Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/228

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206
Beacon Hill Before the Houses.

upon the site of the Merchants Bank Building, and extended with its garden to Dock Square, the water flowing up nearly to the base of the Samuel Adams statue. Next comes a half-acre lot owned by Samuel Eliot, grandfather of President Eliot of Harvard University. Then follows a second half-acre lot owned by the heirs of the Reverend James Allen, fifth minister of the First Church, who, in his day, as will be shown in the sequel, owned a larger portion of the surface of Boston than any other man, being owner of thirty-seven of the seven hundred acres which inclosed the territory of the town. His name is perpetuated in the street of that name bounding the Massachusetts General Hospital grounds. Somerset Street was laid out through it. The Congregational House, Jacob Sleeper Hall, and Boston University Building, which occupies the former site of the First Baptist Church, under the pastorship of the Reverend Rollin H. Neale, stand upon it. Next comes Governor James Bowdoin's two-acre pasture, extending from the last-named street to Mount Vernon Street, and northerly to Allston Street; the upper part of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Place were laid out through it; the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, formerly Freeman-place Chapel, built by the Second Church, under the pastoral care of the Reverend Chandler Robbins, and afterwards occupied by the First Presbyterian Church, the Church of the Disciples, the Brattlesquare Church, the Old South Church, and the First Reformed Episcopal Church; so that the entire theological gamut has resounded from its walls; the Swedenborgian Church, over which the Reverend Thomas Worcester presided for a long series of years, also stands upon it. Having reached the summit of the hill, we come abreast of the five-and-a-half-acre pasture of Governor John Hancock, the first signer of the immortal Declaration of American Independence, extending from Mount Vernon Street to Joy Street, and northerly to Derne Street, embracing the Capitol lot, and also the reservoir lot, for which last two he paid, in 1752, the modest sum of eleven hundred dollars! It is now worth a thousand times as much. For the remainder of his possessions in that vicinity he paid nine hundred dollars more. The upper part of Mount Vernon Street, the upper part of Hancock Street, and Derne Street, were laid out through it. Then, descending the hill, comes Benjamin Joy's two-acre pasture, extending from Joy Street to Walnut Street, and extending northerly to Pinckney Street; forty-seven dwelling-houses now standing upon it. Mr. Joy paid two thousand dollars for it. At the time of its purchase he was desirous of getting a house in the country, as being more healthy than a town-residence, and he selected this localty as "being country enough for him." The upper part of Joy Street was laid out through it. Now follows the valuable twenty-acre pasture of John Singleton Copley, the eminent historical painter, one of whose productions (Charles the First demanding in the House of Commons the arrest of the five impeached members) is now in the art-room of the Public Library. It extended for a third of a mile on Beacon Street, from Walnut Street to Beaver Street, and northerly to Pinckney Street, which he purchased in lots at prices ranging from fifty to seventy dollars per acre. Walnut, Spruce, a part of Charles, River, Brimmer, Branch Avenue, Byron Avenue,