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This weekend is your chance to see some things the public normally can't see
By adamg on Wed, 05/15/2024 - 11:11pm
Let's start with the telephone museum Verizon has, here in the town where the telephone was first used, but almost never lets anybody in to see.
People who sign up for the first Saturday tour (starts at 10 a.m.) of the Innovation Trail's kick-off weekend, will get a special visit to the seldom seen telephone museum - after which you'll get to see some of the other innovation museums on either side of the Charles.
On Sunday hie yourself over to Highland Park in Roxbury, where, between 2 and 4 p.m., you'll get a once-a-year chance to climb to the top of the Cochituate Standpipe, built in the era when even public works were designed to look attractive - and used to store water from the Cochituate Reservoir for Roxbury after its annexation to Boston.
At 3 p.m., there'll be a lecture there on the history of the structure, by Byron Rushing and other members of the Roxbury Historical Society.
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Comments
Nothing but fond memories of
Nothing but fond memories of being a teenage girl in the 70s talking on our indestructible big yellow phone that hung on the kitchen wall. It had a cord that could stretch all the way to the other room so I could yap away with my friends while watching Soul Train for free.
Mom, get off the phone!
Can I just have 10 minutes of privacy?
but...
but if that thing ever hits the ground, it's going to put a big dent in the linoleum that you're going to have to distract mom from for a week.. after that you can safely claim ignorance!
You forgot
the USS Constitution has her turnaround cruise on Saturday.
Turnaround is Friday
https://twitter.com/USSConstitution/status/1790405981635010577
Telco
As a telco employee I have seen what was a small display of AG Bells workshop which was at the old NE T&T hq @185 Franklin St. It was in a small room off the rotundra in the main entrance along with a mural depicting the evolution of telephony around said rotundra.. When they sold the building it all was moved to the Bowdoin Sq CO. I have not been to Bowdoin since so no idea what the "museum" entails.
It was open to the public when it was still on Franklin Street
Anyone could just walk in the front door and turn right into that little room.
the rotunda mural disappeared
because it depicted the workforce in the early 20th Century, which is no longer accepted as a part of actual history.
Fort Hill Tower
That link is missing a fair bit of recent history when the Lyman "family" cult used to occupy the hill and tower in the late 60's/70's. It's a really juicy part of local musician Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks book https://www.astralweeks.net
Only $17 bucks on Amazon
It'll be here tomorrow.
Thanks for the rec, Pete!
Great Book
A lot of good stuff on the Boston music scene and VU, the birth of public television in Boston, and Van Morrison (of course).
Available in print and electronically…
… at the BPL as well.
Thanks for the recommendation!
I think it was in the New Yorker …
… that I read a piece about the Lyman cult about two years ago. What a story! They still exist in some form.
You have to hand it to our fair city to be fertile ground for such bizarre stuff!
It was...
Cool article @Lee. It doesn't talk much about Fort Hill, (just a mention really), but very absorbing.
$5 to spend Saturday morning …
… exploring Thompson Island. Ferry departing from EDIC pier in South Boston.
Next Saturday also. Possibly all summer long?
Tickets through Eventbrite.
Where do you see $5? The
Where do you see $5? The eventbrite link I found says $20.
Keeping the ferry expensive is a good way to limit the supposedly required public access. Especially for low-income people.
Also, Outward Bound seems to have sold the naming rights to Thompson Island, and is declaring that it's now Cathleen Stone Island. Are they allowed to do that? I thought the U.S. Board on Geographic Names gets to decide stuff like this.
If I ever felt like giving $12 million to Outward Bound, instead of plastering my own name on the island, I'd have the money go towards making the ferry free.
Was the tower really built when Roxbury was independent?
Wikipedia says Roxbury was annexed by Boston on January 5, 1868.
https://www.bostonpreservation.org/advocacy-project/fort-hill-tower-high... says the tower was designed in 1869.
Is the telephone museum any good? $20 plus fees is a little steep.
You're right
It went into service like a year after Roxbury was annexed. Fixed.
what hath god wrought ?
Speaking of closed telephone
Speaking of closed telephone museums, the one in Waltham, or possibly Lexington according to Google, seems to have closed for covid and never reopened. Has anyone been there?