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Coliseum doodle decorates old tax records
By adamg on Tue, 03/28/2017 - 10:51am
The folks at the Boston City Archives report they recently ran across this doodle in the 1869 city tax records. Do you know what it represents? See it larger.
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Comments
A huge temporary stadium
built for the Boston Peace Jubilee in 1869, then rebuilt in 1872 for another similar event.
The Great Gale
And for more on the referenced Great Gale of 1869 that took her down
Never heard of any of this
Thanks for the links. Very interesting!
Looks Like The World Peace Jubilee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Peace_Jubilee_and_International_...
It was located roughly where Tent City / Copley Place is today.
By the way, Steve Murphy's people had already misspelled its location in the Suffolk County Records by this point.
It's good to know Bostonians are consistent over centuries:
Our general ill disposition to any and all public events goes back a long way, apparently.
Attendees or neighbors?
The above comment sounds more like something that the nearby residents would complain about, and not how the attendees would respond.
In any case, the same promoters did it again in an even grander style just three years later.
The first jubilee broke even but the second one lost a fortune.
Not sure of all the answers.
First off, my tongue is a bit in my cheek, of course.
The quote I pasted came from the Wikipidea entry for the second event, and the citation doesn't reveal who was speaking or writing.
Considering the Back Bay had yet to be very built up, I don't imagine there were many neighbors around to be complaining. The few photos and drawings I've seen of the 1872 building make the immediate neighborhood look rather barren.
design for
the Megaplex.
http://www.csmonitor.com/1993/0927/27082.html
The old Tip Top bread bakery?
The old Tip Top bread bakery?
The Answer
Those of you who figured out that it was the Coliseum built for the 1869 Peace Jubilee are correct! Here's a more detailed image from Digital Commonwealth: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:bv73cd580
We're not exactly sure why this assessor sketched the Coliseum in the tax book (boredom perhaps? A long lunch break?), but we're glad we found it!
Perhaps the Coliseum stood on that property owner's land?
and the diagram was there to remind the assessor of that fact, and charge an appropriate tax?