USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 60
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1 [Views of the houses referred to are given in Vol. II. pp. 89, 527, Vol. III. p. 202, and frontispiece to Vol. II., respectively ; and other examples may be found in Vol II., the Faneuil house, p. 523, the Bromfield house, p. 521 ; and in Vol. III., the Wadsworth house, p. 107, Craigie house, p. 112, Elmwood, p. 114. - ED.]
2 [There is a view of the Hutchinson house in the American Magazine, ii. 237 (1834). See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Oct. 1881 .- ED.]
8 [The oldest meeting-house in this part of the country is that still standing at Hingham, of which a view is given in Bryant and Gay's United States, ii. 58 .- ED.]
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ARCHITECTURE IN BOSTON.
in King Street, the other hard by in Marlboro' Street; and the latter of which, burned in 1711, was replaced by a brick building on the same site, of which a view is given in Vol. II. p. 219 of this work. The new structure expressed the growing resources of the community, but did not give evi- dence of an increase of architectural enlightenment. It was not until a more genial spirit began to pervade the life of the colony, exhibited in the in- creased elegance of the dwelling-houses, that the desire was felt for some amelioration in the aspect of the house of worship. The first evidences of this feeling are to be seen in Christ Church in Salem Street, built in 1723, and the Old South, which followed seven years later.1 In the former of these a visible attempt was for the first time made to give to the small interior something of the ecclesiastical aspect which belonged to an English church. The pilasters which supported the side galleries were carried up to the roof, making a division into nave and side aisles, of which the former was ceiled in the form of a segmental vault, while the latter were covered with trans- verse vaults of similar form between the pilasters. A modest chancel brought the church into essential conformity with the ancient models. In the Old South Meeting-house, on the other hand, the Puritan form was rigidly maintained. The pulpit, with its ponderous sounding-board, was raised high on the side wall to command the two galleries; the interior was undivided, the flat ceiling unbroken. Within the walls of the two houses the distinction between the Episcopal and the Congregational wor- ship was thus plainly marked. On the exterior, however, the distinction disappeared. The Puritan contempt for architectural splendor had, in a hundred years of prosperity, at length given way. Christ Church had adorned its simple front with a lofty wooden steeple of the style invented by Wren after the great fire of London. The Old South followed the example and reared a more imposing steeple in the same style, which re- mains to this day substantially unchanged. The steeple of Christ Church was blown down in a gale in 1805, and replaced by another of somewhat lesser height. In both these instances, as in all the churches for a hundred years later, the architectural ambition of the builders was satisfied by the steeple. The body of the church remained as plain and clumsy as the Old Brick itself. No attempt was made, beyond the occasional elaboration of the eaves into a classic cornice, to soften the square and barren outline or to adorn the parts.
In 1749 the King's Chapel was built from the designs of Peter Harrison, an English architect, pupil of Sir John Vanbrugh, and in his youth em- ployed with that master on the works at Blenheim. Harrison after coming to America had found some opportunity at Newport to exercise his talents, and had built there, among other buildings, the Redwood Library. His design for the King's Chapel included a lofty steeple, which had to be omitted for lack of funds. The peristyle which surrounds the base of the tower was also omitted for the same reason, but was added in 1790. The
1 See illustrations of these in Vol. II. pp. 509-515.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
interior was the first in the colony to exhibit real architectural merit. Its only conspicuous defect is lack of height, compelling an awkward treatment of the ceiling, which, however, is not enough to destroy the general im- pression of dignity and repose.1
Brattle Square was the last of the colonial churches.2 It was built in 1772, with a squat and ugly exterior, unredeemed by any steeple, but with an interior not very unlike that of King's Chapel. The London churches of Wren, Gibbs, and Hawksmoor were the models from which these interiors were studied, and they were by no means unworthy examples of the style of those masters.
Of the early public buildings, properly so called, the list is limited to two, - the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall. Of both these edifices suf- ficient accounts are given in a previous chapter of this work.3 Neither of them presents to our eyes the aspect it wore to those who saw it built; yet in both enough of the original character remains to entitle them to a careful and scrupulous protection from further change. The first town- house dates from about 1657. It occupied the same site still covered by its successor. It was of wood, " built upon pillars in the middle of the town," says Dunton, "where their merchants meet and confer every day." This building, of which no representation exists so far as is known, was burned in 1711. A new one of brick was at once erected, and was in its turn partially destroyed by fire in 1747. The walls, however, did not fall, and the house was rebuilt without delay, in the form with which every one who knows Boston is familiar; changed, indeed, radically as to the interior, and outwardly in many important respects, but still retaining the most picturesque and characteristic features of its early days, - its broken gables at either end, its tower rising in three diminishing stages from the middle of the long roof, -features of which its admirable position greatly enhances the effect. A sundial formerly occupied the place of the clock in the east gable, the lion and the unicorn ramped in place of the unmeaning scrolls on either side. The simple pitched roof, rising to a ridge, has given way to a clumsy mansard, in obedience to the sordid demand for rentable offices, in · addition to those which had before been carved out of the historic cham- bers below. Worse than all, an intermittent pressure has been now for some years maintained for the removal of the building, which stands in the way of the impatient traffic of State Street. More than once it has seemed clear that this vulgar clamor, which discredits the commercial intelligence not less than the patriotic sentiment of the city, would prevail, and that the venerable monument was doomed; but a truer feeling has of late been growing strong in the community, and it now seems probable that the Old State House will be carefully preserved for many generations to come.
1 [A view is given in Vol. II. p. 498. Har- rison had come over with Smibert, and after re- turning to England, he came back to Boston, and married and died here. - ED.]
2 A model of this house is in the gallery of the Mass. Hist. Soc.
8 See Vol. II. p. 507 ; also, Vol. IV. p. 12.
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ARCHITECTURE IN BOSTON.
The small building, measuring forty feet in width and a hundred in length, which Peter Faneuil gave to the town of Boston in 1742, and of which John Smibert, the painter of portraits, was the architect, has grown in breadth and height into a much more imposing edifice, though its charac- ter has not been otherwise materially changed. This was, perhaps, the first building in the town in which the architecture was, so to speak, spread over the whole surface instead of being confined to one or two prominent parts.1 In the dwelling-houses a little decoration of the front door-way, a main cor- nice, and in exceptional cases pilasters at the corners satisfied the archi- tectural requirements. In the churches the external treatment was always confined to the steeple. Even in the Old State House, the end-walls and the central tower were the only portions of the exterior which received much attention, the architecture of the long sides being limited to the dressings of the central door-ways; but in Faneuil Hall, all portions of the exterior received substantially the same treatment, -round arched windows and door-ways, with engaged pilasters between, carrying entablatures at the height of the various stories. As originally built, the ground story was a market, with open arches, and the hall in the second story was somewhat low. The alterations of 1806 doubled the width of the building and the height of the hall, the present galleries being then added at the height of the old ceiling. On the exterior a third order of pilasters and arches was thus added to the two of the original edifice; and the increase of size being un- accompanied by any variation either in outline or in detail, and the arches of the ground-floor being closed by doors and windows, a certain blank- ness and monotony of effect was the result, which did not belong to the old hall, and which has not been ameliorated by painting the walls of a dusty brown color.
·
The troubled times which preceded the Revolution put a stop to build- ing, and checked the steady growth of taste and luxury. For a full genera- tion scarcely any addition of importance or interest was made to the architectural worthies of the town or its suburbs. The return of peace found a people impoverished and fatigued, and with quite other things to do than to indulge a pleasant taste in building. It was near the end of the century before the burden of poverty and depression was measurably light- ened. With the gradual increase of the population of the town and the return of prosperity, building was resumed with vigor. Architecturally speaking, this was a critical period in the town's history. A difference is to be observed in the tone and manners of the community; the repose and naïveté of the provincial times has given place to a more or less conscious ambition as of metropolitan style. It was then by a singular good fortune that the unrecognized profession of architecture should have been at pre- cisely this moment seriously adopted for the first time in New England by a young man of education and taste, whose love for his calling was genuine
1 [See Vol. II. p. 267 .- ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and steadfast enough to maintain him for forty years in a career which was more fruitful in honor to himself and to the town in which he lived than in pecuniary profit.
- from your affectionate fathery Charles Bulfund, +020
Charles Bulfinch, born in Boston in 1763, was graduated at Cambridge in 1781, and entered a counting-room; where, the business of the town being paralyzed by the war, then but just beginning to promise a successful issue, he employed his abundant leisure in reading such works on archi-
1 [This cut follows a likeness drawn in ink, a portrait in oils painted in London in 1786, taken late in life, and owned by Mrs. Stephen and a miniature by Malbone, made about 1788. -ED.] G. Bulfinch of Cambridge, who also possesses
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ARCHITECTURE IN BOSTON.
tecture as were then accessible. From time to time he found modest opportunity for exercising his taste for building, in repairing his father's and his neighbors' houses, which during the dark days had been suffered to fall out of condition. At the age of twenty-one he went abroad and travelled for a year or two in England and on the Continent, where, as was natural, his taste for architecture was greatly stimulated. The great monu- ments excited him; it is even related that in St. Peter's he was moved to tears. He bought himself many architectural books, and in due time came home with, as may be supposed, his career quite clearly determined in his own mind. His first work was the monumental column on the summit of Beacon Hill, which owed its existence to his patriotic enthusiasm and en- ergy, and of which the tablets with their inscriptions, preserved in the State House, are all which now remain. Its brief immortal- ity was not proof against the en- terprise which cut away the hill on which it stood.1 When in 1793 the first theatre in Boston was pro- jected, Mr. Bulfinch furnished the design, which appears from the ac- counts in the newspapers of the day to have been carried out with much completeness and even ele- This ME DA L entitles CHARLES BULFINCH, Efq. to a Seat in the BOSTON THEATRE Benefit Nights excep during Life; gance. Of the exterior we can form some judgment from the medal2 which was struck at the completion of the enterprise in THE BULFINCH MEDAL.3 recognition of the services ren- dered by the architect, and which bore on one face an elevation of the front on Federal Street, evidently reduced from the architect's drawing, and on the obverse the following inscription : -
" Presented by the Proprietors of the Boston Theatre to Charles Bulfinch, Esq., for his unremitted and liberal attention in the plan and execution of that building, the Elegance of which is the best evidence of his Taste and Talents."
Nearly at the same time with the building of the theatre, Mr. Bulfinch joined with several other gentlemen in a speculation which resulted in the creation of Franklin Place, one of the most interesting features of the city during the earlier half of the century. The original plan embraced two similar crescents, enclosing a small grass-plat with a classic vase in the cen- tre. Some difficulties in the way of obtaining the necessary land made it
1 [See Vol. IV. pp, 64, 65. - ED.]
8 [This cut follows the original, kindly lent 2 [Also from the cut in the present volume, by Mrs. Stephen G. Bulfinch, of Cambridge. P. 363. - ED.] - ED.] VOL. IV. - 60.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
necessary to substitute for the northerly crescent a straight line; but the plan was in other respects successfully carried out. This was the first at- tempt in Boston at building residences in blocks. Until then the pleasant fashion of setting every house by itself, enclosed by its more or less ample grounds, had been consistently followed. The new buildings were, however, arranged with much skill and good taste, the long line of the crescent · 6 being broken in the centre by an archway thrown over 166 an entering street, and the sky-line being judiciously varied by the superior ele- vation of the centre and the end wings. The houses 200/ 08 were of ample size, with a generous and convenient disposition of rooms, and 16 61 'Graf flat so fucking furmindy Som were for half a century THE TONTINE BUILDINGS. 1 among the most desirable dwellings in the city. But the immediate result of the # enterprise was disastrous. The growth of the town, though marked and grati- 76 fying, was not yet sufficient to warrant the erection of so large a number of ex- pensive dwellings. Heavy mortgages were followed by forced sales at ruinous prices, and Mr. Bulfinch saw himself reduced to bankruptcy. His professional standing was, however, not affected by this misfortune, and his practice rapidly increased. The Masaschusetts
1 [For some account of the Tontine Crescent, as Franklin Place was originally called, see Quincy's Municipal History of Boston, p. 26; and Boston Almanac, 1859. A view of the Tontine Buildings is given in the Massachusetts Magazine, February, 1794; and is reproduced in the Mass.
Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 66, as well as in the present cut. A perspective view is given on p. 363. It was the first brick block built in Boston. The first block of stone buildings was that in Brattle Street. The urn, erected to Franklin's memory in the little Green in the middle of the street,
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ARCHITECTURE IN BOSTON.
State House was his next work. The government of the State had out- grown the little building at the head of State Street, and on July 4, 1795, the corner-stone of the new edifice on Beacon Hill, drawn to the spot by fifteen white horses, was laid by the Governor and the Grand Master with great pomp and ceremony. The original design suffered in some degree from the shortening of the wings; but in spite of this injury, and of the too slight elevation of the dome above the roof, the building has a simplicity and dignity which disarm criticism, and which, combined with its admirable site, give it in a remarkable degree the character of a public monument.1
Mr. Bulfinch's practice now included public and private buildings of al- most every description. The Roman Catholic Cathedral2 in Franklin Street, the New North Church in Hanover Street, and the New South on Church Green at the intersection of Summer and Bedford Streets were built from his designs. The last named was a peculiarly attractive church, octagonal in plan, built of white granite, with a classic portico of four Doric columns, surmounted by a graceful steeple one hundred and ninety feet high. The last of his churches was that in Federal Street, in which for the first and only time he tried the experiment of a Gothic spire, with an unfortunate result. All these churches have long since disappeared. The new steeple of Christ Church in Salem Street was also by Mr. Bulfinch.3
The Massachusetts General Hospital ; the County Court House, afterward used as the City Hall, which occupied the site of the present City Hall in School Street; the Boylston Market; University Hall at Cambridge; most of the granite buildings on the north side of State Street; the long range of dwelling-houses which occupied that portion of Tremont Street from West Street to Mason Street, known as Colonnade Row, - these are some of his most important buildings. Before building the Massachusetts Hospi- tal, and the Insane Asylum at South Boston which was undertaken at about the same time, Mr. Bulfinch made a visit to several other cities to inspect similar institutions. At Washington he had some pleasant intercourse with President Monroe, then just elected to office. The next year the President on his Northern tour made some stay in Boston, where Mr. Bulfinch, chair- man of the selectmen of the town, received him officially and showed him his various works. Of all this reciprocal civility the result was, in no long time, the appointment of Mr. Bulfinch as architect of the Capitol at Wash- ington, which had been half burned by the British in the late war. In this honorable position he remained a resident of the capital for a dozen years, returning to Boston in 1830. He was now growing an old man. The only conspicuous building from his hand after his return from Washington was the State House at Augusta, Maine, which was similar in its general design
was, upon its removal, placed upon Bulfinch's grave at Mount Auburn. Shurtleff's Description of Boston, p. 383. - ED.]
1 [See representations of it, before it received the modern extensions, in a cut and heliotype
given in the supplementary notes to Mr. Stan- wood's chapters in the present volume. - ED.]
2 [See view of it in Vol. III. p. 516 .- ED.]
8 [It is shown in the view of the church in Vol. II. p. 509. - ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
to that of Boston, but smaller. Mr. Bulfinch died in 1844, at the age of eighty. The first professional architect of Boston, holding his modest way through a long life without the stimulus of competition or the encourage- ment of good-fellowship; without the resources of technical training or the equipment of illustrated examples of every style now ready to the hand of every beginner, - his name is in the highest degree worthy of remem- brance and honor by the profession which has followed him and by the community in which he lived so long.
During the first fifteen years of Mr. Bulfinch's practice in Boston he had the field to himself. But the growth of the town was steady and rapid, and the number of prominent buildings erected from year to year was soon too great to be embraced within the care of a single architect. Of some of the most important of these it is now impossible to discover the designer. This is the case with the Exchange Coffee House in Congress Street, near to State Street, built in 1808, and an object of great local pride as the finest hotel in the country. It was seven stories high, and covered an area of more than twelve thousand feet. Its front was one hundred and thirty- two feet long, and was adorned with six lank marble pilasters on a rustic basement, supporting an entablature with a central pediment. The plan showed a great central area, or court, forty by seventy feet, extending eighty-three feet high to the roof, lighted by a dome and surrounded by porticos of twenty columns on each floor, from which opened the rooms of the hotel, - evidently a very grand establishment. Its splendor was short-lived, the building being burned to the ground in 1818.1
The meeting-houses of Park Street and Hollis Street were built in 1810 and 1811. Like the others of their class their only pretension to be ranked as architectural works lies in their steeples, both of which are of unusual height and of remarkable grace of composition. Park Street was built from the designs of Peter Bonner, an English architect, of whom little .is remembered. He built the fine mansion of Eben Crafts, still standing on the northerly slope of Parker Hill in Roxbury. The architect of Hollis Street is, I believe, not known.
One of the earliest of the architects who came in time to share the field with Bulfinch was Solomon Willard, who-born in Petersham, Massachu- setts, in 1783, the son of Solomon Millard the village carpenter - learned in his father's shop the use of the tools, but showed a capacity for higher · things. Before he was of age, we are told he had "mastered Euclid, and shown considerable expertness in mechanical inventions." At the age of twenty-one he came to Boston, working first at his trade of carpenter, but obtaining gradually a reputation as a carver in wood and stone, in which art he had apparently been his
1 [See this volume, p. 55, and the view of the building, p. 58. - ED.]
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ARCHITECTURE IN BOSTON.
own instructor. He carved the Ionic capitals of St. Paul's, the wooden cap- itals of Park Street steeple, and the marble panels in the front of Mr. David Sears's house on Beacon Street (now occupied by the Somerset Club) ; he made a model in wood of the Capitol at Washing- ton for Mr. Bulfinch, and models in plaster of the Parthenon at Athens and the Pantheon at Rome; he gave lessons in archi- tecture and drawing ; finally he appeared as an architect. In conjunction with Alexander Parris he built St. Paul's Church on Tremont Street. Shortly after, in 1825, he was se- lected by the Bunker Hill Monument Association, after much vacillation, as the architect of the obe- lisk. The history of the - adoption of the design for this monument is curious. A portion of the com- mittee were in favor of a reduction of Trajan's col- umn, while the remainder were for an Egyptian obe- lisk. The latter carried the day, chiefly on the ground of its greater economy. Mr. Horatio Greenough presented a design and model for an obelisk a hundred feet high, raised on a plinth SPIRE OF HOLLIS STREET MEETING-HOUSE.1 · twenty feet high, ap- proached by four flights of steps. This was finally rejected by the commit- tee, and a design submitted by Willard for a shaft two hundred and twenty
1 [The previous building on this site was erected from a design by Bulfinch in 1787. It had two towers, and is shown in the Columbian
Magazine, April, 1788, and in the Massachusetts Magazine, December, 1783. It forms the most conspicuous object in the view given in the
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
feet high, without accessories, was adopted and carried out.1 Mr. Willard fixed upon a quarry in Quincy as likely to furnish stone of the desired quan- tity and quality, and purchased of Mr. Gridley Bryant for $325 the privilege of quarrying as much as might be required for the monument.2 The United States Bank in State Street, a small granite building with the front of a Grecian Doric temple in antis, of which the columns, much reduced in size, now form a part of the façade of the Merchants' Bank building on the same site; and the County Court House, still standing in Court Square, a dismal prison, built in 1832, with two severe Doric porticos at the extrem- ities, one of which has been removed,- these, with St. Paul's and the monu- ment, were the chief works of Willard.
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Alexander Parris was perhaps more engineer than architect; yet in Mr. Bonney's shop at Pembroke, where the boy was apprenticed to the carpen- ter's trade, the occupation of his leisure moments was the study of Nichol- son's Architecture. At the close of his apprenticeship he removed to Port- land, where he furnished designs for several important buildings. A little later we find him similarly engaged at Richmond. It was not until the close of the war with Great Britain in 1815 that he settled in Boston, where both as architect and engineer he occupied a prominent position for nearly thirty years. St. Paul's Church, referred to above as having been built by Parris in conjunction with Willard, was doubtless the best work of both. It presents to the street a simple Ionic hexastyle portico, with somewhat attenuated columns of freestone from Acquia Creek, and a pediment which it was intended to fill by a bas-relief representing Paul preaching at Athens. The requisite funds were, however, wanting for such a luxury as a sculp- tured pediment, and the rough blocks remain to this day to remind us of the loss. Had the design been carried out, another laurel might probably have been added to the brow of Willard. Parris built also the Quincy Market,3 the Marine Hospital at Chelsea, the Arsenal buildings at Water- town, and many private buildings of which no record is at hand. He held for fifteen years the office of constructing engineer at the Charlestown Navy Yard, and was charged with many occasional duties outside that position, - as the construction of sea-walls on the islands of Boston Harbor, and several light-houses, beacons, and breakwaters on the New England coast. Mr. Parris died in 1852.
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