Walking with History in a Walking City

Michael Kenney

When Boston calls itself a walking city, it means it—and even if the weather doesn’t seem perfect, it’s worth taking a break from the convention and heading out and about. To get you started, here are several paths, any one of which may be enjoyed during your stay in Boston.

The Revolutionary City

Not all that far afield, take the Green Line from the Copley Square “T” station four stops “inbound” and get off at Government Center. Just ahead of you as you exit the station is City Hall, a much-admired (by architects) but often-reviled building in the 1960s expressionist style. As you pass it on your left, look up the broad pedestrian mall to the right where you will see the Old State House, well worth a detour. The seat of the British colonial government, its second-floor Council Chamber overlooks the site of the 1770 Boston Massacre and from its balcony the Declaration of Independence was read out in July 1776.

Opposite the Old State House’s entrance is the Visitor’s Center for the National Park Service’s Boston National Historical Park, now celebrating its thirtieth anniversary. There you will find Boston’s Freedom Trail. And if you decide to trace it on your own, the NPS Visitor’s Center can supply you with maps and guide books.

Continuing into the old colonial city, retrace your steps back toward City Hall to the broad stairway leading toward Faneuil Hall, Boston’s “Cradle of Liberty,” where Samuel Adams advocated revolution.

Adams’s statue stands before the building, but step back from it a few paces and look at the granite paving underfoot. Etched into the stone is a delicate tracing of seaweed, clam shells, and gulls’ feathers that resembles a shoreline’s high-water mark—which is exactly what it records: the original shoreline when Boston’s first settlers arrived in 1630. All the land between you and the present harbor was filled over the centuries, first for docks and wharves, then for merchants’ warehouses and ship chandleries.

Just beyond Faneuil Hall is Quincy Market—restored and recycled in the 1970s as a food court—whose bustle recalls the original market stalls and has served as a model for similar reuse projects in other nineteenth-century urban marketplaces.

There’s another option for lunch nearby, the landmark Union Oyster House, another site of revolutionary ferment. The early eighteenth-century building forms one side of the Blackstone Block where the original seventeenth-century street patterns remain in Salt Lane, Marsh Lane, and Creek Square.

No visit to Boston would be complete without at least a peek at “The Big Dig,” the awesome $14.6 billion project to tear down the elevated Central Artery and rebuild it underground. It’s hard to tell in advance how much construction and deconstruction work you’ll encounter—but you can’t miss it, especially if you head on a bit farther into the North End, a labyrinth of twisting streets reflecting three hundred years of settlement, many of them lined with small, family-run Italian restaurants.

Once in the North End, you’ll find the Paul Revere House and the nearby Old North Church, where the lanterns hung that alerted the patriots in Charlestown that the British troops were about to march to Lexington and Concord.

From the North End or the Blackstone Block, head back to the OAH convention via the Green Line from its Haymarket station (five stops to Copley).

The Brahmin City

A ride inbound on the Green Line, three stops to the Park Street “T” station, gets you started on a rambling excursion through the byways of Beacon Hill and then down along Boston’s antiques row. As you exit the station, you’ll see the gold dome of the State House. Head for it up a gentle slope along one edge of Boston Common.

The Common is where early residents pastured their cattle and where British troops camped before heading for Lexington and Concord. It’s been a victory garden and a public art gallery. There’s a summer wading pool that becomes a winter skating rink. The corner nearest the “T” station was the stomping ground for soapbox orators well into the last century.

Before crossing Beacon Street to the State House, detour a few steps to the left where you will find the Shaw Memorial, the grandest of all Boston’s historic sculptures and second only to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington as America’s finest and most moving war memorial. The bronze bas-relief by Augustus Saint-Gaudens depicts Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, Boston Brahmin, leading members of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, an African American unit that led the assault on Confederate Fort Wagner, popularized in the movie, Glory.

The gold-domed State House, designed by Charles Bulfinch and built in 1797 to replace the colonial-era Old State House, is worth a visit, but we’ll continue past it, down Beacon Street and up Joy Street to Mount Vernon Street onto Boston’s classic red-brick, gas-lit and cobblestoned Beacon Hill.

The townhouses along Mount Vernon Street were built beginning in the early 1800s and over the years were the homes of Boston’s “Brahmins,” the social and mercantile aristocracy satirized in the gibe, “The Cabots speak only to the Lowells and the Lowells speak only to God.”

As an alternative, continue on Joy Street to pick up Boston’s Black Heritage Trail (see map on back page). Years of gentrification have blurred the distinctions, but for much of the past two centuries, Beacon Hill was home to members both of Boston’s black community and of its white establishment.

Whether from Mount Vernon or Pinckney, turn halfway down the hill into Louisburg Square, whose London-styled garden is edged on either side by stately Greek Revival townhouses. (Note that Bostonians give the square an English pronunciation, “lew-is,” rather then the French “lou-ie,” to commemorate the capture of the French Canadian fortress of Louisburg by Massachusetts colonial troops in 1745.)

Walk through the square, then continue downhill along Pinckney Street to Charles Street. Today, it is not only Boston’s Antiques Row—no less than fourteen stores, plus another dozen design studios and gift shops—but serves as the Beacon Hill neighborhood’s main street, with markets, a drug store, and a hardware store that have been on the street a half-century or more. You’ll be likely to find neighborhood residents having breakfast or coffee at The Paramount or lunch at Panificio—and check the restaurant guide for evening suggestions.

Follow Charles Street toward Beacon Street, then head back to the OAH convention hotel through the Public Garden, a formal greenspace laid out in the 1830s as the Back Bay flats were being filled. The charming Swan Boats are tucked away for the winter, but the delightful bronze sculptures of the “Make Way for Ducklings” figures head toward the central pond.

The Arlington Street “T” station at the far corner of the Public Garden will get you on the Green Line back to Copley and the OAH convention hotel—or you can walk back down the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, turning left at Dartmouth Street.

Michael Kenney writes frequently on local and regional history.