Bunker Hill Monument : All 294 Steps and 221'

After a fun and exciting trip into the harbor on one of the Super Duck Tours we headed up the hill to a historically significant location known as Breeds Hill.  The battle is popularly known as the Battle of Bunker Hill while the majority of the fighting actually occurred on Breeds Hill.

While technically a defeat the American's inflicted such significant casualties against the British that it provided a necessary confidence boost to the colonialists. It is said that over 1000 British died while only a little over 100 American's died. This showed the inexperienced American's that their patriotic dedication could overcome superior British military might

The confusion in the name is a result of orders to build fortifications on Bunker Hill but the men built instead on the smaller Breeds Hill because it was closer to Boston. To honor the dedication of the Patriots a monument was built in 1794. It stood only 18 feet and made of a gilded wooden pillar.  In 1823 a group of prominent citizens decided to build a more permanent and significantly larger monument and formed the Bunker Hill Monument Association. They selected 40yo architect Solomon Willard. Construction began in 1827 and would take 16 years to complete.

The monument was not only a symbol of National Pride but also a feat of great engineering.  The first commercial Railway in America was built to transport the granite to build the monument from the quarries in Quincy. They also built a special hoist apparatus to life the 5-ton blocks into place.

19 Years after the Association formed and 16 years of construction the monument was dedicated by Statesman and orator Daniel Webster  on June 17, 1843 in the presence of the then President John Tyler and the last living veteran of the battle. The monument caps out at a height of 221'5". At its base the walls are 6' thick and at the top only 2' thick. At the top of the Obelisk is a 18' tall chamber with viewing windows. It has 294 steps with are each 8" tall. Admission is free but you must get tickets at the Adjacent Bunker Hill Museum before climbing the 196' to reach the viewing chamber. It was a fun experience and provided amazing views of the Boston skyline and the surrounding areas.

I'll admit that after racing to the top my legs were a giggly. As such I would recommend that you may want to pace your ascent to the top. It also didn't help that it was 89-degrees out.  It is a must do for anyone visiting the Charlestown area.

Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (ICA)

This past weekend during our mid-winter heat wave (the temps were above freezing) I decided to emerge from hibernation just long enough to enjoy all the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (ICA) had to offer.

Designed by award winning architects Diller Scofidio and Renfro the 65,000 sqft building housing the ICA is a masterpiece of its own. The building was designed to echo the appearance of the nearby gantry cranes. It is 4 floors designed for galleries, education, theatre and dining/shopping. Its appearance has attracted both awards and criticism but either way it has definitely made a splash in the revitalized seaport district.

There were four exhibitions on display at the ICA Boston during my last visit.

When the Stars Begin to Fall: Featured 35 artists who share an interest in the American South, this exhibition explores the relationship between contemporary art, black life, and “outsider” art. Some of the pieces really caught my eye like Je Minter’s work titled “Housewife”. Made from vintage Kirby vacuum cleaner heads and a mannequin it spoke volumes of about the gender fight amongst southerners.

I also enjoyed the geometric work titled “The Eyes of the Universe” by Henry Ray Clark that made you feel watched no matter where in the room you might be. I think it is symbolic of the lack of privacy people have today even in places they call their own.

While there we got to listen to and interact with guest speaker and assistant professor of African and Afro-American & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University Jasmin E Johnson. Her interactive gallery talk discussed many topics from black life, slavery, and the black rights movement and how the south has shaped black history. It was an informative and educational conversation.

The next exhibit was not only a visual delight but a full immersion of sight and sound. Titled Sonic Arboretum we were immersed into an environment where the sounds of Andrew Bird added another layer to the beauty of the colorful horn speaker’s collection by artist Ian Schneller. The music makes you want to close your eyes and imagine the world where the symphony might exist but to do so would rob you of the visual delight of the hardware producing it.

The hardware is a unique thing of its own. Ian Schneller’s creations are sold and branded under the Specimen Products name and the horns are made from recycled newspaper print, dryer lint, baking soda and shellac before being mounted to the also handmade tube amplifiers. The quality of the sound and the visual appeal make them both a sight and sound to be remembered.

Before taking in the next exhibition we took a few minutes to enjoy the beauty that is the view of Boston Harbor from the panoramic windows of the Founders Gallery. This breathtaking room measures 80feet long and 33ft wide and has floor to ceiling windows.

The next more unusual exhibition was that of Adriana Varejão one of Brazil’s leading artists. This exhibition is her first solo museum show in the United States and embodies a macabre artistry. It is her interpretation of cultural cannibalism. Some of her works like “Corner Jerked-Beef Ruin” mix the simplicity of a while tiled wall and the gruesomeness of a marbled meat interior.  

Other works like her “Wall with incisions a la Fontana” reflects to me an anger and frustration with the purity that a clean white tiled wall represents. The incisions are not clean and crisp but jagged and made as if by a passion gone awry.

Another piece that at first I thought was a tattoo map turned out to be the skin fileted and laid flat called “Exploratory Laparotomy II” for me it was too much of a visceral image to be appreciated. All I could think of was an autopsy.

The last gallery on current exhibition was ICA Collections: In Context which featured works that explore social and political issues while transforming the genre of landscape by the expansion of the medium to include drawing, photography, sculpture, and video.

With the impressive architecture of the facility, the educated and thought provoking gallery talk by Asst Prof Jasmin E Johnson and impressive collection of contemporary art the ICA lived up to expectation in causing the mind to broaden its vision and see past the normalcy of our lives. The sounds and sights of the Sonic Arboretum took you to a place of peace and tranquility while Adriana Varejão’s work elicited the anger feel anger and violence everyone sometimes feels. The vistas of the Founders Gallery eased the mind and allowed you to quietly contemplate the questions in your mind. All in all you left feeling more enlightened then when you arrived.

Mapparium @ Christian Science Center

Located in the Christian Science Center’s Mary Baker Eddy Library is an amazing 3 story tall glass globe. Inspired by architect Chester Lindsay Churchill to represent the Christian Science Monitor’s global awareness and reach he constructed this 30-foot diameter glass globe based on the Rand McNally Political map of the time.

It is frozen in time in 1935 when Thailand was known as Siam and much of Africa was under colonial rule. The globe is made of 608 stained glass panels and was designed to allow the countries to be viewed in accurate geographical relationship to each other.

Guests of the Mapparium are grouped together in small batches and taken into the mapparium for a 20 minute long stay where they enjoy a light and sound show. Guests walk across a glass bridge suspended in the middle of the globe where it’s unusual acoustics allow visitors voices to be amplified.

They do not allow pictures from within the globe since the map is copyrighted by Rand McNally but I couldn’t resist sneaking a few for my blog. It’s a great location to visit and see what the world looked like in 1935.

Salem Witch Museum

Housed in an old church located just off Salem Common is the Salem Witch Museum. It calls itself Salem’s Most Visited Museum although I cannot figure out why. Other than its imposing gothic exterior it has little else to offer.

It isn’t your typical museum filled with priceless one of a kind artifacts. No this museum is instead a series of two historical presentations. Its only artifact of any historical significance is reportedly an architectural header bean from the original 1692 Salem jail. 

The first presentation is done with the use of 13 dioramas built into the walls of a large auditorium. Visitors sit in uncomfortable chairs set up in rows on either side. As the lights dim each of these diorama’s representing the major events of the 1692 witchcraft trials are lit as a recorded narration of events is played. Like the story these dioramas are showing their age.

The second presentation is a guided tour partially given by a member of the staff and explores how witches have been portrayed throughout history. This presentation includes photos on the walls of various witches both real and created by Hollywood as well as more dioramas with pre-recorded audio played through the speakers.

The whole tour of the museum lasted about 45 minutes before we were unceremoniously dumped into the museums gift store filled with chachkies and other worthless overpriced trinkets. It was certainly nothing to write about or suggest to your friends and while they make the claim to be the most visited museum in Salem I’d venture to guess that is nothing more than a clever marketing ploy to get you in. 

House of Seven Gables (Salem, MA)

The Turner-Ingersoll Mansion built in 1667 was the colonial home to three generations of the prominent Turner family, then the family of a successful farmer turned seaman named Samuel Ingersoll and the entrepreneurial Upton family before  finally being purchased by Caroline Emmerton who would turn it into the museum it is today.

It is known as the House of Seven Gables and being the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book of the same name. Originally built for wealthy Capt. John Turner. The original structure was a 2 room 2 ½ story post medieval home sporting a massive central chimney. Over the years the home would grow. First Capt Turner added a new kitchen and lean-to and then later a spacious 2 ½ story extension to the front of the house including a new parlor on the first floor and bedroom on the second. The new addition sported higher ceilings and was finished to reflect the wealth of the family.

His son would eventually inherit the home and he too was a successful merchant trading with Europe. The added wealth of the family would lead to more renovations and a change in style. To maintain his position in the community he remodeled the house in the Georgian style and added many features such as wooden paneling inside.

When he died in 1742 he left to his son John III a fortune estimated at 3.2 million dollars in today’s money and made him the 3rd wealthiest person in Salem at the time. Very few changes were made to the house under John III and over the next 40 years the family fortune dwindled due to being a loyalist and heavy gambling.  The house too would fall victim and would be lost.

The home was then purchased by the Ingersolls who remodeled it once more and removed several of the gables, replaced the porches and added Georgian trim to keep up with the newer houses being built in Salem at the time. Samuel Ingersoll was a former farmer who had become successful as a sea captain and West Indies trader and married Susannah Hathorne.  It was Susannah who introduced her cousin Nathanial Hawthorne to the home. In 1851 he would write a book called the House of Seven Gables.

In 1883 with the Ingersoll family fortune lost the house was sold to the Uptons. With the popularity of the book and the fictitious Pyncheon family they allowed visitors for 25 cents per person to enjoy tours of the home.  The Upton Family also sold a line of painted souvenir chine  in a small showp on the Turner Street side of the home to attract patrons to their version of the Hepzibah’s cent shop.

In 1908 it was sold one final time to Miss Emmerton who had inherited a large fortune from her grandfather John Bertram a successful maritime trader. It was with her that the home was restored and through charity she established the home as a philanthropic charity focused on supporting and improving the welfare of foreign born workers who had moved to Salem and helping them transition by teaching them American ways of English, woodworking, sewing and childcare.

In 1910 he established the House of Seven Gables Settlement Association which operates the museum today. Visitors like us pay $12.50 per person for a guided tour of the home. With the history of the home behind us let’s now take the tour. Note that pictures are not allowed on the tour and while I did take a few I managed to find some of the others online.  Our tour started in the kitchen of the home and we were found ourselves transported into a 17th century kitchen whose hearth is complete with cauldrons, toaster and bedwarmer.

While we were in the kitchen area, we took a peek into "Hepzibah's cent shop". While not original to the house it was added to recreate the cent shop from the book to increase appeal of the home to visitors. It has been painstakingly recreated right down to the last spool of thread, curl of ribbon, and gingerbread elephant

 

From the kitchen, we next passed through the door into the dining room. You can tell from the ceiling height that it was part of the original 1668 dwelling. Our guide made mention of the paint in this room. It was a vibrant green called "verdigris". It was made using copper and would have been a very expensive paint in the time. The room also featured a portrait over the dresser of a younger Susannah Ingersoll, Nathaniel Hawthorne's second cousin and fourth owner of the house.

To the left of the fireplace in the dining room is a small arched door that when opened looks more like a storage closet then the entry to the secret staircase mentioned in the book. It too was not part of the original design of the home but was added in keeping with the book written by Hawthorne.

 



For those looking for a bit of adventure we were able to climb the stairwell 2 ½ stories. It was a snug fit for sure but each and every one of us on the tour made our way up the rickety stairs to the attic room of Clifford Pyncheon.

Next we made our way into the attic which retained its original appearance and was setup as an example of where and how servants might have lived in the house. Our guide describe this as the coldest room of the house depending on the season. She also explained that the crumbling wall was an early example of horse hair plaster used as insulation. It failed to work well because of the severity of the temperature changes and crumbled.

Next using a diorama/model our tour guide demonstrated how the house had changed from its original structure to the mansion today with the many modifications and additions. She also took the time to explain which of the peaks formed the 7 gables.

Next we visited the Parlor chamber with its high ceilings and ornate bed with linens.  It was where the Capt. after gaining much wealth in 1677 made one of his many additions. Such a room and bed in these times was very unusual and demonstrated great wealth.



Next we descended down a more formal stairwell and headed to the Hall. It was the most formal room in the house and is where guest would have been entertained.  On either side of its fireplace are identical doors. The one on the right reveled an elegant built in cabinet functioning as a bar. Its intricate carvings and choice of color would certainly have displayed the family’s success.

This room marked the end of the inside tour. Our guide next took us outside to visit the ground as we made our way to the red house across the elegant courtyard.

The Nathaniel Hawthorne Birthplace is now immediately adjacent to the House of the Seven Gables, and also covered by the admission fee isn’t where it once was. Although it is indeed the house in which Hawthorne was born and lived to the age of four, the house was sited a few blocks away on Union Street when he inhabited it.

Today its original location is a parking lot and the building would have been lost if not for the hard work of the association. The Nathaniel Hawthorn home is a self-guided tour. We didn’t spend much time here as the rooms were pretty bare with the exception of some period furniture and anecdotal bits of information. It too had a beautiful hearth in its kitchen with all the wears you would expect to have found in a home of its time.

Once through this small and modest house we returned to the grounds where we enjoyed the view of Salem harbor from the front lawn. We also took some great pictures of the Houses from the central courtyard.

On March 29, 2007, the House of the Seven Gables Historic District was designated a National Historic Landmark District. It’s an amazing home with an even more amazing story. It is a must visit for anyone making the trip to Salem.