In the last episode, we talked about Boston’s first water sources, from rainfall and natural springs to a simple wooden aqueduct connecting Jamaica Pond to downtown Boston. This time, we’re picking up where episode 292 left off. As Boston grew in the early 19th century, it quickly outgrew its existing water supply, which was dreadfully polluted anyway. The city was left looking outside its boundaries for a water source that was large and plentiful enough to supply the needs of a growing American city, and debating whether that source should be owned by a governmental entity or a private company. This week, we’ll look at the celebration that came with the solution to that problem, and the drawn out debates and hard work that enabled Boston to supply its citizens with a truly public source of water.
Tag: Boston Common
The Red Scare in Park Square (episode 172)
Draft riots are nothing new in Boston. A 1970 protest at Northeastern University over the draft and the Vietnam War devolved into a riot. In 1863, the North End was torn by a draft riot that ended with the militia firing a cannon at a crowd of mostly Irish-American men, women, and children. We even covered a violent 1747 riot in which Bostonians resisted forced impressment into the Royal Navy. What all those incidents have in common, though, is that the rioters were opposed to the draft. The riot on July 1, 1917 was different. In that case, rioters supported the draft and focused their violence on antiwar protesters.