DK Travel : Boston : History & Culture

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Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

This Fenway museum, in a faux Venetian palace, represents the exquisite personal tastes of its founder, Isabella Stewart Gardner, who was one of the country’s premier art collectors at the end of the 19th century (see Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum).
James Michael Curley (1874–1958)

Self-proclaimed champion of “the little people,” Curley used patronage and Irish pride to retain a stranglehold on Boston politics from his election as mayor in 1914 until his defeat at the polls in 1949. Known as “the rascal king” he embodied political corruption but created many enduring public works.
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963)

Grandson of Irish-American mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and son of ambassador Joseph Kennedy, John F. Kennedy represented Boston in both houses of the US Congress before he became the first Roman Catholic elected president of the United States. The presidential library at Columbia Point exhibits his brief, but intense, period in office (see John F. Kennedy Library & Museum).
John Winthrop (1587–1649)

Acting on a daring plan put together by English Puritans in 1629, Winthrop led approximately 800 settlers to the New World to build a godly civilization in the wilderness. He settled his Puritan charges at Boston in 1630 (see 1630: Boston Founded) and served as the governor of the new Massachusetts Bay Colony until his death.
Jordan Hall

The New England Conservatory of Music’s 1,013-seat concert hall opened in 1903 and underwent an $8.2 million restoration in 1995. Musicians frequently praise its acoustics, heralding Jordan “the Stradivarius of concert halls.” Hundreds of free classical concerts are performed at this National Historic Landmark hall every year (see New England Conservatory, Jordan Hall).
Kenmore Square

Largely dominated by Boston University, Kenmore Square is now being transformed from a student ghetto into an extension of upmarket Back Bay, losing some of its funky character but gaining élan in the process. As the public transportation gateway to Fenway Park, the square swarms with baseball fans and sidewalk vendors, rather than students, on game days. The most prominent landmark of the square is the CITGO sign, its 5,878 glass tubes pulsing with red, white, and blue neon from dusk until midnight. Time magazine designated this sign an “objet d’heart” because it was so beloved by Bostonians that they prevented its dismantling in 1983.
Lexington

Peaceful, leafy Lexington Green, surrounded by high-spired country churches, marks the first encounter of British soldiers with organized resistance by American revolutionaries. The rebels fortified their courage for the confrontation with a night of drinking at the adjacent Buckman Tavern (1 Bedford St).
Louisa May Alcott

Little Women sealed Alcott’s (1832–88) literary fame, but she also acted as a nurse in the Civil War.
Louisburg Square

Cobblestone streets, a genteel little gated park, and a hefty dose of Boston Brahmin cachet make this tight block of townhouses the city’s most exclusive patch of real estate. Modeled after the traditional residential squares of London in 1826, the square was named in remembrance of the 1745 Battle of Louisburg in modern-day Quebec.
Lowell

Lowell was the cradle of the US’s Industrial Revolution, where entrepreneurs dug power canals and built America’s first textile mills on the Merrimack River. The sites within the National Historical Park (246 Market St) tell the parallel stories of a wrenching transformation from agricultural to industrial lifestyle, and the rise of the American labor movement. A 1920s weave room still thunders away at Boott Cotton Mills Museum (400 John St).