Beacon Hill, Boston

For other uses, see Beacon Hill (disambiguation).

Beacon Hill Historic District
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark District
Cutting down Beacon Hill in 1811; a view from the north toward the Massachusetts State House
Location:	Boston, Massachusetts
Built:	1795
Architect:	Charles Bulfinch
Architectural style:	Colonial Revival, Greek Revival, Federal
Governing body:	Local
NRHP Reference#:	66000130
Significant dates
Added to NRHP:	October 15, 1966
Designated NHLD:	December 19, 1962

View of Beacon Hill, Boston, late 18th c., from Breed's Hill in Charlestown

Beacon Hill is a historic neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, that along with the neighboring Back Bay is home to about 26,000 people. It is a neighborhood of Federal-style rowhouses and is known for its narrow, gas-lit streets and brick sidewalks. Today, Beacon Hill is regarded as one of the most desirable and expensive neighborhoods in Boston.

The Beacon Hill area is located just north of Boston Common and the Boston Public Garden and is bounded generally by Beacon Street on the south, Somerset Street on the east, Cambridge Street to the north and Storrow Drive along the riverfront of the Charles River Esplanade to the west. The block bounded by Beacon, Tremont and Park Streets is included as well, as is the Boston Common itself. The level section of the neighborhood west of Charles Street, on landfill, is known locally as the "Flat of the Hill."

Because the Massachusetts State House is in a prominent location at the top of the hill, the term "Beacon Hill" is also often used as a metonym in the local news media to refer to the state government or the legislature.

History

Like many similarly named areas, the neighborhood is named for the location of a former beacon atop the highest point in central Boston, once located just behind the current site of the Massachusetts State House. The hill and two other hills nearby, Pemberton Hill and Mount Vernon, were substantially reduced in height to allow the development of housing in the area^{[citation needed]} and to use the earth to create land by filling the Mill Pond, to the northeast.

Former Beacon Hill Reservoir in 1854 (demolished ca.1880)

The entire hill was once owned by William Blaxton (also spelled Blackstone), the first European settler of Boston, from 1625 to 1635; he eventually sold his land to the Puritans. The south slope of Beacon Hill facing the Common was the socially desirable side in the 19th century. Black Beacon Hill was on the north slope. Many famous black leaders, including Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, David Walker and Sojourner Truth, spoke at the African Meeting House on Joy Street. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, who lived for a time on Joy Street, was the first African American woman to become a physician in the United States. In 1860 she was admitted to the New England Female Medical College (which later merged with Boston University) to earn her M.D. degree. Her publication of "A Book of Medical Discourses" in 1883 was one of the first by an African American about medicine. The two Hills were largely united on the subject of Abolition. Beacon Hill was one of the staunchest centers of the anti-slavery movement in the Antebellum era.

Beacon Hill's north slope was called "Mount Whoredom" as early as 1715 (see Judge Samuel Sewall's journal).

Beacon Hill's north slope being a poor Black and a prostitution neighborhood, it was undesirable, and Boston's most affordable neighborhood. Thus, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Boston's poorest immigrants would first live on the north slope. Those immigrants were mostly Irish, Italian, and Eastern European Jews.

In 1937, The Late George Apley, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, gave a satirical description of the upper-class white residents on Beacon Hill.

Until a major urban renewal project of the late 1950s, the red-light district of Scollay Square (an extension of "Mount Whoredom") flourished just to the east of Beacon Hill, as did the West End neighborhood to the north.

Beacon Hill was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1962.

Second Harrison Gray Otis House, 85 Mount Vernon Street.

Notable residents

Houses on Louisburg Square

Beacon Hill has been home to many notable persons, including:

• Louisa May Alcott, 10 Louisburg Square
• John Albion Andrew
• William Blaxton, original owner of Beacon Hill
• Edwin Booth, 29A Chestnut Street
• Peter Bent Brigham, corner of Bulfinch and Allston streets
• Charles Bulfinch
• John Cheever
• John Singleton Copley
• Michael Crichton
• Robert Frost, 88 Mount Vernon St., 1941
• John Hancock
• Chester Harding, 16 Beacon Street
• Teresa Heinz
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• Julia Ward Howe
• Abigail Johnson
• Edward M. Kennedy
• John Kerry
• Henry Cabot Lodge
• James Russell Lowell
• Robert Lowell
• Mary Osgood, 8 Beacon Street
• Harrison Gray Otis
• Sylvia Plath
• William Prescott
• Eleanor Raymond
• C. Allen Thorndike Rice
• Henry Rice
• David Lee Roth
• George Santayana, 302 Beacon Street
• Anne Sexton
• Robert Gould Shaw
• Carly Simon
• Charles Sumner
• Uma Thurman
• David Walker
• Gretchen Osgood Warren, 67 Mount Vernon Street
• Fiske Warren, 67 Mount Vernon Street
• Daniel Webster
• Jack Welch

Sites of interest

Monument in back of the State House marking the site of the original beacon pole

Map of Beacon Hill from 1842

Sites of interest in Beacon Hill include:

• Massachusetts State House (Beacon Street): Home of the state's government
• The Unitarian Universalist Association: Headquarters of the international, liberal religious denomination, next door to the Massachusetts State House
• Louisburg Square
• Nearby Acorn Street, a narrow lane paved with cobblestones, often mentioned as the most picturesque (or the most frequently photographed) street in the United States.^{[citation needed]}
• Mt. Vernon Street: "The finest address in all America"
• Bull and Finch Bar (Beacon Street): Source of inspiration and exterior shots for the Cheers television show.
• Charles Street Meeting House
• The Club of Odd Volumes (Mount Vernon Street): Bibliophiles club, library, and archive
• Suffolk University
• Suffolk University Law School
• The Boston Bar Association
• The route taken by the fictional Mrs. Mallard and her children, depicted in Make Way for Ducklings, a book for children by Robert McCloskey. The story is commemorated every year in May by a parade through Beacon Hill to the Boston Public Garden.
• Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial: Intersection of Beacon Street and Park Street, opposite the Massachusetts State House
• Museum of African American History, New England’s largest museum dedicated to preserving, conserving and interpreting the contributions of African Americans, located at the African Meeting House, adjacent to the Abiel Smith School. The meeting house is the oldest surviving Black church built by African Americans. The school was the first publicly funded schoolhouse for African American children in America.
• Nichols House Museum, a historic 1804 townhouse
• Harrison Gray Otis House, 1796. The Otis House also houses Historic New England's headquarters.
• The Francis Parkman House
• The Vilna Shul

Former street names in Beacon Hill

• Anderson Street - West Centre Street
• Bulfinch Street
• Court Street - Queen Street
• Grove Street - Centre
• Howard - Southack's Court (after Capt. Cyprian Southack)
• Irving Street - Butolph Street
• Joy Street - Clapboard Street (between Cambridge and Myrtle Streets in 1735), Belknap Lane (between Myrtle and Mount Vernon Streets)
• Mt. Vernon Street - Sumner
• Phillips Street - Southack Street (after Capt. Cyprian Southack)
• Revere Street - May Street
• Smith Court - May's Court
• State Street - King Street
• Tremont - Common (NE of School Street where Beacon Street ends)
• West Cedar Street - George Street

The neighborhood of Beacon Hill as seen from the Charles River, (with the Financial District in the background)

Notable addresses in Beacon Hill

The Chester Harding House, a National Historic Landmark occupied by portrait painter Chester Harding from 1826–1830, now houses the Boston Bar Association.

Beacon Street

• One Beacon Street - An eponymous office tower at the corner of Tremont Street; the 14th-tallest building in the city
• 8 Beacon Street - late 19th/early 20th century home of the Osgood Family: Dr. Osgood, Margaret Osgood and daughters Gretchen and Mary
• 10½ Beacon Street - Boston Athenæum
• 14 Beacon Street - Congregational House, site of the Congregational Library and City Mission Society
• 16 Beacon Street - Chester Harding House, now home to the Boston Bar Association, was home to the famous portrait painter Chester Harding from 1826–1830
• 22 Beacon Street - Amory-Ticknor House, built in 1804 by Charles Bulfinch; now houses the Beacon Hill studio for Fox 25 News (WFXT), with a strategic rooftop camera position
• 25 Beacon Street - headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association, an international liberal religious denomination
• 33 Beacon Street - resident George Parkman; building designed by Cornelius Coolidge
• 34½ Beacon Street - erstwhile headquarters of Family Service of Greater Boston, a private, nonprofit social service agency founded in 1835
• 39-40 Beacon Street - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow courted and married Fanny Appleton
• 42-43 Beacon Street - painter John Singleton Copley had a house on this site, as did David Sears II, whose house is now the home of the Somerset Club
• 45 Beacon Street - 3rd Harrison Gray Otis house, now American Meteorological Society
• 54-55 Beacon Street - resident William H. Prescott had William Makepeace Thackeray as a houseguest.
• 84 Beacon Street - Cheers Beacon Hill. Formerly known as the Bull & Finch Pub, this pub was the inspiration for the classic television show, Cheers, and was shown during the opening credits of the sitcom.

Bowdoin Street

• 35 Bowdoin Street - Church of Saint John the Evangelist
• 122 Bowdoin Street - nominal resident, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (registered voting address)

Brimmer Street

• 30 Brimmer Street - Church of the Advent (official site)
• 44 Brimmer Street - resident Samuel Eliot Morison

Cambridge Street

• Massachusetts General Hospital - Bulfinch Pavilion and Ether Dome
• 100 Cambridge Street, Upper Plaza - Garden of Peace
• 131 Cambridge Street - Old West Church
• 141 Cambridge Street - 1st Harrison Gray Otis house, architect Charles Bulfinch

Charles Street

• 44A Charles Street - Mary Sullivan, last victim of the Boston Strangler, murdered here

Chestnut Street

• 6 Chestnut Street - Beacon Hill Friends House
• 13, 15, 17 Chestnut Street - architect Charles Bulfinch designed row-houses for Hepzibah Swan
• 18 Chestnut Street - birthplace of poet Robert Lowell
• 50 Chestnut Street - resident Francis Parkman, historian; building designed by Cornelius Coolidge
• 57A Chestnut Street - Harvard Musical Association

Grove Street

• 28 Grove Street - Resident Rev. Leonard A. Grimes, prominent black clergyman associated with the Underground Railroad and Abolitionist movement. Noted for being one of the men who bought the freedom of Anthony Burns after his arrest.

Irving Street

• 58 Irving Street - Birthplace of Charles Sumner, abolitionist, U.S. Senator.

Joy Street

• 46 Joy Street - African Meeting House.
• 67 Joy Street - Resident Rebecca Lee Crumpler, prominent physician, considered to be the first black woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S.

Louisburg Square

• 4 Louisburg Square - resident William Dean Howells while editor of the Atlantic Monthly
• 10 Louisburg Square - residents Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott and family
• 19 Louisburg Square - residents John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry
• 20 Louisburg Square - singer Jenny Lind married Otto Goldschmidt here

Mount Vernon Street

• 5 Mount Vernon Street - former site of Dr. Park's "Boston Lyceum for the Education of Young Ladies"
• 8 Mount Vernon Street - home of Fiske Warren and Gretchen Osgood Warren
• 32 Mount Vernon Street - residents Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and his wife Julia Ward Howe
• 41 Mount Vernon Street - home of Beacon Press, a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association, that published the Senator Mike Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers in 1971
• 45-47 Mount Vernon Street - site of Portia School of Law, founded for and by women in 1908
• 51-57 Mount Vernon Street - architect Charles Bulfinch
• 55 Mount Vernon Street - home of Rose Standish Nichols, now the Nichols House Museum
• 57 Mount Vernon Street - residents Daniel Webster and later Charles Francis Adams
• 67 Mount Vernon Street - home of Samuel Dennis and Susan Cornelia Warren, paper manufacturer and one time president of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• 72 Mount Vernon Street - erstwhile site of the Boston University School of Theology
• 76 Mount Vernon Street - home of Margaret Deland
• 77 Mount Vernon Street - resident Sarah Wyman Whitman and later the clubhouse of the Club of Odd Volumes
• 85 Mount Vernon Street - 2nd Harrison Gray Otis house, architect Charles Bulfinch
• 87 Mount Vernon Street - architect Charles Bulfinch
• 127 Mount Vernon Street - home of The Real World: Boston and Spenser: For Hire, former Boston Fire Department station

Myrtle Street

• 109 Myrtle Street - resident Lysander Spooner, an American individualist anarchist.

Phillips Street

• 2 Phillips Street - Resident John Coburn
• 18 Phillips Street - The Vilna Shul, now Boston's Center For Jewish Culture
• 41 Phillips Street - Erstwhile site of the Northeast Institute of Industrial Technology
• 66 Phillips Street - Hayden House, associated with the Abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad
• 83 Phillips Street - Resident John Sweat Rock, prominent black dentist, attorney, and abolitionist activist

Pinckney Street

• 15 Pinckney Street - a site of Elizabeth Peabody's Kindergarten
• 105 Pinckney Street - Resident P.P.F. Degrand

Other residents

• Writers Brad Meltzer and Judd Winick lived in a tiny apartment in Beacon Hill in 1993 before they achieved success. While living there, Winick developed his first successful comic strip and Meltzer worked at Games Magazine by day while working on his first novel at night.

See also

• Cambridge Railroad

Further reading

• The Book of Boston, 1916 by Robert Shackleton, text and photos online
• Joy Street Frances Parkinson Keyes, 1950, fiction.
• Area Preservation and the Beacon Hill Bill. Old-Time New England. v.46, no.164, Spring 1956.
• Beacon Hill: A Walking Tour, A. McVoy McIntyre, 1975. ISBN 0-316-55600-9
• The Mount Vernon Street Warrens, Martin Green, Simon & Schuster, 1989 ISBN 0684191091
• Beacon Hill: The Life & Times of a Neighborhood, Moying Li-Marcus, 2002. ISBN 1-55553-543-7
• Colonial Society discussion of the development of Beacon Hill.

External links

• Beacon Hill History
• Beacon Hill Online
• Black Beacon Hill
• Vilna Shul
• Back Bay - Beacon Hill 2000 Census of Population and Housing
• Beacon Hill Quick-Walk
• Metropolitan Museum of Art. First Methodist Church, Temple Street, Beacon Hill, Boston, ca.1930. Photo by Walker Evans.
• Flickr. Photos, 2009