Mrs. Anzur's History Class: The Freedom Trail Part Three

We last met at the Old South Meeting House, a site steeped in the history of the Boston Tea Party (get it, steeped? One steeps their tea before drinking it??).

From the Old South Meeting House I walked along Washington Street until I saw the Old State House where Washington and State Streets meet. According to my guide book, the Old State House is the oldest public building in Boston, built in 1713 as the colonial government seat. It is from the balcony of this building that the Declaration of Independence was read on July 18, 1776. Its origin as a British colonial building is evident from the golden lion and unicorn statues on the roofline, symbols of British imperial power. The original statues were thrown off the building when the Declaration of Independence was read.

Just below the balcony of the Old State House is a brick circle in the sidewalk, memorializing the site of the Boston Massacre. It on this spot, on March 5, 1770, a group of upset colonists were throwing insults and snowballs (well, snowballs filled with rocks) at a group of British soldiers standing guard outside the Old State House. The soldiers opened fire into the crowd, instantly killing three men, two more later dying from injuries. The colonists were to refer to it as the Boston Massacre, an event to fuel their dissatisfaction with imperial rule; the British refer to it as the Incident on King Street.

From the site of the Boston Massacre I traipsed along Congress Street to a bustling plaza. This is the busy Faneuil Hall and Faneuil Hall Marketplace (most likely pronounced Funnel, but many Bostonians cannot even agree to this). Faneuil Hall, named after Peter Faneuil, is a former public hall, reported as the "Cradle of Liberty," as the Sons of Liberty held many of their disgruntled sessions within these walls. In front of the hall, amidst throngs of people, actors pretending to be statues, and break dancers, a statue of Samuel Adams, one of our Founding Fathers, looks upon the street.

To gain the lovely view of Faneuil Hall and its glittery cupola (pictured right), I crossed Congress Street to climb the steps toward current Boston City Hall. From here I fell into giggles as I compared the site of current City Hall against the description in my guide book. The book refers to it as a "charmless, inverted ziggurat"and its surrounding area "the vast, empty, and depressing City Hall Plaza." The book couldn't be more correct.

I walked around the remainder of the huge City Hall Plaza, taking in its expansive concrete wealth, and headed to the New England Holocaust Memorial. In stark contrast to the old world brick buildings that line the nearby streets, the Holocaust Memorial rises amidst the trees, six tall glass towers, each pane of glass etched with the numbers of the 6 million Holocaust victims. Even more eerie than the numbers, each tower has a vent at its base, hissing steam upwards, a quiet reminder of the way in which so many had been murdered.