Boston: More Stories
The molasses flood, the Cocoanut Grove fire, the Brink’s robbery, the Gardner Museum, Fenway Park and a bridge measured in Smoots.
24 places
Abiel Smith School
The case over a five-year-old sent to this school was still being cited against Black Americans fifty years on.
Arnold Arboretum
The plant hunter who broke his leg for a lily the Arboretum did not enter in its collection for more than a century.
Boston Athenaeum
A robber's last wish, and the man he tried to rob.
Boston Marathon Finish Line
A woman ran this race in 1966 and the director said she had not.
Boston Massacre Site
What a dying man told his surgeon, and what John Adams did with it.
Boylston Station, First Subway
The first subway in the country cost part of a graveyard and a street corner before it carried anyone.
Cocoanut Grove Fire Plaque
A boy with a match, a door that jammed, and a plaque that had to move.
Copp's Hill Burying Ground
Two brothers, one smuggler and one customs man. Boston made a hero of the first and tarred the second.
Fenway Park and Jersey Street
Boston had Jackie Robinson on this field first, and came last.
Fort Independence, Castle Island
A private called Perry, a lieutenant walled up alive, and what became of him.
Great Molasses Flood Site
A company hid a leak with a coat of paint, and a neighborhood paid for it.
Hancock Tower, 200 Clarendon
The falling windows were the problem Boston could see.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Thirteen works gone in eighty-one minutes, and the case is still open.
John Harvard Statue, Harvard Yard
Of John Harvard's gift to the college, one book got away from the fire.
Kennedy Birthplace, 83 Beals Street
The president's mother furnished this house from memory, and a firebomb left evidence that disagreed.
Lewis and Harriet Hayden House
A Beacon Hill boarding house, and what its keepers were ready to do to keep it safe.
Longfellow House, Washington's Headquarters
The child born enslaved here who wanted wages from George Washington, and the crypt he chose at the end.
Malcolm X and Ella Little-Collins House
Her own savings for Mecca went to her brother, and then his funeral and his debts came to her too.
Old City Hall
A mayor who went to prison, kept his pay, and then made a rival with one sentence.
Parker House Hotel
Two brothers in one city that week. One had voted for Lincoln. The other, one man said, was practicing with a pistol.
Smoot Marks, Harvard Bridge
A fraternity prank from 1958 that ended up built into the sidewalk.
The Brink's Building
The perfect crime of 1950, undone by a failed hit and a shattered wristwatch.
The Ether Dome
One painless operation, several men claiming it, and a quarrel that ended in a jail cell and an asylum.
The Mapparium
A stained-glass world that its owners decided never to correct.