The Bay State Monthly — Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1884Various
History
The Bay State Monthly — Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1884
Various
Massachusetts -- Periodicals; New England -- Periodicals
southeast corner of Hanover and (new) Washington Streets, stand upon it.
Next comes the four-acre pasture of Charles Bulfinch, the architect of
the Capitol at Washington, also of the Massachusetts Capitol, Faneuil
Hall, and other public buildings, and for fourteen years chairman of the
board of selectmen of the town of Boston, extending from Bowdoin Street
to Bulfinch Street, and from Bowdoin Square to Ashburton Place, for
which he paid two hundred pounds, New-England currency, equivalent to
six hundred and sixty-seven dollars. Bulfinch Street and Bulfinch Place
were laid out through it. The Revere House, formerly the mansion of Kirk
Boott, one of the founders of the city of Lowell; Bulfinch-place Church,
which occupies the site of the Central Universalist Church, erected in
1822 by the congregation of the Reverend Paul Dean; and also Mount
Vernon Church, erected in 1842 by the congregation over which the
Reverend Edward N. Kirk presided, stand upon it. Then follows the
two-acre pasture of Cyprian Southack, extending to Tremont Row easterly,
and westerly to Somerset Street, Stoddard Street and Howard Street were
laid out through it. The Howard Athenæum, formerly the site of Father
Miller's Tabernacle, stands upon it. Then follows the
one-and-a-half-acre pasture of the heirs of the Reverend John Cotton,
second minister of the First Church, extending from Howard Street to
Pemberton Square, which constitutes a large portion of that enclosure.
And lastly, proceeding southerly, comes the four-acre pasture of William
Phillips, extending from the southeasterly corner of Pemberton Square to
the point of beginning, and enclosing the largest portion of that
enclosure. The Hotel Pavilion, the Suffolk Savings Bank, and Houghton
and Dutton's stores, stand upon it.
Less than a century ago Charles River flowed at high tide from the
southeast corner of Cambridge Street and Anderson Street across
intervening streets to Beacon Street, up which it flowed one hundred and
forty-three feet easterly across Charles Street to No. 61. When Mr. John
Bryant dug the cellar for that building he came to the natural beach,
with its rounded pebbles, at the depth of three or four feet below the
surface. It also flowed over the Public Garden, across the southern
portion of the parade-ground, to the foot of the hill, upon which stands
the Soldiers' Monument. A son of H.G. Otis was drowned, about seventy
years ago, in a quagmire which existed at that spot. It also flowed
across the westerly portion of Boylston Street and Tremont Street, and
Shawmut Avenue, to the corner of Washington Street and Groton Street,
where stood the fortifications during the American Revolution, across
the Neck, which was only two hundred and fifty feet in width at that
point, and thence to the boundary of Roxbury. A beach existed where now
is Charles Street, and the lower part of Cambridge Street, on both
sides, was a marsh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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