Between Causeway Street and Broadway there are only two streets actually crossing Washington Street from one side to the other and to points beyond. How many Bostonians could name them? Hanover Street is one, but you would not be likely to guess the other, unless you were quite familiar with Boston. It is―Elm Street. Did you pass this quiz?

*

        There are over thirty Franklin Streets in Greater Boston, not to mention Franklin Avenues, Places, etc.

*

        Cambridge had the first printing press in America, over three hundred years ago, before it was Cambridge. Before long, there were two printers in Cambridge, and they had to stay there, though Cambridge had not sufficient business for two printers―for no other community on this continent would give either one a license to operate.

*

        The town of Winthrop resembles in shape an elephant’s head. The neck leading to Point Shirley is the Elephant’s trunk, the Point itself bring the curled-up tip of the trunk. And the Court Park section of Winthrop is the elephant’s hanging ear. To complete the resemblance, there is a lake on Winthrop’s Playstead which is just where the elephant’s eye should be. The elephant? Must be our Great Metropolis.

*

        The artificial respirator, popularly well known under the name “iron lung,” is a truly Boston invention―invented, developed and manufactured in Boston. To most readers, there will be no need to explain the importance of this invention.

*

        For the first time, a Massachusetts state department is moving its headquarters outside the city limit of Boston. The Public Safety Department, now located in a Boston office, is preparing a new set of offices in a former engraving plant just over the line into Brookline.

*

        On Washington Street, just at the number 2000, there can still be seen the old stone boundary post which used to mark the limits between Boston and Roxbury. And on Hyde Park Avenue, a little way beyond Ramsdell Avenue, there is another obsolete boundary stone, which marks the old border between Boston and Hyde Park.

Home      Menu      Index