Bowdoin Square (Boston)

Bowdoin Square (established 1788) in Boston, Massachusetts was located in the West End. In the 18th and 19th centuries it featured residential houses, leafy trees, a church, hotel, theatre and other buildings. Among the notables who have lived in the square: physician Thomas Bulfinch; merchant Kirk Boott;^[1][2] and mayor Theodore Lyman.^[3] The urban renewal project in the West End in the 1950s removed Green Street and Chardon Street, which formerly ran into the square, and renamed some existing streets; it is now a traffic intersection at Cambridge Street, Bowdoin Street, and New Chardon Street.^[4][5]

Bowdoin Square, Boston, c. 1880

Bowdoin Square is served by the MBTA Blue Line station Bowdoin.

Brief history

Some of the features of Bowdoin Square in its heyday included:

• Kirk Boott house (built 1804). "The half-acre lot on which Boott build his brick house was then a pasture in Boston's West End, an area that was just beginning to be developed. Boott's 3-story Federal mansion, with its tall Palladian windows lighting the staircase overlooking the garden, was very likely designed by Charles Bulfinch."^[6]
• Samuel Parkman house (built c. 1816). "The large granite double house which stood for years at the western end of Bowdoin Square was built about 1816 by Hon. Samuel Parkman, a rich merchant. He was father of Dr.George Parkman who was murdered in 1849 by John White Webster ... [and] grandfather of Francis Parkman, the historian."^[7]
• Baptist Tabernacle (built 1840); also known as the Bowdoin-Square Church or the Bowdoin Square Baptist Church^[8][9][10]
• Revere House hotel (1847–1912)^[9]
• United States Court House (19th century)^[11]
• Bowdoin Square Hotel^[12]
• Bowdoin Square Theatre^[13][12]

Images

• 
  House built by Thomas Bulfinch II, after 1722. His grandson Charles Bulfinch was born here^[14]
• 
  Kirk Boott house, built 1804
• 
  Samuel Parkman house, built c. 1816
• 
  Daniel Webster, 1850 ("A great crowd had collected ... and on his appearance in a barouche, he was enthusiastically cheered."^[15]
• 
  Bowdoin Square Baptist Church, built 1840^[16]
• 
  Railroad Jubilee, 1854
• 
  U.S. Court House, Bowdoin Square, c. 1856; engraving by Samuel Smith Kilburn, Ballou's Pictorial
• 
  Detail of 1883 map of Boston, showing Bowdoin Square at intersection of Green, Chardon, Court, Bowdoin and Cambridge Streets
• 
  1883
• 
  Intersection of Cambridge, New Chardon and Bowdoin Streets, Boston, 2010