North End Park Cultural Timeline - Rose Kennedy Greenway - Boston, MA
Posted by: 
NorStar
N 42° 21.756 W 071° 03.345
19T E 330714 N 4692083
This timeline has many quotes from people who lived in the North End neighborhood of Boston.
Waymark Code: WMPFK3
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 08/23/2015
Views: 7
Near Boston's North End neighborhood, is this part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which has a time line with historic sentences about the changes in the makeup of the neighborhood and quotes from people about who life there.
The timeline is located on the northwest side of Hanover Street, between the two roads that line greenway. The installation is a long metal sign about 100 ft long.
The timeline starts with 1600 and continues to the present. In each time period, there is a historic statement, and then quotes with the name of the person said that quote.
1900 [Italians
I have most of the quotes photographed - here they they are:
"'We were poor, but we were rich in our family and in our friends and neighbors. If a neighbor was sick, you took care of him. If a neighbor was out of work, you brought food to his family.
- Representative Salvadore F. DiMasi, First Italian-American Speaker of the Massachusetts House'"
"I remember as a little boy, sitting on the front stairs of my building, waiting for the ice man to deliver blocks of ice. The best part for me and my friends was scooping ice fragments from the floor of the truck and sucking on them or placing them on our bodies to cool off. - Don"
"'Going to the bathouse on a Friday night was a social night out for many of us. It was an opportunity to catch up with friends from all over the neighborhood. The bathouse served as a gathering place to share news, ideas, information and confidences during a time when there was limited telephone usage in the North End.' - Nancy Caruso"
"'When I walked down the street, women in the windows were always watching over me. My parents always knew where I was. It was like I had a hundred grandmothers.' - Paul Scapicchio"
1870s - 1890s [Jews]
"'My home was strictly a kosher home. My people ran a kosher restaurant in the North End for over 20 years...the most expensive meal that I remember was 65 cents, and that was for a five course meal.' - Sam Gurvitz'
"'Salem Street is for the Jews what the Plaza is for the Spaniards and Italians in their native countries. There the people meet and congregate.' - Horace Kallen"
1800 [Irish]
"'As kids we spent a lot of time on Snow Hill Street...the street in those days was called Connemara Hill. As we would be coasting down the street in winter, we always uttered that Gaelic expression, "Fog a belach" which means in English "clear the road."' - John Devlin"
"Many of the young men of the Irish families, which had settled in the North End, were then invited to join the company...its members when on parade, in full dress uniform, wearing tall bearskin hats, were a remarkably fine looking soldiers, and...a great credit to the militia.' - Daniel Macnamara, member of the Irish 9th Regiment commanded by Col. Thomas Cass of North Bennett St, which fought bravely and suffered heavy casualties in the Civil War"
1700 [English]
"'When we were upon the sea, that part of the town which lies about the harbor appeared to us in the form of a crescent, or half-moon; and the country, rising gradually from it, afforded me a prospect of the neighboring fields and woods.' - Author unkown"
"'The chiefe Edifice of this City-like Towne is crowded on the Sea-bankes, and wharfed out with great industry and cost, the buildings beautiful and large, some fairly set forth with Brick, Tile, Stone and Slate and orderly placed with comfy streets, whose continuall in larger preages some sumptuous City. - Edward Johnson"
"The early springs and long summers make but short autumns and winters. In the spring, when the grass begins to put forth it grows apace, so that where it was all black by reason of winter's burnings, in a fortnight there will be grass a foot high.' - William Wood"
"'It was a place "very uneven, abounding in small hollows and swamps covered in blueberries and other small bushes."' - Ann Pollard"
1600 [Native Americans]
"'...It being the custom of the Indians to burn the wood in November, when the grass is whithered and leaves dried, it consumes all the underwood and rubbish, which would overgrow the country, making it impassable and spoil their...hunting; so that by this means in those places where Indians inhabit there is scarce a brush or bramble or any cumbersome underwood to be seen in the more champion ground.' - William Wood"
Address:
Hanover Street at Cross Street
Website: Not listed
|
Visit Instructions:
Please include the following with your submission of a visit:
1. Photograph as a proof of your visit.
2. Short narrative. Tell of your visit, share something new, edit the waymark with additional quotes found a the location, add new visiting hours or anything that would be nice to know when visiting the location.
3. Finally, please add a visit if you go to the area and you find the building, memorial, memorial or structure has been removed. Please submit an edit to the waymark adding the words {Historic/Removed} at the end. Also, edit the short description to annotate the reason it was removed for the value to other visitors.