Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/230

 2o8 Beacoji Hill Before the Houses.

Lime, and Chestnut Streets, Louisburg ervoir lot about twenty feet, and Louis- Square, the lower parts of Mount Ver- burg Square about fifteen feet. The non and Pinckney Streets, and the contents of the excavations were used sotitherly part of West Cedar Street, to fill up Charles Street as far north as have been laid out through it. Copley Cambridge Street, the parade-ground left Boston, in 1774, for England, and on the Common, and the Leverett- never returned to his native land. He street jail lands. The territory thus wrote to his agent in Boston, Gardner conveyed novv embraces some of the Greene (whose mansion subsequently finest residences in the city. The stood upon the enclosure in Pemberton Somerset Club-house, the Church of Square, surrounded by a garden of two the Advent, and the First African and a quarter acres, for which he paid Church, built in 1807 by the congre- thirty- three thousand dollars), to sell gation worshiping with the Reverend the twenty-acre pasture for the best Daniel Sharp, stand upon it. price which could be obtained. After Bounded southerly on Copley's pas- a delay of some time he sold it, ture, westerly on Charles River, and in 1796, for eighteen thousand four northerly on Cambridge Street, was hundred and fifty dollars; equivalent Zachariah Phillips's nine-acre pasture, to nine hundred dollars per acre, or which extended easterly to Grove two cents per square foot. It is a singu- Street ; for which he paid one hundred lar fact that a record title to only two pounds sterling, equivalent to fifty and a half of the twenty acres could dollars per acre. The northerly parts be found. It was purchased by the of Charles and West Cedar Streets, and Mount Vernon Proprietors, consisting the westerly parts of May and Phillips of Jonathan Mason, three tenths ; Har- Streets, have been laid out through it. rison Gray Otis, three tenths ; Benja- The Twelfth Baptist Church, formerly min Joy, two tenths ; and Henry Jack- under the pastorship of the Reverend son, two tenths. The barberry bushes Samuel Snowdon, stands upon it. Pro- speedily disappeared after the Copley ceeding easterly was the sixteen-and- sale. The southerly part of Charles a-half-acre pasture of the Reverend Street was laid out through it. And the James Allen, before alluded to as the first railroad in the United States was greatest landowner in the town of here employed. It was gravitation in Boston, for which he paid one hundred principle. An inclined plane was laid and fifty pounds, New-England cur- from the top of the hill, and the dirt-cars rency, equivalent to twenty-two dollars slid down, emptying their loads into per acre. It bounded southerly on the water at the foot and drawing the Copley's, Joy's, and Hancock's pas- empty cars upward. The apex of the tures, and extended easterly to Temple hill was in the rear of the Capitol near Street. Anderson, Irving, Garden, the junction of Mount Vernon and South Russell, Revere, and the easterly Temple Streets, and was about sbcty parts of Phillips and Myrtle Streets, feet above the present level of that were laid out through it. Next comes locality, and about even with the roof Richard Middlecott's four-acre pasture, of the Capitol. The level at the corner extending from Temple Street to Bow- of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Place doin Street, and from Cambridge Street has been reduced about thirty feet, to AUston Street. Ridgeway Lane, the and at the northeast corner of the res- lower parts of Hancock, Temple, and

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