#ACORN STREET BOSTON WINDOWS#

And if you’re looking for a quiet place away from campus to study, the Athenaeum offers day passes for $40. The library also offers film screenings, poetry readings, lectures, and musical performances, which are open to the public. The number of people in a tour is limited, so it’s best to book early. The Athenaeum is a members-only library, but the public is allowed on the first floor and can take guided art and architecture tours (find dates and times here).

#ACORN STREET BOSTON WINDOWS#

The building’s large Palladian windows overlook the Granary Burying Ground, where some of Boston’s most prominent early citizens are buried. The Athenaeum is furnished with oriental rugs, oil paintings, sculptures, and fresh flower arrangements, making you feel as if you’ve stepped into someone’s stately home. Boston Athenaeumįounded in 1807, the Boston Athenaeum boasts approximately 600,000 volumes its holdings include vast collections in subjects such as Boston, Massachusetts, and New England history as well as English and American literature. Find more information about tour options, times, and cost here. Guided Freedom Trail tours meet in front of the Visitor Information Center on the Common. You can take a self-guided tour using a downloadable map or smartphone app. The trail, marked with a wide red painted line, winds through several neighborhoods, including the North End, the waterfront, and Charlestown. The 2.5-mile Freedom Trail begins at the Common and leads visitors to 16 historic sites, among them King’s Chapel, Faneuil Hall, and the Bunker Hill Monument.

During the summer months, there’s an old-fashioned carousel (rides are $3 for three minutes), and visitors can cool off by dipping their feet in the adjacent Frog Pond, which in winter is transformed into a popular ice-skating rink.

Today, this 50-acre green oasis is the site of many cultural events. It began as 44 acres held in common by Puritan colonists as grazing land for their livestock. Photo by Cydney Scott Boston Commonīoston Common is the oldest public park in the country. Below, we’ve put together a list of places you won’t want to miss. But the neighborhood also offers some affordable (or free) pleasures. Pricey boutiques and antiques stores line Charles Street. Today, Beacon Hill is one of the city’s most exclusive residential neighborhoods. On the south side lived some of the Hub’s most patrician families, the so-called Boston Brahmins, and the less prosperous north slope was home to many African Americans, a center for Black and white abolitionists, and an important station on the Underground Railroad. The neighborhood got its current name from the hill that was topped by a beacon, which once alerted Bostonians to danger.ĭuring the 19th century, Beacon Hill was home to both the richest and the poorest Boston residents. The peaks were shorn off in the early 1800s so the area around them could be turned into buildable land. The area, once owned by William Blaxton, the first European to settle Boston, was known as Tri-mount, or Tremont, because of its three peaks. More recent residents have included poets Robert Frost (Hon.’61) and Sylvia Plath, former US Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry (Hon.’05), and actor Uma Thurman. A stroll down any of the narrow gas-lit streets will take you past bow-fronted Federal-style brick row houses that recall the eras when architect Charles Bulfinch, author Louisa May Alcott, and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., lived here. But you can also find them in some of the worn-down exposed areas of Louisburg Square and on a few driveways along Mount Vernon Street.Guests staying at Fifteen Beacon or Liberty Hotel can enjoy an easy walk along these historic routes.Beacon Hill, situated just north of Boston Common, is one of the city’s oldest-and most beautiful-neighborhoods. The most well known location is on Acorn Street, which happens to be one of the most photographed parts in the city. The only place that true cobblestones can still be found is in Beacon Hill. Most of these traditional cobblestones were replaced in the 19th century with ‘”setts”, granite stones that were cut into (more or less) regular shapes and used to make the pavement much more even. These cobs were then used as paving materials for streets, leading to uneven surfaces, broken wheels, and, of course, massive complaints. The term “cobblestone” actually derives from the Old English word “cob”, meaning a rounded mass or lump that had to be dug out of Boston’s soil. Boston is noted for its cobblestone streets, but, truth be told, most of them are not really made of cobblestones, at least in the traditional sense.

Acorn street boston