Remember the Refectory?

Franklin Park Refectory (1896, Hartwell & Richardson), c.1906. Photo by Thomas Warren Sears.

Franklin Park Refectory (1896, Hartwell & Richardson), c.1907.

As we celebrate the American Revolution Semiquincentennial and the golden anniversary of the American Revolution Bicentennial, I am observing a not-so-golden anniversary. Fifty years ago the Franklin Park Refectory, a Boston landmark that would be very useful today were it still with us, was laid waste and torn down.

Franklin Park Refectory (1896, Hartwell & Richardson), c.1907.

The best way to celebrate the history and heritage of our nation is to preserve, recycle and reuse its historic architecture as an educational tool for future generations and a tribute to the artisans who built distinguished social facilities to help foster a more civilly democratic society. 

Franklin Park Refectory, courtesy of digitalcommonwealth.org.

So I thought I'd recall an architectural treasure — once of high social significance and utility to visitors to Franklin Park, its zoo and its golf course, kudos to its palatial presence in a location by the entries to those popular attractions – that fell victim to shifting socioeconomic demographics, benign neglect, and the wrecking ball.

Blueprints for the Franklin Park Refectory.

Frederick Law Olmsted conceived Refectory Hill as part of his 1886 General Plan for Franklin Park as a rural retreat offering a wide variety of amenities for people of all social classes within wilderness, rolling hills and paths, overlooks, a pond, and recreational fields. He envisioned the Refectory as an eating place where "refreshments [would] be served principally out of doors under a large pergola or vine clad trellis, upon a terrace formed in the manner of the Playstead Overlook. Horse Sheds on the east side. Extended sylvan prospects from the terrace." Designed in an Italian Renaissance Revival style by Hartwell & Richardson, the Refectory was dedicated with festive excitement on July 4, 1896 – timely with America's 220th anniversary – as an open, airy, breezy pavilion with a pergola, an arcade, corner towers with classical arches and balustrade balconies, private dining rooms, a second-story loggia, and a rooftop garden, bordered by a terrace and a classical balustrade overlooking a mountainous stone foundation. All those areas for eating, drinking and lounging offered heavenly bucolic vistas extending beyond the Arnold Arboretum to the Blue Hills, as an idyllic setting for the public to benefit from the restorative powers of food, libation and nature.

Franklin Park Refectory, c.1917.

Its hilltop grandeur, presenting it as a social mecca to a shrine of refreshment and renewal, was expressed by Sylvester Baxter in his Boston Park Guide: "While all the other park buildings are simple and picturesque in character, the Refectory is marked by an elegance of style in keeping with its site and purpose." 

Franklin Park Refectory, renovated as a Boston Public Library branch.

By 1906, the Refectory proved a strain to maintain as a restaurant and café. So it became a branch of the Boston Public Library, for which its open-air first floor was closed off with an arcade of glass doors with arched transoms, making it an out-of-the-way place to read and study surrounded by the tranquility of nature. 

Franklin Park Refectory as a Boston Public Library branch, side view.

Upon its closure as a library in the late 1920s, a Catholic charity sought its conversion to a day home for children with tuberculosis, that would enable them to take advantage of the healing powers of the fresh air and natural environs the building presented in abundance. 

But neighbors objected to this proposal, afraid that it would turn the old building into something like a hospital (which, of course, didn't foreshadow the 1950s usurpation of Franklin Park's Heathfield by Lemuel Shattuck State Hospital, which remains there today).

It was reopened as an eatery by the Burke family in 1928. For 44 years it was the go-to concession stand for golfers, zoo crowds and kite-flyers, where Weitz Toasted Frankfurters were a specialty and Schlitz beers, Cracker Jacks, Mallomars, out-of-the-oven pizzas, ice cream, and more were served by dapper young men in white uniforms and aprons. 

This variety of victuals extended the Refectory into a jovial social center where political powwows, gala get-togethers and children's birthday parties took place by the dozen, family dinners were enjoyed on umbrella-shaded terrace tables with breathtaking country views, and toboggans were rented out for winter coasts down Schoolmaster Hill.

Seniors have shared their happy memories of the Refectory on Facebook, including Tharreni Jessie Morton:

Yes, I think this is maybe the building I have been thinking of off and on that we used to go to – it had a little lunch counter where you could get maybe a hotdog and a drink... and [an] old stereopticon picture machine, things that you looked at little scenes from – old Victorian stuff – and it was still pretty much just as it had been in the past – and this was in my teen years in [the] early-mid-sixties.

Franklin Park Refectory after closing, mid-1970s.

The rapidly changing social demographics, urban renewal, and mounting fear of crime that led to the "white flight" from Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and other neighborhoods abutting Franklin Park forced the closing of the refectory in 1972, which plunged this noble classical temple into decay and long-term neglect. A blog visitor shared his memory of this in 2008: 

I remember pulling open the large metal door on the abandoned, boarded-up Refectory back in 1974 as a 10 year old to look inside. It was cavernous. And all I could think was, "Wow, somebody should fix this place up!" That experience sparked a love for abandoned old buildings with potential that has stayed with me ever since.

Photo by Georgfotoart.

My father's scrutiny of the near-shambles Refectory sparked the same for me – especially when, in April 1976, he was notified that it was being razed, no thanks to a decree from then Commissioner of Parks and Recreation Anthony Forgione that it had to be torn down "right away." My father dashed out to the site, where he was interviewed by a major news outlet about the demolition, and an eighth-grade classmate told me she had seen my father on television.

He even reported to us that one of the wrecking crew had told him, "It's a shame that they should tear something like this down," and that about 12 mature trees were cut down in the process – as if the city had a parking lot for the golf course and the zoo in mind for the site. My father salvaged an ornate plaster bracket from the rubble, which he displayed in our garden and let the elements erode over time, as sort of a memorial to the ruination of the Refectory.

Fast-forward fifty years: What's Refectory Hill like today? Sure enough, it's another fulfillment of the prophecy Joni Mitchell made in her song, "Big Yellow Taxi":

Don't it always
seem to go

That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?

They paved paradise,

Put up a parking lot.

Trillium beer garden, Fenway (opened March 2013). Photo by Alex Zokan.

Which is a shame, considering today's popularity of beer gardens such as the Trillium in the Fenway. Today there would certainly be a market for a restored Franklin Park Refectory as a beer garden attracting the crowds that flock to the Franklin Park Zoo, the William Devine Golf Course, the annual Kite Festival, and White Stadium once it's rebuilt.

Just as Frederick Law Olmsted had predicted when he first envisioned the Franklin Park Refectory.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!