Happy New Year from Your Preservation Society!
We wish you a joyous and peaceful new
year...and we hope you’ll join us
in some of the many activities we have planned for 2011.
Training Field Comes to Life
in New Interpretive Panels
Everybody loves the Charlestown Training Field. Most of us don’t know much about it.
Three new
interpretive panels in the
Training Field will remedy this. The panels – funded by a grant to
CPS from the Edward Ingersoll Browne Trust Fund of the City of Boston
– cover themes of war and commemoration, the changing Training Field
landscape, and threats to the little park’s existence.
The panels tell us the Training Field started life as a training ground for colonial militia in the 1640s. In 1775 it was part of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and in the early nineteenth century it housed a firehouse, munitions depot and schoolhouse before becoming the urban park we love today.
In the mid-twentieth century it was the focus of another kind
of battle as Charlestown residents fought to stop efforts to turn it into
a highway offramp.
You can learn all this and more in the panels, which were researched, designed and installed by a professional preservation team led by Dodson Associates of Ashfield, MA and which included Content Design Collaborative of Scituate, MA and the Public Archaeology Laboratory of Pawtucket, RI.
CPS managed the project with invaluable
input from the Boston Parks Department, which owns the Training Field, the
Boston National Historical Park, the Browne Fund, the Friends of the
Training Field, St. John’s Episcopal Church, and other local
organizations, veterans’ groups and residents who shared documents
and memories of Charlestown’s beloved “outdoor living
room.”
CPS will publish more information and a bibliography of Training Field sources on our website, charlestownpreservation.org, with easy links to other sites.
CPS and Harvard-Kent Partnership
Collaborate on Holiday Tree
Did you see the charming CPS holiday tree at the Joy of Old on the Charlestown Holiday Stroll?
The tree, called Home for the Holidays, was a
collaboration between CPS and the Harvard-Kent Leadership and
Scholarship Partnership, which awards college-incentive scholarships to
deserving students at Charlestown’s Harvard-Kent Elementary
School.
The tree's wonderful little ornaments -- all representing historic Charlestown houses -- were created by scholarship winners Katrina Cheong, Micaela Coward, Mark Gahn, Wan Yi Lin, Giancarlos Marte and Dasiah Thornton.
The students worked from the CPS Historic House Styles of Charlestown Coloring Book, illustrated by Charlestown artist Joe Trepiccione. They had great fun hand-coloring the illustrations and learning about Charlestown’s many old houses.
The CPS coloring books are for sale at the Joy of Old: at just $5, they make a perfect present for the little person in your life.
Another Successful House Tour
CPS’ major fundraising event, the bi-annual Historic House Tour, was a great success. On Saturday, September 25, hundreds of tour-goers enjoyed a beautiful, sunny day and a rare glimpse inside half-a-dozen historic homes.
Funds raised by the tour help to finance CPS’s many preservation and quality of life initiatives, from annual scholarships to the preservation of the Training Field’s monumental Civil War commemorative statue.
The 2010 tour featured a wide variety of houses dating from the beginning to the end of the nineteenth century, from a storybook cottage tucked away on a small side lane to a grand and spacious three-story house on Monument Square.
The houses were both brick and wood-frame and single-family and condominiums, with each house reflecting the tastes and lifestyle of its owner. Interiors ranged from traditional colors and antiques to contemporary schemes with large-scale wallpaper and sleek minimalist furniture. Visitors enjoyed decks with skyline views of Boston as well as the unexpected privacy of an outdoor patio off a garden-level home.
A surprise on the tour was the historic Engine House 50 on Winthrop Street. Tour-goers had a rare chance to explore the interior of a firehouse that has been in service for 157 years. Antique fire equipment and intact early 20th century interior materials and trim were available for inspection.
The tour also included a reception at the Boys & Girls Club complete with refreshments and a silent auction featuring unique items and experiences donated by local residents and businesses.
Many, many thanks to all of our sponsors, advertisers, donors and volunteers, and especially to the homeowners who opened their lovely houses to the community. Without you the Historic House Tour would not be possible!
All About Charlestown’s
Own Engine House 50
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Charlestown firehouse was situated in the middle of the Training Field, which at that point was less a park than a strictly utilitarian space housing – among other things -- a school and a munitions depot.
But in 1847 the City of Charlestown embarked on
a program to remove all the buildings on the Training Field. Along with
other structures, the Warren Hand Engine No. 4 Firehouse was banished from
the space.
In 1852, the city bought land on Winthrop Street from John J. Soley for the construction of a fire station to accommodate the new equipment needed to protect the expanding town.
Built by Isaac Cushing for a cost of $7,240, the three-story building was completed in 1853. In addition to a firehouse, it incorporated space and a separate entrance for a school. It was oriented toward Soley Street and opened onto a stableyard, which you can still see at the rear of the current firehouse.
Some sources suggest that this building was replaced in the early twentieth century, while others indicate that the firehouse was closed briefly in 1917 to give the original building a “modern” façade fronting on Winthrop rather than Soley Street. Regardless of the building’s history, it’s noteworthy that a firehouse has occupied this site for 157 years.
Stylistically, the Winthrop Street façade is a richly detailed example of early twentieth century Georgian Revival architecture. It’s constructed of red brick embellished with cast stone. The strictly symmetrical composition is dominated by the rusticated base, the cast stone arches of the garage, tall second story windows framed by Doric pilasters and pediments, iron balconies, oval niches and windows, and decorative swags.
The building is uniquely embedded amid the residences of Winthrop Street and is an integral component in the “wall” of buildings and the nineteenth-century character of the street.
CPS Looks Back...and Ahead
2010 was a busy year at CPS, capped by the informal unveiling of the Training Field’s new interpretive panels and by another successful Historic House Tour.
The house tour is our major fundraiser: it helps buoy the organization's finances and makes it possible for us to fund preservation and quality-of-life projects like the interpretive panels, scholarships and mini-grants. Many, many thanks to the many, many people who contributed to the tour’s success!
There’s a busy year ahead. Our annual cleanup of the historic Phipps Street Burial Ground is scheduled for Saturday, May 7 (the raindate is Saturday, May 14). If you haven’t participated in the past, we hope you’ll join us this year: the cleanup is a rare opportunity to get inside this usually-locked burial ground, which was established before 1640 and contains over 150 headstones pre-dating 1700.
The CPS Annual Meeting, which is open to all members, will be held in late June, with planning underway soon. A location for the meeting has not yet been determined: feel free to provide us with suggestions.
Finally, having recently completed the Training Field interpretive signage project, we’re starting to think about potential new preservation projects. The CPS Board has also been discussing a strategic planning initiative for the organization.
Stay tuned for an invitation to a special membership meeting in late winter, where we hope to involve the full membership in an effort to establish short and long term organizational goals, reexamine our existing programs and think about ways they can be improved.