New England – Fall 2010 – Day 18: Boston (Freedom Trail).

In my innocence I did not realise that Omni was a trade name of a set of hotels so I wondered at first what that part of our most expensive hotel’s name meant. Having worked that out by reading in our room I turned my attention to the Parker House Hotel. We had picked it to be one of the most central and historic hotels in Boston – it easily lived up to both. The lobby is immense and furnished to a high standard but giving the impression that nothing has changed in recent times. Research reveals that the PHH has a rich history for which I will quote Wikipedia:
Opened in 1855 by Harvey D. Parker and located on School Street near the corner of Tremont, not far from the seat of the Massachusetts state government, it has long been a rendezvous for politicians. The hotel was home to the Saturday Club, also referred to as the Saturday Night Club, which consisted of literary dignitaries such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. John Wilkes Booth was also once a guest at the hotel.
The Parker House invented American foods such as Boston cream pie and the Parker House roll, and coined the term "scrod".
The original Parker House and later additions were demolished in the 1920s and replaced with an entirely new building. One wing of the original hotel remained open until the new building was completed in 1927.
As the longest continuously operating hotel in the United States, many well-known people have worked at the Parker House, including Hô Chí Minh who was a baker in the bakeshop from 1911 to 1913, Malcolm X who was a busboy in the early 1940s, and Emeril Lagasse.
John F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for Congress in the hotel's Press Room, proposed to Jackie Kennedy, as well as held his bachelor party here.
We enjoyed the whole experience of the hotel and found the staff at every level most obliging and friendly. Julia bumped into a porter while she was wearing her Brazilian soccer shirt and he was fascinated to discover that although she was not Brazilian but she had been given the shirt by Brazilian friends. He seemed to make a point of looking out for her from then on.
We set off from the hotel to get breakfast, Dunkin Donut again, and then to walk the freedom trail. At the Boston Common we checked out the price of a guided tour with a costumed guide but they were very expensive and only covered the first two thirds of the trail. We felt that our tracking skills, honed by visiting Texas, would see us through as we were merely following a thick red line on the sidewalk.
As our first point of interest we visited the Massachusetts State House, which is the state capitol and seat of government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The building houses the Massachusetts General Court and the offices of the Governor of Massachusetts. The most notable feature of the building is the large dome. The original wood dome, which leaked, was covered with copper in 1802 by Paul Revere's company. (Paul Revere, who stars later in this account, was the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets in a commercially viable manner.)
The dome was first painted gray and then light yellow before being gilded with gold leaf in 1874. During WWII, the dome was once again painted, this time black, to prevent reflections during blackouts and to protect the city and building from bombing attacks. In 1997, at a cost of more than $300,000, the dome was re-gilded, in 23k gold. The gold dome means that a president, JFK, came from the state.
The dome is topped with a pine cone, symbolizing the importance of Boston's lumber industry in the early colonial days not, as we thought, a pineapple which could only symbolize our stupidity.
From here we walked towards our hotel to visit Park Street Church, a historic stop on the Freedom Trail. It was founded on February 27, 1809. The church became known as "Brimstone Corner", in part because of the missionary character of its preaching, and in part because of the storage of gunpowder during the War of 1812. Next to the church is the Granary Burying Ground which is the city of Boston's third-oldest cemetery. Located on Tremont Street, it is the final resting place for many notable Revolutionary War-era patriots, including three signers of the Declaration of Independence, Paul Revere and the five victims of the Boston Massacre.
We were of course dealing with some mixed feelings about all the glorification of this rebellion against our lawful control of the colonies but we tried to go with the flow.
Next we reached the Benjamin Franklin statue and former site of the first public school, Boston Latin School which was opposite the side door of our hotel. Several times in the hotel we noticed people breaking their walk on the freedom trail for a drink in the hotel bar, it was either late on the walk and they only had a couple of stops left but if they were travelling in our direction we could see little prospect of them finishing the walk.
On a corner near to the hotel we arrived at The Old South Meeting House (built 1729), in the Downtown Crossing area of Boston, Massachusetts, which gained fame as the organizing point for the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. 5,000 colonists gathered at the Meeting House, the largest building in Boston at the time. Around here we were supposed to observe the old bookshop but it escaped us, there was a huge modern bookshop at this crossroads and we also noted the sculptures there as a monument to the suffering of the Irish in the Potato famine.
The Freedom trail next took us to The Old State House, a historic government building located at the intersection of Washington and State Streets in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Built in 1713, it is the oldest surviving public building in Boston, and the seat of the first elected legislature in the New World. It is now a history museum operated by the Bostonian Society, a nonprofit whose primary focus is the museum. We moved past but later it was a great evening photograph as it was brilliantly lit against a strong night sky.
Next we came upon the site of the Boston Massacre, also known as the Boston riot, an incident that led to the deaths of five civilians at the hands of British redcoats on March 5, 1770, the legal aftermath of which helped spark the rebellion in some of the British American colonies, which culminated in the American Revolutionary War. A heavy British military presence in Boston led to a tense situation that boiled over into incitement of brawls between soldiers and civilians and eventually led to troops discharging their muskets after being threatened by a rioting crowd. Three civilians were killed at the scene of the shooting, eleven were injured, and two died after the incident. They say history is written by the victors but surely five deaths struggles to be described as a massacre? It hardly ranks with Wounded Knee. The site itself is marked by a metal plaque inset into the middle of a busy road junction.
We then reached Faneuil Hall, located near the waterfront and today's Government Center, in Boston, Massachusetts, has been a marketplace and a meeting hall since 1742. It was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others encouraging independence from Great Britain, and is now part of Boston National Historical Park and a well known stop on the Freedom Trail. It is sometimes referred to as "the Cradle of Liberty". It is an impressive building and we ventured off the Freedom Trail here to seek out one of the Cheers bars, this one had nothing to do with the TV series in terms of production but was a reasonable facsimile of the bar although it is in what amounts to a conservatory. We pressed on without stopping for a drink but we penciled it in for later.
We were now in Boston’s North End district at The Paul Revere House which was the colonial home of American patriot Paul Revere during the time of the American Revolution. Paul Revere was the man selected to ride through the night to raise the colonists in defense of their new just before the battles of Lexington and Concord. His famous "Midnight Ride" occurred on the night of April 18/April 19, 1775, when he and William Dawes were instructed by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride from Boston to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the movements of the British Army, which was beginning a march from Boston to Lexington, ostensibly to arrest Hancock and Adams and seize the weapons stores in Concord. Incidentally the idea that he cried “The British are coming!” cannot be correct as the colonists thought of themselves as the British. My recent reading tells me Revere was a silver smith and he is credited with having made a carving knife passed down through Bartlett family in the “West Wing” TV series but perhaps as fictional as that is my belief that he was a dentist who made George Washington’s wooden false teeth?
Close to Revere’s house we came to Old North Church which is the location from which the famous lantern "One if by land, and two if by sea" signal is said to have been sent, again this is incorrect as the British soldiers were coming from the river not the sea. From here we quickly reached the Copp's Hill Burying Ground. It is the second oldest cemetery in Boston It contains the remains of various notable Bostonians from the colonial era.
On the Snow Hill Street side are the many unmarked graves of the African Americans who lived in the "New Guinea" community at the foot of the hill. In addition to the graves there are 272 tombs, most of which bear inscriptions that are still legible. Amongst these well marked headstones there is one of an activist who died before the War of Independence and this is chipped and pitted by musket balls from the Red Coats practising their aim on him.
We now crossed the river over a bridge next to the new home of the Boston Celtics, Julia did not enjoy the crossing as the path was metal mesh and the river moved clearly below it, I was struggling to walk upright due to my back but we were determined to finish the trail. Many times since my nephews did their 65 miles in a day charity walk we have drawn inspiration from their effort and we refused to give in.
Over the river are two final stages of the trail. First we followed the line to the naval dockyards housing USS Constitution. She is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. Named by President George Washington after the Constitution of the United States of America, she is the world's oldest floating commissioned naval vessel. Launched in 1797, Constitution was one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794. Constitution is most famous for her actions during the War of 1812 against Great Britain, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane and Levant. The battle with Guerriere earned her the nickname of "Old Ironsides" and public adoration that has repeatedly saved her from scrapping. As a fully commissioned US Navy ship, her crew of 60 officers and sailors participate in ceremonies, and we were given a free guided tour by a Naval Aviator. He was at pains to point out that her unique claim to fame lay in her being both commissioned and afloat as there are older vessels but none that fulfill both these conditions. He also pointed out that with a something and zero record the Constitution had easily the best record in Boston versus any of the sporting franchises. We were shown below decks and it was pointed out to us that the entire gun-deck was cleared for action including dismantling the captain’s cabin to allow the ship to fight effectively. Although much bigger than the Mayflower it still seemed small to cope with oceans and the thought of fighting other ships of similar sizes using gunpowder and steel make anyone think it must have been hellish. Incidentally I remember strange snippets of information at times and the one I recall is that the ships youngest crew members were between 12 and 15 but they had two of the most dangerous jobs in battle. The powder magazines had small hatches to minimize the fire risk so these boys carried gunpowder to the gunners and those who were not doing that carried messages between the ship’s officers and were therefore preferred targets for the enemy snipers. We also enjoyed the “Old Ironsides” museum on the base but then we set off for our final landmark.
We found our way to the Bunker Hill Monument was built to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill. The 221 foot granite obelisk was erected between 1827 and 1843 in Charlestown, Massachusetts with granite from Quincy, Massachusetts, conveyed to the site via the Granite Railway, built specially for that purpose, followed by a trip by barge. There are 294 steps to the top. The Bunker Hill Monument is not on Bunker Hill but instead on Breed's Hill, where most of the fighting in the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill actually took place. The Monument Association, which had purchased the battlefield site, was forced to sell off all but the hill's summit in order to complete the monument. Like many notable battles the winning side didn’t get the glory, although the British troops drove the colonists under William Prescott, who is credited with the “Don’t fire until you can see the whites of their eyes” line, from their positions on Breeds Hill they suffered such casualties that it was remarked by the colonists that they were happy to sell hills at that price to the enemy.
We found our way back to the hotel by underground and later after icing my back we walked round the block to another pub and had another excellent bar meal. There was American football on the TV and I fear I made a fool of myself trying to explain the game to Julia when I have only the most rudimentary grasp of its rules but we enjoyed the spectacle.