Meeting House Hill is one of the oldest sections of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

's historic Dorchester neighborhood. It is the site of the First Parish Church (est. 1631) and the Mather School (est. 1639), the oldest public elementary school in North America. Located immediately to the north of

Fields Corner Fields Corner is a historic commercial district in Dorchester, the largest neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ; ...

, it is within walking distance of the

and Savin Hill MBTA stations.

History

Early America

Meeting House Hill was settled in the 17th century by

Puritans The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...

who arrived on the ''

Mary and John ''Mary and John'' was a 400-ton ship that is known to have sailed between England and the American colonies four times from 1607 to 1633. She was during the later voyages captained by Robert Davies and owned by Roger Ludlow (1590–1664), one of t ...

''. It was originally called Rocky Hill, after the puddingstone outcroppings along its eastern slope. Most of the earliest homes in Dorchester were built on

Savin Hill Savin Hill is a section of Dorchester, the largest neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Named after the geographic feature it covers and surrounds, Savin Hill is about one square mile in area, and has a population of about 1 ...

and Allens Plain (now the intersection of Pond, Cottage, and Pleasant Streets), but by 1668 there were at least two homesteads and a schoolhouse on the lower slope of Rocky Hill. Both the First Parish Church and the Mather School, named for its pastor, were originally located on Allens Plain. In 1673, oxen were used to move the church to the top of what came to be known as Meeting House Hill. The Mather School was rebuilt near the church in 1694. The First Parish Church has been rebuilt several times, and became a Unitarian church in the early 19th century under Reverend

Thaddeus Mason Harris Thaddeus Mason Harris (July 7, 1768– April 3, 1842) was a Harvard librarian, Unitarian minister and author in the early 19th Century. His most noted book was ''The Natural History of the Bible'' first published in Boston in 1793. Harris was na ...

. The current structure was built in 1897. The church overlooks a small triangular park, originally called Dorchester Common, now named for the late pastor Reverend James K. Allen. A granite monument to Dorchester's fallen

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

soldiers was erected there in 1867. Coppen Square, a small green at the corner of Bowdoin and Quincy Streets, was originally named Eaton Square after Percival Eaton, whose family kept a tavern there from the time of the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

to the Civil War. Wagoners assembled at the tavern on the eve of the

Fortification of Dorchester Heights The Fortification of Dorchester Heights was a decisive action early in the American Revolutionary War that precipitated the end of the siege of Boston and the withdrawal of British troops from that city. On March 4, 1776, troops from the Conti ...

. Coppen/Eaton Square is also the site of the Lyman Memorial Fountain, commissioned in the 19th century by Nahum Capen in honor of Boston mayor Theodore Lyman, Jr. The fate of the original fountain, which was larger and more ornate than the one that eventually replaced it, remains a mystery.

19th century

From 1804 to 1846, Mrs. Judith Foster Saunders (b. 1772, Gloucester, Massachusetts; d. 1841, Boston) and Miss Clementina Beach (b. 1775, Bristol, England; d. 1855, Boston) ran an academy for young ladies at the corner of Adams and East Streets. They founded the school with the assistance of Saunders's cousin, the noted women's rights advocate and essayist Judith Sargent Murray. The girls were tutored in "Reading, Writing, English Grammar, Arithmetic, Plain Sewing, Embroidery, Tambour, French Language, Painting, and Geography, including the use of the Globes." The school became known for the girls' exquisite embroideries, which are included in private collections and museums including the

Museum of Fine Arts Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

and the

Winterthur Museum Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library is an American estate and museum in Winterthur, Delaware. Pronounced “winter-tour," Winterthur houses one of the richest collections of Americana in the United States. The museum and estate were the home o ...

. The original building still stands at 34 Adams Street. Lyceum Hall, next door to the First Parish Church, was an important center of the community for many years. The

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but a ...

-style public meeting hall was built in 1838 and dedicated in 1840. The Lyceum hosted lectures, dances, school classes, and other public gatherings. Local women's abolition groups met there, and it served as a recruiting depot for the

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union of the collective states. It proved essential to th ...

during the Civil War. It became a special needs school in 1891, and was demolished in 1955.Taylor (2005), p. 79.
/ref> In the mid-19th century, thousands of Irish Catholics came to Boston, many settling in Dorchester. In 1872, less than 20 years after St. Gregory's Church was burned to the ground by

Know-Nothing The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". ...

rioters, Bishop

John Joseph Williams John Joseph Williams was an American bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the fourth Bishop and first Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Boston, serving between 1866 and his death in 1907. Early life and education Williams was born in Bosto ...

authorized the building of Saint Peter's Church on Bowdoin Street to serve the growing immigrant population. Father Peter Ronan was the parish's first pastor; he said his first mass in Lyceum Hall in October of that year. Ronan moved into a nearby cottage once occupied by "Mad Jack" Percival, one of the first commanders of the U.S.S. Constitution. The corner-stone of Saint Peter's Church was laid in 1873; it was dedicated in 1874, and finishing touches were added in 1891. Designed in the Gothic Revival style by noted church architect

Patrick Keely Patrick Charles Keely (August 9, 1816 — August 11, 1896) was an Irish-American architect based in Brooklyn, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island. He was a prolific designer of nearly 600 churches and hundreds of other institutional buildin ...

, the church was built from puddingstone excavated from the site. It once had as many as 22,000 members. In the 1980s the steeple was found to be structurally unsound, and was removed. Many of the buildings in the area were constructed in the 19th century. Several homes near the First Parish Church date back to the

Federal Period Federal-style architecture is the name for the classicizing architecture built in the newly founded United States between 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815, which was heavily based on the works of Andrea Palladio with several inn ...

. The brick building at the corner of Winter and Bowdoin Streets is the former site of Shepard's Bakery, built by Otis Shepard in 1820; the bakery became famous for its "'Lection cakes" sold in the Town Hall on election days, and was kept in the Shepard family until 1907. The many triple-deckers in the area date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Boston's population was rapidly expanding. The

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

Georgian Revival Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover— George I, George II, Ge ...

, Queen Anne, and

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the archit ...

styles are also represented. The firehouse at 7 Parish Street, housing Engine 17 and Ladder 7, was established circa 1870; the current structure was built in 1928.

20th century and later

The City of Boston acquired the Capen family estate, "Mount Ida", in 1912, and converted part of it into an 11-acre public park. Designed by the

Olmsted Brothers The Olmsted Brothers company was a landscape architectural firm in the United States, established in 1898 by brothers John Charles Olmsted (1852–1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870–1957), sons of the landscape architect Frederick Law O ...

, the sons of

Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co ...

, Ronan Park is named for Father Peter Ronan, the first pastor of Saint Peter's Church. It commands one of the best views of Boston Harbor of any vantage point in Dorchester. Over the centuries, the demographics of Meeting House Hill have shifted. The original homogeneous English Protestant community gave way to Irish Catholics in the late 19th century, and other ethnic groups in the late 20th century. The area is now home to residents of primarily African-American, Cape Verdean, Hispanic, West Indian, and Vietnamese ancestry. A diverse selection of restaurants and markets can be found in the Bowdoin/Geneva area. To celebrate their heritage, residents hold an annual Multicultural Festival each summer in Ronan Park.

Geography

The top of Meeting House Hill is the highest point in Dorchester. The

Imagist Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism is someti ...

poet

Amy Lowell Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Life Amy Lowell was born on Febru ...

wrote a poem describing the view of the "blue bay" from Meeting House Hill, and many local artists have painted the view from its summit. The Impressionist painter

Childe Hassam Frederick Childe Hassam (; October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935) was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressioni ...

, who grew up on Olney Street, enthused about the area:

"Dorchester was a most beautiful and pleasant place for a boy to grow up and go to school—from Meeting House Hill and Milton Hill looking out on Dorchester Bay and Boston Harbor with the white sails and the blue water of our clear and radiant North American weather. ... if you like as fair as the isles of Greece. ... and white houses often of very simple and good architecture juxtaposed to it all. Some of the white churches were actual masterpieces of architecture, and the white church on Meeting House Hill as I look back on it was no exception. ... I as a very young boy looked at this New England church and without knowing it appreciated partly its great beauty as it stood there then against one of our radiant North American clear blue skies."

Notable residents

* Isabel Barrows (1845–1913), the first American woman ophthalmologist and the first woman employed by the U.S. State Department * Samuel J. Barrows (1845–1909), U.S. Representative and minister of the First Parish Church * Nahum Capen (1804–1886), writer, editor, publisher; inventor of the outside letterbox collection system; owner of the "Mount Ida" estate, for which Mount Ida Road is named * Patrick Collins (1844–1905), U.S. Representative and Mayor of Boston * Abigail Adams Eliot (1892–1992), leading authority on early childhood education * Margaret Foley (1875–1957), labor organizer and suffragist *

(1793–1835), Harvard librarian, author, and minister of the First Parish Church *

Thaddeus William Harris Thaddeus William Harris (November 12, 1795 – January 16, 1856) was an American entomologist and librarian. His focus on insect life cycles and interactions with plants was influential in broadening American entomological studies beyond a narrow ...

(1795–1856), Harvard librarian, entomologist, and botanist *

(1859–1935), Impressionist painter * "Mad Jack" Percival (1779–1862), naval officer and war hero; namesake of Percival Street * Mary J. Safford (1834–1891), one of the first female gynecologists in the United States

References

External links

St. Peter's Parish

Friends of Ronan Park

"View of Savin Hill from Meeting House Hill"
by M. O. Barry, 1830
"View from Meeting House Hill, towards Boston Harbor"
by H. H. Hollingsworth, 1840
Needlework wrought by Abigail Humphreys at Mrs. Saunders & Miss Beach's Academy

by Gilbert Stuart {{BostonMA, state=collapsed Neighborhoods in Boston Dorchester, Boston