The Rough Guide to Boston (Rough Guide Boston)

319 Pages·2011·6.44 MB·English

by  Sarah Hull

THE ROUGH GUIDE to
Boston
Colonial sights • Café culture • Historic day-trips
BOSTON 99
3
93 1A
1
3
9
2
4
90 Logan
90 Airport
1
5
Back Bay Fens 6
7
9
28
Olmsted
Jamaica Park
Pond
8
Dorchester Bay
Franklin
Arnold Park
1
Arboretum
0 1 mile
1 Downtown 6 The South End
2 The North End 7 Kenmore Square and
3 Charlestown the Fenway
4 Beacon Hill and the West End 8 The southern districts
5 Back Bay 9 Cambridge
About this book
Rough Guides are designed to be good to read and easy to use. The book is
divided into the following sections and you should be able to find whatever
you need in one of them.
The introductory colour section is designed to give you a feel for Boston,
suggesting when to go and what not to miss, and includes a full list of
contents. Then comes basics, for pre-departure information and other
practicalities.
The city chapters cover each area of Boston in depth, giving comprehensive
accounts of all the attractions, while the listings section gives you the
lowdown on accommodation, eating, shopping and more. The out of the city
chapters describe excursions further afield.
Contexts fills you in on history, architecture, literature and books, while
individual colour sections introduce sport and Yankee cooking.
The book concludes with all the small print, including details of how to send
in updates and corrections, and a comprehensive index.
This sixth edition published March 2011.
The publishers and authors have done their best to ensure the accuracy and currency of all the
information in The Rough Guide to Boston, however, they can accept no responsibility for any loss,
injury, or inconvenience sustained by any traveller as a result of information or advice contained
in the guide.
Boston
Harbor
Charles River
The Rough Guide to
Boston
written and researched by
Sarah Hull
www.roughguides.com
Contents
Colour section 1 M Shopping .......................... 184
N Sports and outdoor
Introduction ............................... 4 activities ............................ 195
What to see................................ 6 O Kids’ Boston ..................... 202
When to go ................................ 9 P Festivals and events ......... 205
Things not to miss ................... 11
Out of the City 209
Basics 17
U Around Boston .................. 211
Getting there ............................ 19 a Cape Cod.......................... 227
Arrival ...................................... 22 b Nantucket ......................... 244
City transport ........................... 24 c Martha’s Vineyard ............. 252
Tours ........................................ 27
The media . 30 Contexts 263
Travel essentials ...................... 31
History ................................... 265
The City 37 Architecture and urban
planning .............................. 271
1 Downtown Boston .............. 39 Literary Boston ...................... 274
2 The North End ..................... 63 Books .................................... 276
3 Charlestown ........................ 70 Local accent and jargon......... 281
4 Beacon Hill and the West
End ..................................... 76 Small print & Index 283
5 Back Bay ............................ 85
6 The South End .................... 94
7 Kenmore Square, the Fenway The sporting life
and west ........................... 100 colour section
8 The southern districts ....... 109 following p.80
9 Cambridge ........................ 117
Listings 133 Yankee cooking (and
drinking) colour section
G Accommodation ................ 135 following p.176
H Eating ................................ 144
I Drinking............................. 162
KJ PNeigrfhotrlimfei.n..g.. .a..r.t.s.. .a..n..d.. .fi..lm... .... 16794 CAMBRIDGEHaYravradrd Cfoollolowuirn gm pa.p2s9 6
L Gay Boston ....................... 180
3
왗왗 Downtown Boston 왗 Beacon Hill
MASSACHUSETTS AVE
PEABODY ST
| CONTENTS |
CAMBRIDGE ST
Introduction to
Boston
Boston is as close to the Old World as the New World
gets, an American city that proudly trades on its colonial
past, having served a crucial role in the country’s
development from a few wayward pilgrims right through
to the Revolutionary War. It occasionally takes this a bit
too far – what’s a faded relic anywhere else becomes a
plaque-honoured tourist site here – but none of it detracts
from the city’s overriding historic charm, nor from its
present-day energy.
The new millennium has seen a major renaissance in Boston.
The completion of the seemingly never-ending Big Dig
project, the Red Sox triumph in the 2004 and 2007 World
Series, the Patriots’ repeated Super Bowl victories and
the frequent openings of new restaurants, bars, clubs and
boutiques have all contributed to the feeling that Boston’s
future is even stronger than its past.
Despite the occasional wearisome touch, no other city in America gives a
better feel for the events and persons behind the nation’s birth, all played out
in Boston’s wealth of emblematic and evocative colonial-era sights, conven-
iently linked by the self-guided walking tour (one of a handful in the city)
known as the Freedom Trail. As well, the city’s cafés and shops, its attractive
public spaces, and the diversity of its neighbourhoods – student hives, ethnic
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enclaves and stately districts of preserved townhouses – are just as alluring as
its historic sites.
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
Boston is also at the centre of the American university system: more
than sixty colleges call the area home, including illustrious Harvard and
MIT, in the neighbouring city of Cambridge, just across the Charles
River. This academic connection has played a key part in the city’s long
left-leaning political tradition, which has spawned, most famously, the
Kennedy family. Steeped in Puritan roots, the districts around Boston
Common still exude an almost small-town atmosphere, and, until the past
decade or so, were relatively unmarred by chain stores and fast-food joints.
Meanwhile, groups of Irish and Italian descent have carved out authentic
and often equally unchanged communities in areas like the North End,
Charlestown and South Boston.
Today, Boston’s relatively small size – both physically and in terms of
population (twentieth among US cities) – and its provincial feel actually
serve to the city’s advantage. Though it has expanded significantly through
landfills and annexation since it was settled in 1630, it has never lost its
core, which remains a tangle of streets over old cowpaths clustered around
Boston Common (which was itself originally used as cattle pasture).
Delightfully, this centre can really only be explored properly on foot; for
even as Boston has evolved from busy port to blighted city to the rejuve-
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nated and prosperous place it is today, it has remained, fundamentally, a
city on a human scale.
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
왖 Boston is known for its Irish pubs
What to see
he city’s epicentre is Boston Common, a large public green (and the
country’s first public park) that orients Downtown and is near many
of Boston’s most historic sights, including the Old State House, the
TOld Granary Burying Ground and the Old South Meeting House.
Little, however, captures the spirit of the city better than nearby Faneuil Hall,
the so-called “Cradle of Liberty,” and the always-animated Quincy Market,
adjacent to the hall. Due north, an incomparable sense of Boston’s original
layout can be found in the compact, seventeenth-century Blackstone Block.
Boston’s waterfront, on the edge of Downtown, ofers its fair share of diver-
sions, many ideal for travelling families; the action is centred on Long Wharf.
Due east of the waterfront lies the rapidly developing Seaport District, home
to a number of seafood restaurants as well as historic Boston icons like the
larger-than-life Hood Milk Bottle (squarely in front of the Children’s Museum)
and the glossy Institute of Contemporary Art.
The North End, modern Boston’s Little Italy, occupies the northeast corner
of the peninsula, and was cut of from the rest of the city by the old elevated
I-93 before the completion of the main section of the Big Dig in 2006. It’s
home to a few notable relics, such as Old North Church and the Paul Revere
House, and boasts an animated streetlife that’s fuelled, in large part, by
6
왖 Park Street Church
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
the strong cups of espresso that
are profered in its numerous The Big Dig
Italian cafés. Just across Boston In a city whose roads follow the
Harbor from the North End logic of colonial cowpaths, the added
confusion wreaked by Boston’s
lies Charlestown, the quiet
“Big Dig” highway reconstruction
berth of the world’s oldest
project – the largest and most
commissioned warship, the USS
expensive in US history – soured the
Constitution, as well as the site of
idea of driving here for more than a
the Bunker Hill Monument, decade. Thankfully, the final phase,
an obelisk commemorating the landscaping the space formerly
famous battle that bolstered occupied by the unsightly elevated
Central Artery (I-93), was completed
American morale in the fight
in 2007. The Big Dig’s initial budget
for independence.
of $2.6 billion may have more than
North of the Common,
quadrupled, but the project – as most
vintage gaslights and red-brick Bostonians will tell you – was worth
Federalist townhouses line the both the cost and the wait. Along
streets of Beacon Hill, the with pumping billions of construction
dollars into the city, the plan birthed
city’s most exclusive residen-
new structures like the Leonard P.
tial neighbourhood; it’s
Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge (pictured
anchored by the gold-domed
below) and freed up 150 acres of land
State House, designed, along
for park and recreational use, while
with numerous area houses, by supplying soil to cap landfills where
Charles Bulfinch. Charles Street toxins once seeped into Boston Harbor.
runs south from the hill and Visit Wwww.bigdig.com, which has all
the history, trivia, artwork and gossip
separates Boston Common from
connected with the project; you can
the Public Garden, which
learn, among other impressive figures,
marks the eastern edge of Back
that during the Dig more earth was
Bay, a similarly well-heeled moved than during the construction of
neighbourhood that features the Great Pyramids.
opulent rowhouses alongside
modern landmarks such as the
John Hancock Tower, New
England’s tallest skyscraper. The
neighbourhood also hosts some
of the city’s best shopping along
Newbury Street. Additionally,
the hip enclave of the South
End, known for its restau-
rants and streetlife, as well as
the ornate ironwork gracing its
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well-maintained homes, is also
worth a visit.
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
The Cape and beyond
If Boston is New England’s heart, then Cape Cod is the region’s
well-tanned arm. For generations, Bostonians have emerged from the
city’s arctic winters eager to bask in the Cape’s three hundred miles
of shoreline. While the tone of this 63-mile peninsula varies greatly –
from the old-money vibe of Chatham to the raucous good time of
gay-friendly Provincetown – its beauty rarely wavers, and your own
little piece of paradise is never far. Out on the water, Martha’s Vineyard
and Nantucket offer enticements of their own, with immaculate
beaches complemented by breezy heaths and moors. The Vineyard
is the more relaxed of the two islands, known for its endearing
gingerbread cottages, vintage carousel (the oldest in the country) and
diversity of its residents. Tiny Nantucket gets teased for her hoity-toity
attitude (“those pants aren’t pink, they’re ‘Nantucket reds’”), but it’s
still a bright spot, defined by its storied whaling history and rows of
silvery clapboard cottages.
The student domains of Kenmore Square and the Fenway are found west
of Back Bay and the South End: the former is largely overrun with college
kids from nearby Boston University; the latter spreads west of Massachusetts
Avenue and southwest along Huntington Avenue, and is home to heavy-
weight local institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum and Fenway Park. Below all these neighbourhoods are
Boston’s vast southern districts, home to the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum and the southerly links in Frederick Law Olmsted’s
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series of parks, known as the Emerald Necklace; it includes the spectacular
Arnold Arboretum as well as Franklin Park, setting for the Franklin Zoo.
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO