Boston Travel
Black Heritage Trail
Massachusetts was the first state to declare slavery illegal, in 1783 partly as a result of black participation in the Revolutionary War and a large community of free blacks swiftly grew in the North End and on Beacon Hill. Ironically, very few now live on Beacon Hill, but the Black Heritage Trail through the area celebrates important sites in local black history (the various visitor centers provide maps).
Pick up the Trail either at 46 Joy St, where the Abiel Smith School contains a Museum of Afro-American History (summer daily 10am4pm, rest of year MonSat 10am4pm; free), illustrating the national civil rights campaign as well as local history, or at the African Meeting House at 8 Smith Court (off Joy St), for displays and talks from well-informed rangers. Built in 1806 as the first African-American church in the United States, this became known as "Black Faneuil Hall" during the abolitionist campaign; Frederick Douglass issued his call here for all blacks to take up arms in the Civil War. Among those who responded were the volunteers of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment , commemorated by a monument at the edge of Boston Common, opposite the State House, which depicts their farewell march down Beacon Street. Robert Lowell won a Pulitzer Prize for his poem, For the Union Dead, about this monument, and the regiment's tragic end at Fort Wagner was depicted in the movie Glory. The Trail then winds around Beacon Hill, passing schools, other institutions, and residences ranging from the small, cream clapboard houses of Smith Court to the imposing Lewis and Harriet Hayden House at 66 Phillips St, once a stop on the famous "Underground Railroad," sheltering runaways from pursuing bounty-hunters.
Boston
Although the metropolitan area of BOSTON has long since expanded to fill the shoreline of Massachusetts Bay , and stretches for miles inland as well, the seventeenth-century port at its heart is still discernible. Forget the neat grids of modern urban America; the twisting streets clustered around Boston Common are a reminder of how the nation started out, and the city is enjoyably human in scale.
Boston was, until 1755, the biggest city in America; as the one most directly affected by the latest whims of the British Crown, it was the natural birthplace for the opposition that culminated in the Revolutionary War . Numerous evocative sites from that era are preserved along the Freedom Trail through downtown. Since then, however, Boston has in effect turned its back on the sea. As the third busiest port in the British Empire (after London and Bristol), it stood on a narrow peninsula. What is now Washington Street provided the only access by land, and when the British set off to Lexington in 1775 they embarked in ships from the Common itself. During the nineteenth century, the Charles River marshlands were filled in to create the posh Back Bay residential area. Central Boston is now slightly set back from the water, separated by the John Fitzgerald Expressway that carries I-93 across downtown. The city has been working on routing the traffic underground (a project a decade in the making known as "the Big Dig"), though the monumental task won't likely be completed before 2004, much to the frustration of locals.
There is a certain truth in the charge leveled by other Americans that Boston likes to live in the past; echoes of the "Brahmins" of a century ago can be heard in the upper-class drawl of the posher districts. But this is by no means just a city of WASPs: the Irish who began to arrive in large numbers after the Great Famine had produced their first mayor as early as 1885, and the president of the whole country within a hundred years. The liberal tradition that spawned the Kennedys remains alive, fed in part by the presence in the city of more than one hundred universities and colleges, the most famous of which Harvard University actually stands in the city of Cambridge, just across the Charles River, and is fully integrated into the tourist experience thanks to the area's excellent subway system.
The slump of the Depression seemed to linger in Boston for years even in the 1950s, the population was actually dwindling but these days the place definitely has a rejuvenated feel to it. Quincy Market has served as a blueprint for urban development worldwide, and with its busy street life, imaginative museums and galleries, fine architecture and palpable history, Boston is the one destination in New England there's no excuse for missing.
Freedom Trail
Probably the best way to orient yourself in downtown Boston and to appreciate the city's role in American history is to walk some or all of the Freedom Trail . You can pick up or leave this easy self-guided route anywhere a line of red bricks marking the trail is embedded in the pavement but technically it begins on Boston Common at the Visitor Information Center .
From here, head for the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House (free tours MonSat 10am3.30pm), which was completed in 1798 to a design by Charles Bulfinch. It remains the seat of Massachusetts' government; its most famous feature, the wooden Sacred Cod symbolizing the wealth Boston accrued from its fisheries, hangs in front of the Speaker, and faces in different directions according to which party is in office.
Though Park Street Church (July & Aug TuesSat 9am3pm; rest of year by appointment; free) is by no means "the most interesting mass of bricks and mortar in America" that Henry James claimed, its ornate white steeple is undeniably impressive. This was where the orator William Lloyd Garrison launched his campaign to free the slaves on July 4, 1829. The 1600 graves of the Old Granary Burying Ground just around the corner (daily 9am5pm; free) include those of Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, as well as the reputed Mother Goose, a Bostonian named Elizabeth Vergoose (or Vertigoose), said to have collected nursery rhymes for her grandchildren; while King's Chapel Burying Ground (daily 9.30am5pm; free) contains Boston's earliest colonists and the first governor, John Winthrop. A statue of Benjamin Franklin marks the site of Boston Latin , America's first public school, attended by Franklin and Samuel Adams. Guests at the nearby Omni Parker House Hotel (not officially on the Trail) have included Charles Dickens and John Kennedy, Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh. The Old Corner Bookstore at School and Washington streets (MonSat 9am6pm, Sun noon5pm) was a literary salon frequented by Longfellow, Thoreau and Hawthorne.
Next come the Trail's two most striking and significant buildings. At the Old South Meeting House (daily: AprilOct 9.30am5pm; NovMarch 10am4pm; $3), the largest building in colonial Boston and an old Puritan house of worship, Samuel Adams addressed the patriots about to carry out the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. This was no raucous and unruly mob: they were solemn men, well aware of the likely impact of their actions. The elegant Old State House , built in 1712 and still proud, although dwarfed by surrounding skyscrapers, was the seat of colonial government. From its balcony the Declaration of Independence was read on July 18, 1776; exactly two hundred years later Queen Elizabeth II appeared on that same balcony. Inside is a museum of Boston history (daily 9am5pm; $3). Outside, a plain ring of cobblestones set on a traffic island at the intersection of Devonshire and State streets marks the site of the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, when British soldiers fired on a crowd that was pelting them with stone-filled snowballs, and killed five, including the black Crispus Attucks.
Modern visitors gravitate to Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall (it rhymes with Daniel; daily 9am5pm; free) for the lively shops, restaurants and takeaways that made this a pioneer example of successful urban renewal (by the developer who went on to transform London's Covent Garden). Faneuil Hall was, how ever, once known as the "Cradle of Liberty," a meeting place for Revolutionaries and, later, abolitionists. Nearby on Union Street, step off the Freedom Trail to visit The New England Holocaust Memorial , six tall hollow glass pillars built to resemble smokestacks and etched with quotes and facts about the Holocaust, with an unusual degree of attention to its non-Jewish victims.
Passing under the six-lane John Fitzgerald Expressway and into the North End, you reach Paul Revere House , Boston's last surviving seventeenth-century house (daily: mid-April to Oct 31 9.30am5.15pm; Nov 1 to mid-April 9.30am4.15pm; closed Mon JanMarch; $2.50), built after the Great Fire of 1676, and home to Paul Revere patriot, silversmith, Freemason and father of sixteen children from 1770 until 1800. When Revere embarked upon his famous ride of April 18, 1775, to warn Lexington of imminent British attack, two lanterns were hung from the belfry of Old North Church , 193 Salem St (daily: JuneOct 9am6pm; NovMay 9am5pm), to alert Charlestown in case he got caught. A little further up, from Copp's Hill Burial Ground (daily 9am5pm; free), you can see across the harbor to Charlestown; as indeed could the British, who planted their artillery here for the Battle of Bunker Hill.
In theory, the Freedom Trail now crosses the Charlestown Bridge, but that's a long walk over. Its final two sites are better reached by the frequent ferries from Long Wharf to Charlestown Navy Yard (MonFri every 1530min 6.30am8pm, Sat & Sun every 30min 10am6pm; $1 each way). First is the USS Constitution , also known as "Old Ironsides," the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world. Launched in Boston in 1797, it was prominent in the War of 1812. Every July 4 it is ceremonially turned around sailed out into the bay and its cannon fired mainly to equalize the weathering on its two sides. Unless it's closed due to ongoing rehabilitation work, free tours of the ship are led by costumed guides (daily 9.30am3.50pm, www.ussconstitution.navy.mil ), or visit the USS Constitution Museum (daily: summer 9am6pm; rest of year 10am5pm; free). Above the museum, the Bunker Hill Monument sits on Breed's Hill, the actual site of the battle fought on June 17, 1775, which, although won by the British, did much to convince them that they could not hope to triumph in the end. A spiral staircase of almost three hundred steps leads to the top; a small museum (daily 9am5pm; free) at the base has dated but informative exhibits on the battle.