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 streets, brick sidewalks, and gas-lit streets.

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 originally 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 in the local news media to refer to the state government or the legislature.

Notable residents

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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

Sites of interest

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Sites of interest in Beacon Hill include:

• Massachusetts State House (Beacon Street): Home of the state's government
• Louisburg Square
• Nearby Acorn Street, a narrow lane paved with cobblestones, often mentioned as the most picturesque (or the most frequently photographed) street in Boston
• 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
• Suffolk University
• Suffolk University Law School
• 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 Afro-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
• Otis House Museum, 1796. The Otis House also houses Historic New England's headquarters.

Notable addresses in Beacon Hill

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Beacon Street

• 10 1/2 Beacon Street - Boston Athenæum
• 14 Beacon Street - Congregational House, site of the Congregational Library and City Mission Society
• 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

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 John Grimes, prominent black clergyman associated with the Underground Railroad and Abolitionist movement

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
• 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
• 85 Mount Vernon Street - 2nd Harrison Gray Otis house, architect Charles Bulfinch
• 87 Mount Vernon Street - architect Charles Bulfinch
• 127 Mount Vernon Street - Real World Boston House

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.

See also

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• Boston By Foot for guided architectural tours
• Cambridge Railroad

Books

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• Beacon Hill: The Life & Times of a Neighborhood, Moying Li-Marcus, 2002. ISBN 1555535437
• Beacon Hill: A Walking Tour, A. McVoy McIntyre, 1975. ISBN 0316556009

External links

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• Beacon Hill Online
• Black Beacon Hill
• Vilna Shul
• Back Bay - Beacon Hill 2000 Census of Population and Housing
• Beacon Hill Quick-Walk

History

• The Book of Boston, 1916 by Robert Shackleton, text and photos online
• Colonial Society discussion of the development of Beacon Hill.

Boston neighborhoods | Registered Historic Places in Massachusetts

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