Many European visitors to the US have a habit of sneering at the pride Americans take in their own history, and in particular the reverence they show for buildings a couple of centuries old that, compared with the Tower of London, are practically new. Yet in Boston it is hard not to be impressed by this respect for the past – more than in any other US city, including Philadelphia, where independence was declared 236 years ago on Tuesday.
The Massachusetts state capital looms large in the story of independence. The American Revolution’s most enduringly romantic hero is Paul Revere, the Bostonian silversmith whose gallop through the night to alert colonial militia that the redcoats were coming was later immortalised, stirringly if hyperbolically, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his 1861 poem Paul Revere’s Ride. Nor was there a more eloquent statement of resistance to the British than the Boston Tea Party, an oddly genteel name for the unceremonious dumping, in November 1773, of 342 chests of tea into Boston harbour, a protest against a parliamentary tax enshrined that year by the Tea Act.
These stories and many more are brought to life along the Freedom Trail, Boston’s much-vaunted 4km red-brick path, which connects many of the city’s venerated historic sites. It is the sine qua non of any visit to Boston, even if you’ve gone there only for the shopping.
And it’s not all old history, either. There’s the bar that in its original incarnation, as the Bull & Finch Pub, was, in the early 1980s, the exterior of a new pub sitcom, Cheers. Astutely, the Bull & Finch’s owner, Tom Kershaw, charged NBC just a dollar a year for the privilege, in return for the licence to sell Cheers souvenirs. It was a stroke of entrepreneurial genius, if not quite on a par with that of Mark Zuckerberg and his friends across the Charles River at Harvard University, who in 2004 created a social-networking website for students and called it Facebook.
That’s the thing about Boston: its place in American popular culture is as assured as its place in the nation’s history. To appreciate this, the best vantage point is the Skywalk Observatory atop the Prudential Tower. In 1964 the tallest building in the world outside New York City, now it doesn’t even rank among the 50 tallest buildings in the US although it still offers a cracking view all the way to New Hampshire, in the foreground taking in Fenway Park – the 100-year-old home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team. Many Bostonians will tell you high summer is the perfect time to visit because, with many Red Sox fans away, tickets are easier to obtain.
There isn’t much that is more fundamental to America’s identity than baseball, but nothing at all is more fundamental than immigration, and a permanent exhibition all the way around the 360° Skywalk highlights the part it has played in Boston’s evolution, from the sublime to the Starship Enterprise.
The celebrated Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius arrived from Nazi Germany in 1934, some years after the Russian parents of Leonard Nimoy, who grew up in a shabby tenement and became Mr Spock in Star Trek.
Other foreigners were drawn by Boston’s extraordinary abundance of seats of learning – it has no fewer than 57 colleges and universities, unparalleled anywhere else in America and surely the world.
But it was hardship in Ireland and Italy that provided the main impetus for immigration to Boston; without the Irish potato famine, the Fitzgeralds from County Limerick and the Kennedys from County Wexford might have stayed put, and Boston been denied its most famous son, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It’s best to put a whole day aside for a visit to the spectacular John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, dramatically located well out of the city centre, though easily reached on Boston’s excellent subway system. This year is a poignant time to visit: October marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, chronicled by the museum in terrifying detail.
The Italians gave Boston its spaghetti and meatballs. On my visit I took a food tour of the South End, the district in which by 1920, nine out of 10 residents were either Italian immigrants or their children. Much of what we now think of as Italian food is actually Italian-American, with meat added to pasta, which in the old country would have been unthinkable.
It was my kind of tour, and never mind Chicago, Boston is my kind of town. – The Independent
If You Go...
Walking tours of Boston’s historic sites include Boston by Foot (001 617 367 2345; bostonbyfoot.org), which offers 90-minute tours from $12 (R96), and the Freedom Trail (001 617 357 8300; thefreedomtrail.org), where hour-long tours with costumed guides start at R124.
You can also walk it on your own: collect a guidebook at the Visitor Centre on Boston Common.
The three-hour food tour of the North End costs R400 through Yummy Walks (001 212 209 3370; foodtoursboston.com).
The Skywalk Observatory, 800 Boylston St (001 617 859 0648; prudentialcenter.com). Admission R112.
John F Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum (001 617 514 1600; jfklibrary.org). Admission R96.
Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox (bostonredsox. com).
For more information see bostonusa.com