When the great Boston fire had been quenched, and an estimate was
being formed of the enormous losses, the significant statement was
made that "the best treasure of Boston cannot be burnt up. Her grand
capital of culture and character, of science and skill, humanity and
religion, is beyond the reach of flame. Sweep away every store and
house, every school and church, and let the people with their history
and habits remain, and they still have one of the richest and
strongest cities on earth." This is the prominent characteristic of
Boston public spirit. The people take the greatest pride in their
city, its high rank and achievements, and the wealthy and energetic
townsfolk are always alert to extend them. There are more libraries,
schools, colleges, art and scientific collections, museums,
conservatories of music and educational foundations in and near Boston
than in any other American city. Magnificent structures, the homes of
art, science and education, are scattered with prodigality all about.
Next to the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library is the
largest in America. Bostonians love the fine arts, and the many open
spaces and public grounds are adorned with statues of eminent men and
groups representing historical events. The people seem to be always
studying and investigating, the women as well as the men pursuing the
difficult paths of abstruse knowledge, so that armies of them, fully
equipped, scatter over the country to impart the learning of the
"Modern Athens" to less fortunate communities. There are many fine
churches, especially in the newer parts of the West End, whither have
removed into grand temples of modern artistic construction quite a
number of the wealthy congregations of the older town. Boston is also
full of clubs, in endless variety, formed for every conceivable
purpose, and several of them very handsomely housed.
To get available room and facilitate business, the city has gathered
the terminals of all the railways into two enormous stations on the
northern and southern sides of the town, and for nearly a half century
it has been filling-in the fens and lowlands to the westward, so that
now this reclaimed West End is the fashionable section, containing the
finest churches, hotels, and residences. Through this splendid
district extends for over a mile the grand Commonwealth Avenue, two
hundred and forty feet wide, its centre being a tree-embowered park
adorned by statues of Alexander Hamilton, John Glover, William Lloyd
Garrison, and Leif Ericson, and having on either side a magnificent
boulevard. The bordering residences are fronted by delicious gardens,
and at regular intervals fine streets cross at right angles, their
names arranged alphabetically, in proceeding westward, with the
well-known English titles, Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth,
Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford, etc. Parallel to the Avenue
are also laid out Boylston, Marlborough, Newbury and Beacon Streets
through this favorite residential section. Proceeding out Boylston
Street are passed the stately buildings of the Museum of Natural
History, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with twelve
hundred students, the leading institution of its kind in America.
Beyond, at the intersection of Dartmouth Street, is Copley Square,
displaying around it the finest architectural group in the city, five
magnificent buildings, three of them churches. Trinity Episcopal
Church, built on the northern side, in free Romanesque, is formed as a
Latin cross, with a massive central tower, two hundred and ten feet
high. It has elaborate interior decoration and fine windows. The
Public Library, on the southern side, is in Roman Renaissance, two
hundred and twenty-eight by two hundred and twenty-five feet, and
sixty-eight feet high, erected at a cost of nearly $2,400,000. It
contains eight hundred thousand volumes, and the interior is
excellently adapted to its uses, being tastefully adorned. The Second
Unitarian Church, on the northern side of the square, built in 1874,
was the church of the three Mathers, and of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The
Museum of Fine Arts, on the eastern side of the square, is constructed
of red brick and terra-cotta, and contains extensive collections. The
fifth building fronting the square is the "New Old South Church," in
Italian Gothic, with a tower rising two hundred and forty-eight feet.
Beyond this fashionable district, the "Back Bay Fens" have been
skillfully laid out in a series of boulevards and parks, making a
chain extending several miles south and southwest through the suburbs,
Franklin Park, covering nearly a square mile, being the chief. Here,
on grounds with great natural adornments, in Roxbury, Brookline, and
Brighton, is a region of much beauty. The surface is undulating,
finely wooded, dotted with lakes, and displaying many costly suburban
houses, in full glory of garden and foliage. This pleasant region
spreads to Chestnut Hill, where the city has its great water
reservoir, holding eight hundred million gallons, the favorite drive
from Boston being to and around this reservoir, the route giving
splendid views from the hilltop. Jamaica Pond and Jamaica Plain are
near by, two of Boston's attractive cemeteries being beyond the
latter, Mount Hope and Forest Hills. Here is also the famous Arnold
Arboretum, the greatest institution of its kind, now part of the park
system, and having a grand outlook from its central hill. In West
Roxbury is the Martin Luther Orphan Home, which now occupies the noted
"Brook Farm," where a group of cultivated people, led by George
Ripley, and including Hawthorne, Curtis, Dana, Channing, Thoreau,
Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, made their famous attempt to found a
socialistic community in 1841, but found that it would not work. It
was described as an experiment in "plain living and high thinking,"
the articles of association calling it the "Brook Farm Institute of
Agriculture and Education," for the establishment of an "agricultural,
literary, and scientific school or college." Pupils were taken, and in
its most successful period there were about one hundred and fifty
persons in the community; "kitchen and table were in common; very
little help was hired, but philosophers, clergymen and poets worked at
the humblest tasks, milking cows, pitching manure, cleaning stables,
etc., while cultivated women cooked, washed, ironed, and waited at
table; all work, manual or intellectual, was credited to members at a
uniform rate of ten cents an hour." Later, it became a Fourieristic
"phalanstery," under the title of the "Brook Farm Phalanx;" then, in
1845, the chief building burnt down, and financial difficulties
following, the experiment, which had excited world-wide comment, was
abandoned in 1847.