Boston History: You’d be forgiven if the headlines of the past year turned you away from the thought of traveling to the United States. But you too must be missing. Despite the news, in addition to controversial politics and civil unrest, the U.S. There is much more to do. Here, a better look at Boston.
As we continue our tour of bits of states that aren’t really American and are therefore possibly fun to visit these days, we come to a surprising halt. As you will recall from your TV- and film-aided lessons in American history, the Boston Tea Party took place in Boston, and the first shots of the American Revolution were fired in nearby Lexington and Concord shortly after the Boston Massacre.
But here’s the thing to remember about Boston: It had a 150-year long day, almost equal to the joy of New York—when everything that matters is what happens there—and the Revolution came to its end. Boston is a much older European settlement than most of the country that surrounds it. As a result, it was able to overcome a lot of evils before and develop differently.
Boston was a center in the slave trade, for example, in the 17th century, but by the 19th it was already a center for its abolition, with judges refusing to pass judgments on those who stole property when it The property was human, and people were putting up posters around town fleeing newcomers from slave-owning America telling the police were not their friends (still great advice).
A city of this era that is developing and relatively progressive, at least in American terms, is not a common thing on the continent. Europeans wiped out the really old cities like Cahokia and Cholula, which means if you discount places that are no longer cities like Colonial Williamsburg, St. Augustine, and Jamestown, you can find Quebec, along with St. in) are left. Johns, and Boston (Providence is attractive but much smaller, and unlike Boston, New York, founded six years earlier, has almost wiped out everything it was before 1930).
But visit Faneuil Hall, Boston’s biggest tourist attraction (and the fourth most popular in the country with 25 million annual visitors), and although the original, built-in 1743, burned down in 1761 and rebuilt in 1762 The weathervane on top, which looks like a grasshopper, was built in 1742. This is where people met in December 1773 to discuss what to do about the latest shipment of tea from England (they decided to throw a party), and where Daniel Webster delivered his John Praises to both Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
This is where Julius Caesar Chappelle, one of the first black American legislators, gave his speech in favor of a bill to give blacks the right to vote in 1890, and it’s where people came to be known as Americans in early 1898. behold, had gathered to protest his introduction. Imperialism in the Spanish–American War, which laid the foundation for the American Anti-Imperialist League, and where he later opposed his country’s reprehensible but trend-setting actions in the Philippines in 1903. Boston History
These days, you can get some really good oysters and a lot of cold beer at Salty Dog (est. 1972; probably the oldest now that the 192-year-old Durgin-Park restaurant was shut down by its new corporate owners on Jan. was. , 2019).
But you can walk just three minutes north of Union Hall Oysters, which still exists, and is older than Durgin. They say it’s the oldest restaurant in America, in fact, founded in 1826, making it one of the original purveyors of Boston baked beans and, oddly enough, the place where Americans first used toothpicks. started using. I remember a road trip to Boston with a friend in college.
It was our first stop, which we accidentally stumbled upon, but the memory of the beading condensation on my beer mug on a hot July day after a full day’s drive from Toronto, and tray after tray of oysters that we had to feel. Were very naive. Very expensive indeed, one of the clearest and happiest travel memories I have.
We were there at least two hours, and the bartender warmed us up after the first $50 or so and told us how Daniel Webster (whom I assumed at the time and after years was the dictionary guy) for the show, and he A future King of France in exile lived upstairs when he was in his early twenties, teaching French and holding meetings with Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. The establishment of the Bell in Hand, a contender for Boston’s oldest inn took place in 1795.) Boston History
Walk nine minutes north of that, and you’ll find the Paul Revere House, where the Midnight Rider lived for 30 years. It is the oldest in the city, having been built on an even older site where witch hunters and Harvard male Rise and Cotton Mather lived.
Too Old in Boston: Boston Latin is the oldest high school in, I’m guessing, North America, founded in 1635 and about an eight-minute walk southwest of Faneuil. This is Ben Franklin’s high school, and Sam Adams’s too. JFK’s father and grandfather went here, and so did George Santayana and Leonard Bernstein, Louis Farrakhan, and Sumner Redstone. Harvard, across the bridge at Cambridge, was founded a year later, and many people have been there as well, I have heard and then worked there.
But it would be a mistake to make your visit to Boston purely – or even largely – historical. Be aware, and ogle as you pass, but Boston is a good city right now. The transit system works well, at least for tourist needs (it’s certainly the oldest subway in the United States), and you can hop from the T to Charlestown – The Town for those in the know, Or those who’ve seen Ben Affleck’s movie of the same name – and either just wander around the gaslit streets and buildings that date back to revolutionary times (no worries, it’s not nearly as rough as Affleck made it seem), or go to City Square and Main Street where there are shops and bars. Just off Main Street is the obelisk commemorating the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was fought here (and won by the British; there’s also a museum), and the Warren Tavern, which is Boston’s other contender for oldest. Boston History
From there, you can go to Cambridge and see other neighborhoods like Harvard, or Beacon Hill or North End, or Back Bay, or take the Silver Line to the Purchase Street/Pearl Street station and visit Boston’s newest neighborhood, the Port District. can travel to. Which I’ve seen a couple of times, stayed once, and really like. It’s put together with a great deal of care for public space, is clearly right by the water, has everything that industrial architecture so loves these days, and is a miraculous 7-minute drive from Logan Airport’s drive.
Other former industrial areas have been turned into residential and retail neighborhoods: high prices creating particular demographics, and for a city as racially integrated as Boston, it’s pretty white. But unlike, say, Noda in Vancouver’s Yaletown, Charlotte and Reino in Denver, Boston are well aware of it, and even something is already being done about it.
In May there was Boston’s black-owned business pop-up market, and then in November, the Massachusetts Port Authority has made diversity part of the scorecard for further growth, and black investor L. Duane Jackson has made the neighborhood a personal project. , and is behind the new 1,000-room Omni Hotel. There’s also a children’s museum, and if you stay, or drink at the Envoy Hotel (very nice interior; rooms have excellent robes), you can visit Griffin’s Wharf, where all that tea was dumped in Boston harbor. . Because of history.
