, into the mill-pond.

The owner of the estate which included the western of the three summits - during the Revolutionary period was John Singleton Copley, the distin- guished artist. His land was little if any short of eighteen acres in extent. It was bounded by Beacon Street on the south, and by the water, which then came up to Charles Street, on the west. In 1795 it was sold to Jonathan Mason and H. G. Otis by Copley's son, afterward Lord Lyndhurst, who came over from England with a power-of-attorney from his father for the purpose. Subsequent purchases by Messrs. Mason, Otis, and their associates in the speculation, made the " Mount Vernon Proprietors " the owners of all the land inclosed within a line starting near the corner of Beacon and Charles streets, and following the line of Beacon, Walnut, Mount Vernon, Joy (at first called Belknap), and Pinckney streets, as now laid out, to the water, including the flats west of the estate. Extensive improvements were under- taken. The hill was cut down, and the material used in converting the flats into upland. Charles Street was laid out, on made land, in 1803. The speculation was a highly profitable one to those who were engaged in it.

The first acquisition of territory beyond the original limits of the town was South Boston, known at the beginning of the present century as Dor- chester Neck. Although separated from Boston by a channel only a few hundred yards wide, there was no communication between the two penin- sulas except by means of occasional row-boats, which could ply only at high tide; but as there were only ten families then residing on the Neck,1

by one of his wives, and the share of each was one-two hundred and fifty-second part of the estate, and to each was conveyed a strip front-

ing eighteen inches on Beacon Street, and eighty feet deep.

1 Simonds's History of South Boston, p. 80. ..

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

these were all-sufficient for the purpose. The total valuation of estates was but $139,200, all real. The town of Dorchester was extremely reluctant to give up this part of its territory, but it must be admitted that the value of it was not suspected until the proposition to take it away was made.

The annexation had its origin in a real estate speculation. Mr. Joseph Woodward had removed from Tewksbury, bought a large tract of land on Dorchester Neck and settled there, believing that Boston was destined to become a great commercial city, that it had not room for growth, and that this was the easiest and most natural acquisition. He persuaded some of the leading citizens of Boston - William Tudor, Gardiner Greene, Jona- than Mason, Harrison Gray Otis, and others -to adopt his views, and to imitate his example so far as to purchase lands upon the Neck. When once the scheme had been originated, it was carried through to execution with great promptness and energy. The transfer to Mr. Tudor was made toward the end of the year 1803, and the act of annexation was signed on March 6, 1804. The legislation was, however, not procured without de- termined resistance from the despoiled town of Dorchester. Numerous meetings were held, and the selectmen were instructed to use all their efforts to prevent the annexation. At one stage of the proceedings the town was offered the vast sum of $6,000 on condition that it would not further oppose the bill, and but for the opposition of an influential citi- zen the proposition would probably have been accepted. Subsequently the offer was increased to $20,000, but this too was rejected; and finally the bill was passed by the General Court, -the town losing its land with- out receiving any compensation whatever.1

Immediately upon the passage of the act land rose enormously in value. On the same day that the annexation was decreed by the General Court an act was signed authorizing the construction of a bridge to South Boston, as it at once began to be called. The corporators of the bridge company were William Tudor, Gardiner Greene, Jonathan Mason, and Harrison Gray Otis ; of whom the two latter were the leading members of the association just mentioned under the name of the Mount Vernon Proprietors. The bridge was completed in the summer of 1805, and opened with a grand military display on October I of that year. Although it was located at the point where the distance between the two peninsulas was least, it was one thousand five hundred and fifty-one feet in length,2 and cost $56,000. There had been a contention as to the location of the bridge from the first, and the line was unfortunately chosen. Population was not attracted to the newly annexed territory, which could be reached only by a bridge connecting with Boston at the Neck. An agitation was begun at once in favor of a second bridge. This was resisted, of course, by the proprietors of the first bridge, and a wrangle ensued that only came to an end twenty years later. A charter for a free bridge was granted in 1826; the new (Federal Street) bridge was

1 [See Mr. Barrows's chapter in Vol. III. -ED.]

2 Shaw says one thousand six hundred and twenty-eight feet.

TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.

built and opened in 1828, and in the same year it was conveyed to the city. Its construction rendered entirely unproductive the property of the South Boston Bridge Corporation, which had never paid a return to its stockholders, and in 1832 the old bridge was sold to the city for $3,500, and opened free to travel.

The early growth of South Boston did not by any means meet the ex- pectations of the projectors of the annexation. In 1810 the census showed but three hundred and fifty-four inhabitants on Dorchester Neck. In 1825 they only numbered one thousand nine hundred and eighty-six. At this time, however, the city began locating reformatory institutions upon it, and this, with the construction of the second bridge, gave South Boston a new impulse. In 1830 the population had increased to two thousand eight hun- dred and sixty-five, and since then its growth has been rapid and steady.1

The first systematic and co-operative enterprise having in view the en- largement of the limits of Boston by making new land, was the Front Street 2 improvement. An act chartering the Front Street Corporation was passed in 1804, as one of two companion acts to that annexing Dorchester Neck (South Boston) to Boston. The corporation was mainly or wholly composed of persons owning estates bordering on the water east of Wash- ington Street and south of Beach Street. The improvement consisted of the construction of a street generally parallel with Washington Street; and the owners of the flats enclosed thereby were left to fill in the intervening space, each on his own land. The street was begun in May, 1804, and com- pleted in October, 1805. It was accepted in March, 1809. The cost of the improvement was about $65,000, which was paid by the persons whose estates were enclosed. About nine acres of land available for building purposes were thus added to the area of the town.3

1 South Boston has not always been con- tented under the municipal government of Bos- ton, and one manifestation of discontent deserves mention in this place as a part of the history of annexation, or as a sequel to it. In 1847 a me- morial (signed by Cranston Howe, S. G. Howe, Larra Crane, D. Nickerson, H. Montgomery, Samuel S. Perkins, C. J. F. Allen, Isaac Adams, Seth Adams, and Joseph Smith) was presented to the mayor and city council, demanding that " there should be a change either in its municipal relation with the city of Boston proper, or in the policy which has hitherto characterized that relation." The memorial was couched in very vigorous language. It set forth the area, popu- lation, valuation, the number of public and pri- vate buildings and their importance, and the fact that South Boston had "not only the capacity, but the actual material necessary for a separate and independent municipal existence." It as- serted that the union with Boston was purely artificial, and that there could be no good reason for its continuance except reciprocity of advan-

tages. South Boston, they complained, derived no advantage from the union, but had been treated merely as an appendage from which profit might be derived by the central government, - " a Bot- any Bay," for the location of almshouses, prisons, and small-pox hospitals. The memorialists pro- ceeded to recite their grievances at length, and to urge that a larger sum than had been appro- priated by the city should be devoted to improv- ing and lighting the streets, and to other objects for which no doubt expenditures were urgently needed. Whether this memorial, or the growing political power of South Boston itself, effected a change need not here be investigated; but cer- tainly in recent years that division of the city has had no just reason to complain that its interests were neglected.

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The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV, Part 4

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Boston : Osgood Number of Pages: 760

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Boston : Osgood
Number of Pages: 760