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Dylan Thuras: Hi, everyone. We have something pretty different for you today. This is a live episode of the podcast, as in we did it with real people in the audience. So a little while ago, I was asked to speak at the WBUR Festival in Boston. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to talk about, and then I stumbled across this hotel, the Omni Parker House Hotel. It is the longest continually operating hotel in America, big historical hotel in Boston. It’s downtown. It’s near the Freedom Trail. And I realized that there was not just one, but multiple great stories to tell about this hotel. There’s just an insane amount of history that flows through this hotel. So I invited Susan Wilson, who is the hotel’s official historian, to come and talk with me in front of this live audience at the WBUR festival. So that is what you are going to hear today. Also, I get to have my little, like, an Oprah moment at this live podcast thing. Maybe you’ll be jealous. It was really fun.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Dylan: I’m Dylan Thuras. Today with me is Susan Wilson, the best historian in Boston, which is saying something. Susan, thank you for being here.

Susan Wilson: Thanks for inviting me.

Dylan: Susan, you hold this incredible depth of knowledge, obviously about the hotel, but about Boston history in general. How did the Parker House come into your world?

Susan: Well, when I was a kid in New Jersey, my mother used to make Parker House rolls. It was a big deal. And I went to Tufts University in Medford. And when I was old enough, we used to come in on Sundays, because in Parker’s restaurant, they had this large fountain filled with tomato juice, just flowing and flowing. Then at noon, because of blue laws, they would pour vodka into it. And so we came at noon. And we would drink there.

Dylan: Yeah. Which, by the way, have you talked to them about bringing this back? Because the bloody mary fountain is like, you know, that’s pretty good. Anyway, I need to ask everyone a question. Has anyone in this room seen the 1995 film, Four Rooms? Is there a single—

Susan: One back there, one back there.

Dylan: Okay, so everyone else, I’m sorry, you’re gonna have to leave the two people who raised your hand, you will get a special presentation. Okay, no. So there’s this movie in the ’90s called Four Rooms, about four stories in four hotel rooms. And they’re each directed by a different director. Tarantino did one of them. Robert Rodriguez did one of them. So in this scenario, we are doing four rooms, but four locations from one hotel here in Boston, spread across history. They each end up shaping what is to come in Boston, in our country, in really interesting, radical ways. So we are going to do our four rooms at the Omni Parker House Hotel. So the year that we’re starting in, Room One, is 1865. So only a decade after this hotel has opened. And Room One, the man practicing pistols in the alley. April 6, 1865. And this is as you can see, historical hair horror in the style of Tarantino. So, exterior: a small alley besides the Omni Parker House Hotel. The alley is a shooting gallery. The street is slick with rain. And people are talking excitedly in the streets because the Civil War looks to be ending any day now. The streets are already draped in bunting. In just a few days, fireworks will be bursting over Boston. Orators like Frederick Douglass will pack Faneuil Hall. And standing there in a pool of shadow besides the Omni Parker House Hotel, a lone figure lurks. Also, I want to warn you that all four of these stories are basically going to be setups of some version of, “and you will never believe who that boy grew up to be.” And so, when I ask who this person is, and Susan answers, I need everyone to gasp. So every response, we will all gasp together in surprise and shock. Okay, so back to the alleyway. This young man rounds a corner into the narrow alley besides the Parker House to practice his shooting. But this handsome young man begins performing odd feats of dexterity. He’s practicing shooting backwards underneath his leg. He seems to be preparing for something. So Susan—everyone ready to gasp? Who was this mysterious figure in the alleyway?

Susan: The figure was John Wilkes Booth.

Dylan: He was in the alleyway. John Wilkes Booth, the dastardly John Wilkes Booth. Okay, so what was John Wilkes Booth doing in Boston and doing in this alleyway next to the hotel?

Susan: Okay, so John Wilkes Booth was one of three brothers who were actors. And they all periodically worked together. And even a year before, John Wilkes Booth had done some performing in Boston. And at this time, his brother, Edwin, was in a play. And John Wilkes was staying at the Parker House. And he was really popular. John Wilkes was considered, he was very handsome. He was known for swordplay and dashing roles.

Dylan: Yes. And he was like an action hero, basically.

Susan: Oh, totally action. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the thing is, the reason the papers noticed this about his shooting in the alley, it was very common at that time, if you were going in a coach, a stagecoach, or a horse-drawn anything from town to town, you might get attacked. And so many, many gentlemen, if not most, carried pistols with them in order to be safe. And therefore, most hotels had in their basements or nearby, a shooting gallery where you could practice. So that’s what he was doing. It was no big deal. Everyone knew him and went, oh, there’s the handsome John Wilkes. However, it was the weird way he was practicing, like these weird gyrations that got it reported in the newspapers. Then, eight days later … He went to Washington and did the deed.

Dylan: Yes. In just a few days, the Civil War would be over. Three days later, Lee surrenders. And eight days later, John Wilkes Booth assassinates Lincoln. And what was the evidence that this was a long time coming? Because in retrospect, it seems like that maybe this was not John Wilkes Booth’s first time at the Omni. And it seems that maybe there had been actually that this, the Omni Parker House had ended up being—or then, the Parker House—had ended up being a place where he had come before, maybe with other kind of plans in mind.

Susan: Oh, absolutely. It was by far the loveliest and most popular hotel in town. And so if anyone of any significance came to town, they stayed there. But he had met there, we know for sure, a year before with a bunch of basically people who were Confederate spies. And at the time, they were plotting something perhaps to kidnap Lincoln. This idea of actually assassinating Lincoln, nobody had a clue. His brother, Edwin, didn’t have a clue. They knew that they disagreed, Edwin was a very strong Unionist. And he, the first time he ever voted in his life was for Lincoln. So it wasn’t like he was involved in politics a lot, but he really believed in the Union. And John Wilkes really thought, you know, this Lincoln person is terrible. I think he wants to be a king. Can you imagine that? A president wanting to be a king?

Dylan: Yeah. He seemed to believe that Lincoln was a tyrant.

Susan: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. But nobody foresaw the murder.

Dylan: Yeah. And there’s a kind of extreme juxtaposition here because the city is actually starting to celebrate the end of the Civil War already at this point.

Susan: Absolutely.

Dylan: And then there’s this handsome actor practicing strange—I think we don’t appreciate this part of the story, which is like that he was already famous before he did. We all know him as being famous for this assassination. But that it would be as if like—I don’t know, I’m trying to think of a kind of like—Vin Diesel assassinated the president or something, you know, you’d be like, what? Like, it has a strangeness to it that I think is like we’ve lost a little bit.

Susan: But chances are, we wouldn’t remember him if he hadn’t done the deed.

Dylan: Right. Because he was a kind of—

Susan: He wasn’t that good an actor.

Dylan: Okay, so that’s room one. Let’s move on to Room Two. Just two years later on a snowy December day, a grand historical Christmas movie in the style of Steven Spielberg. This is a very good—this is a feel good movie. So interior: beautiful, brand new hotel room, specifically, I believe, rooms 138 and 139.

Susan: It was a suite, actually.

Dylan: Yes. Okay. So they were like together and hanging on the wall is a large mirror and pacing back and forth in front of the mirror is a man in a black suit and he’s pacing. His hair is fuzzing out to the sides. It’s got this kind of bushy, untamed goatee. And the year is 1867. It’s nearly Christmas. And the man is sort of repeating to himself again and again, this thing that he’s trying to make sure he’s going to be able to present in the most grand way possible. So it’s time for the big reveal. Everyone get ready. Susan, who is this Victorian fellow in this fancy hotel room trying to practice for his big presentation?

Susan: It is Charles Dickens.

Dylan: Amazing. Okay. So Charles Dickens. What is he doing in this room? What is he—why is he here and what is he up to?

Susan: Why he’s here is he’s on a reading tour. Dickens only came to the United States twice, once in 1842 and second time in 1867. Basically, he made a lot of money from readings. We don’t think of—when we think of doing authors’ readings, we think of somebody standing and reading a book and people asking questions. But he was a trained actor. And so what he was doing in front of this giant six foot mirror was practicing, making a theatrical presentation of his readings. So practicing voices and gestures and all that. And people actually came. They had to have guards kind of like he was like a rock star. They have guards to keep people out who wanted to see him practicing or grab his fur coat and have a little piece of Dickens. And it would be easy for him to have 2,000 people in the audience for a reading. And there would be lines out the door. His first public reading was December 2nd, 1867, after he had read it at the Parker House.

Dylan: And what is he reading? I don’t think we’ve actually said what he’s reading.

Susan: Oh, he’s reading A Christmas Carol.

Dylan: And for the first time in America, right?

Susan: First time in America. And so it was and people adored A Christmas Carol. And so to see the actual author reading this was huge. There were lines out the door. People were scalping tickets to get in. Not a lot—you know, like Taylor Swift—but it was pretty big.

Dylan: It was big.

Susan: It was big. Yeah.

Dylan: And one thing I didn’t realize that you talked about was that in some ways, A Christmas Carol and this presentation here in Boston at the Parker House Hotel was a sort of like a rebranding of Christmas, or a reform of what Christmas had been. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what Christmas had been and how this was actually sort of a different, fuzzier approach.

Susan: Okay. Or it was part of a movement. Basically, okay, so Boston was settled by Puritans who were trying to purify the Church of England. So they cleaned everything out of the church. They cleaned there. No music, no stained glass, no no incense, nothing, just everything plain and simple. And the Puritans basically they banned Christmas. In fact, there was a period where it was technically illegal and you would be fined if you were seen practicing Christmas because it was too papist. It was too much like the Roman Catholic Church. A lot of people got drunk. In fact, very often people of lower socioeconomic classes would get drunk and go to people of upper socioeconomic classes who were drunk, and they would say, you have to give me stuff or I’ll leave.

Dylan: They would demand figgy pudding.

Susan: Exactly.

Dylan: They would actually be like, no, seriously, guys. Five drinks in—

Susan: And I won’t go until I get some. Absolutely. Yeah. So it was kind of a nasty thing. And it was associated with—just it wasn’t a warm and fuzzy family thing. And it was basically, Christmas started growing up again in the South first. But it wasn’t until like the middle of the 19th century that it began emerging in the Boston area again. It took us that long to get out of puritanical times. And little by little, it was starting to come back. But the Christmas Carol with this whole idea of, you know, family and redemption and being good and loving and giving things. This was kind of like the capstone of that.

Dylan: And even the kind of cross-class, the class consciousness of that story sort of gets at some of the problems of Christmas previously. You know, we’re all going to kind of like—

Susan: We can do it together.

Dylan: Yes, we can do it together.

Susan: Exactly. So this really put the cherry on the cake or whatever.

Dylan: Okay. And how does Dickens do presenting A Christmas Carol? How is it received here in America?

Susan: Oh, people were blown away. The first public presentation was right around the corner, Tremont Temple, which is still there to this day. And that was the one where 2,000 people showed up. But everybody—people laughed, they cried, they were just completely blown away. He had crowds everywhere he went.

Dylan: Yeah. What was it? You said he only came twice.

Susan: Yes.

Dylan: In 1842. And then …

Susan: 1867 to ’68, yeah.

Dylan: What was Dickens’ overall impression of America? Like, what do we know about how he felt about it?

Susan: The first time he had very mixed feelings, and he actually wrote about those mixed feelings. And we were really—I mean, we were not happy with what he wrote.

Dylan: He described it, he was like, this place is not good.

Susan: Yeah. Actually one of his least favorite things in 1842 was he went south and he saw slavery. And he thought that was just awful. But one of his favorite things was he went up to Lowell and saw the Lowell Mill girls working in extraordinary, wonderful conditions. At the time, it was true. And of course, he spent much of his life writing about the horrendous factory conditions in Britain. So he was quite taken by that. They had a finite number of hours. They had beautiful places to stay. They were safe. They even had their own publications. They had a magazine called The Lowell Offering. And the girls went to lectures. They met famous people. They met Dickens when he came up there. When he left, they gave him a pile of all The Lowell Offerings that they had made so far. And we know he said that he read them all. Curiously, when he went home, he was supposed to be writing something else. And he actually ended up writing A Christmas Carol. And we know now because of some research done by a BU professor, Natalie McKnight, that many of the stories included stories of ghosts from the past and people revisiting the past and some things that repeated in A Christmas Carol. And that was from the Lowell girls.

Dylan: So the first visit inspires A Christmas Carol, maybe in certain ways. And he comes back over 20 years later and actually performs it here.

Susan: At least inspires.

Dylan: It is now time for room number three, unquestionably my favorite. Okay, on to Room Three. The Cracked Table in the Bakeshop, quirky rom-com in the style of Wes Anderson. So interior: Parker House Hotel Bakeshop, dawn, winter of 1912. The kitchen is a hive of early morning activity. It’s depicted in whimsical Wes Anderson style detail, copper pots hang in perfect rows, chefs in crisp white uniforms move in choreographed precision like characters on a tiny stage. The center of it stands our hero of this room, a young Vietnamese baker in his early 20s looking at the camera as he stands at this marble baking table, well used with a visible crack running along an edge. Flour floats through the air as sunbeams come across the windows. He’s kneading dough for Parker House rolls. Okay, everyone ready to gasp? Who was that young baker?

Susan: Ho Chi Minh.

Dylan: Ho Chi Minh, a baker at the Parker House Hotel in 1912. And actually, okay, I’m very excited about this part. Hang on, you start, actually start talking about the Parker Rolls because there’s a fun side story here.

Susan: Sure. Okay. So raise your hand if you’ve had a Parker House roll. Okay.

Dylan: I have Parker House Rolls here.

Susan: We have them for everybody. Fresh baked at the hotel this morning. Okay, spread them out. So as wonderful as Parker House rolls are, they are light, they are fluffy, every second ingredient is butter. And they are very popular, but nowadays there are lots of light and fluffy things that you can eat. However, given when these first appeared, which was in the late 1860s and 1870s, it was a big deal because colonial and early American bread, well, you know how artisanal bread today is like hard on the outside, then soft inside? Well, colonial and early American bread was hard on the outside and hard on the inside. There are confirmed cases at Harvard in the dining halls in the 1800s of there being food fights, okay—and people throw food in food fights—of somebody throwing a loaf of bread at someone else, hitting them in the eye and losing their eyesight. Now, for example—

Dylan: Yeah, this is actually quite nice.

Susan: That wouldn’t hurt you at all, okay? So it was a giant thing.

Dylan: These were like a revolution.

Susan: A revolution in eye injury all alone.

Dylan: Yes, in soft bread and non-dangerous food fight experience.

Susan: Absolutely.

Dylan: So in 1912, Ho Chi Minh would have been baking these, baking a Boston cream pie.

Susan: Both of which were invented at the Parker House we’ve mentioned.

Dylan: And so what is Ho Chi Minh doing in Boston at the Parker House? What’s going on here?

Susan: Okay, so Ho Chi Minh, which is not his real name, his real name was Nguyen Sinh Cung. He had so many pseudonyms, okay? While he was at the Parker House, he was known as Van Ba or sometimes just Ba. And he was among the people who thought that imperialism was bad and they wanted to get the French out of French Indochina. He also believed in world communism. So basically this guy had three great loves or three great missions, one of which was getting freedom for French Indochina second of all spreading world communism, and third of all baking. And these were all very important and he was very skilled. He left the Saigon area in the middle of 1911. It’s very mysterious because it’s hard to track. But we know that he was cooking in the ships, the transatlantic ships, which are very popular. He worked in New York, in Boston, in the South. But they were always after him because of the trouble he was creating.

Dylan: He was already on the run from the French, right?

Susan: Oh, he was already on the run. But you have to make a living while you’re doing that. And later on, he studied with Escoffier at the Carleton in London. So he was a serious baker, you know, he’s really good.

Dylan: And he came to the U.S. not just being on the run, but he also had some kind of political aims or goals potentially while here in Boston and in America, yeah?

Susan: Right. In Boston at that time, he lived in a neighborhood that was mostly African-American and Jewish, new immigrants. He was interested in exploring and finding out about anti-Semitism, about African-American efforts, which eventually became the NAACP and other efforts like that. Women’s suffrage was huge at the time. Unions were developing and there were strikes. And all of this fed into things that he cared about. So he wanted to intersect with all of this. And the year he was here was huge. I mean, 1912, there were so many new things. Fenway Park opened that year. I think the Boston Fish Pier opened. A lot of stuff was happening that he would intersect with. Now, I know that you think that when he came here, he got interested in the American Revolution.

Dylan: Well, I have a reason to believe this.

Susan: Okay, so why do you think that?

Dylan: When he writes the Vietnamese Revolution, he opens with a quote from our Declaration of Independence. And he later contacts many different presidents, essentially saying, I am doing what you did. I am trying to throw off the yoke of this colonizing oppression. Can’t you see in me a reflection of yourself? And basically he’s saying, we don’t necessarily have to be enemies. There could be understanding between us. So this is why I think there’s some, at least, maybe it came later, maybe it came after the Boston period, but there’s some connection.

Susan: No, he definitely did that later on. But a lot of those guys that he contacted were in the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, I mean even Kennedy in the ’60s. So I don’t have any … Again, it’s so …

Dylan: There’s no evidence of this.

Susan: There’s no evidence. And the thing is, he couldn’t have walked on the Freedom Trail. It didn’t exist. Not till 1951. So we’re off by four decades.

Dylan: Right.

Susan: Just checking.

Dylan: My vision of him looking up at a statue of, I don’t know, you know …

Susan: Sam Adams.

Dylan: Probably not quite right. But …

Susan: You know, you may be right, but there’s so little known.

Dylan: So what is the work environment at the Parker House like? Besides being a baker, what is kind of the scene there? Who’s he working with? Who are his coworkers in the space?

Susan: Well, many of the waiters there are Irish, have been from the beginning, a lot of the head waiters. But they’re also getting to be international because by the 20th century, a lot of African-American workers were working there. And part of that is because after slavery ended and after the Civil War, many African-Americans moved north and many of them got jobs on the Pullman trains, these very luxurious trains, and got to be exquisitely trained as waiters and things like that. So they were in huge demand. So he was probably … He was working with other people who were considered underdogs or not …

Dylan: Irish, African-American.

Susan: Exactly.

Dylan: These are his colleagues in the kitchen.

Susan: Not the rich Brahmins on Beacon Hill.

Dylan: That’s right. And so, you know, has there maintained any connection between Vietnam and the hotel? You know, this is kind of something that sort of came to light a little bit later, like, oh, it really was him and he really was here.

Susan: Right. Definitely since the late 1980s, there have been delegations from Vietnam visiting. This past year, they visited, I think, twice and the prime minister came. I mean, it’s a big deal. And they come and they want to see the table. Okay. So the table in the bake shop, it’s a marble table and one corner is cracked off and it’s like people go in and go, man, can’t you afford a new table? You’re the Parker House. It’s like, no, Ho Chi Minh worked on this table, so we’re keeping it even with the broken corner.

Dylan: This is the special table.

Susan: Yes.

Dylan: So we are going to move on to room number four, the Boy on the Bar Table. Susan tells me it’s technically not a bar, but I said, do they serve drinks? They do serve drinks. So it’s close enough.

Susan: He likes alliteration.

Dylan: I do like alliteration. So the Boy on the Bar Table, February 11, 1923, Irish political drama in the style of Martin Scorsese, exterior. It’s evening in Boston and a young boy stands outside the press room of the Parker House hotel. It is his grandfather’s birthday. The boy’s grandfather is a big deal. The boy’s grandfather is the former mayor of Boston and represents this continually growing power of the Irish in Boston politics. Though “no Irish need apply” signs may still be hanging around town, the boy’s grandfather won control of the whole town, becoming the first American born Irish Catholic to be elected mayor in not just Boston, but all of America. So outside these revelries, a party goer approaches the boy and asks him what he thinks of his grandfather’s big party. And the boy, without hesitation, speaking with a distinct Boston accent, calls his grandfather the best grandfather a child could ever have. And said with such confidence and charm, the party goer scoops the boy up, brings him into the party, sets him on a table and asks him to give the speech about his grandfather. Again, it would be the first of many, many very famous speeches. I bet you guys have some guesses about who this is. So … we’re still going to gasp. Susan?

Susan: This little six-year-old boy is John F. Kennedy.

Dylan: Yes. Oh my God. It’s JFK.

Susan: And this is his first public speech.

Dylan: Right. Six years old, standing on the table at his grandfather’s birthday celebration. So who is JFK’s grandfather?

Susan: John Fitzgerald, better remembered as Honey Fitz. Who ran against people like James Michael Curley and was part of just a huge number of Irish Americans who became involved in Boston politics.

Dylan: How did that happen? Because obviously there was this resistance to, you know, there was this bias against the Irish all over the place. How were they able to move into politics sort of effectively here?

Susan: There’s a lot of theories about that. I mean, his great, great grandfather came here in 1849 and the 1840s was the beginning of the potato famine and other economic woes in Ireland. So many Irish came here. First of all, many came here because it was a port city and there were actually affordable places to stay back then. And so they came in, some of them had already been involved in politics in the old country, but the other thing was, unlike other immigrants, they already spoke English. So it was easy to get involved in things that other people were still struggling with the language. The other thing is, they had strong clan-like connections. And if somebody wanted to run for something, there was huge support behind them.

Dylan: Yes. And it also seems like the Parker House was quite the political hotspot generally. Like why was it? Why did it become this kind of focus of political activity?

Susan: Diagonally across the street is Old City Hall. So that’s where the mayors were. And that was when City Hall was a pretty building. And that was City Hall until 1969. Up the street is the Gold Dome State House. So it was a logical place. I mean, you had to be lovely and have great, you know, great restaurants and be very welcoming and all that, but it was conveniently located.

Dylan: And it wasn’t just politicians who came through there. There were also some interesting, unsavory characters who stopped by the hotel at various points.

Susan: You mean besides John Wilkes Booth?

Dylan: Besides John Wilkes Booth. Yes. Definitely including John Wilkes Booth.

Susan: Yeah. Diagonally across the street—so if you’re on School Street and you’re facing, first there’s King’s Chapel, then there’s Old City Hall. Then there’s this thing called the Niles Building. In 1920, this guy was running a booming business there. His name was Charles Ponzi.

Dylan: His scheme is still around today.

Susan: It is to this day. And so, you know, it was very convenient to come over and dine and …

Dylan: Yeah. Meet some wealthy people who might be interested in this—

Susan: And borrow their money.

Dylan: —never ending supply of money. Okay. So obviously, you know, that moment at Honey Fitz’s birthday celebration was JFK’s first political speech at the Parker House, but it wasn’t his last. What are some of the other big JFK moments that have happened at the Parker House?

Susan: Well, the whole Kennedy family always frequented the place, including JFK. And when he got back from World War II, the hero in PT-109, he decided to run for Congress. And so he made the Parker House the place that he announced that, and headquarters to begin that. So he gave his first speech there. And then several years later, in 1953, we still have a little marker there by the table in Parker’s Restaurant. Table number 40 is where he proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier. And then shortly thereafter, in the press room, they hit his bachelor party there, too. But so they were there for political reasons, for personal reasons. The Kennedy family just had a long love affair with the Parker House.

Dylan: One interesting thing I came across in doing some of this research is that then, as we mentioned before, actually, Ho Chi Minh and JFK actually end up sort of—they don’t meet. I don’t think they ever meet in person. But they end up having some interaction and correspondence. Ho Chi Minh writes to JFK at a certain point. And it’s interesting. Early on in the ’50s, JFK went to Vietnam and ended up basically testifying in front of the Senate, saying—this is his quote—“In Indochina, we have allied ourselves to the desperate effort of a French regime to hang on to the remnants of empire.” He basically says, like, this is nuts. Like, we can’t be party to this. This is not going to work out. And obviously, it didn’t go that way because the kind of fear around communism spreading becomes—

Susan: The whole domino theory thing.

Dylan: Becomes much stronger than any resistance. But it’s just interesting to see these two people who come through the Parker House at different moments in their lives and sort of then interact again later on. Anyway, Susan, this has been so incredible. You know, the history of Boston and really of America flows through the Parker House and flows through you. Thank you so much for joining us today for this. Best historian in Boston. That was Susan Wilson, the resident hotel historian for the Omni Parker House Hotel. And just an absolute delight of a person. She is not just the hotel historian, she does—she’s a historian generally, and she does a ton of other things, including photography. You should go check out all her books and works on her website. We will put a link in the show notes. Susan Wilson, best historian in Boston.

Special thanks to Kameel Stanley and all of the folks at WBUR and CitySpace for helping out with this live show. It was a blast. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

This episode was produced by Johanna Mayer. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Kameel Stanley, Manolo Morales, Amanda McGowan, and the amazing Kate Walsh. Our theme music is by Sam Tindall.

At the intersection of Purchase Street and Congress Street in downtown Boston is a lime-green-colored metal object covered in bolts and rivets. To the casual observer, it’s just another fixture of Boston’s urban landscape, but for those who remember the city during the second half of the 20th century, this pylon is one of the last surviving elements of one of the city’s most infamous and reviled transportation projects. 

Completed in 1959, the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway was designed to accommodate Boston’s growing population and postwar car boom. Although intended to help alleviate congestion and ease commutes into the city, it soon found itself having the opposite effect. In order to build the expressway, around 20,000 residents had to be displaced, and hundreds of historic buildings were destroyed. As the years went by, public works projects designed to complement the expressway were canceled. In addition to the heavy traffic, the expressway itself had flaws and shortcomings, such as no breakdown lanes, severe curves, and no room to merge or slow down to exit. The problems associated with the expressway earned it nicknames such as “The Distressway,” “the world’s longest parking lot,” and “the other Green Monster.”

During the construction of the Big Dig, much of the Central Artery in the city was rerouted and moved underground into the newly constructed O’Neill Tunnel. The expressway was finally demolished in 2003 and replaced with the Rose Kennedy Greenway linear park. Today, all that remains of the expressway are the Dewey Square Pylon and support beam Bent 38 near Quincy Market. As the final remnants of the highway fade into history, the memorial serves as a symbol of Boston’s complicated transportation history and the impact it’s had on the local community. It’s also a testament to the labor of countless men and women who strived over the years to improve the city’s infrastructure.