Grancy and Company Real Estate Charlestown Massachusetts

CHARLESTOWN began as an independent community, founded by English colonists before they established Boston across the harbor on the Shawmut Peninsula. Severely damaged by fire following the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, the once thriving colonial town was rebuilt after the Revolution and became a center of transportation and maritime industry in the 19th century. Annexed to Boston in 1874, Charlestown today is noted for its exceptionally rich collection of historic houses and industrial buildings.

THE BEGINNING OF THE BAY COLONY

As the Massachusetts Bay Company prepared for its massive migration to New England, it dispatched engineer Thomas Graves from England in 1623 to lay out a town for the settlers. Graves was attracted by the narrow Mishawum Peninsula between the Charles and Mystic rivers, linked to the mainland at the present Sullivan Square. Charlestown became one of the handful of early settlements, preceding Boston and originally encompassing large sections of Middlesex County. The area of earliest settlement, at Town Hill, still retains the elliptical street pattern that Thomas Graves laid out. Among the first structures was the Great House at Market Square (now City Square). The government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in this all purpose building. In 1635, it was converted into a tavern and stood until it was burned by the British in 1775. During the 18th century, Market Square was paved and other important town institutions, including the courthouse and meeting house, were located here. The area was used as a market place even after the fire of 1775 and eventually became known as City Square; it is now a designated Boston Landmark as an historic and archaeological site. Charlestown still has a number of other 17th century sites. The Phipps Street Burying Ground is the last resting place of many early residents of the town, including schoolmaster John Harvard, whose library of 300 volumes was left at his death in 1638 to the college in Cambridge that now bears his name. John Harvard's gravestone has been lost, but the burying ground contains a granite obelisk erected in his honor in 1828 by graduates of Harvard College. The burying ground contains three centuries' worth of decorative grave markers and monuments. Charlestown's Training Field (at Warren and Winthrop streets), the common grazing area and militia parade ground, was laid out in the 1640s. Whaling and merchant trading were early Charlestown enterprises. Francis Willoughby built the town's first shipyard in 1641; in 1678, the colony's government induced James Russell to construct the first dry dock in America. The commercial and shipping area of the town was concentrated around the present Henley and Wapping streets.

POST REVOLUTIONARY GROWTH

During the decades following the Revolutionary War, the citizens of Charlestown seemed to be trying to make up for lost time, as new residential and industrial areas were built up. Among the oldest buildings is the Warren Tavern (1780), extensively rebuilt in the 1970s. Large landholders on the southeastern slopes of Breed's Hill sub- divided their land for development, laying out the streets that still bear their names - Soley, Cordis, Green, and Wood. Skilled local housewrights built handsome Federal style houses. No other Boston neighborhood has such a fine group of frame houses from this period. Some of the many examples include 2 and 4 Salem Street, probably built in the 1790s. Subdivision and development gradually moved up the peninsula toward the Neck at today's Sullivan Square the Salem Hill area in the 1830s, and the streets from Walker to Baldwin from the 1830s to the 1860s. The Sullivan family promoted real estate development in that area from the 1840s to the early 1870s.

THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL

At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Charlestown's population had reached about 2,000, and the town contained as many as 400 buildings. Following the battles of Concord and Lexington on April 19, 1775, the British headed toward Charlestown in retreat, and most townies fled when they heard the news. Two months later, on June 17, the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought in Charlestown. Although the battle was actually fought on nearby Breed's Hill, the plan had been to engage the British on Bunker Hill, and the name stuck. The American troops lost the battle, but the strength and determination they showed, together with the great British losses, gave an important boost to their cause. Following the battle, British troops burned the oldest section of Charlestown to the ground. Citizens cautiously began to return after the British fled Boston in March, 1776, but full fledged reconstruction of the town did not occur until after the war ended in 1781, when the Warren Tavern was constructed (1780, named after Joseph Warren who died in The Battle of Bunker Hill) and enjoyed by Paul Revere and many since.

THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT

The most ambitious residential building project entered on Breed's Hill, site of the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill. In the first decades of the 19th century, a group of prominent local citizens decided to erect a monument to the battle. In 1825, the 50th anniversary of the battle, they commissioned architect/engineer Solomon Willard to design the now familiar 220 foot granite obelisk in the Egyptian Revival style, often favored for monuments to the dead. (Open to the public; 242- 5601.) Begun in 1826, the monument was not completed until 1842.