Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them, with Joe Bagley (episode 230)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to hub history where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe?
This is episode 2 30, boston’s oldest buildings and Where to find them.
Hi, I’m jake. This week I’m going to introduce you to two special guests.
In just a few minutes. I’m gonna be joined by the author of a new book on the oldest buildings that still survive in boston,
Joe Bagley is the archaeologist for the city of Boston and he’s catalogued and researched 50 of the oldest houses, stores, churches and even light houses that still stand here in the hub.
He’s going to tell us how it’s still possible to rediscover an unknown house from the 1700s in the north end in 2020,
And he’ll tell us how a house from the 1790s, the 41st oldest building in Boston could be demolished in the few short months since the book was published.

[1:00] Along the way. We’ll talk about how he researched the book, the rules. He had to write for himself about what counts as a historic building and how similar his life is to indiana jones.
We’ll also explore how historic buildings can reveal the otherwise untold stories of enslaved Bostonians women and even some of the earliest japanese citizens to visit the United States,
right now though, I want to introduce this week’s special guest host, Nikki,
Long time listeners will remember that Nikki co hosted the show with me from our first episode in October 2016 until her departure in June 2020.
Nikki, will you fill our listeners in on what you’ve been doing since you left the show?

Nikki:
[1:43] I’ve been the executive director of the old North Church and historic sites since June of 2020.

Jake:
[1:49] Well, I’m excited to have you back, even if it’s just for one episode.

Nikki:
[1:53] Before we sit down with city archaeologist joe Bagley I want to pause and thank everyone who supports the show on patreon.
Your ongoing support means that we can cover expenses like keeping hub history dot com registered updated and secure, tweaking our recordings to make our guests and me sound as good as possible,
hosting our audio files with a reliable and experienced partner and backing up our files to make sure we’re covered in case of emergency.
We appreciate everyone who helps us cover our costs. If you’re not yet sponsoring the show and you’d like to start, just go to patreon dot com slash hub history,
or visit hub history dot com and click on the support us link and thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

Jake:
[2:38] We’re joined now by joe Bagley archaeologist for the city of boston and author of the 2016 book, a History of boston and 50 artifacts.
He’s joining us today to discuss his latest book, boston’s oldest buildings and where to find them, which is available in bookstores now. So, joe Bagley welcome to the show.

Joe:
[2:55] Thanks for having me.

Jake:
[2:57] We invited you here today to talk about your book, boston’s oldest buildings and where to find them.
But before I get into that, I just want to ask, what does it mean to be the city archaeologist for boston?

Joe:
[3:08] I’m still learning that myself. But so I work for the city of boston in the environment department for the boston landmarks commission.
So within that I review archaeological impacts on landmark designated sites.
But since I’m also the staff archaeologist for the city of boston, I’ll do work with other departments like the Parks department who may be doing a project somewhere to help understand if there could be an archaeological site or even respond to it if there is a site.
But we also work with nonprofits throughout the city if there’s an archaeological survey needed.
Um We’ve done a lot of archaeological surveys with different museums in the area.
Um and yeah, a little bit of everything. But if it’s archaeology in boston, I’m typically associated with it.

Jake:
[3:54] And when you’re doing an archaeological survey, whether it’s for a museum or because of construction, what does that actually look like? How similar is it to Raiders of the lost ark?

Joe:
[4:04] It’s very very similar. A few less rolling balls of stone coming after me on most days.
Um but typically what I’m doing is looking at The history of the property from native perspective as to whether or not there’s a landscape that could have a native site and I’ll go through a lot of maps.
So I’m I’m looking for whatever may have been there for the past 10,000 years or so.
Um and sometimes that’s by doing very small holes that we call test bit, sometimes it’s by larger holes we call unit or trenches.
Um but each day is kind of custom built for each property and where we’re looking at it, we’re looking at a whole field, are we looking at a very small backyard and we’ll tackle those projects differently.
They typically aren’t those gigantic open holes that you see.
Um sometimes in europe and places like that. Um,
I haven’t found any pyramids yet, but overall it’s,
uh it’s usually a little bit small scale, but because it’s an urban site like boston, we have so much history stacked on top of different places, we tend to have a lot of information to get through as we go down to the different layers.

Jake:
[5:08] So how long have you been in this position? How long have you been the city archaeologist?

Joe:
[5:11] I’ll be 10 years in a couple of months. So I’m coming up on my big anniversary. Yeah.

Jake:
[5:15] Okay. So with a decade basically under your belt, what what are some of the favorite digs that you’ve participated in at that time?

Joe:
[5:24] For me, the ones that are the most exciting are the ones that I don’t see coming.
So, um things like the seaport shipwreck that came up I think in 2015 2016 that I had no idea was about to happen and within 24 hours I was on top of a shipwreck that was found in the ship in the seaport from the 18 hundreds.
Um We did work in the Crypt at Old North Church, which was a really big project because we was a small project in scale, but it’s a big project and what we could find.
Uh but opening up the crips that were, that may or may not be still occupied.
Um so that was a big project for us and they, you know, they were very much occupied still.
Um but it’s really, for me it’s the projects that helped me see boston in a totally different way or see a place that we’ve seen over and over and over again with something brand new to add to it. Those are the things that make me really excited.

Jake:
[6:16] So can you give our listeners a sense of what some of the objects you might find on a dig would be?
And it could be something from your time as the city archaeologist or something that’s in the collection of the department? That’s from before your time? Just what are what are some of the objects that one might encounter on a dig in boston?

Joe:
[6:34] So that’s what makes archaeology is so important. Is that what we find on a dig in boston is the everyday stuff that people leave behind.
So it’s your day to day humdrum objects. You’re close the food you were eating at lunch the plate you were eating it off of the button that pops off your shirt.
Um It’s the everyday story of the everyday of bostonian. So for me that’s the part of history that gets some of the least amount recorded about it.
And so what I try to do in archaeology is to fill in some of those missing gaps in the story.
And so for me the broken dishes from a house, the the animal bones, the we call it personal adornment things like buttons, combs, um jewelry, things like that.
Those are those are the pieces of the story that that I get excited about because I know that that data is probably not well represented in a census record or a tax document or a map. Those are the parts that we can bring something new to the tables. Archaeologist.

Nikki:
[7:36] Joe can you talk a little bit about the rat graveyard that you discovered at Old North?

Joe:
[7:39] Yeah discovered that Old North. Yeah I think it was more of a death pit than a graveyard.
Um Yeah we were digging in the what’s now Washington garden but at one point um it’s just next to Old North Church.
Um It’s it’s now a garden but at one point it was the backyard of three connecting robe brick row houses.
Um That were built in the 18 I think thirties and lived in until about the 19 forties.
Um In the backyard. Each of the brick buildings had a little wooden edition off the back that was where they had their bathroom, which we found the outhouse, but also their cistern, which is basically a gigantic rain barrel that was,
dug in the ground and covered up partially by this edition.
And that system would have collected all the rainwater from the roof tops,
of the houses nearby and would have been what we call gray water, which is things like um you could wash your clothes with it, you could use it to water plants, you wouldn’t necessarily drink it because it wasn’t necessarily delicious by any means or that clean.
They had a well as well. So they would have used that for fresh water.
Um but that that cistern in the, in the in this property was about six ft wide and about eight ft deep.

[8:49] And so the part of the system that was covered would have allowed rats that were in the yard to kind of get up to the edge of the sister and then fall in,
and over decades we may have found, I think it was around 200 or 300 rats skeletons in the bottom of the cistern.
The literally adjacent sister into it was had like one or 2.
So, I don’t know what was going on in that one property as part of the question that we have is like why is there so many rats in this one cistern.
Um but the reality is there was we called it rat gazpacho at the bottom of the cistern from all the all the fresh water coming flooding in from the drains and ending up inside the kind of pit of dead rats.
It’s a great story, really? Well, it does.

Jake:
[9:33] Well, it does sound a lot like Raiders of the lost ark uh seems like he’s always winding up with rats or snakes or something in a pit? Uh huh.

Joe:
[9:40] Yeah, you’re good point. That is actually pretty straight at it. I mean they were very well decomposed. All we found was that little skulls and bones. But yeah.

Jake:
[9:49] Is the archeology lab open to the public?

Joe:
[9:52] It normally is we’re in a transition phase right now, we have to move out of our floor and we’re going to be, the city is working with us to build a new archeology lab in the archival center. So if you come to do archival research you’ll see the archeology lab or vice versa.
Um So we’re going to have a brand new public archaeology laboratory that will be inside the archival kind of reading room.
We’re gonna have full glass walls that we can fold back and that will open sometime next year.
We’re not really sure in the deadline there. The timeline keeps moving on us.
But we’re in the process of moving out of our current space in West Roxbury and going into a trailer while they do the construction and then we’ll be moving back and we’ll be relaunching the entire program, the entire lab.
And so we hope to get public out to the property um as soon as possible. But right now we are close to the public.
Unless you have a really important research question that we can get to you right now because we have very very little space and a lot of products happening while we’re literally packing up and leaving.

Jake:
[10:55] Well, that sounds like something exciting to look forward to in 2022.

Joe:
[10:58] Absolutely.

Jake:
[10:59] So I guess we should get into Boston’s oldest buildings.
The book is a list of basically 50, give or take. A few of the oldest buildings in Boston uh includes houses, commercial buildings, churches, there’s even a lighthouse in their Boston light. My favorite lighthouse.
You had to draw the line somewhere about what makes it into the book.
And I was surprised when I was first reading it not to see the Thomas Mayo House on the list, which I’ve seen in other other lists as having maybe been built in the 1680s, its way out and,
west Roxbury, just a few feet or a few yards from the dead um town line.
Why didn’t something like the Mayo house make it into the book?

Joe:
[11:41] So I had to draw a couple of lines in the sand for what would and wouldn’t be included in the book.
And one of the rules that I’ve made was that the parts of the building that are supposedly old.

[11:54] Have to be visible enough to the outside that we can walk up to it or at least see it from a distance and be like that’s the old part of the house.
And the reason why I did that was because it makes it a lot harder to test whether or not these things are actually the age that they are being reported to be.
Um but also because frankly it was a practical issue.
Um I wrote most of this book during the very beginning of the shutdowns related to Covid, I had no abilities to get into any of these buildings.
So the interior parts of these buildings, if the core of these buildings, kind of the guts of these buildings were from 17th or 18th century, I would have no means to even look myself at it.
So I figured that I had to set the rule of it. The outside of the building visible to the public.
Had to be the part that was historic. Otherwise it just wouldn’t Make my cut off and it is a bit of arbitrary cut off.
But that also excluded things like foundations because I’m an archaeologist, I might go out on a dig at the end of the month and find a 17th century foundation.

[12:54] So if that’s not visible above ground, then we should count all of the potential archaeological sites in boston as part of the oldest buildings too.
So I really wanted to make it have some boundaries. And unfortunately the Mayo house was on the list at first and it didn’t make the final cut.
There’s a couple of old buildings that are on older foundations.
Those didn’t make the cut. Um, it had to have four walls and a roof and then I had to make it clear that it was four walls and a roof for a living person because I realized that that opened up the door to all the different tombs in boston.

Jake:
[13:24] I was just thinking Cotton Mather’s tomb has four walls and a roof.

Joe:
[13:27] Exactly. So I had to kind of create this arbitrary set of rules so that when you open the book on the 50 oldest buildings, you didn’t see 37 tombs, a stonewall, um, offense and a staircase in Jamaica plain like that kind of thing.
So that kind of created the boundaries for the book.

Nikki:
[13:45] One of the things that I was surprised to learn when reading the book is that we’re still discovering 18th century buildings, or rather we’re still discovering that buildings are 18th century.
Can you tell us a little bit about the process of rediscovering the Grant house on Hanover and tile stone in the north end?

Joe:
[14:05] Yeah, the grand house was one of these buildings that I certainly walked by many times, it’s right on Hanover Street, in the middle of all the restaurants, so many people have walked by it.
Um I was in february of 2020 right before the shutdowns happened, I was walking from old North Church to the paul revere house to take pictures of the houses for the book.

[14:25] And the light was hitting the grand house at just the right angle and I looked up and I saw the stripe of bricks down the side of the building that if you’ve gone to any of the buildings in the book from the 18th century, there’s an architectural element called,
a belt course and it’s essentially an area of bricks that stick out further from the wall as almost a stripe,
between each floor, all the windows basically, it’s like an underlying of the windows um and that’s where the floor Joyce for the interior wood of the building that sits in the walls.
Um but it’s basically a billboard on the side of these buildings screaming, I’m an 18th century house because all of them hit an old building from the 18th century in boston, they all have these belt if they’re made of brick, they all have these belt courses,
and I saw this bell course in the light and it stopped me dead in my tracks,
and I was like, oh no because not only did I didn’t mean it probably wasn’t 18th century house, but I was pretty far along in the research of this and I was going through my head how much time I’m going to have to do to figure out how old this house is,
what building at number 50 is going to get bumped off the list because I think I just found an 18th century building.

[15:29] How the Heck did we miss this building over the past 200 years or so?
Um And I went back to the official state records and it was recorded as approximately 18 14 but could be older.
Um And that was based on a map from 18 14. But when I did my research I was able to get it all the way back to 17 30 for just by looking at the deeds.
Um But because it’s boston of course the 17 34 D basically said we tore down an even older house to build this house. So this is the second house at least on that property In 1734.

Jake:
[16:00] So you say you’re tracking that history through deeds, Will you talk a little bit more about what the the documentary house or the documentary history of some of these buildings is like.

Joe:
[16:09] Sure. So some of the buildings I’d say about it’s about half and half between buildings that have dissertations written on them and buildings that no one’s ever heard of.
And so a lot of that came down to um suggestions reported about 18th centuries and then I had to do the deed research to really kind of nail that down.
Um So for the deeds, every building pretty much has a deed in the history of boston and I was able to use the deed books that that document when a building was bought and sold who was paid who was bought by and sold to.
Um And I was basically looking for the time when somebody said I have a vacant parcel of land.
And then the next deed says I’m selling a house on it. The big question then becomes is this that same house or did it burn down?
And then there’s a later house on top of that. So that kind of that was another phase of research. But the deeds were really my key to book ending the approximate date of some of these constructions.
Um And then when I had things like a house right buying a vacant lot and then selling a house afterwards I interpreted that to me the person that bought the land who was a house right built the house themselves and then sold it on.

[17:17] Um So that’s how I kind of read into the deeds to get a little bit more information.
But that’s just a part of what I do as an archaeologist on every one of my projects. So basically I do this kind of research before every one of my my digs.
Um to make sure that I’ve got the basic baseline information of who who lived here and when Throughout time. So this is kind of like the beginning phase of every single one of my archaeological projects where I to do 50 projects on these properties.

Nikki:
[17:44] So the grant houses, about three or four blocks from the paul Revere house, and you mentioned in the book that you possibly uncovered a connection to the revere family from the Grant House. Can you talk about that?

Joe:
[17:57] Sure. So paul Revere’s father moved from the area by Faneuil Hall to Hanover Street right around the time that paul Revere was born.
Um the description of where there’s a newspaper from the 1730s that talks about this.
Um the description that says where he moved to says over and against her. Over an opposite. I forget the exact term of um the kind of forget the person’s name.
Um thank you. The Hutchinson House which we know was on the other side of of Hanover Street, so there’s also a church on a different opposite side of of the Hutchinson house. So we know it’s across the street from Hanover, not on the other side of not like next to it.

Nikki:
[18:24] The Hutchinson How?

Joe:
[18:38] Um so that the grant house and the now demolished property immediately to its north on the other side of tile stone um would have been,
one of its either or we’re down to two houses, it’s either the grand house or the missing house that’s now gone.
The only issue is that I believe that the grant family was living in the house from the entire time that they owned it.
Um So that would mean that a pall over Voir um the father of Revere would have had to have rented it and lived in the same house, which is not impossible but slightly less likely.
So I think that odds are favoring that it’s the neighboring house, not the grant house, but it’s not excluding the grand house yet, but if that’s the case, that means that we have the birthplace of Revere still standing. Which is kind of a big deal to.

Jake:
[19:23] Wow, while we’re in the north end, can you tell us a little bit about the Kimble Cheever house?
I know that Lebanese are Clough, Clough? Uh huh.

Nikki:
[19:33] Yes.

Joe:
[19:34] I would say Cloud, but we’re not gonna have that debate today. Clo Yeah.

Nikki:
[19:37] Clough claw clue.

Jake:
[19:37] Yeah. Uh huh.
So we we have a club for Clough or Clo house in the north end that was developed by Ebenezer and that’s now part of the old north campus.
But Ebeneezer Cluff also, originally it sounds like was planning to develop the parcel where the Kimble Cheever houses.
Now how did that house that stands there? Now end up getting developed by Ebeneezer and Jonathan kimball and not Lebanese or cloth.

Joe:
[20:09] So the way I, my research suggests, I’m not positive the exact reasoning behind this, but basically Ebeneezer bought all of Unity is the north side of Unity Street and started to Ebony’s Clough Clough,
but the north side of Unity Street started to develop a row of brick houses um including the one that was um Ben Franklin’s sister,
um um jane franklin, which is demolishes now the backside of Old North.
Um it just looks like he didn’t get all the way to tile Stone Street before he stopped and sold some of the last lots to another bricklayer.
Um, Ebeneezer kimball um who then built, I think at least the last building, if not the last two buildings in that row. So basically it was a bunch of bricklayers who were all working together on a bunch of different buildings, probably including Old North, which we know avenues that cliff was working on.
Um and then kimball basically finished the last building and so, but they’re all built about basically the same time, it’s kind of like a little showcase of boston bricklayers in the Unity Street area.

Nikki:
[21:14] How is the building different now than when it was built?

Joe:
[21:17] So when it was first built, it would have been a two story, possibly three story building that was then sometime around 1870 or so.
I’m not sure exactly why I did all the work, I could to find out, why but I couldn’t find, it something happened to the building and it was the fourth storey was added to the top of it,
and if you look at the building, the one entire side of the building is missing its original bricks.
So it’s really just like a front facade of really the side facade of the building that still exists on Unity Street. So something happened where an entire side of the building on tile, Stone street and a third story of brickwork was added to it.
Um, that could have been a major fire that took out most of the building, but it didn’t come up in the newspapers, so I’m not really sure if that’s what that was. It.
It could just be a modernization to where somebody in the 18 seventies that I have this old house, I want to make it look newer.
I’m going to take off the old looking brick on this fall and I’m going to add another story to the top and then I can rent it out to hold a whole lot more people. So it’s, it’s really evolved over time.
Um, there’s windows that have been filled in, there’s doors that have been filled in, um, that’s one of the more when you can, when you look at it, the echo of those architectural elements are really still captured in the brickwork of the building. It’s a really cool building to stare at.

Nikki:
[22:32] In the book, you mentioned that the family who moved in after the Kimball’s, the Cheevers were enslave ear’s.
Um, slavery was common in Boston in the first half of the 18th century, but having documentation about the lives of enslaved Africans is not.
Um, can you tell us about the Cheevers and what we know about the men and women and Children who they enslaved?

Joe:
[22:55] Sure. So we know that Joshua Achiever purchased the house in 1747. Um the house is fairly new at the time.
Um He was a very wealthy bostonian, a selectman. He was part of the ancient, honourable artillery company. He really was kind of a mover and shaker in boston.

[23:11] We don’t see any evidence in the documentation of his enslaved people until he passes away and at that point his enslaved people become registered in existence.
Um so what we have in the, in the probate records, which actually are achievers will is that he gives away um to enslaved people.
The first one is a man named Jack, who he actually freeze upon his death.
Um And the second one is a young boy named Spencer who he gives to his wife quote for the rest of his life essentially.
Um So he said to me one of his enslaved people, but he gives another enslaved boy away to his to his wife upon his death.
Um we actually have a couple of references to Jack in the historic records, which is pretty rare.
Jack was actually married to two different women who were also enslaved by other people in the city of boston.
Um, I believe the first woman passed away. Then he went and married a second person.
So we actually shows up in multiple different types of documentary records, which is really rare for an insulated person to show up,
that much in in in boston written documentation because unfortunately the written documents really favor adult white men throughout history, but especially in boston history.

Jake:
[24:31] While we’re on the topic of slavery, I’m going to take us out to Roxbury, from it to an estate that was the home of, of two different governors in massachusetts history, our royal governor, William Shirley,
and then a few years later, under the constitutional government, William Eustis.
So those are two very famous residents of what’s now called the Shirley Eustis House.
Well, you tell us a little bit about the less famous residents of that house, both free and enslaved.

Joe:
[25:00] Sure. So um as governors, um or as the royal Governor really, because it wasn’t so much later,
um as as a royal governor, um Governor Shirley was extremely wealthy and also able to afford enslaved people and servants.
So it would have been a combination of enslaved people and servants who were not enslaved.

[25:19] Um We have written recommend written information about the Shirley Eustis house, that the basement, which is no longer, it’s both there, but no longer there and I can come back to that, but the basement level of the Shirley house,
was um a place where the kitchens were, and also there was living quarters for enslaved people, but that would have been probably exclusively the enslaved.

[25:42] Kitchen workers or domestic servants of the house.
There would have also been enslaved men who would have been on the property and possibly living in the likely living in the adjoining or not to join in the nearby um buildings and outbuildings around the house as well.
Um We have really growing evidence of the, of the of a barn like structure next to the Shirley house, which is still standing, Um which may have should have made the book, but that’s another story because I didn’t realize how old it was at the time.
Um that may have been from the 1750s. And if that’s the case, and it was likely also a place where things like carriages would have been stored, but enslaved people were likely to have lived there as well.
Um I did an archaeological survey at the Shirley Eustis House a few years ago um in the back part of the house, which is now kind of facing South Bay.
Um, with this expressed intention of trying to find that original kitchen where the house used to be. So the house got picked up and moved.
Um, we dug down looking for these enslaved spaces because we have a lot of NFL and a lot of archaeological evidence from places in the mid atlantic,
of enslaved kitchens in basements having um, ritual and uh, people putting enslaved people putting.

[26:55] Kind of bundles of things at thresholds and your heart’s in kitchens and basements.
So they could be an incredibly important archaeological pieces of story here.
So we were looking for that kitchen to see if it was intact and if we could potentially find the floor to see if there’s something in the floor.
Um, unfortunately while we were digging, we realized we weren’t one, we weren’t finding anything. And I literally mean we weren’t finding anything and that never happens on an archaeological site.
Um, but the other challenge was that or not the other challenge, the other reality thing that we realized was that one of my volunteers actually found a newspaper clipping during the dig, which is not when you want to find these things,
that said that after the house was moved, it was kind of a throwaway sentence was like, oh, they dug down the hill that it was standing on and carted it off to fill in South bay,
and I’m standing there where the where the basement used to be but apparently has now been dug up and dumped in South Bay, Realizing that my archaeological dig, my archaeological site left in the 1860s.
And I’ve been digging essentially through like the guts of a glacial hill for the past couple of weeks, not finding anything because there’s literally nothing there.

[27:57] Um But that’s the reality of archaeology. If we could if we could have X ray vision and see what we’re about to dig up and know what we’re about to find, that we wouldn’t need to do archaeology.
But but anyway, we were really looking for that underrepresented story of the enslaved people of the Shirley Eustis house, the barn structure next door, the out building next door really does give hope though, that there could be some of that,
that it’s slave story still represented not only in the building,
but in the landscape around it, because that building is actually topographically higher than the Shirley House and it may be sitting with that mate is sitting on part of that original hill that still survives.
And there could be an archaeological deposit around that building that has more of that missing information to.

Jake:
[28:36] So when you talk about this older outbuilding, you’re not talking about the carriage house that’s currently on the grounds of the justice system because that was moved in, I think in the 20th century, and the house obviously was moved from elsewhere. Where where is there still an old outbuilding standing?

Joe:
[28:50] It’s directly across the street from the Shirley House on Shirley Street.
It’s actually part of an upcoming landmark um um designation that we’re working towards getting landmark designation for the Shirley used this house and includes this building across the street on Shirley Street.
And hopefully all of that will pass in very short order. And we’ll have a new landmark which will include the Shirley House and the outbuilding.
Um but that outbuilding really is an important, incredibly important, important part of the story if we want to not just celebrate the story of the one of the largest, most expensive fanciest houses and one of the wealthiest people in boston, but,
the other people that were involved in the story, which includes enslaved people.

Jake:
[29:31] I’ll have to take a trip, but I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that that barn or I feel like I have to take a trip through there again.

Joe:
[29:35] It’s just one of many hiding in plain sight.

Nikki:
[29:38] Is it privately owned Like is it just in someone’s lot?

Joe:
[29:41] Yes, it’s um it’s a privately owned, I think it’s a duplex.

Jake:
[29:46] So we mentioned that that the Shirley used, his house was physically moved when the neighborhood was going to be developed around it, but that’s not the only set of changes that that house has gone through.
Can you tell us a little bit about how the other changes that that house has gone through through the years, especially as we get into the 19th and late 19th and 20th centuries, and then what that tells us about how boston was changing at those times.

Joe:
[30:11] Sure it remained pretty intact overall, considering that it,
it went through a lot of different changes in use um but essentially things that were really fragile, like balustrades um uh some of the um interior element especially were taken off or taken down,
when the building became um an apartment complex essentially, it was broken down into many different smaller,
housing places um inside of the building.
Um But fortunately a lot of those elements got placed into other parts of the building and I believe that there was even an architect that lived in back bay that took some pieces of the house with them.
Um I don’t know when or how, but they basically curated a couple of pieces of it,
so that when it became a house museum, a lot of these things actually got to be restored back to the property,
on the exterior, I believe that the original um original wood on the exterior of the house was painted with sand and mixed into the paint to make it look more like stone.
The goal was to make the whole building look like a stone, like it was made out of stone.
Um The later collaborates that are out there now are just painted wood.

[31:16] Um So, but those are like the more subtle changes that have happened. Um but at one point after the building was moved to basically get it out of the way of Shirley Street, the neighborhood really kind of flooded in around it.
So in the early 1900s there were tons of buildings right up to the house, the house was basically tucked between um, a bunch of three deckers and 22 family homes.
Um, and then when the property was purchased in the early 1900s, converted back to kind of an historic house museum, a lot of those buildings were actually demolished.
And so whether or not that should have happened or whose stories are being erased when we’re going back to kind of the colonial appearance of these houses.
That that’s 100 year old story now. But um, but those, those,
those 19th century and early 20th century houses are basically under the footprints in the archaeological components of those are now under the yard and the kind of grand lawn that’s in front of the show use this house today,
uh, which which is immediately restoring it back to the way it would have looked, or more like it would have looked.
But in doing so it takes out that 20th century story as well. And that kind of immigrant um, apartment story that a lot of buildings in the book actually have to.

Jake:
[32:26] And before we move on from the Shirley Eustis House, I will selfishly point are loyal listeners to episode 132,
if they want to learn more about how Governor William Shirley got the fortune to build such a grand house and episode,
1 63 to learn how Governor Eustis hosted and entertained General Lafayette on his grand american tour.
So from the Shirley used to sounds just down Dudley Street on the other side of Nubian Square,
there is a house called the Dill Away thomas House, which is a much more sort of modest home that just dates from a few years after the Shirley Eustis House, William Shirley Shirley’s country estate.
Can you tell us who built the Delaware thomas House?

Joe:
[33:16] The Dylan thomas House for most of its early history was used as essentially a parsonage for the first church, which is directly across the street.
But the catch is that um it’s not like the church paid for the building or gave it to the reverence of the of the church,
basically, they they had to build their own house and then it kind of was coincidental that it passed from reverend to reverend over time.
So it was a de facto uh parsonage. It wasn’t actually built for that.
Uh that said it’s a pretty nice house for someone that was essentially not making a ton of money really.
Um And but that led to some things like really slow start to the to the completion of the house because um it took many, many years to get the thing off and running. I think it was multiple years in in construction.
Um it was it was started in the 1750s I think 1752.
And there’s a there’s a letter in the 1760s basically saying I really wish my house would be done, but it’s not so 10 years later they’re still trying to build it.
So um so it got a slow start, but essentially it was it was a home for the religious leader of Roxbury for decades.

Jake:
[34:25] And because the front lines of the revolution ran right through Roxbury in 1775 and 1776, the house had a colorful history during the seizure, Boston. Um, can you tell our listeners a bit about its wartime service?

Joe:
[34:40] Sure, so um I like to call these houses and this is not my term, many people prefer to it, but as a witness House, it’s one of these houses that kind of was there and quote unquote saw what was going on around it.
So yeah, so during, during the actual revolution um there were rebel forces creating earthworks,
kind of around in nearby the villa way thomas house and this is kind of like one of the witness houses, one of these houses that kind of got to see history kind of happened around it.
Um So one of the people that we have documentation of being in the house during the revolution is john thomas who was a rebel general um and he commandeered the house from the church, then used it as officer housing.
Um and there’s even a reference in a in a document that says that he watched Charlestown burn from the upper storey of the building which faces downtown boston and beyond that Charlestown.
Um and there’s a gorgeous painting of Charlestown burning that just shows the black smoke coming out of the otherwise blue sky um so it would have been really um impressive sight even from that distance to see Charlestown from there.
Um But yeah, it was one of those houses that that actually a lot of the houses, especially in the Roxbury area um that were directly involved with the people that were, that were doing the war around them essentially.

Jake:
[35:58] About a century after that, about a century after the seizure boston, the same house makes history again.
At the Dill Away thomas house, there are four students from Japan who studied under Charles Dill Away.
Can you tell us about the significance of that? I guess you call it cultural exchange that that stay here in Roxbury.

Joe:
[36:22] Yeah, it’s one of these things that I had no idea about until I actually did, I was about to do an archaeological dig at the Delaware thomas house that fell through. But when I was reading through it, I saw this kind of piece of history about Japan and I was like, just blindsided me. I didn’t see it coming.
So in 1858 there was an opening of Japan to the non-Japanese world that really brought Japan into a global um space um For the first time, essentially in recorded history.
Um, what that means is that we really are never going to see Japanese people and Japanese items turning up in the United States before 1858.
Um, and then a little bit later than that in 18 70. Um,
Charles dill away who is a teacher who lived in the house, um, his through his connections as a, as a teacher, uh, associate with very other people in the city was,
able to um become essentially a host for four japanese,
young men who came over to America in what may have been one of, if not the actual first exchanges of young people and students, um,
uh, appearance of, of japanese young people in the United States ever.

[37:38] Um, in boston in Roxbury, in the Delaware thomas house.
Um, and why that really excited me at the time. Besides being just a really interesting story. And there’s a beautiful photograph of the four students with Charles del away at the Museum of Fine Arts that I included in the book, um, we were actually able to find.
Um well when I was going through the collections that we curate the collection from that house in the, in the lab here, The archeology lab.

[38:04] Um well, I was going through that, I found this really strange ceramic I had never seen before. It was a black porcelain with um for those of us that grew up in the 90s puffy paint style of paint on top of it where the raised decoration and I hadn’t seen it before.
Um so I actually put it online on our social media pages on facebook and basically was like, hey, I don’t know what this is because I don’t know what it is.
Um and uh somebody immediately identified as satsuma where, which is a japanese ceramic and as soon as that happened, it clicked.
I was like holy cow. This is, this is a japanese ceramic at the site of one of the first japanese, american cultural exchanges ever.
Um and the style of the pot is actually identical to what would have been being made in 18 70.
So the students that came to the deal away house may have actually brought this pottery with them potentially as a gift, I don’t know.
Um, but that would also be one of the first exchanges of ceramics ever between japanese and american people and it broke sadly tragically.
Um but if you go to the Delaware thomas house. When it’s open, it’s kind of a part museum, part um kind of space for other activities.
We actually have those ceramic shirts on exhibit next to a near identical intact base to show what it would’ve looked like when it was when it was intact at the time in the house, which I think is really kind of cool.

Nikki:
[39:27] So despite all of this history with the Dill Away thomas house, the house was nearly demolished in the 19 twenties and then almost destroyed by arson about half a century later.
So how was it eventually saved?

Joe:
[39:43] Sure. So um in the in the 1980s a group of Boston, Roxbury residents um um from the roster Roxbury Historical Society, Byron rushing who was a state representative at the time.
Uh They got together and actually raise the funds to restore the house and I have a photograph of Byron Ocean standing in front of the house in the book Um in the 1980s and the house is not looking its best at the time.
It’s in pretty rough shape unfortunately. Um and they were actually able to raise money um through the state of Massachusetts to reopen the house as a museum in 1992 to restore the building um which was quite a bit of work because they had had partially burned at the time.
Um And that’s actually one of the main stories that I kind of try to to to look out for each of the buildings. It’s not just who lived in the buildings.
Um and why why do we care about them from way back when? But it’s also what efforts have gone into trying to keep these buildings standing to today?
Um was it just they just happened to survive 300 years? Or is it like the ongoing, constant, expensive efforts of people to keep these buildings up and running that um and tell those stories about the preservation efforts to.

Jake:
[40:51] I interviewed Russ Lopez back in episode 1 67 about his book on the L G B.
T. Q history of boston and he told our listeners that the first Bostonians who left documentary evidence that they may have been a gay couple were two black men who lived on Beacon Hill.
And uh there George Middleton and louis either Gloppy in or Clap ian depending on where you look.
So when I stumbled across the house that they lived in and on Pinckney Lane in your book, I was surprised and pleased. I felt like I was an insider because I’ve heard of these guys before.
Well, can you, can you remind our listeners who clap in the Middleton were um, maybe the kind of work that they did and how they fit into the Beacon Hill community of their era?

Joe:
[41:42] Sure. Um So we don’t know as much about gloppy in as we do, or clapping as Middleton, but Middleton was a horse tender professionally, which,
kind of took care of, of horses for other Bostonians, but he was much more than that for his community.
He was um really a leader amongst the free black community in boston. He was an abolitionist.
He fought for equal education rights for students in boston. This is before the Aviall smith school, which is the oldest school in boston was built his his work kind of lead in that direction.
So yeah, he was he was many things. He was a member of the Bucks of America, which is a rebel militia company that we have almost no information about other than their original flag, which is.
And I think the mass historical society, which would be great if we could get more information about them, but he was a real leader in the community.
Um, Clapping and gloppy in or globulin or however we want to pronounce his name.
Um He was probably from the french west Indies, or possibly from one of the more french speaking caribbean countries.
Um But he came to boston, we do know that gloppy in and Middleton were living a single men together on the north slope of the north end in what was a free black community.
They’re kind of facing Charlestown and they picked up their things and moved to.

[42:59] The area where they moved to Pinckney Street, but basically a joining Joy Street, which was another free black community in the late 18th, early 19th century on Joy Street.
So their house would have been kind of right on the edge of that kind of free black community.
Um but they’re this these are kind of two of the historic cores of the of the food black communities in boston.

Jake:
[43:22] Architecturally, their house on Pickney Street stands out immediately because it’s the only wooden house surrounded on all sides by brick homes. From a building perspective, what else makes it special?

Joe:
[43:34] It’s um, it’s smaller in scale than many of the buildings in the, in the neighborhood.
Originally, it was only two stories tall. So much of the buildings in Beacon Hill are three stories, sometimes as many as five stories, um because it’s so old relative to the other buildings, um it just has a much more simpler style.
So it’s a, it’s essentially a Georgian row house, not a federal or greek revival row house, which is pretty much everything else in the neighborhood.
So there’s a little bit less of a, I need to really show off my grandness that Georgia is by no means were subtle in their architecture, but.

[44:11] But the, the slightly later styles are a little bit more pomp and circumstance than the Georgian rowhouse from their earlier time period.
Um, but for me, it was one of the things that I was really shocked about was how little gloppy ins and Middleton’s presence was even acknowledged in some of the early documentation about the, about the buildings and the neighborhood.
Um Beacon Hills, part of a landmark district that we have that my co workers and colleagues and the landmarks commission review products for, so we can go back to the landmark destination And that was done in the 40s or 50’s. I think maybe even earlier than that.
I can’t remember the exact dates, but essentially it just gets lumped in with all the other buildings.
But a kind of casual note that it’s wood and it’s one of the oldest, but not not really anything else.
And I think that it shows you how, in nearly 100 years.

[44:58] What the priorities are in the preservation movement between, you know, we need to record the nicest prettiest houses to now where it’s a lot more about the story and who’s there and what kind of stories are represented by the preservation.
So it was never recorded or preserved because it was the oldest building owned by a black person in boston or built for a black person in boston.
It just preserved because it’s part of the Beacon Hill landscape. So it kind of got swept up in the kind of Beacon Hill nous, that’s what, that’s what gave it the preservation.
It is the oldest building on Beacon Hill is the only one that made the book cut off date.
Um, but then when you start to kind of unpackaged story, you realize that,
we got with that an incredible story of the free black community in boston and possibly a story of a gay couple in the 17 nineties and 17 eighties, which is really basically un recorded other than that.

Nikki:
[45:53] On a similar vein, you talked about in the book how it can be challenging to research nontraditional families or maybe I’ll say nontraditional homeowners.
So in trying to find out where the Caroline cape in house in Dorchester came from, this came up as well. Can you talk a little bit about that research on that house?

Joe:
[46:13] Sure. So Caroline keeping house, which is in kind of the western part of Dorchester near four corners.
Um What it had two things going against it.
It was owned by a woman, which meant that it was inherently less present or at least Caroline story was less present in documentation than others.
Um And the other challenge was that Caroline was a Cape in or which was an enormous family in Dorchester who frankly owned a ton of dorchester at many points.
Um So when I was doing the research on that property, basically, it doesn’t appear until it gets moved to its current location. So the question was always, where did it come from?
Um I know that Caroline keeping, who owned the property when it was moved, inherited from her husband who was a Cape in, but her husband owned five or 6 contiguous properties on the same street.

[47:07] And when you look at the deeds, when you look at the probate records the descriptions for where properties are, tend to really focus on just like the street name, but never the location on that street.
So every one of those like five or six properties would just be described as a house on Washington street.
Um But when you have six properties that all maybe the Caroline cape and house all described as a house on Washington street, you don’t know which of those six properties you’re actually looking at.
So when you try to do the next step back, which is, who sold it to him, all you have is another six buildings that say a house on Washington street. So you’re never really sure if you’re on the right street.
What you have to do is actually look at basically half a neighborhood and do the research of all of those owners that you can kind of piece together the connecting parcels because every, every deed mention to the neighboring neighboring lots are.
Anyway, it’s just, it just becomes a nightmare essentially. Research if I had about a month to do the research on the Caroline keeping house, I might be able to figure out a couple of buildings that it might have been originally.
Um, but interestingly, I just saw the Caroline keeping houses um, on, on for sale or maybe under under agreement now. But I just popped up on Zillow and I was like, oh, look at that.

Jake:
[48:20] It’s amazing that we live in a city where the oldest buildings in the city are are just somebody’s house.

Joe:
[48:27] But it’s nice. So I feel like it’s kind of, it’s not the worst that some of these buildings were houses and still our houses. You know, I have nothing against the house museum and I’ve nothing against museums in general, but it doesn’t, it’s not the worst to know that this has just been a home forever.
There’s something kind of nice about that too.

Jake:
[48:46] About a year ago, maybe a little more than a year ago. Back in episode one, I talked about the centennial of the U. S.
And How a lot of Bostonians thought that the 100 anniversary was the perfect time to start knocking down local buildings that were associated with the founding of the US.
So we had business leaders who were arguing that the old state house should be demolished to make a wider state street.
Um Old South Meeting house was sold for scrap.
And then at the last minute a group of upper class women swooped in and raised the money to save it from demolition.
But that’s not the only historic site in boston. They were saved through the efforts of women.
Can you tell our listeners a little bit about first the Origins of the Luring Green, Oh, house in and JP in the 18th century, and then also how it was saved by a women’s group in the 20th century.

Joe:
[49:43] Right, so the Lauren Green, our house was originally built for commodore Joshua loring who was a common there sorry a commander of the english forces during the seven years for I am not a war historian.
That that kind of news like literally bores me to death.
But anyway um he ended up retiring in um in Jamaica Plain which at the time was known as West Roxbury.
And he purchased in the state um at the time that he purchased it it had a parsonage on the property that had to actually get removed and there’s a chance that that house still stands but that’s another topic.
Um So so the house is essentially a retirement home for a noted war um figure.
Um And it kind of stayed as this kind of large rural estate for the vast majority of its history.
But then by the time you get to the late 1800s, early 1900s it was really literally not any room left for large rural estates in anywhere.
Um that’s one of the biggest things I think if for those that are not as familiar with the surrounding neighborhoods of Boston um to see that changing in the landscape and how long it took for these areas to go from rural to urban.
Um And and that development story in jp Roxbury Dorchester Brighton Alston.

Jake:
[51:01] That’s a big reason why we consider Roxbury in West Roxbury to different places today. At the time when Roxbury was becoming industrialized, lot of tenement homes, immigrants moving in.
The people in West Roxbury said, whoa, whoa, whoa, We’re agricultural rural community.
We don’t want to be part of this industrial city that you’re building in in lower Roxbury. So us here an Upper West Roxbury, you’re going to split off and form our own little town.

Joe:
[51:27] Yeah, it’s really interesting to kind of read into like how much of this was done because we want, we want to keep, you know rural, we want to keep whatever or how much of it was done because we don’t want to live near immigrants. We don’t want to live to hear these people that we don’t want to live near and like.

Jake:
[51:41] And how often those are actually one of the same.

Joe:
[51:43] Exactly, yeah, and I think that, that, that kind of undercurrent of less than subtle racism, less than subtle, um,
xenophobia really does show up quite a bit in, in this book and it actually doesn’t, it’s not not involved in Lauren greenhouse because the group of women that,
um, bought the property, we’re also trying to stop the encroachment of dense, high density housing in that area.
Um, and they were very wealthy, upper class women at the time.
So, um, they formed the Tuesday club, which is still referred to as the Tuesday club, um, kind of as a tongue in cheek with all of these other men’s clubs that were being formed in boston.
They were naming them after different days of the week and they had every day but Tuesday and sunday and nobody dared touch sunday.
So they didn’t have a Tuesday club. So that Jamaica Plain women decided to have the Jamaica plain Tuesday club and kind of like um, appropriate the men’s club idea for themselves.
But yeah, they bought the house and turned it into their headquarters essentially to stop development.
They carefully sold off bits of the land to be able to have the money to take care of the house, but they were selling it off for things like I think it’s a library next door, so they weren’t just giving it away to somebody to turn it into housing.
They were giving it away to other institutions that would help maintain that kind of open space.
Um not not urban housing type situation, but.

[53:08] For for better or worse, there is now a large green space with a beautiful story home in it um, near the heart of Jamaica Plain, that serves an incredibly nice thing for the whole community now.
So, you know, it’s it’s a really complex story, but but but that resources now there, so there’s that too.

Jake:
[53:28] Yeah, I know. In the summertime they’re outdoor concerts on the grounds, and the JP Historical Society starts a good number of their walking tours on the grounds there, and it serves now,
the incredibly diverse neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, So maybe some of those goals weren’t entirely successful.

Nikki:
[53:45] So obviously not every story of preservation is a successful one, and you know, to me, I think of like the Hancock houses being maybe not the first loss, but like the first big loss.
Um but historic houses and buildings are still being lost to this day,
and one of the houses in the book, the 1790 Calvin Birdhouse in Dorchester, has actually been demolished since you wrote the book, which really wasn’t that long ago.
How do, how does such an old property end up getting demolished?

Joe:
[54:23] Yeah, so this one was one of those ones that I didn’t see coming. Um I probably should have seen coming.
So one of the things that I tried to do with each book I reached building was to look into its status, whether it was landmark designated, whether it was not landmark designated.
What I didn’t do was to check to see if somebody’s already put in a permit to have it demolished.
Um I just thought that I would have known frankly because I work for the folks that review those kinds of things.

[54:46] Um So literally adjacent to my desk at City Hall is our architect who reviews projects on the demolition, basically the project at its both on the street and on Wendover Street has two addresses.
And if you look at the street uh from Dudley Street, the property, I’ll freely admit that the Calvin Birdhouse is without question was the ugliest building in the whole book.
It just was like, there’s just not even um if you look at it from Doubly Street, there were so many additions on the front of the building that we’re brick.
I think one story that may have been two stories. I think there were one story um storefronts that what would typically happen if I was that person doing, they’re not working for the city anymore.
So I don’t know what the exact process was. But um when, when we get these demolition permit requests, we look at the building and try to see is this a building that’s historic or old.
Um, my book didn’t exist yet. Um and all you saw was a bunch of brick stores and it’s like well this building is clearly not something we need to worry about and it got signed off on.
So it went through the official process of landmark review. Um it got signed off on. That happened back in 2018.
So years before when I wrote the book the building already had gotten its death sentence signed.
Um I didn’t know that and then um Covid happened and that slowed everything down.

[56:05] And then weeks after the book came out, like literally weeks after the book came out, I was presenting to the Dorchester Historical Society and somebody said that building for demolition and I was like what?
I had no idea and then maybe three days later I got a text from a friend that was literally like that building is gone and I kind of panicked and found the demolition and I wrote to um I wrote to my my boss the director um,
Roseanne Foley and I was like is there literally anything we can do at this point because I mean it went through the full process, we had our chance to call it out.

[56:37] Um but by then it was just too late so um unfortunately we lost it,
um I don’t want to draw a comparison between the Calvin Birdhouse and the Hancock house because that’s a disservice to the Hancock house but essentially um I’m hoping that the loss of the Calvin Birdhouse, like the loss of the Hancock house will at least give us some,
Kind of momentum to say just because these are the 50 oldest buildings in the book, just because there’s a book now that says that they’re important and significant and there’s all this research has been done to show why they’re significant.
There’s nothing inherently protected about any of the buildings that don’t have protections in place for them and they can be demolished if they aren’t protected.
So um that’s kind of the the drum I’m going to start banging.
Kind of going forward with this project is to see what can we do to protect the remaining houses.
The other 49 houses um from demolition is not, no one’s going to tear down Old State House anytime soon, but there are other houses in the book that are um that are, I don’t wanna say at risk, but at the very least not protected.
And they could be at risk in the future. And I just don’t think that these 49 buildings that still stand um need to go, it’s not that many buildings.

Nikki:
[57:47] That’s a good segue. Throughout the book, you talked about the status of being a boston landmark, a National Historic Landmark, and on the National Register of Historic Places.
Can you just talk through what each of those three things means and from a preservation perspective, which is the most desirable?

Joe:
[58:09] Sure. So the National Register for Historic Places and a National Historic Landmark are on the same spectrum and are entirely separate from a City of boston landmark.
So I’m gonna start with National Register and Historic Landmark. Um National Register simply means that the building or the resource is local, state or federally significant to some part of history.
Um I won’t say that it’s an easy process to get through because it’s not, but it’s a relatively relatively easy process to get a building listed on the National Register for those three categories local state or national significance.
A National Historic Landmark is a National Register property with a National Historic significance.
That’s all it means is basically it’s not local, it’s not states National so it’s really all three.
Um So on the spectrum there’s National Register kind of in the middle um and National Historic Landmark on the end.
And those are the same kind of family landmark, boston landmark is a totally separate process.
So currently in our current legislation it states that a building that is a boston landmark designated property has to have above local significance,
if it’s below local significance, I’m sorry, if it is local significance, then it could be something called an architectural conservation district which basically has lighter manipulations on it.

[59:29] But if you can get something to be a state or national or regional level significance, then it could be a boston landmark.
If it is designated such the landmark designations, I use the terms it has teeth and that basically just means that everything that happens to the exterior, that building gets looked at by a commission and just decide, is this okay or not?
Um, So it is um is a new addition meant to look new, which is actually a good thing on historic buildings?
Or is it um is it meant to look like a fake old building? Which isn’t allowed because somebody could get confused about what it looks.
Is the changes to the windows appropriate for the style of the house is the siding that was vinyl going to be replaced with wood shingles. That’s great, that kind of thing.
So all of that happens at a at a landmark level process.
The National Register Building, if you have a National Register listed building, basically, the one thing that that prevents in theory is something like a federal highway from going to your house without somebody saying maybe we shouldn’t do that.
Um, it doesn’t mean it stops it from happening, but somebody’s going to say maybe we shouldn’t do that during the process and other people can use it for leveraging, but it doesn’t actually prevent changes demolition.
Um, National Register Listed buildings are torn down every single day in boston and in boston, but around the country, um, a landmark building in theory should never be demolished because it’s been landmark designated.

Jake:
[1:00:52] So we want to have all our favorite historic places be landmarks.

Joe:
[1:00:56] Yeah. And I think that’s my take on the landmark process and this isn’t everyone’s take but my take on it is that landmarking should be done.
If a building is qualified to be a landmark, we should landmark designate the landmarks. And the reason why I think that that’s really important is that if we don’t go ahead and do that for buildings that aren’t under threat.
Um uh Currently Old North Church is not a landmark designated building. It’s in the process of becoming one but it isn’t right now that’s a landmark if there ever was one.

Nikki:
[1:01:23] It’s like the landmark, I mean I’m a little biased, but it’s pretty significant.

Joe:
[1:01:24] Yeah I know right of course but like,
it’s pretty significant and you would know um But yeah but the if we don’t go ahead and landmark designate the landmarks, what ends up happening is that landmark commission and the landmark process rears its ugly head,
if and only if a building is being demolished and it becomes this anti development anti change thing and it shouldn’t be that and it doesn’t need to be that.
So if we’re not if we’re not going through the process of getting landmarks landmarked then what ends up happening is that landmarks just becomes punitive and that’s not the point of it and it shouldn’t be used for that.
So um I think that it’s important that if if a building or a structure or an archaeological site or an archaeological collection or about whatever is landmark eligible than we should try to get those things landmark designated.
It would be a lot more work on my teams um plate.
But but it it helps neutralize the landmarking process and make it much more of a thing that is really just there to acknowledge the significance of an historic place.
Not to say we don’t want to change something because that’s really not ever what it should have been and I’ll step off my soapbox now.

Jake:
[1:02:38] Well that harkens back to a conversation we had with Matthew Dickie from the.

Nikki:
[1:02:44] Boston Preservation Alliance.

Jake:
[1:02:45] Thank you from the boston Preservation Alliance, and I don’t have the episode number on the tip of my tongue, But he was very focused on spreading the word that preservation doesn’t necessarily mean opposition to change our opposition to development.
It just needs to do it intelligently.

Joe:
[1:03:01] And I mean there’s plenty of examples in in the book of buildings that have been adapted lee reused. I mean look at the old corner bookstore, it’s a chipotle right now.
Um There’s ways to take these buildings and make them useful to the public.
There’s ways to make them profitable, there’s ways to make them um um home without turning them into a pile of rubble that gets shipped out of state and dumped in a landfill somewhere.
Um But yeah, I think it’s it’s an important thing that the preservation is about.
Just old places can be looked at with new eyes in new ways and they are challenging to work with.
But they’re just one of the challenges that are in place that can be overcome by using those places creatively and not just demolishing. It shouldn’t just be a knee jerk reaction to demolish because it’s just too much of a pain to deal with old places.

Jake:
[1:03:51] So, shifting gears ever so slightly at the end of the book, there’s a section, it’s almost like the the attic of Boston’s oldest structures.
But because you impose rules on yourself for deciding what was going to count toward the project, there’s a section of honorable mentions.
So can you give us the highlights of what didn’t quite make the cut?

Joe:
[1:04:16] Um One that I think absolutely I wish I could have included more than all of them is the Boylston fish fears of the back bay fish weirs. Their their 5000 year old native american massachusetts. Native american built structures that are under the ground of back bay.
Um Their fishing structures for the, for the spotting fish each spring.
They’re one of the largest man made structures in north America before the arrival of Europeans.
Um They’re just so incredibly important that I really wish I could have included them as like the oldest building. But I think of them or as a structure than a building because they don’t have four walls and a roof or at least walls and a roof so that that got the boot.
Um There’s things like um the U. S. S. Constitution because it’s a boat and not a building.
Um There’s the one that I also would really love to get my, literally get my hands on is the Bernard Cape and House, which is reportedly built in 16 37.
Although I’ve never seen an old building that’s considered to be that old quite live up to its date other than the Fairbanks house and that.
Um but um It’s probably almost definitely 17th century at least which would have put it in top three in this book if it was still standing was built in Dorchester.
It was actually on one of it was one of the buildings that was standing with Caroline Cape, in we mentioned before um when Cape in uh,
inherited a bunch of properties, I believe this was one of them or at least it was within the same family on the same in the same area anyway um the building got dismantled.

[1:05:44] Um in 1909 and taken to Milton where it was rebuilt.

[1:05:51] And then in 2000 and six the property sold and the person that bought it didn’t want the 17th century house on it and they actually took it apart again and it’s now currently in a storage locker somewhere. I actually don’t even know where it is.
Um But I think there are people that do um but I don’t um and if we were to build that building back and put it in some place in boston it would probably be top three if not higher oldest buildings in boston.

Jake:
[1:06:18] I think it would be top three oldest buildings in in the state.
I know the Fairbanks House, which says 16 36 on the chimney but has been dated to 2 16 37.
Through tree ring analysis is considered the I think the oldest standing building in massachusetts and the oldest wooden building in I think the Northeast.

Joe:
[1:06:40] I think it’s in the north America if you. Yeah. Yeah this would be right up there.

Nikki:
[1:06:41] It’s the North America.

Jake:
[1:06:42] Yeah,
Yeah. To have a 1637 building reconstructed in Boston. It immediately goes to the top of the charts.

Joe:
[1:06:52] If it manages to make keep it to date because no one’s done the denver on it to confirm that.

Jake:
[1:06:55] Right, right.

Joe:
[1:06:57] Um But I have a dream of of having an archaeology museum. You know when I have my 1st $100 million to play with, I’m going to build an archaeology museum somewhere in boston and then rebuild the Cape in house inside of it as one of the showcases of the entire exhibit.
Um Yeah you know, James. But um yeah there’s there’s a couple other buildings in in that section that I think are just you know, really fun.
There’s ones that were built in boston when boston was a lot bigger and then our borders have shrunk. They’ve grown quite a bit recently when we added all the different neighborhoods. But at one point boston itself was enormous and included places like Winthrop.
So there’s a very old house and Winthrop, there’s a bunch of old houses and Winthrop, but one of them was a descendant of john Winthrop who um who has a house on Winthrop.
But that that building was technically when it was built, it was built in boston but it’s no longer in boston. So yeah, one of my, one of my rules is the building has two currently still be inside. Yeah, in boston.

Jake:
[1:07:53] Yeah, it might be hard to sell. A building. In Winthrop is one of the 50 oldest buildings in Boston. Yeah. Uh huh.

Joe:
[1:07:56] Right. But since these things would have otherwise made the list, that was why I needed the honorable mentions plus it’s just like really good stories. Like there’s a house in storage.
I needed to include that in this book. So the honourable mention section was for like things I just could not include essentially.

Jake:
[1:08:09] Yeah. I thought my attic was cluttered. At least I don’t have a whole other house in it.
So the book again is boston’s oldest buildings and where to find them by joseph M Bagley And we’ll put a link to purchase it in the show notes this week at hub history dot com slash 230,
joe.
If people want to find out more about your work or more about you or they want to follow you online, where should they go to do that?

Joe:
[1:08:39] We have a lot of social media facebook instagram and twitter, all three of them under boston archeo. And we also put all of our information on our website at boston dot gov slash archaeology.

Nikki:
[1:08:50] I’ll also give a plug and say if people would like to see two of the oldest buildings and purchase the book, they can come to Old North and purchase it in our gift shop after they visit the church.

Jake:
[1:08:55] Yeah.

[1:09:03] That is an excellent extra plug. I like it Well joe Bagley I just want to say thank you very much for joining us today.

Joe:
[1:09:10] Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Nikki:
[1:09:13] To learn more about joe Bagley and his book boston’s oldest buildings and where to find them.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 2 30.
We’ll have links to the archaeology department website as well as all of joe’s social media profiles where he shares pictures of his latest digs as well as favorite objects from the collection.
Of course, we’ll also have an affiliate link for you to buy the book online and support us with a tiny fraction of the price.
If you want to get in touch with jake, you can email him at podcast at hub history dot com. Follow the show at hub history on twitter, facebook and instagram or you can go to hub history dot com and click on the contact us link.
While you’re on this site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on apple podcasts, please consider writing a brief review and if you do drop us a line and we’ll send you a hub history sticker as a token of appreciation.

Music

Nikki:
[1:10:09] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.