Blue Hill Observatory Gift Shop - Canton, MA
Posted by: 
NorStar
N 42° 12.747 W 071° 06.892
19T E 325431 N 4675529
The ceiling in the room of the Blue Hill Observatory that is now a gift shop is curved such that if you stand in one corner you can whisper and have the other person hear in the corner diagonally across.
Waymark Code: WMN0Z5
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 12/04/2014
Views: 5
On the Milton-Canton line, on top of Great Blue Hill, is the Blue Hill Observatory, which has a room that is acoustically a whispering gallery.
To get to the observatory, you must park at the base of the hill, then walk up the hill via one of several trails to the summit. The Blue Hill Observatory is at the end of the service road. It is a castle-like structure with a single turret. The public entrance is on the west side, on the other side of the tower from the parking area.
You walk right into the room from the public entrance. Currently, it is used as the gift shop for the observatory. The room has a curving ceiling that forms a sort of cone. I was able to go to one corner, my wife at the opposite end. I was able to converse in a low voice with her, despite our distance apart and the atmospheric noise from other conversations.
There is no direct evidence to show that this is a bonafide whispering gallery. However, the staff there know that it was made to provide a way to project the voice during talks given there.
Blue Hill Observatory is the maintainer of the oldest continuous weather record in the U.S. They provide tours on most weekends roughly from 10 til 4. See the web site for details.
Observatory page about the building:
(
visit link)