Park Street

Early on the morning of August 28, 1835, Charlestown’s third major fire destroyed a large portion of the downtown area. Beginning in City Square, the fire swept to Joiner Street before being brought under control. Fire departments from 16 surrounding communities answered the call for putting out the “extensive conflagration.” Immediately after the fire, a committee was formed to evaluate laying out new streets and “widening, altering or discontinuing old streets.” Park Street, then called Warren Street, was widened, along with Main, Joiner and Chamber Streets. Ebenezer Breed, a Charlestown merchant, was appointed “trustee for special purposes” to oversee the disposal of lots in the burnt district.* Park Street’s extension from the present Warren Street to Common Street was not set out until 1868.

During the late 1860s George Washington Warren, a lawyer and later judge of the Municipal Court of Charlestown, unsuccessfully advocated the development of Park Street in a manner which would have been reminiscent of Monument Avenue. Warren’s Park Street plan would have once again used the Bunker Hill Monument as a focal point but would have involved cutting Park Street’s path through the old Training Field/Winthrop Square. Park Street was not laid out in such a fashion.