Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts

Encyclopedia : B : BE : BEA : Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts

Cutting down Beacon Hill, about 1800; a view from the north toward the Massachusetts State House.

Other places are also named Beacon Hill.

Beacon Hill is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, covering approximately one square mile (2.6 km²) and home to about 10,000 people. It is a wealthy neighborhood of Federal-style rowhouses, with some of the highest property values in the United States. It is known for its narrow streets, brick sidewalks, and gas-lit streets.

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 nearby hills, were substantially reduced in height to allow the development of housing in the area and to create land by filling part of the Back Bay at the foot of the hill.

The Beacon Hill area is located just north of the Boston Common and the Boston Public Garden and is generally bounded 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."

The entire hill was originally owned by William Blaxton, the first settler of Boston from 1625 to 1635, who 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. 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.

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

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

2nd Harrison Gray Otis House, 85 Mount Vernon Street.

Contents

Notable residents

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

Louisa May Alcott, 10 Louisburg Square
William Blaxton, original owner of Beacon Hill
Edwin Booth, 29A Chestnut St.
Charles Bulfinch
John Singleton Copley
Robert Frost, 88 Mount Vernon St., 1941
John Hancock
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Julia Ward Howe
John Kerry
Henry Cabot Lodge
James Russell Lowell
Robert Lowell
Harrison Gray Otis
Sylvia Plath
William Prescott
David Lee Roth
Anne Sexton
Carly Simon
Charles Sumner
Daniel Webster

Sites of interest

Sites of interest in Beacon Hill include:

Massachusetts State House (Beacon Street): Home of the state's government
Louisburg Square
Nearby Acorn Street, a narrow lane paved with cobblestones, often mentioned as the most picturesque (or the most frequently photographed) street in Boston
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
Suffolk University
Suffolk University Law School
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 Afro-American History], New England’s largest museum dedicated to preserving, conserving and interpreting the contributions of African Americans, located at the [African Meeting House]
[Nichols House Museum], a historic 1804 townhouse
[Otis House Museum], 1796. The Otis House also houses Historic New England's headquarters.

Notable addresses in Beacon Hill

Beacon Street

10 1/2 Beacon Street - Boston Athenæum
14 Beacon Street - Congregational House, site of the Congregational Library and City Mission Society
25 Beacon Street - headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association, an international liberal religious denomination
33 Beacon Street - resident George Parkman
34 1/2 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 Prescott had William Makepeace Thackeray as houseguest

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
18 Chestnut Street - birthplace of poet Robert Lowell
50 Chestnut Street - resident Francis Parkman, historian
57A Chestnut Street - Harvard Musical Association

Grove Street

28 Grove Street - Resident John Grimes, prominent black clergyman associated with the Underground Railroad and Abolitionist movement

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

32 Mount Vernon Street - residents Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and his wife Julia Ward Howe
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
57 Mount Vernon Street - residents Daniel Webster and later Charles Francis Adams
72 Mount Vernon Street - erstwhile site of the Boston University School of Theology
85 Mount Vernon Street - 2nd Harrison Gray Otis house, architect Charles Bulfinch
[87 Mount Vernon Street] - architect Charles Bulfinch
127 Mount Vernon Street - Real World Boston House

Phillips Street

2 Phillips Street - Resident John Coburn
18 Phillips Street - Vilna Shul, now the [Boston Center For Jewish Heritage]
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

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.

Books

Beacon Hill: The Life & Times of a Neighborhood, Moying Li-Marcus, 2002. ISBN 1555535437
Beacon Hill: A Walking Tour, A. McVoy McIntyre, 1975. ISBN 0316556009

External links

History

[The Book of Boston, 1916] by Robert Shackleton, text and photos online
[Colonial Society] discussion of the development of Beacon Hill.

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