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PART 2: FROM RICHES TO RAGS
1780-1840
by
Guild Nichols
folks@NorthEndBoston.com
After 1780, Revere expanded his business interests in
keeping with the feverish commercial development along
the North End waterfront. He opened a foundry for the
smelting of iron and brass and was soon supplying bolts,
spikes and nails for the burgeoning shipbuilding
industry. He produced cannons and cast church bells, one
of the largest of which still rings in Boston's King's
Chapel. The copper sheeting from his copper rolling mill
in Canton covered the dome of the Massachusetts State
House and the hull of the U.S.S. Constitution, built in
Hartt's shipyard at the far end of Hanover Street.
Paul
Revere Engraving of Boston in 1768
Shipping was the magnet that drew thousands
of new mechanics, journeymen and sailors to
the North End in the early 1800s. As the neighborhood
began to outgrow its physical limitations,
efforts began to reclaim the marshlands and
mudflats surrounding the peninsula. The Mill
Pond, which had become a body of festering,
stagnant water; was filled in. Over the next
25 years, portions from the tops of Beacon
Hill and Copp's Hill were transported to reclaim
nearly 70 acres of buildable land. This included
the North End neighborhood to the west of
Salem and Prince streets, as well as the area
now called the "Bulfinch Triangle"
where the Boston Garden and North Station
now stand.
On the eastern waterfront side of the narrow North
End peninsula, new wharves reached out into the harbor
and massive new brick and granite warehouses rose up to
accommodate the incoming shipments of goods from
European and the East India trading companies. While
back in the very heart of the North End, one of Boston's
most celebrated period architects, Charles Bulfinch, was
building a New North Congregational Society church in
dignified "American" classical style on Hanover Street..
Its bell was cast and hung by Paul Revere. It is to this
day the only surviving Bulfinch-designed church in
Boston and is now named St. Stephen's Church.
On the North End's western side adjoining
Blackstone Street, the cornerstone had been laid for a
brand new marketplace building adjacent to Faneuil Hall
- named Quincy Market after Boston's second Mayor Josiah
Quincy. When completed in 1827, this massive, new
two-story structure was 535-feet long and 50-feet wide,
built upon landfill
These new physical transformations in and around
the North End belied the changing character of the
neighborhood itself, which was overflowing with
itinerant seafarers, shipbuilders, and all and sundry
people attracted by the booming shipping and mercantile
trade. The North End had developed a new persona. From
the inside, it was still a tough, thriving working class
neighborhood. To outsiders, it became a frightening and
dangerous slum. And proper Bostonians kept their
distance.
The North End had become a haven for gamblers,
criminals, whores and often drunken and violent sailors.
The area around North Street (known then as Anne Street)
was the most notorious, lying just one block in from the
harbor. It came to be called "Black Sea" and the "Murder
District." Boston policemen stayed away out of fear for
their own lives. And yet, it is not as if the
neighborhood completely acquiesced. In 1825, a mob of
incensed citizens raided the infamous "Beehive" brothel.
And about this time, a stalwart seafarer walked up into
North Square with a purposeful mission in mind: to save
the souls of sailors.
Edward Thompson Taylor was an orphan who at the age
of seven set out to sea. After nearly 25 years he came
ashore and was ordained a Methodist minister. He became
a missionary in charge of the new Seamen's Bethel, which
opened on North Square in 1833. His stories of life on
the high seas, coupled with his knowledge of nautical
matters and an uncommon eloquence, earned him wide
respect, love and admiration. His sermons were so
riveting, his oratory skills so pronounced that Ralph
Waldo Emerson dubbed him "the Shakespeare of the sailor
and of the poor" while Walt Whitman called him "an
essentially perfect orator." Herman Melville is said to
have patterned the church sermon of Father Mapple in
Moby-Dick after Rev. Taylor's speech and manner.
This Seamen's Bethel was not the sole institution
to give aid and sustenance to sailors and ship mechanics
who flocked to the North End. A Baptist Bethel was also
built on Hanover Street and, in 1847, a Mariners House
was founded by the Boston Port and Seamen's Aid Society
opposite the Bethel in North Square. This boarding house
still continues today to provide food, lodging and
counsel to mariners from around the world just as it has
for over 150 years.
But
if the quality of life in the North End neighborhood had
changed for the worse, so too had its physical
character. A dark and downward spiraling malaise had set
in. Buildings were left to deteriorate, cobblestone
streets went unrepaired, refuse accumulated in every
corner and alleyway. It was as if the new, promising
bright City of Boston on its very periphery had turned
its back and severed all connections. Into this urban
slum now flowed tens of thousands of new Irish
immigrants fleeing the famine at home.
Click here
to go to the 3rd Part:
The Irish Influx: 1840-1870...
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