Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts

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Other places are also named Beacon Hill.

Beacon Hill is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, covering approximately one square mile (2.6 km²) and home to about 10,000 people. It is a wealthy neighborhood of Federal-style rowhouses, with some of the highest property values in the United States. It is known for its narrow, gas-lit streets and brick sidewalks. 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 part of the Back Bay at the foot of the hill. The Beacon Hill area is located just north of the Boston Common and the Boston Public Garden and is generally bounded 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." The entire hill was once owned by William Blaxton, the first 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. 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. 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. Beacon Hill was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1962.

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

Notable residents

Houses on Louisburg Square.

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

Louisa May Alcott, 10 Louisburg Square
William Blaxton, original owner of Beacon Hill
Edwin Booth, 29A Chestnut St.
Charles Bulfinch
John Singleton Copley
Robert Frost, 88 Mount Vernon St., 1941
John Hancock
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Julia Ward Howe
John Kerry
Henry Cabot Lodge
James Russell Lowell
Robert Lowell
Harrison Gray Otis
Sylvia Plath
William Prescott
David Lee Roth
Anne Sexton
Carly Simon
Charles Sumner
Daniel Webster
Jack Welch
Teresa Heinz
Uma Thurman

Sites of interest

Acorn Street, built in the late 1820s.

Sites of interest in Beacon Hill include:

Massachusetts State House (Beacon Street): Home of the state's government
The Unitarian Universalist Association: Headquarters of the international, liberal religious denomination, next door to the Massachusetts State House
Louisburg Square
Nearby Acorn Street, a narrow lane paved with cobblestones, often mentioned as the most picturesque (or the most frequently photographed) street in the United States.
Mt. Vernon Street: "The finest address in all America"
Bull and Finch Bar (Beacon Street): Source of inspiration and exterior shots for the Cheers television show.
Charles Street Meeting House
The Club of Odd Volumes (Mount Vernon Street): Bibliophiles club, library, and archive
Suffolk University
Suffolk University Law School
Park Street Church
The route taken by the fictional Mrs. Mallard and her children, depicted in Make Way for Ducklings, a book for children by Robert McCloskey. The story is commemorated every year in May by a parade through Beacon Hill to the Boston Public Garden.
Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial: Intersection of Beacon Street and Park Street, opposite the Massachusetts State House
Museum of African American History, New England’s largest museum dedicated to preserving, conserving and interpreting the contributions of African Americans, located at the African Meeting House.
Nichols House Museum, a historic 1804 townhouse
Harrison Gray Otis House, 1796. The Otis House also houses Historic New England's headquarters.

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

Notable addresses in Beacon Hill

Beacon Street

10 1/2 Beacon Street - Boston Athenæum
14 Beacon Street - Congregational House, site of the Congregational Library and City Mission Society
22 Beacon Street - built in 1804 by Charles Bulfinch; now houses the Beacon Hill studio for Fox 25 News (WFXT) with a strategic rooftop camera position
25 Beacon Street - headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association, an international liberal religious denomination
33 Beacon Street - resident George Parkman
34 1/2 Beacon Street - erstwhile headquarters of Family Service of Greater Boston, a private, nonprofit social service agency founded in 1835
39-40 Beacon Street - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow courted and married Fanny Appleton
42-43 Beacon Street - painter John Singleton Copley had a house on this site, as did David Sears II, whose house is now the home of the Somerset Club
45 Beacon Street - 3rd Harrison Gray Otis house, now American Meteorological Society
54-55 Beacon Street - resident William Prescott had William Makepeace Thackeray as houseguest

Bowdoin Street

35 Bowdoin Street - Church of Saint John the Evangelist
122 Bowdoin Street - nominal resident, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (registered voting address)

Brimmer Street

30 Brimmer Street - Church of the Advent (official site)
44 Brimmer Street - resident Samuel Eliot Morison

Cambridge Street

Massachusetts General Hospital - Bulfinch Pavilion and Ether Dome
100 Cambridge Street, Upper Plaza - Garden of Peace
131 Cambridge Street - Old West Church
141 Cambridge Street - 1st Harrison Gray Otis house, architect Charles Bulfinch

Charles Street

44A Charles Street - Mary Sullivan, last victim of the Boston Strangler, murdered here
Fire House - filming location of the television series "Spenser for Hire" (first season)

Chestnut Street

6 Chestnut Street - Beacon Hill Friends House
13, 15, 17 Chestnut Street - architect Charles Bulfinch
18 Chestnut Street - birthplace of poet Robert Lowell
50 Chestnut Street - resident Francis Parkman, historian
57A Chestnut Street - Harvard Musical Association

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.

Irving Street

58 Irving Street - Birthplace of Charles Sumner, abolitionist, U.S. Senator.

Joy Street

46 Joy Street - African Meeting House
67 Joy Street - Resident Rebecca Lee Crumpler, prominent physician, considered to be the first black woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S.

Louisburg Square

4 Louisburg Square - resident William Dean Howells while editor of the Atlantic Monthly
10 Louisburg Square - residents Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott and family
19 Louisburg Square - residents John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry
20 Louisburg Square - singer Jenny Lind married Otto Goldschmidt here

Mount Vernon Street

32 Mount Vernon Street - residents Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and his wife Julia Ward Howe
41 Mount Vernon Street - home of Beacon Press, a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association, that published the Senator Mike Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers in 1971
45-47 Mount Vernon Street - site of Portia School of Law, founded for and by women in 1908
51-57 Mount Vernon Street - architect Charles Bulfinch
57 Mount Vernon Street - residents Daniel Webster and later Charles Francis Adams
72 Mount Vernon Street - erstwhile site of the Boston University School of Theology
77 Mount Vernon Street - House of the Club of Odd Volumes
85 Mount Vernon Street - 2nd Harrison Gray Otis house, architect Charles Bulfinch
87 Mount Vernon Street - architect Charles Bulfinch
127 Mount Vernon Street - Home of the Real World: Boston and Spenser for Hire, former Boston Fire Department station.

Phillips Street

2 Phillips Street - Resident John Coburn
18 Phillips Street - Vilna Shul, now the Boston Center For Jewish Heritage
41 Phillips Street - Erstwhile site of the Northeast Institute of Industrial Technology
66 Phillips Street - Hayden House, associated with the Abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad
83 Phillips Street - Resident John Sweat Rock, prominent black dentist, attorney, and abolitionist activist

Pinckney Street

15 Pinckney Street - a site of Elizabeth Peabody's Kindergarten

Other residents

Writers Brad Meltzer and Judd Winick lived in a tiny apartment in Beacon Hill in 1993 before they achieved success. While living there, Winick developed his first successful comic strip and Meltzer worked at Games Magazine by day while working on his first novel at night.

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
Joy Street Frances Parkinson Keyes, 1950, fiction.