Freedom Trail Pro Tips: WHERE ARE THE BATHROOMS?

People have got to go! There is no more pressing issue on Boston's historic Freedom Trail than the need to pee. I'm here to help. Below is every bathroom stop I know of. I'll make sure to clarify what is a public bathroom and what is a "private bathroom" that you can use.

Visitor Information Center on Boston Common

Boston Common (public bathrooms): The obvious bathroom stop is the Visitor Information Center on Boston Common, though truth be told, they have very small bathrooms that are often overrun by school groups, the homeless, and other visitors. The pros go to the Frog Pond bathrooms. They are also small, but less known, so they are also usually less gross and less full.

Boston Athenaeum (private bathrooms): This is located at 10 1/2 Beacon St., just around the corner from the Boston Common, and also close to the side entrance of the Granary Burying Ground. The first floor of the Athenaeum is open to the public, though you do have to sign in. There is a bathroom on the first floor. You see where I'm going with this?

Omni Parker House Hotel (private bathrooms): As a general rule, hotels are good for a bathroom break. The Parker House is tops, though. They have two bars and a restaurant on the first floor, and are the oldest hotel in America, so they are more accommodating than most to walk-ins. Their bathrooms are on the "mezzanine level," which is essentially the second floor. When you get to the top of the stairs, boys go right, girls go left. This hotel is located at the corner of Tremont and School, near the Granary Burying Ground and across from King's Chapel.

"What's that big clock tower in Boston?"

There are some questions visitors always ask. "Where is the closest bathroom" usually tops the list, and "is that Ben Franklin" when they see the "Franklin" monument in the Granary Burying Ground is also popular. Another top-tier inquiry is "what's that big clock tower?"

The big clock tower in question is the the old custom house. Not actually our oldest custom house ever, its domed base was built in 1847 to replace an older building which was itself a replacement to our original. The tower completed in 1915, making it the tallest building in Boston until 1964. Just off State Street in McKinley Square, the custom house was built just steps away from Long Wharf, where much of Boston's shipping arrived in the 19th century.

While this particular building has no exciting history of note (though it did play a prominent role in Boston scribe Dennis Lehane's novel Prayers for Rain), it is iconic in Boston's waterfront skyline. Currently under the management of Marriott, it serves as a luxury hotel. What many people who see it don't know though is that the base of the building is still very much open to the public. Go inside and get literature free of charge from the front desk, and then you can take a tour through the antebellum structure's breathtaking Greek revival interior, including the original dome, which resides underneath the tower today. Hanging from the ceiling around the dome, you will find very strange flags, representing prominent merchant houses of the custom house's hayday: J.H. Shattuck & Co., Z. Azarian & Co., John Mayo & Co., Gilden & Williams, H. Oxnard, and Brocker & Stugis (see photos below).

John W. McCormack speaks to Boston about the war effort

In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day -- when Allied forces stormed the beaches of France and began their bloody eleven month march toward Nazi Germany -- I thought it might be interesting to reflect on the city of Boston during the war.

McCormack in the 1960s

One of my favorite moment's in Boston's WWII history is US Congressman John W. McCormack's Fourth of July oration. Speaking to a packed crowd in Faneuil Hall's second floor, known for two centuries as "Great Hall" and for slightly less as "the Cradle of Liberty," McCormack explained to Bostonians why they had to put in long hours at the Navy Yard or the factory, why they had to put every extra cent into war bonds, and why they had to send their sons and husbands to war:

"In this war more than any other," he said, "we are fighting powerful enemies who are imbued with the monstrous doctrine of hatred -- anti-religious hatred, economic hatred, and racial hatred -- determined to enslave the world." He ridiculed the Axis powers, criticizing their disdain for "the rule of majority, because their power lies in their own success in pillaging and destroying -- in the burning of books and the persecution of minorities, in the destruction of the dignity and personality of the individual."

Faneuil Hall

This speech, with was answered with thunderous applause and not a few war bond purchases, is an example of a countless number of local efforts to clearly and honestly explain the necessity of "the good war" to the American people on a local level. In reflecting on its origins -- coming from an America with a segregated army and from a home front torn asunder that same year (1943) with race riots, it is easy to dismiss speeches like McCormack's as propaganda. It is harder, but no less honest, to see it for what it was: a call to the people of Boston, and the United States, to strive toward a society free of these tyrannies. It could not have been lost on a politician regularly facing legislation and letters on both sides of the race issue that he was describing an America that was fantastical at the time, but looking back, it is equally difficult for us to recognize that we still have a long way to go, and that men like McCormack and his contemporaries put us on a path for a better tomorrow many yesterdays ago.

Congratulations to my American Culture in World War II Class!

Today marked the end of my first class - a five week course at UMass-Boston's OLLI program on American Culture on the Home Front. I want to commend all of my 70+ students for their outstanding work and thank them all for providing me the opportunity to explore history with them!

Check out the first session of the class here!

Join Paul Revere on April 20 at the Charlestown Navy Yard!

Paul Revere Row is an excellent event every year. Join the wonderful folks at the USS Constitution Museum for entertaining and family friendly programming, including "drills" with the Charlestown Militia, before getting your chance to meet Paul Revere, who will make his way across the Charles River under the cover of night, accompanied by the blazing of lanterns from the Old North Church back in Boston.

I cannot recommend this event enough for visitors in town for the weekend or locals looking for educational entertainment. Click here for more information!

The Guide's Guide talks about advertising in popular magazines during World War II

Here's some video from a talk I gave on advertising war bonds in popular magazines during World War II at The History List's "History Camp" on March 8, 2014. 

This presentation features some of the research conducted for my Masters Thesis in History at UMass Boston. 

Lecture: Boston's Orange Line

If you're like me, you can't get enough of old photos of Boston's subway system. To satiate that need, come to a lecture by Jeremy Fox and Andrew Elder about their new book, Boston's Orange Line, January 26, 2014 at 3pm.

Learn all about what older folks used to call "the scary line" from its beginning in 1901 as a private line to the present as a public one, and either celebrate its move from elevated to underground like a normal person, or mourn the loss of the creepy subway underpasses like me.

Better still, the lecture is being held at Doyle's, 3484 Washington St., Jamaica Plain (a short walk from the Orange Line's Green Street stop). This bar is in itself a historic site, seeped with history of the Boston Irish, prohibition, and municipal politics.

This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. Cash bar.

No blanket hatred of taxes in colonial Boston

Masthead for Boston Gazette.

While much is made about colonial opposition to taxes in the years preceding the American Revolutionary War, it should be noted that some voices in Boston's patriot movement were wholeheartedly in favor of some taxes - just not the ones they were protesting!

There is much made of "direct" versus "indirect" taxation in 1764-1765, but The Boston Gazette, published by known Patriot leaders Benjamin Edes and John Gill, argued that the origin of the tax was what was important. In the July 8, 1765 issue, next to a story enthusiastically announcing that Stamp Act opponent James Otis would be sent to the intercolonial congress that would eventually produce petitions against parliamentary taxes, was an article explaining a local land tax passed by the body governing the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts. Two weeks later, the paper opined about the position of central Massachusetts towns that were unable to send representative to the Massachusetts General Court. Without representatives, the Gazette argued, the towns' recognition of and compliance to taxes passed by the General Court were optional.

On July 22 through September 2, 1765, the paper continued its clarifications on acceptable versus unacceptable taxes through its "Letter to a Noble Lord" editorials, likely written by James Otis. In these columns, Otis avoided discussions about direct versus indirect taxation, opting instead to focus on direct versus virtual representation. In no uncertain terms, the writer said that direct representation was the only representation of interest to him, and that only through the votes of the people whom taxes were to be laid upon were taxes just. He went on to ridicule British Prime Minister Genville's insistence that revenue needed to be raised in order to protect the colonies. "When did the colonies solicit protection," he asked, implying that like taxes, military protections should only be ordered when agreed upon by those who were being protected.

By paring their opposition of the Stamp Act with acceptance and explanation of other, locally created taxes, the Boston Gazette created a reasonable position for which they and their allies could act less civilly to protect. They also delivered the clearest, most radical treaties on acceptable taxation that the Americas had yet seen.

Destruction of the Liberty Tree

Engraving of a British official being tarred
and feathered at Boston's Liberty Tree

Boston's Liberty Tree - an elm tree that once stood roughly where the Chinatown T Stop is today - has long been recognized as a major symbol in the American Revolutionary. A rallying point for the South End Gang for the Pope's Day "festivities," which often led to violence against their North End counterparts and always with the destruction of anti-Catholic effigies, during the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765 it became a potent symbol of the nascent Patriot movement, as well documented by historian Alfred Young.

It is thus no surprise that the Liberty Tree became a target of destruction during the British occupation of Boston in 1775. According to a report in the Connecticut Courant on September 4, 1775, a group of soldiers led by a Job Williams, with the blessing of General Thomas Gage, "made a furious Attack upon" the famous elm. "After a long spell of laughing and grinning, sweating, swearing and foaming, with Malice diabolical, they cut down a Tree, because it bore the Name of Liberty."

While the destruction of the Liberty Tree could be construed as a significant symbolic blow to Boston's Patriot cause, the Courant dismissed the tree's demise as a setback, so long as "the GRAND AMERICAN TREE OF LIBERTY, planted in the center of the United Colonies of North-America, now flourishes with unrivalled, increasing beauty." The Liberty Tree had transcended its physical form, instead becoming an American revolutionary ideal.

This sentiment of the Liberty Tree as an undying symbol of the Patriot cause was echoed in the September 6 issue of Isaiah Thomas' Massachusetts Spy, in which the following poem appeared:

In a chariot of light from the regions of day,
the goddess of liberty came;
Ten thousand celestials directed the way,
And hither conducted the dame.
A fair budding branch from the gardens above,
Where millions with millions agree,
She brought in her hand, as a pledge of her love,
And the plant she named Liberty Tree.
The celestial exotic stuck deep in the ground,
Like a native it flourish'd and bore,
The fame of its fruit drew the rations around,
To seek out this peaceable shore.
Unmindful of names or distinctions they came,
For freemen like brothers agree,
With one spirit endu'd, they one friendship pursu'd,
And their temple was Liberty Tree.
Beneath this fair tree, like the patriarchs of old;
Their [illegible] in contentment they eat,
Unvex'd with the troubles of silver and gold,
The cares of the grand and the great.
With timber and tar they Old England supply'd,
And supported her pow'r on the sea;
Her battles they fought, without getting a groat,
For the honour of Liberty Tree.
But hear, O ye swains, ('tis a tale most profane)
How all they tyrannical powers,
King, Commons, and Lords, are uniting amain,
to cut down this guardian of ours;
From the east to the west, blow the trumpet to arms,
Thro' the land let the sound of it flee,
Let the far and the near - all unite with a cheer,
In defence of our Liberty Tree. 

While the physical Liberty Tree had already been destroyed, the symbol became one in which the Patriots rallied around. While Gage's men were able to remove the tree itself, they very likely increased the tree's potency and the Boston Patriots' resolve to oppose the crown.

Join local history buffs for Roslindale Origins talk January 23

Join local history buffs and former Roslindale Main Streets directors Carter Wilkie and Josef Porteleki at the Boston Public Library's Roslindale Branch on Thursday, January 23, 2014 at 7pm for a discussion about the origins of the Roslindale neighborhood. This "armchair tour" will explore the neighborhood's landscape and its precarious connection to Roslin, Scotland.

This event is free and open to the public. Roslindale Branch Library, 4246 Washington St., Roslindale, MA.

Presented by the Friends of the Roslindale Branch Library and the Jamaica Plain Historical Society.

Colonial history comes to life this January at Modern Theatre

There are few better examples of Boston's struggles with religious freedom than that of Anne Hutchinson. A early settler of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Hutchinson challenged religious authority in the community, holding services advocating her own unique brand of Puritanism in her own home until her exile from Boston in 1638.

This early American drama story is being brought to the stage by Intermezzo Opera, which is presenting performances of "Anne Hutchinson" on January 25 and 26 at the Modern Theatre, 525 Washington Street, Boston. Tickets start at $20.

The opera focuses on Hutchinson's trial and subsequent exile and excommunication. From the opera's synopsis, it seems an excellent opportunity to see a live theater performance that will also educate audiences about the nuances of American Puritanism - particularly the strands of intolerance in colonial America and the subtle differences and broad ideological repercussions of believing in a "covenant of grace" versus a "covenant of works." 

Music by Dan Shore: libretto by William Fregosi and Fritz Bell.

South Boston Arts Association Presents "A Fascinating Morning" with historian Robert Allison

The South Boston Arts Association is hosting historian Robert Allison for a talk this Saturday, January 11, 2014, at 9:30 am.

Professor Allison is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Suffolk University and President of the South Boston Historical Society. He is also the author of numerous books, including A Short History of Boston, The American Revolution: A Concise History, and Stephen Decatur: American Naval Hero, 1779-1820. 

The event will be held at the Curley Community Center, L Street Bath House at M Street Entrance, South Boston. Free and open to the public, refreshments will be served. 

Welcome to The Guide's Guide to Boston

Hello, and welcome to The Guide's Guide to Boston. This website will introduce you to the history of one of America's oldest cities.