Peculiarities of American Cities. Glazier Willard W.
at the corner of Milk and Washington streets, stands one of the most famous buildings in Boston, and perhaps the most celebrated house of religious worship in the United States. It was founded in 1669, and received the name of the Old South Church. The first building was made of cedar, and stood for sixty years. In 1729 it was taken down, and the present building erected on the same spot. The interior arrangement is described as having been exceedingly quaint, with its pulpit sounding board, its high, square pews, and double tier of galleries. During the Revolution it was frequently used for public meetings, and Faneuil Hall assemblies adjourned to the Old South whenever the size of the crowd demanded it. Here the celebrated "Tea Party" held their meetings, and discussed the measures which resulted in consigning the British tea, together with the hated tax, to the bottom of Boston Harbor. Here Joseph Warren delivered his famous oration on the Boston Massacre, drawing tears from the eyes of even the British soldiery, sent there to intimidate him. In 1775 the edifice was occupied by the British as a place for cavalry drill, and a grog-shop was established in one of the galleries. In 1782 the building was put in repair, and has stood without further change until the present time, nearly a hundred years. In 1872 it was occupied as a Post Office, and has only been vacated this winter. Its day of religious service is doubtless over. It will probably be used for business purposes, but never again as a society sanctuary.
Opposite the south front of the Old South Church, on Milk street, stood the house in which Benjamin Franklin was born. Here, on the seventeenth of January, 1706, the great philosopher was ushered into existence, and on the same day was christened at the Old South. When he was ten years old, he worked with his father in a candle manufactory, on the corner of Union and Hanover streets, at the sign of the Blue Bell. He was afterwards printer's devil for his brother James, and at eighteen established the fourth newspaper printed in this country. It was entitled "The New England Courant."
The first newspaper of Boston was also the first in the colonies, and was printed on a half sheet of Pot paper, in small pica. It was entitled "The Boston News Letter. Published, by authority, from Monday, April seventeenth, to Monday, April twenty-fourth, 1704." John Campbell, a Scotchman and bookseller, was proprietor.
Now the Boston press stands in the front rank of the world's journalism, and is commodiously accommodated; as the elegant buildings of the Transcript, Globe, Journal, Herald and other papers, testify. The Advertiser is the oldest daily paper in the city.
It is impossible to properly describe Boston within the limits of so short a chapter, and only a glance at a few other points of interest will therefore be given.
The City Hall, on School street, is on the site of the house of Isaac Johnson, who lived here in 1630, and who has been styled the founder of Boston. The corner-stone of the new building was laid December twenty-second, 1672. It is of Concord granite, and is in the finest style of modern architecture. Here, under the arching roof of the French dome, the fire-alarm telegraph centres, and the sentinel who stands guard at this important point never leaves his post, night or day. The mysterious signal, though touched in the city's remotest rim, is instantly obeyed, and in less time than it takes to tell it the brave firemen are rushing to the rescue. A fine bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin stands in the inclosure in front of the building.
The Custom House, on State street, is built of granite, even to the roof. It is constructed in the form of a Greek cross, and is surrounded by thirty-two granite columns, a little over five feet in diameter. The site was reclaimed from the tide waters, and the massive building rests upon about three thousand piles. Over a million dollars were expended in its erection.
The Old Granary Burying-ground, once a part of the Common, received its name from a public granary which formerly stood within its limits. Some of the most distinguished dust in history is consigned to its keeping. Paul Revere, Peter Faneuil, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, the victims of the Boston Massacre, the parents of Franklin, the first Mayor of Boston, and a long list of other names famed in their day and ours, lie buried within this ancient ground. Near by, between the Common and the Granary Cemetery, stands the celebrated Park Street Church, of which W. H. H. Murray, the brilliant writer and preacher, was, until lately, the pastor. It used to be known as "brimstone corner." This winter we attended Park Street Church on the same day with the brunette monarch, Kalakaua and suite.
One of the most commodious and elegant stations in New England, or this country, is that of the Boston and Providence Railroad. It is about eight hundred feet in length, and is built of brick, with two shades of sandstone. The track house is seven hundred feet long, covering five tracks, and has a span of one hundred and twenty-five feet. Its cost is somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred thousand dollars. The interior arrangement is quite novel in style. The waiting-rooms open out of an immense central apartment with a balcony reaching around the entire inner circumference. Theatre tickets, flower and cigar stands, a billiard room and a barber shop, are some of the special features of the station. Refreshment rooms and dressing rooms, in oak and crimson, are also an integral part of the building.
Hundreds of interesting places in this singular and devious city of Boston must go unnoticed in these pages. The beautiful Tremont Temple and its Sunday temperance lectures; Music Hall, with its big organ of six thousand pipes, through one of which Henry Ward Beecher is said to have crawled, before its erection; the Parker House, one of the crack hotels of the city; the Revere House, where all the distinguished people stop, with its special suite of rooms upholstered in blue satin, where King Kalakaua smoked his cigars in peace; the beneficent Public Library; the Boston Athenæum, home of art; the Boston Theatre, the new and elegant Globe Theatre, and the suburban limits, including Charlestown and famous Bunker Hill, Cambridge and Harvard University, Mt. Auburn, Dorchester Heights, Roxbury and East Boston, which was formerly known as Noddle's Island, and where now the Cunard line of steamers arrive and depart – all these tempt my pen to linger within their charmed localities. But it is a temptation to be resisted. When, after many weeks' sojourn in the intellectual "Hub," I was at last seated in the outward bound train, ticketed for the west, a regret, born of pleasant associations and a taste of Boston atmosphere, took possession of me. The farewells I uttered held an undertone of pain. But the train sped onward, unheeding, and the city of the harbor seemed to dissolve and disappear in the smoke of her thousand chimneys, like a dream of the night.
CHAPTER III.
BUFFALO
The Niagara Frontier. – Unfortunate Fate of the Eries. – The Battle of Doom. – Times of 1812. – Burning of Buffalo. – Early Names. – Origin of Present Name. – Growth and Population. – Railway Lines. – Queen of the Great Lakes. – Fort Porter and Fort Erie. – International Bridge. – Iron Manufacture. – Danger of the Niagara. – Forest Lawn Cemetery. – Decoration Day. – The Spaulding Monument. – Parks and Boulevard. – Delaware Avenue. – On the Terrace. – Elevator District. – Church and Schools. – Grosvenor Library. – Historical Rooms. – Journalism. – Public Buildings. – City Hall. – Dog-carts and their Attendants.
Buffalo is a kind of half-way house between the East and the West – if anything may be called west this side of the Mississippi River – and it partakes of the characteristics of both sections. It was once the chief trading post on the Niagara frontier, and its vicinity has been the scene of many a hotly contested battle between dusky races now forever lost to this part of the world, and almost forgotten of history. Long ago, the Eries, or the Cat Nation, lived on the southern shores of the same lake whose waters now lap the wharves of Buffalo. They left it the heritage of their name, and that is all.
The race, in its lack of calculation, did not greatly differ from many isolated instances of the paler race of mankind around us now; for it died of a too o'erreaching ambition. Jealous of the distant fame of the Five Nations, the Eries set out to surprise and conquer them in deadly battle, and themselves met the fate they had meant for the Iroquois. They were exterminated; and few returned to the squaws in their lonely wigwams, to tell the tale of doom.
The noble race of Senecas succeeded the Cat Nation on the shores of Lake Erie, and after them, from across the great seas, came the dominant, pushing, civilizing Anglo-Saxons.
When the war of 1812 broke out, Buffalo was an exceedingly infant city, and did not promise well at all.