Informed Discussion of Peter Faneuil and His Legacy
It’s a long and thoughtful article, presenting recent primary-source research and including many voices. The web version includes animated maps.
I hadn’t known this:
A 2021 survey suggested that Bostonians support renaming the hall, with 51 percent in favor, 36 percent opposed, and 12 percent undecided or declining to answer, according to the MassINC Polling Group. Black voters overwhelmingly backed the change, while white voters were nearly evenly split.Of course, support for renaming would probably divide if people were asked about different possibilities instead of a generic change. But the minority strongly opposed to renaming are certainly overrepresented in this article’s comments section.
I wrote a series of postings about the name of Faneuil Hall back in 2020 (starting here), and in June reported on the site’s exhibit about slavery in Revolutionary Boston. My thinking, including the value of visible iconoclasm and highighting the many people involved in the building, hasn’t changed.
Renaming landmarks is something all societies do, of course. Revolutionary Boston included King Street, Queen Street, Hutchinson Street—all changed for political reasons in the new republic. For a while King’s Chapel was called the Stone Chapel. Prolonged public discussion of such issues highlights divisions in society, but being able to resolve those questions collectively should be a sign of health.
3 comments:
Am I remembering correctly that what we call Faneuil Hall was also called the Town House in Boston records at the time of the Revolution? Granted, a rather boring alternative name, and possibly confused with "town hall," but at least authentic to the time.
In pre-Revolutionary Boston, the Town House was the building we now call the Old State House. People called it that because it was the site of town meetings and selectmen’s meetings before Faneuil Hall was built. There are also some references in the 1750s and early 1760s to that building as the Courthouse because it hosted court sessions before a dedicated courthouse was built a block away.
By the last years before the Revolution, the Massachusetts General Court (Assembly and Council) had the Town House to themselves. And in some years, the royal governors summoned the legislature to Cambridge or Salem, leaving that building underused. But it still appears to have held the provincial legislative records.
One of the shifts of the Revolution, which I recall Thomas Hutchinson remarked on, was people started to refer to that building as the State House instead of the Town House. It remained the seat of the legislature into the new republic until the new State House was built on Beacon Hill—the core of the building the state government uses today.
That led to the building getting its longest-lived name: the Old State House. And to it becoming a purely commercial property owned by the town of Boston for decades until it was made into a museum (and subway entrance).
The Globe piece is really a repackaging of research Boston National Historical Park completed and presented back in 2021. I.e., two whole years ago.
https://www.nps.gov/bost/learn/historyculture/peter-faneuil.htm
I'm really not sure what took them so long to cover the story!
Post a Comment