Begin at the Boston Common
Information Kiosk
Tremont Street
What's
New?
You won’t find the Boston Women’s
Heritage Trail on any Boston map, nor will you find Park Rangers
ready to guide you along it’s walkways. This Walk (or walks
really) was the brainchild of a group of Boston teachers,
librarians, and students. The five walks meander through several
Boston neighborhoods as testaments to the accomplishments of
local women.
The booklet with maps that guides
the walker is available at both National Park Service locations:
Boston Common and 15 State Street. Unlike NPS brochures, the
booklet is not free. Although it costs $9.95 on the Common, you
can get it for $5.00 on State Street. The 80-page book is a
worthy publication, however, for not only does it detail the
walks, it includes a vast amount of Boston history, and lots of
illustrations.
The five walks are labeled:
Downtown, North End, Beacon Hill, South Cove/Chinatown, and Back
Bay. Several of the stops overlap those found on the Freedom and
Black Heritage Trails, so if you plan to walk either of these,
have the booklet with you before you start. The stops include
private homes (with plaques – look for the little icon of a
tall woman in a long dress), public buildings that have changed
use, and sites with various functions that are open to the
public. The number of stops on each walk varies.
As an example, the North End Walk
(12 stops) celebrates the diversity of our cultures, and visits,
among other sites, the Paul and Rachel Revere House; the
Mariners House where wives of sailors were provided a place to
sell the items they made at home; and the birthplace of Rose
Fitzgerald Kennedy. Plaques commemorating North End women
feature among those hanging in the Revere Mall. The North Bennet
Street Industrial School was founded by a woman named Pauline
Agassiz Shaw in 1881. It still holds an international reputation
for training students in fine carpentry, violin making and
restoration, and in making jewelry. This Walk weaves around
quite a bit, but stays in the North End. All the Walks do much
the same, overlapping at times with other Walks.
The Beacon Hill Walk (17 stops)
shares two sites with the Black Heritage Trail: the African
Meeting House (some prominent abolitionists were women) and the
Harriet and Lewis Hayden House where an escaped slave, Ellen
Craft, lived for a time. Craft dressed like a man, pretending to
be her own master, acting as if her own husband were her slave.
Thusly disguised, the two of them labored against slavery.
Elsewhere, the walk focuses on women writers and artists.
The other three walks (Back Bay
is the most jam-packed at 35 stops), are similar.
Any of the five can be walked
within 1 ½ hours. The neighborhoods they pass through are each
distinctive in flavor, and include other sights. For
information, call 617-522-2872. This is a project of the Boston
Public Schools.
Hours:
Public buildings are open during
regular business hours.
Admission:
Free to all NPS sites. Admission
varies at the museums.
Click here to find out more on
Boston's |
Women's
Heritage Trail
