The Arlington Street Church is defined by its exterior of white Portland stone and a steeple modeled after the churches of Christopher Wren in London. It was the first public building constructed in the newly filled Back Bay in eighteen…
Back Bay Victorian Architecture
This walk takes you through the grand, Parisian-style grid of Back Bay to showcase the magnificent brownstones and monumental churches that defined late 19th-century Boston.
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1. Arlington Street Church
2. Gibson House Museum
The Gibson House stands out for its remarkably intact Victorian interior, complete with original family wallpaper, furniture, and personal belongings. Built in eighteen fifty-nine, it was the first house on Beacon Street to be occupied.…
3. First Baptist Church of Boston
The First Baptist Church stands out for the tower that looms over the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Clarendon Street. The sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed the angels carved into the limestone frieze, the same man who…
4. Old South Church in Boston
The Old South Church is defined by its ornate, two hundred and forty-eight foot tower of Roxbury puddingstone and sandstone, rising in a style architects call North Italian Gothic. This congregation began in sixteen sixty-nine, when…
5. Boston Public Library
The Boston Public Library features an arched facade of Milford granite that echoes the style of a Roman palace. It houses over twenty million items and was the first large free municipal library in the United States. When the building…
6. Trinity Church
The rust-colored sandstone walls and deep stone arches of Trinity Church rise from Copley Square like a massive, brooding fortress. Architect Henry Hobson Richardson built this structure in eighteen seventy-seven, opting for a heavy…