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commercial wharf and harbor from atlantic avenue

Maritime Center of Commerce During the Age of Sail Iconic Wharf in “The Boston Granite Style” Designed by Isaiah Rogers Built by Gridley Bryant “The erection of the Commercial Wharf Building signaled the beginning of the intensive mid-nineteenth-century development of the Boston waterfront. The primary causes of this development during the 1830s and 1840s were the rapid expansion of Boston’s inland railroad connections, the development of the clipper ship (which reached its most advanced form during the 1850s in the East Boston shipyards of Donald McKay) and the establishment of Enoch Train’s Boston to Liverpool packets. These developments encouraged industrial growth in the Boston area and intensified its traditional maritime activity by making the city a point of transfer from sea to land transportation.”

The Maritime History of , 1783-1860 Samuel elioT moriSon

front cover painting: Fitz Henry Lane, Clipper Ship Southern Cross (detail) Permanent collection, Peabody Essex Museum front cover photograph: from Portrait of a Port by W.H. Bunting Contents

Center of Commerce During the Age of Sail 2 Skilled Workers Enabled Boston’s success 6 New American Architecture: Boston Granite Style 10 Architect, Isaiah Rogers 12 Builder, Gridley Bryant 13 Notable Architecture, Boston Granite Style 14 inside back cover Bibliography

commercial wharf Boston’s Commercial Wharf

the heart of maritime commerce during the golden age of sail

At a special meeting of the Board of Directors of the Commercial Wharf Company the Building Committee:

“Submitted to the board a plan of elevation of the warehouse proposed to be erected by the company on Commercial Wharf drawn by I. Rogers Arch. & dated Boston July 18th 1832. — said plan exhibits a view of the southerly front, & two ends — also the Basement on the northerly side: the board having examined this plan & no alterations proposed — thereupon voted: unanimously — that said plan of elevation be & it is hereby approved and adopted by the board.”

Commercial Wharf Corporation Ledger, 1832 (collection of the Peabody Essex Museum. Salem Massachusetts.)

Architect Isaiah Rogers’ drawings for Commercial Wharf were approved in 1832, contracts for stone signed two weeks later and twelve months after that, the building was in use, to become the bustling heart of Boston’s maritime commerce. Commercial or Granite Wharf as it was first known, included thirty-two new warehouses; in the words of historian W.H. Bunting, it housed “East Indian, South American, Mediterranean, West Indian, and Northern European merchants.” The new wharf was an immediate success.

Original Stock Certificate, 1832. Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 2 commercial wharf Shipping was the lifeblood of the American economy in the 1800s. Ships and sailors connected manu - facturers with customers, farmers with consumers, and immigrants with their new homes in America. These ships travelled across the oceans, but also up and down the coast and into the inland waterways. Built out into Boston’s original Town Cove, Commercial Wharf is the old - est structure of its kind along today’s North End waterfront. Its construc - tion began the intensive 19th cen - tury building out of the North End waterfront in the Boston Granite Style. This rapid new development was catalyzed by multiple factors: 1. The expansion of Boston’s inland Original key to the vault at Commercial Wharf. railway network. Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 2. The development of the clipper ship . Donald MacKay’s East Boston shipyards were the birthplace of the fastest and most ad - vanced of these vessels. 3. The establishment of Enoch Train’s Boston- based White Diamond Line of weekly liverpool- to-Boston packet ships. Traditionally, ships sailed when they had loaded enough cargo to justify a voyage. Passengers could be delayed days or even weeks waiting for the holds to fill. The simple in - novation of sailing on a weekly schedule was a distinct improvement for travelers and perishable cargos alike. By enhancing and boosting the traditional activi - ties of sailing ships, these three facets were enor - mously encouraging to commercial and industrial growth in Boston and its environs. In the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of thou - sands of English and Irish immigrants to the United States departed from Liverpool, England and sailed to Boston. Scandinavian settlers also sailed to America through the British port. Commercial Wharf remains a monument to Promotional Sailing card for Enoch Train’s Packet Line. Boston’s success as a premier American interna - Courtesy of the Bostonian Society. tional maritime trade center in the 1800s, and an active working port — one of the oldest continuously operated ports in the western hemisphere. commercial wharf 3 excerpted from Morison’s Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 “Never before or since had Boston Harbor been so crowded, or the waterfront so congested with Sailing ships... In the eighteen-thirties the yearly average almost attained fifteen hundred, and the average size of vessels was growing as well. Coastwise arrivals increased in the same propor - tion; and by 1844, when a new and ever greater era began, fifteen vessels entered and left the harbor every day in the year.” average annual arrivals from foreign ports at Boston, by decades 1790-1800 1800-10 1810-20 1820-30 1830-35 1835-41 569 789 610 787 1199 1473 annual arrivals of coasting vessels at Boston 1830 1840 1844 1849 1851 2,938 4,406 5,312 6,199 6,334

In 1857, Vessels from: trade with the world British East Indies, Philippines, Dutch East Indies, China, Africa, Azores, Cape Verde Islands, Canaries, Gibraltar and Malta, Spanish Mediterranean ports, French Mediterranean ports, Sardinia, Tuscany, Naples and Sicily, Smyrna, Black Sea, Portugal, Spain Atlantic ports, France Atlantic ports, Norway and Sweden, Russia, England and Scotland, Belgium and Holland, Canada, Maritime Provinces, S. Pierre & Miquelon, Cuba, Puerto Rico, British West Indies, Other West Indies, Haiti & San Domingo, British Honduras, Mexico & Central America, New Grenada & Venezuela, Surinam & Cayenne, Brazil, Argentine Republic, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Sandwich Islands. the table above illustrates the dominance of maritime activity in the port of Boston. Y Samuel Eliot Morison The Maritime History and local vessels returning of Massachusetts,1783-1860 (page 377) to port from whaling 4 commercial wharf in the final analysis, the power of Massachusetts as a commercial state lay in her ships and the men who built, owned, and sailed them.

Samuel Eliot Morison

docks and shipping, commercial wharf 175 years ago. stereoscope (detail) by John P. Soule commercial wharf 5 Thousands of Skilled Workers Enabled Boston’s Success

Donald McKay’s shipyard in East Boston. Some of the many men employed in the building of ‘Glory of the Seas’ at her launching in October, 1869. Workers who powered Boston’s marine economy came from not only the city itself, but also from the Canadian Maritimes, Ireland, scotland, England, Norway, finland, and elsewhere, bringing diversity and an international feel to the shipyards and wharves. McKay himself is near the center wearing a top hat. He was a practical genius who had only a minimal formal eduction, but was considered the outstanding designer and builder of clipper ships. James Wallace Black, Glory of the Seas, October 1896. Photo courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum.

The backbone of maritime Massachusetts, however, was its middle class; the captains and mates of vessels, the master builders and shipwrights, the ropemakers, sailmakers, and skilled mechanics of many different trades, without whom the merchants were nothing. Samuel Eliot Morison

6 commercial wharf Wharf Neighbors, Heroes, and Heroines

Captain William T. Shorey, master of a Nantucket whaling fleet in 1886 with his wife, Julia (Shelton), and their daughters. Courtesy of the National Park Service, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

Boston Courier (Boston, Massachusetts, Thursday, October 24, 1833)

AT RIGHT : Mary Anne Brown Patten of East Boston joined her captain husband on Neptune’s Car , an East Boston-built clipper ship, on the New York to San Francisco route. Mary never had any intention of taking command, but when they were off the coast of South America, her husband fell gravely ill. Mary had accompanied her husband on previous voyages (including passages to China) and she had studied navigation and seamanship along the way. With her captain husband incapacitated, Mary took command of the ship. She successfully faced down a mutiny at gunpoint, saved her husband from death, and delivered the ship, crew, and cargo safely to port in San Francisco. Mary Patten Brown was 19 years old — and pregnant — at the time. Mary Ann Brown Patten, c. 1857, unidentified artist. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Dorthy Knouse Koepke. commercial wharf 7 In 1916 four ship chandlers operated out of busy Commercial Wharf. Absolutely vital to the operations of the port, they provided nearly everything a vessel required. Chandlers were valuable friends to shipmasters, frequently giving credit or lending money. The best were astute businessmen who often owned shares in the vessels of the port. photo courtesy Chelsea Clock Company. Offices and Shops at Commercial Wharf, 1916 G. J. Buchanan Co William J. Wilson C. D. Woodbury Cornice and sheetmetal workers Clerk Shipping office 87 Commercial Wharf 10 Commercial Wharf 7 Commercial Wharf (home in Roxbury) George W. Chadbourne Thomas A. Cromwell & Son Co. Teamster Harvard Brewing Co. Ship Chandlers 8 Commercial Wharf 45 to 48 Commercial Wharf 39 Commercial Wharf (home in Dorchester) “The beer that’s bought, Flitner-Atwood Co. When the best is sought” Commercial Towing Co. Ship Chandlers maritime Towing Service Gray, Aldrich Co., Inc. 8 Commercial Wharf Pumps, engines, lights end of Commercial Wharf Harrington, King & Co. and Farm Tractor s Dayton milling Co. Ship Chandlers 33-34 Commercial Wharf 39 Commercial Wharf 79 Commercial Wharf armour Glue Works H. mcGuinn lobster Co. Walter W. Hodder 49-51 Commercial Wharf 75 Commercial Wharf Ship Chandlers D. F. Gallagher & Co. 5 Commercial Wharf John E. Mallowes Sheet iron and Tin Captain of the barge Dora Canada, Atlantic, & Plant 37-38 Commercial Wharf end of Commercial Wharf Steamship Co. (home in Dorchester) William Whicker Commercial Wharf Shipping office Howard V. Redgate Hilton express office (to lynn ) 6 Commercial Wharf Bookkeeper 90 Commercial Wharf end of Commercial Wharf (home in Medford) 8 commercial wharf on the wharf: fishermen baiting trawls for groundfish — halibut, haddock and cod, 1903 photos from ‘A History of New england Fisheries’ by Raymond McFarland. Local Sicilian / Italian Fishermen, 1916 A sampling of the many working fishermen living near and working from the wharves, includ - ing Commercial Wharf, in 1916. Many of these family names are still prominently represented in the North End and elsewhere in Boston. Their home addresses in 1916 are clustered close to the Fisherman's Club, the Sacred Heart Italian Church, and the wharves. Salvatore Aiello 13 Lewis St. Giuseppe Maniscalco 260 North St. Dmenico Arutos 4 Baker’s Alley Vincenzo Maniscalco 292 North St. Bertolino Baldassare 364 North St. Vito Maniscalco 3 Sun Court S.t Filippo Bendavania 19 Fleet St. Paolo Merlino 3 Baker’s Alley Antonio Buono 44 Fleet St. Vincenzo Montanimo 9 Garden Court St. Giacomo Buono 41 Fleet St. Paolo Musumeci 277 North St. Raimondo Buono 44 Fleet St. Vincenzo Orlando 22 Fleet St. Gaetano Busalacchi 23 Fleet St. Nicola Parisi 295 ½ North St. Giuseppe Cipriano 271 North St. Vincenzo Piazza 231 North St. Antonio Ciulla 304 North St. Gaetano Randazzo 177 North St. Arcusio Ciulla 293 North St. Graziano Randazzo 3 Langdon Place Francesco Ciulla 2 Sun Court St. Salvatore Randazzo 181 North St. Leonardo Ciulla 309 North St. Serafino Randazzo 177 North St. Michele Ciulla 3 Sun Court St. Joseph Rossi 326 Commercial St. Alfonso Damiano 292 North St. Accursio Sabella 231 North St. Cosimo Faletta 177 North St. Antonio Sabella 22 Fleet St. Antonio Favaloro 4 Langdon Pl. Stefano Sabella 49 Fleet St. Frank Favaloro 2 Powers Court Vincenzo Sabella 292 North St. Serafino Favaloro 40 Lewis St. Antonio Sciulla 290 North St. Vito Favaloro 218 North St. Salvatore Sciulla 309 North St. Antonio Gilardi 228 North St. Simone Sciulla 290 North S.t Nardo Gilardi 3 Sun Court St. Tommaso Sciulla 282 North St. Francesco Licata 9 Quincy Court Francesco Sciafani 292 North St. Giuseppe Licata 40 Fleet St. Antonio Scola 271 North S. Vincenzo Lumia 1 Baker’s Alley Giovanni Scola 15 North Square Accursio Maniscalco 19 Fleet St. Giuseppe Scola 228 North St. Acuso Maniscalco 309 North St. Lorenzo Scola 28 Fleet St. Alberto Maniscalco 292 North St. Luigi Scola 1A Garden Court St. Antonino Maniscalco 231 North St. Salvatore Scola 12 Moon St. commercial wharf 9 Boston Granite Style commercial wharf is an iconic example of “boston granite style” architecture, and the first wharf ever built in this uniquely american style

Distinguished by its use of single pieces of hammer-finished stone as posts and lintels, as columns, and as large slabs making up the fabric of the exterior wall, the Boston Granite Style was the first uniquely American architectural style for public buildings. In 1832 Isaiah Rogers’ design for Com - mercial Wharf was the building that introduced this pioneering American public building style to the wharves of Boston. This massive harbor-front structure is constructed of what many architectural authorities have called “the noblest of all build - ing stones” — granite. Between 1810 and 1855 construction for commerce and government in Boston showed the effect of the Boston Granite Style.

Architectural significance of Commer - cial Wharf was derived in the main from two important and innovative ideas. First: the rough hammered sur - face departed from the finely finished blocks and severe linear patterns of the New South Church, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Bulfinch’s City Hall. This new textural subface was both aesthetically pleasing and cost ef - Commercial Wharf detail. fective. Second: Over and above the hammer finished stone as posts and lintels, hallmarks superficial treatment of the stone, the of Boston’s Granite Style. use of monolithic slab construction which “exploited the aptitude of gran - ite for the expression of mass.” (Doc - toral dissertation, John Morrill Bryan)

Large, rough slabs of granite were placed in a post and lintel configura - tion, creating impressive street level spaces for doors and windows. Rough, massive, and unadorned, the granite gave the wharf, and similar buildings, a substantial quality; exuding strength and stability — the hallmarks of a sub - stantial business.

Over many years visitors to Boston have noticed what a granite town it is, 10 commercial wharf even though it is often thought of as a brick city. , for example, in the 1860s, wrote of one example of the many ranges of stores and wharf buildings around Boston Harbor, then a teeming center of world-wide commerce, that it must surely be “one of the finest pieces of com[mercial] architecture in the world.” He described its huge hammered blocks as of “rough granite,” and pronounced it “noble” in design. (Walt Whitman Looks at Boston. New England Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jul., 1928), p. 357.)

“The Boston Granite Style, as it was called even in its own day,” wrote historian James O’Gorman, spread from Boston down the At - lantic seaboard to New Orleans and up the Pacific seaboard to San Commercial Wharf detail. Francisco, and constituted “a Monolithic slab construction, unique at the time, to Boston’s Granite Style. highly original sort of basic classi - cism” worthy of comparison with the work of the leading European rationalist architects of the 19th century, Sir John Soane and Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

The work of O’Gorman has also shown that the Granite Style was a key influence on the “massive,” “quiet” and “lithic” work of Henry Hobson Richardson, the Boston architect whose work was the first American architecture to achieve transatlantic stature.

New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote that the Boston Granite Style was “a unique type of stone-slab design in which the structural blocks were used with almost 20th century directness and unprecedented func - tional severity.” Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the mid twentieth century dean of American architectural criticism, concurred. The granite wharves he agreed, were “hardly equaled any - where in the world.”

commercial wharf 11 Isaiah Rogers architect of commercial wharf

Born in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and a student of Boston’s , Isaiah Rogers was one of the earliest propo - nents of the Granite Style in Boston. He became a preeminent hotel architect and early-on was renowned for Boston’s Tremont House (the first hotel with indoor plumbing!), the Astor House in and the Exchange Hotel in Rich - mond, Virginia. He designed the Burnett House in , then the largest and most elegant hotel in the Midwest. He also designed New York's Astor Opera House.

Commercial Wharf is the most important remaining evidence of Rogers’ contribution to early 19th-century Boston.

His working relationship with Gridley Bryant, civil engineer and builder, facilitated the speedy construction of the Wharf. Only one year from incorporating and approving the drawings, Commercial Wharf was open for business.

Isaiah Rogers designed Commercial Wharf James F. O’Gorman wrote in his biography of Bryant: portrait from Isaiah Rogers: “According to John Bryan, Rogers’ rough-hammered exterior Architectural Practice in Antebellum America by James F. O’Gorman stonework was important both economically, because it was cheaper than the smoothly finished surfaces of recent build - ings, and visually, for the play of light and shade over walls that were otherwise left plain. Also noteworthy was the use of monolithic granite-slab construction at street level.”

From 1863 to 1865, Rogers was appointed as Supervising Architect of the United States. In this role he designed and patented four burglar-proof vaults built in the northwest corner of the U.S. Treasury Building (Washington, D.C.) in 1864. Their lining consisted of two layers of cast iron balls interposed between the traditional alternating plates of wrought iron and hardened steel. The balls, held loosely in specially formed cavities, were designed to rotate freely upon contact with a drill, or any other tool, thereby preventing a burglar from penetrating.

Because most of Rogers’ important buildings stood at the centers of cities, despite his prominence much of his executed work is gone, since those cities were re-developed for the next century. Fire was a frequent threat as well. This makes the preservation of Commercial Wharf as part of the ar - chitectural history of Boston and our nation, even more critical today.

engraving of the wharf, embellishment on the original stock certificate, 1832 12 commercial wharf Gridley Bryant construction engineer, builder of commercial wharf Born in Scituate, Massachusetts, Gridley Bryant (1789 – 1867) was a pioneer — self-educated con - struction engineer, apprenticed to a builder by his widowed mother because of his childhood apti - tude for buiding forts, he built the first commercial railroad in the United States and invented most of the basic technologies involved in it. Bryant was chosen as the builder of Commercial Wharf because of his particular inventiveness and ex - pertise in sourcing, handling, and transporting massive stone blocks. His son, Gridley James Fox Bryant, became a famous 19th-century architect and builder.

Bryant invented a portable derrick in 1823 and soon gained a reputation for being a master struc - ture builder. He was awarded the contract to build the United States Bank in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, Massachusetts. In investigating how to move the granite needed for these projects from the granite quarry in Quincy to the work sites, he deter - loading stone blocks on bryant’s granite railway. mined that the best method would be via a rail - lantern slide c. 1870, courtesy Thomas Crane Public Library, the Quincy Room road, much like that of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which was still in the planning stages at the time. The state legislature reluc - tantly granted Bryant a charter to build a railroad with the financing of Bunker Hill Monument di - rector Thomas Perkins. This innovative use of rails met with considerable skepticism. Canals were then considered the optimum mode of transportation for stone. Construction began on the Granite Railway, the first chartered railroad in North America, on April 1, 1826, with the first train operat - ing on the railroad from the Quincy Quarry only six months later, on October 7, 1826.

Running from Quincy to the Neponset River, the wooden rails were covered with iron and were laid five feet apart. Special wagons with huge wheels (six feet in diameter) hauled massive blocks of granite along these rails three miles to the river, from where they were taken by barge to their ultimate destination, for use first in the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument, and then Commercial Wharf.

The Granite Railway relied on horses, rather than steam locomotives, to draw the cars along the tracks. In winter the cars were equipped with a purpose-built wooden snowplow. Without it, Commercial Wharf could not have been built so quickly, or so cost effectively.

A section of the railway called the Incline was added in 1830 to haul Gridley Bryant, granite from the Pine Ledge quarry to the railway level 84 feet builder of Commercial Wharf portrait from Lives and Works of below. Cars moved up and down the 315-foot incline, controlled by Civil and Military Engineers by a conveyor belt-type chain. The Incline continued to operate until Charles B. Stuart the 1940s . commercial wharf 13 Notable Architecture Boston Granite Style

quincy market,1826, was a precursor to commercial wharf, 1833

quincy market, 1826 lewis wharf, 1834

the custom house, 1837 Commercial block.1856

bryants mercantile wharf, 1855 the state street block, 1857 14 commercial wharf Bibliography sources for this document

Boston Port Authority. Boston Looks Seaward, The Story of the Port, 1630-1940. Boston: Bruce Humphries, Inc., 1941.

Bryan, John Morrill. “Boston’s Granite Architecture, c. 1810-1860.” Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1972.

Bunting, W. H. The Camera’s Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New England. Boston: Historic New England, 2006.

Bunting, W. H. Portrait of a Port: Boston, 1852-1914. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

Cushing, George M. and George M., Jr. Great Buildings of Boston, A Photographic Guide. Dover Books, 1982.

Edwards, John D. and Institute of Transportation Engineers. Transportation Planning Handbook, 2nd edition. Washington, DC: Institute of Transportation Engineers, 1999.

Forbes, Allan and Ralph M. Eastman. Yankee Ship Sailing Cards, Volume III. Boston: State Street Trust Company, 1952.

German, Andrew W. Down on T Wharf: the Boston Fisheries as seen through the Photographs of Henry D. Fisher. Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1982.

Gibson, David. The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places. Hudson, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009.

Hauk, Z. William. T Wharf: Notes and Sketches Collected during a Quarter Century of Living on Boston’s Waterfront. Boston: Alden-Hauk, Inc., 1952.

Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

McFarland, Raymond. A History of the New England Fisheries. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania, 1911.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Maritime History of Massachusetts: 1783-1860. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921.

O’Gorman, James F. Isaiah Rogers: Architectural Practice in Antebellum America. Amherst and Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.

Reed, Roger. Building Victorian Boston. Amherst and Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.

Seasholes, Nancy S. Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.

Seasholes, Nancy S., and The Cecil Group, Inc. Sites for Historical Interpretation on East Boston’s Waterfronts. Boston: Boston Redevelopment Authority, 2009.

Shand-Tucci, Douglas. What Makes Boston Architecture Great? It’s Not What You Think. Transcript of television broadcast, WGBH-TV, September 2, 2015.

State Street Trust Company. Old Shipping Days in Boston. Boston: Walton Advertising & Printing Company, 1918.

Stuart, Charles B. Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers. New York, NY: D. Van Nostrand, 1871.

photos pages 4 and 5 by Frank Costantino north end wharves of boston, 1852

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Map: Detail of 1852 map of Boston by J. Slatter, showing North End and vicinity. Published by Matthew Dripps. embossed seal from original Commercial wharf stock certificate, 1832 © 2019 Joseph Howland Collins, Maritime Mile™ all rights reserved.