A Walk in the City

Back Bay from the Foot of the Longfellow Bridge in Cambridge

I have always had a fondness for Boston.  It's full of history and is a city one can hold in the palm of one's hand.  While public transportation is readily available, it seems unnecessary in a place where an effort has been made to ensure a fine pedestrian experience.  Walking is cool in Boston.

So, that's what I did this past Monday evening.  Having a business meeting in Back Bay the following day, I threw my bag into my room at a hotel in the shadow of the Prudential Building and stepped out into the humid late summer afternoon air with an intent to meet friends in Cambridge.  A strong summer breeze rustled trees and tourists' hair in Copley Square.  The traffic on Boylston was thinning out but horns still honked and truck brakes squealed.

I looked forward to getting under some shade in the thick tree canopy at the Public Garden.  I made way for ducklings and strode briskly past the smallest suspension bridge in the world.  A few swan boats pedaled quietly on the pond.  The majority of the park's patrons stayed away from the touristy things and were simply reclining on benches or on a spot of grass trying to stay cool.  In the distance, the gold dome of the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill glowed bright in the rays of the now setting sun.

At Charles Street, I took a left and headed through the narrow, brick lined commercial block which dumped me out at the foot of the Longfellow Bridge.  There, the graffiti pocked pedestrian walkway carried me over the Charles River and over to Kendall Square.  Passing joggers and cyclists and workers coming out of office towers, I met up with an old college friend and his wife who had biked from their house to show me the town.   My friend is a city councilor in Cambridge and proudly pointed out some of the newer features of his city to include the new park in place at the northern edge along the Charles which took as its foundational base the vast amount of dirt and debris taken from the cavernous project known as the "Big Dig" or the project to place a major interstate and other parts of downtown Boston's transportation network underground.  Bostonians needed someplace to put the waste from the project and, being prudent civic planners, piled it up and put a park on top of it.

The Boston of 1775 was radically different than it is today.  Back Bay was called that for a reason. The low swampy marshland of the colonial days is long gone and on it stands the glass sided John Hancock tower and rectangular Prudential building.  The city, once a tiny little town peninsula strangled by the harbor and the river with only a thin neck connecting it to the mainland, has been filled and altered so much that it would be unrecognizable to Sam Adams and Paul Revere.  The Charles, once possessing a large estuary as it dumped into the harbor and the ocean beyond, has been constrained by floodgates, sluice channels, locks and other barriers to control the water as well as to give vessels navigating upstream an easier time of it. 

Past the Museum of Science which straddles the river, we stopped and leaned against a park rail and looked at the city across the Charles and imagined Paul Revere slipping by the guns of HMS Somerset in a rowboat as he headed towards his famous midnight ride in April of 1775.  The next morning, barges carrying red coated soldiers of His Majesty's forces, rowed "by sea" across the Charles to a landing nearby and began their long and arduous march to Lexington and Concord and the "shot heard 'round the world."  Tonight, the river was empty here although, just upstream, Boston's famous "duck boats" plied the wide Charles as did wind surfers, pleasure boats and a slew of canoes and kayaks.

Under the Zakim - Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, whose suspension cables hang from towers mirroring the famous Bunker Hill Monument a few steps away, the roar of the I-93 traffic overhead was deafening.   A new skate park is scheduled to be built in the shadow of the bridge and, until then, the kids on bikes and skates were using whatever was available to have their fun.  

Only a few hundred yards away, the Charles is subjected to its final man made indignity.  A lock system protects upstream populations from the ebb and flow of the tide.  They irritate Fourth of July revelers who, having boated through them to get to the concert and fireworks at the Esplanade, have to wait in long lines headed back to their harbor slips in Boston or Charlestown.  While taming the river, the locks also provide a handy way to cross the Charles into the North End back on the Boston side.   As we walked across, the traffic on the I-93 disappeared below street level and into the tunnel underneath Boston which $15 billion and almost 20 years of work helped create.  This placing of an active interstate highway under a major city is the largest public works project in American history and I suspect will remain that way for some time. 

We wound our way into the North End and were stopped on Hanover Street by a crowd of churchgoers celebrating a religious holiday or feast day, I really did not know which.  The revelers had the local band and were carrying a float with money taped to a statue.  Someday, I'll look into who they were honoring on this humid night.  Anybody who knows Boston's North End knows that Italian food is the only thing on the menu and we ducked into a local favorite and enjoyed some eggplant parmesan and a couple of bottles of zinfandel.  The waitress, a real Italian from Naples, was only too happy to make our dining experience pleasurable.   The small table in a dark, cool corner of the restaurant made for great conversation.

After dinner we popped into a cafe next door for a cup of coffee and a few more laughs.  But, it was getting late and time to go.  

We stopped for a moment to snap a picture of the Customs House tower and chatted a bit at the foot of the Old State House where a group of rowdy and drunk Bostonians harassed a small detachment of British regulars on a crisp, moonlit winter's night in 1770.   The snow pelted soldiers fired on the crowd killing five, touching off the road to the American Revolution.

The financial district, Fanueil Hall, Downtown Crossing and the Theater District were dark and empty on this Monday night. Only a few hurried pedestrians crossed our paths. Strange to see them this way since these areas are packed with natives and tourists in the day time. 

Finally, after six hours with good friends, we parted in the shadow of the Prudential Building.  Hugs and kisses to good friends and then I, tired from a long day, slept the sleep of a happy man.