Near the northeast angle of the Common, on Beacon Hill, stands the State House, an imposing building surmounted by a huge gilded dome, and preceded by a Corinthian portico and a flight of steps. On the terrace in front are statues of Daniel Webster and Horace Mann. The dome is illuminated at night.
In Beacon Street, opposite the State House, is the beautiful Shaw Monument, by Saint-Gaudens, erected in honor of Colonel Shaw and his regiment, the first colored regiment raised during the Civil war.
In Pemberton Square is the new County Court House, a massive granite building in the German Renaissance style, with an imposing central hall adorned with emblematic figures. In School Street, to the left, is the City Hall, behind which is the Old Court House. In front of the City Hall are statues of Franklin and Josiah Quincy.
School Street ends at the large Old South Building in Washington Street, the most crowded thoroughfare in Boston, with many of the best shops. Following Washington Street (“Newspaper Row”) to the left, we soon reach, at the corner of State Street, the Old State House, dating from 1748 and restored as far as possible to its original appearance, even to the figures of the British lion and unicorn on the roof.
State Street, the center of financial life, leads to the east, past the Exchange Building (with the Stock Exchange) and other large office buildings, to the Custom House, a massive granite building in the shape of a Greek cross, with lofty tower.
Change Alley (now inappropriately styled “Avenue”), diverging to the left from State Street leads to Faneuil Hall, the “cradle of American liberty,” originally presented to the city in 1742, by Peter Faneuil, a Huguenot merchant, but rebuilt after a fire in 1761 and reconstructed on the original plan in 1898.
Devonshire Street leads to the right from State Street to the Government Building, a huge edifice occupying the entire block between Milk Street, Devonshire Street, Water Street and Post Office Square. The Post Office occupies the ground floor, the basement, and part of the first floor, while the rest of the building is devoted to the United States Sub-Treasury and the United States Courts.
At the corner of Washington Street stands the Old South Meeting House, built in 1729 on the site of an earlier church of wood, which lay near Governor Winthrop’s house.
Boylston Street, another important thoroughfare, diverging from Washington Street to the right, skirts the Common and Public Garden and leads to the Back Bay. At the corner of Berkeley Street (right) stands the Museum of Natural History, with a library of thirty thousand volumes and good zoological, ornithological, entomological and mineralogical collections. Opposite is the Berkeley Building, a structure of a fine commercial type. Adjacent are old buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the leading institutions of the kind in the world. It now occupies a magnificent group of buildings on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, erected at a cost of ten million dollars.