Homes of the brave

The stretch of Boston's Commonwealth Avenue from Kenmore Square to Packard's Corner has never been the same since its two primary historic landmarks and social magnets disappeared – one partially, the other totally. Braves Field and the Commonwealth Armory were legend-breakers and history-makers, now obscured by Boston University's "new uses" for their sites.

They were built concurrently in 1914-1915, the former as the home of the Boston Braves National League baseball team (yes, Boston once had two teams!), the latter as a post and drill hall for the Massachusetts Army National Guard. Coincidentally, the Commonwealth Armory was designed by James E. McLaughlin, architect of Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox American League team, which explained the armory's festively ceremonial and tastefully Bostonian design. 

Like Fenway Park (built three years earlier), Braves Field was aligned in a northeastern direction, in the name of player safety and competitive fairness. Since most baseball games are played in afternoons and early evenings, this orientation of the field's central axis from home plate through second base kept the setting afternoon sun out of the eyes of the batter, catcher and home-plate umpire for ease and accuracy of tracking, catching and calling, say, a 95 mph fastball. 

This arrangement also determined afternoon shadow patterns in the stadium. As the sun set in the west, the third-base seating was the first to catch a shadow, so its spectators received early relief from summer heat.

Also like Fenway, Braves Field's size, configuration and compass-points were governed by the established street-grid of its neighborhood, which set it within a similar square street pattern to that of the auto showrooms, service stations and Boston University buildings along its strip. 

Yet, unlike Fenway, Braves Field was built on a foursquare parcel rather than the snugly skew block that morphed Fenway into a polygon, to allow the field more latitude for in-the-park home runs, per the wishes of Braves owner James Gaffney. This gave it ample foul territory, which favored pitchers over batters. Breezes from its Charles River location further impeded out-of-the-park homers.

But their city settings made Braves Field and Fenway Park truly urban ballparks that attracted crowds within walking and transit-riding as well as driving distance from all over the city, as handy alternatives to the far-off, isolated stadiums in other cities that are long walks (or long drives, in the case of Gillette Stadium in Foxborough) away, hence out of reach to many.

Braves Field and Fenway Park were thus some of the nation's most universally accessible ballparks. Furthermore, their dense urban settings did not stop them from being open, airy green oases from urban congestion with bountiful breathing space for all spectators.

On Braves Field's opening day, August 18, 1915, a 46,000-strong crowd saw the Boston Braves defeat the St. Louis Cardinals, and J. C. O'Leary reported in The Boston Globe that it was "the finest ballpark in the world. There is not another like it anywhere, and the probability is that it will stand preeminent for the next 25 years." It was also that era's largest baseball stadium, served directly by a streetcar system.

Braves Field, 1916 World Series. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Which attracted the Braves' sort-of rivals, the Red Sox, to Braves Field for the 1915 and 1916 World Series – and the gamble paid off: the Sox won both series 4 games to 1. (Craig Breslow, are you listening?) And, yes, it was a fair trade: while Braves Field was being built the Braves played their 1914 World Series at Fenway Park, sweeping the Philly Athletics in four games.

The breezy, open design of Braves Field (albeit with some obstructed views – tough noogies if you were stuck in the nosebleed seats, if that was all you could afford) allowed a few more nuggets of history to be made there, but "the finest ballpark in the world" – not to mention the "Miracle Braves" moniker sportswriters tagged the team with after their improbable World Series win – were stretching it a bit. It took until 1922 for a homer to be hit there (by New York Giants catcher Frank Snyder, clearing the left-field foul pole), inner fences on the field were built and shifted around several times, and the whole field was shifted clockwise toward right field. Something always seemed off about the design, perhaps due in part to the field's unusual location, and that it had been the site of the Allston Golf Club's golf course when Gaffney purchased it shortly after Fenway Park opened in 1912. Perhaps the river breezes were more favorable toward the flight of golf balls than baseballs.

Nonetheless, the Boston Braves won the 1948 National League Pennant before 1.5 million spectators. This was their first pennant victory since 1914, and it was timely with their cofounding of the Jimmy Fund, the cancer research arm now associated with the Red Sox. The Braves lost the World Series to the Cleveland Indians 4 games to 2.

Sam "Jet" Jethroe became Boston's first African-American major-leaguer in
1950, when he joined the Boston Braves. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

In partial redemption of their weak record, the Braves became the second MLB team to break the color barrier, hiring outfielder Sam “Jet” Jethroe in 1950, a year after Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first African-American major-leaguer. By 1952, the Braves had three Black players; one was George Crowe, Robinson’s old teammate on the Los Angeles Red Devils basketball team.

Boston University graduation on the former Braves Field,
soon after its 1953 transfer to the university.

After losing their final Braves Field game to the Dodgers 8-2 in 1952 (Roy Campanella socked in the deciding homer), the Braves moved to Milwaukee (followed by Atlanta in 1966), forever depriving Boston of a National League team. The next year, Boston University purchased Braves Field, beginning the process of depriving Boston of one of its baseball shrines.

After shrinking the newly named Boston University Field in 1955 (renamed Nickerson Field in 1963, in honor of BU Trustee William Emery Nickerson, main inventor of the machinery that manufactured Gillette's first safety razor) for campus housing, the gabled, arcaded entrance, the under-bleacher concourse, and part of the old wall are all that remain of old Braves Field, as a monument to major-league majesty.

The same cannot be said for its most immediate neighbor...

...the Commonwealth Armory. Built for Troops A, B, C, and D of the First Squadron Cavalry, Battery A of the Massachusetts Field Artillery, and the Field Hospital, Ambulance, and Signal Corps, it had to be a vast, spreading arena to accommodate all those guardsmen, with a commanding presence on the avenue.

So James E. McLaughlin dressed up its sandstone-trimmed brick edifice with a sequence of segmental arches like that on Fenway Park to visually emphasize the building's wide reach along the street. To give it the castle-like regality worthy of its occupant, he fronted it with a Jacobethan headhouse and buttressed tower, accessible drawbridge-style by a gated, arched entry bridge over a "moat." The broad springing arcs of these arches and the elliptical dome roof seemed to signify the broad-jump spring of the barrel-vaulted ceiling inside the drill hall, structured to create the widest open space possible for the drills of the growing National Guard troops, living quarters for 700 officers and men, stables for 250 horses, storage for armaments, and more.

Mounted State Police training on horseback at the Commonwealth Armory, c.1925.

Troops stationed there were called to action on the Mexican border in 1916, and later deployed to France during World War I. The Armory also hosted a myriad of public events, including the Boston Auto Show, sportsman's shows featuring Ted Williams, dog shows, international food festivals, an address by President John F. Kennedy at a celebration of his 44th birthday on May 29, 1961, and the

President John F. Kennedy (center) introduces his brother, Massachusetts
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (right), at the "New England Salute to the
President" on October 19, 1963, at the Commonwealth Armory in Boston.
Photo courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

"New England Salute to the President," a Democratic fundraising dinner honoring Kennedy on October 19, 1963. "I must say it is a constant source of pride to me that I come from this State, that I represented Massachusetts, that I am identified with this State. It has the longest and, I think, most distinguished history. But I think in 1963 as well as the last 30 years, as well as the last 150 years, this State and the people in it have been willing to meet their responsibilities, and particularly those who are Democrats," he said – a month and three days before his assassination.

On March 13, 1969, less than a year after the assassination of civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his widow Coretta Scott King spoke at the Armory at the Boston University Founders' Day Convocation upon receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree from BU, where her husband had received his Ph.D. Also accepting a posthumous award on his behalf for his service to humanity, she addressed her determination to advance her late husband's legacy of nonviolent social change, structural injustice, and global human rights, tying it in with the critical need to address the "triple threat" of society – namely the interlinked crises of institutional racism, poverty, and militarism, specifically pertaining to the Vietnam War. She also explored the transformation of her husband's philosophy from the mission of one individual to a structured, organized social movement, in her promition of the future Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

On October 10, 1969, The Who performed at the Armory as part of the North American leg of their Tommy Tour, in support of that year's release of their seminal rock opera Tommy. They performed the full opera to a cheering audience that packed the space.

In the wake of the killings of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration on the campus on May 4, 1970, ironically the Commonwealth Armory became a site of vehement antiwar protests in its own right.

The State's reactionary law-and-order wing struck back with a GOP gala dinner there on October 31, 1972, just a week before Richard Nixon's landslide reelection as President. Yet that dinner didn't stop Massachusetts from being the only state to vote for Senator George McGovern.

Which famously gave rise to the bumper-sticker slogan "Don't Blame Me, I'm from Massachusetts" after Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace on August 9, 1974, in the aftermath of the Watergate break-in cover-up.

The Commonwealth Armory's enormous space also made it suitable for a wide range of public services, including college registrations, Certified Public Accountant and Nursing Board exams, ROTC physical training, and even a makeshift morgue following the tragic Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston on November 28, 1942. 

(It might have come in handy as a temporary hospital for COVID patients during the pandemic had it still been around then.)

All those historical events and community services, plus its quintessence in progressive drill-hall engineering, should have been reason enough to preserve the Armory as a Boston landmark. But no. In 2002 it made way for BU's Agganis Arena, which the Armory would have fit comfortably...

...as the curves, roof ellipse, and size of its replacement suggest, being not much bigger than its predecessor. As designed by Cannon Design in its typical hack corporate style, Agganis Arena shows that the Commonwealth Armory's crumbling into the trashbin of oblivion was unnecessary, and is yet another blemish on BU's bland, bric-a-brac, chockablock campus. 

A cast-iron gate and lantern, refurbished by Ryan Iron Works, are the sole mementos of the intricate craftsmanship of their castle, which crowned its neighborhood regally and served its community nobly as a convention hall, political arena, concert venue, and much more. Now it has solely a private function for BU, robbing Boston of another community asset and historic landmark. So that's how we remember two vanished venerable institutions where baseball, political and social history were made: by their gates, not their buildings.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Hancock's haunt

When I was a Ghost City Tours tour guide, I'd point out Boston's sole surviving ghost of John Hancock, a little-known landmark sequestered in the shadows of the city's oldest street pattern, the Blackstone Block, as the sole remnant of that pattern's period in history. The Ebenezer Hancock House, which John built in 1767 as the home and office of his younger brother, Deputy Paymaster-General of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, has an angular shape unusual for its time, being built within the confines of the skew lanes and cowpaths that defined it. Since it changed hands last month and has an iffy future, perhaps it's time to revisit its architecture, history and backstory.

What makes us stop and stare at it the most is that it thinks outside the box, having no right-angled corners – as well as a cropped corner, which John may have arranged to bring his brother more sunlight or to allow freer passage of cows and horses there. Its iron S-ties secured its structure at another corner, and the stringcourses in its Flemish-bond brickwork defined its floors. Its larger first-floor windows likely illuminated Ebenezer's disbursements of payments to troops during the Revolutionary War. But despite its less-than-erudite form (compared to brother John's manor, which I'll go into later), it can proudly boast that George Washington Slept Here when it was an inn later on, as well as Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

In 1778, the house stored a loan of 2 million French silver crowns from Louis XIV of France, negotiated by Benjamin Franklin as Minister to France and brought into Boston by Admiral Charles Henri Hector, Comte d'Estaing, as back payment to Washington's Eastern Continental Army. In 1798, Benjamin Fuller opened America's longest continually operating shoestore on the first floor.

William H. Learnard took over Fuller's shoestore in 1821, and ran it until 1886, but it miraculously remained in the building as a shoestore until 1963, as other enterprises in the house and the Blackstone Block came and went over the years, including the Marshall House restaurant, inn and tavern, which operated mainly in the 1890s and the 1910s.

By the early 1970s, the East India Trading Co. antique and souvenir shop was operating in that space. Over the years the house fell into disrepair, even though most of the original interior details remained amazingly intact, probably due to underutilization. I remember walking past it with my father around that time and noticing that its storefront was smashed; my father suspected a break-in. Later the house was "left vacant following a serious car accident in the 1970s, which nearly destroyed the storefront at the corner of the building,” wrote city archaeologist Joseph M. Bagley in Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them. Swartz & Swartz came to the rescue, acquiring it as their law office in 1974 and restoring it to its colonial condition, preserving as much interior detail as possible.

And look at what they did...

Of course, their intricate preservation of all those rooms in their original dimensions, materials and structural elements, from hand-hewn beams to brick walls to wrought-iron cauldrons and andirons, entailed considerable sacrifice of valuable space to conduct legal business. So Swartz & Swartz built an addition on the back in the parking area, careful to hide it from the view of Freedom Trail tourists and to distinguish its modern architectural style from the original. 

Incidentally, that parking area once contained a row of houses John Hancock had built on spec to abut Ebenezer's digs. Sadly, they did not survive past the 1950s, leaving the Ebenezer Hancock House as a "holdout" from Boston's Colonial-Revolutionary era:

Hancock Manor (1737-1863), Boston. Photo c.1859.

Engraving of Hancock Manor, Alexander Jackson Davis & Thomas Illman, 1832.

They don't compare in social standing, do they? More than a holdout, the Ebenezer Hancock House is the sole surviving building in Boston associated with its favorite son, due to not only the razing of his spec rowhouses but also the leveling of his own manor, which stood on Beacon Hill on Beacon Street by the site of the Massachusetts State House from 1737 to 1863.

View of Hancock Manor from the Boston Common by Christian Remick, 1768.

Built by Joshua Blanchard for John's merchant uncle Thomas Hancock and later willed to John, this brown Braintree granite and Connecticut sandstone manse was bedecked with corner quoins, a gambrel roof balustrade, and a Juliet balcony from a French window capped with baroque volutes, and it commanded a peerless view of the Boston Common's pastureland.

A view of Hancock Manor and the Boston Neck, Richard Williams, 1775.

As these drawings show, Hancock Manor had the advantage of being built on many acres of rural virgin land. This afforded it a full pasture and garden and a breathtaking view of the Boston Common that extended into the Boston Neck, which attached the town to the mainland by a narrow isthmus at the time, making John Hancock feel like master of all he surveyed. By contrast, the Ebenezer Hancock House had the disadvantage of having to conform to densely settled, firmly established urban street patterns, which hemmed it in considerably.

Hancock Manor staircase. Wood engraving from Ballou’s Pictorial
Drawing-Room Companion, March 26, 1859. Courtesy Bostonian Society.

Hancock Manor's lavish interior began with a paneled parlor with a bridal stair of carved twisted balusters leading up to a landing with a circular-headed window overlooking the garden of ornamental flower-beds, fruit-bearing box trees, mulberry trees and other exotic plantings. "As you entered the governor's mansion, to the right was the drawing or reception room, with furniture of bird's-eye maple covered with rich damask. Out of this opened the dining-hall [...] in which Hancock gave the famous breakfast to Admiral D'Estaing and his officers," reported Eliza G. Gardner, who lived in the Manor for many years.

John Hancock House, painting by Charles Furneaux, c.1859.

The house was occupied by Lt.-Gen. Hugh Percy during the British Army's 1775-1776 Siege of Boston, and then Gen. Henry Clinton set up his headquarters there, all while Hancock was in Philadelphia as President of the Second Continental Congress, and shortly before he inscribed his venerable "John Hancock" on the Declaration of Independence. After the Second Treaty of Paris concluding the Revolutionary War in 1783, Hancock entertained luxuriantly at his Manor, attracting the likes of le Comte d'Estaing, le Marquis de Lafayette, and, yes, George Washington, and Hancock lived there as the first and third Governors of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On his death bed he dictated his will to give his home to the Commonwealth but died before the will could be finalized in writing.

Protest sign calling for the preservation of Hancock Manor. Courtesy of Historic New England.

Following many failed attempts to preserve Hancock Manor – ultimately because the Legislature were too preoccupied with Civil War matters to agree upon the terms of acquiring the house – it was sold at public auction for $230 on June 16, 1863, and demolished, despite a rallying cry to preserve this icon of history. But its demise sparked one of the first historic preservation movements, which led to the salvation of Boston's Old South Meeting House (1729) and Old State House (1711).

Ultimately, we lost Hancock's historical treasure for nothing, for the fancy rowhouses that replaced it were removed for the construction of the State House's marble wings in 1916, leaving but a ghost of what once stood there and should still be standing there today, as well as a plaque marking its sad site:

Ebenezer Hancock House at night. Photo by Ryoko Sha.

So Ebenezer Hancock's old haunts are all the architecture we have left to memorialize John Hancock's immeasurable legacy in the growth of our city, the founding of our Commonwealth, and the declaration of our independence as a nation. Now that the house is under new ownership, it'll be interesting to find out what ghost will haunt it now, and how well it'll preserve the ghosts of the past...

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!