Beacon Hill, Boston

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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[1]
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Built/Founded: 1795
Architect: Charles Bulfinch
Architectural style(s): Colonial Revival, Greek Revival, Federal
Governing body: Local
Added to NRHP: October 15, 1966
Designated NHLD: December 19, 1962
NRHP Reference#: 66000130[2]
Other places are also named Beacon Hill.

Beacon Hill is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts that is home to about 10,000 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 the country.[3][4]

The Beacon Hill area is located just north of the 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.

Contents

[edit] 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 nearby hills, were substantially reduced in height to allow the development of housing in the area and to create land by filling the Mill Pond, to the northeast.

The entire hill was once owned by William Blaxton, the first European 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. In 1937 The Late George Apley, a Pulitizer Prize winning novel, gave a satirical description of the upper-class WASPs on Beacon Hill.

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.

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

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

[edit] Notable residents

Houses on Louisburg Square.
Map of Beacon Hill from 1842

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

[edit] Sites of interest

Acorn Street, built in the late 1820s.
Monument in back of the State House marking the site of the original beacon pole

Sites of interest in Beacon Hill include:

[edit] Former street names in Beacon Hill

  • Anderson Street - West Centre Street
  • Irving Street - Butolph Street
  • Joy Street - Clapboard Street (between Cambridge and Myrtle Streets in 1735), Belknap Lane (between Myrtle and Mount Vernon Streets)
  • Myrtle Street - May Street
  • Phillips Street - Southac Street
  • Smith Court - May's Court
  • West Cedar Street - George Street

[edit] 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.

[edit] Beacon Street

[edit] Bowdoin Street

[edit] Brimmer Street

[edit] Cambridge Street

[edit] Charles Street

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

[edit] Chestnut Street

[edit] 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.

[edit] Irving Street

[edit] Joy Street

[edit] Louisburg Square

[edit] Mount Vernon Street

[edit] Myrtle Street

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

[edit] Phillips Street

[edit] Pinckney Street

[edit] Other residents

[edit] See also

[edit] Books

  • Beacon Hill: The Life & Times of a Neighborhood, Moying Li-Marcus, 2002. ISBN 1-55553-543-7
  • 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
  • Joy Street Frances Parkinson Keyes, 1950, fiction.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Whitehill, Walter Muir (1968). Boston: A Topographical History (Second ed.). pp. 81–84. 
  2. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. 
  3. ^ Great Neighborhoods: Boston
  4. ^ Boston Neighborhoods

[edit] External links

Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Beacon Hill, Boston

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