1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boston (Massachusetts)/Art and Literature

BOSTON

Art and Literature.—The Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1870 (though there were art exhibits collected from 1826 onward) and its present building was erected in 1908. It has one of the finest collections of casts in existence, a number of original pieces of Greek statuary, the second-best collection in the world of Aretine ware, the finest collection of Japanese pottery, and probably the largest and finest of Japanese paintings in existence. Among the memorials to men of Massachusetts (a large part of them Bostonians) commemorated by monuments in the Common, the Public Garden, the grounds of the state house, the city hall, and other public places of the city, are statues of Charles Sumner, Josiah Quincy and John A. Andrew by Thomas Ball; of Generals Joseph Hooker and William F. Bartlett, and of Rufus Choate by Daniel C. French; of W. L. Garrison and Charles Devens by Olin L. Warner; of Samuel Adams by Anne Whitney; of John Winthrop and Benjamin Franklin by R. S. Greenough; of Edward Everett (W. W. Story), Colonel W. Prescott (Story), Horace Mann (E. Stebbins), Daniel Webster (H. Powers), W. E. Channing (H. Adams), N. P. Banks (H. H. Kitson), Phillips Brooks (A. St Gaudens), and J. B. O’Reilly (D. C. French).

Among other important monuments are a group by J. Q. A. Ward commemorating the first proof of the anaesthetic properties of ether, made in 1846 in the Massachusetts General Hospital by Dr W. T. G. Morton; an emancipation group of Thomas Ball with a portrait statue of Lincoln; a fine equestrian statue, by the same sculptor, of Washington, one of the best works in the country (1869); an army and navy monument in the Common by Martin Millmore, in memory of the Civil War; another (1888) recording the death of those who fell in the Boston Massacre of 1770; statues of Admiral D. G. Farragut (H. H. Kitson), Leif Ericson (Anne Whitney), and Alexander Hamilton (W. Rimmer); and a magnificent bronze bas-relief (1897) by Augustus St Gaudens commemorating the departure from Boston of Colonel Robert G. Shaw with the first regiment of negro soldiers enlisted in the Civil War. There is an art department of the city government, under unpaid commissioners, appointed by the mayor from candidates named by local art and literary institutions; and without their approval no work of art can now become the property of the city.

The public library, containing 922,348 volumes in January 1908, is the second library of the country in size, and is the largest free circulating library in the world (circulation 1907, 1,529,111 volumes). There was a public municipal library in Boston before 1674—probably in 1653; but it was burned in 1747 and was apparently never replaced. The present library (antedated by several circulating, social and professional collections) may justly be said to have had its origin in the efforts of the Parisian, Alexandre Vattemare (1796–1864), from 1830 on, to foster international exchanges. From 1847 to 1851 he arranged gifts from France to American libraries aggregating 30,655 volumes, and a gift of 50 volumes by the city of Paris in 1843 (reciprocated in 1849 with more than 1000 volumes contributed by private citizens) was the nucleus of the Boston public library. Its legal foundation dates from 1848. Among the special collections are the George Ticknor library of Spanish and Portuguese books (6393 vols.), very full sets of United States and British public documents, the Bowditch mathematical library (7090 vols.), the Galatea collection on the history of women (2193 vols.), the Barton library, including one of the finest existing collections of Shakespeariana (3309 vols., beside many in the general library), the A. A. Brown library of music (9886 vols.), a very full collection on the anthropology and ethnology of Europe, and more than 100,000 volumes on the history, biography, geography and literature of the United States. The library is supported almost entirely by municipal appropriations, though holding also considerable trust funds ($388,742 in 1905). The other notable book-collections of the city include those of the Athenaeum, founded in 1807 (about 230,000 vols. and pamphlets), the Massachusetts Historical Society (founded 1791; 50,300), the Boston medical library (founded 1874; about 80,000), the New England Historic-Genealogical Society (founded 1845; 33,750 volumes and 34,150 pamphlets), the state library (founded 1826; 140,000), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (founded 1780; 30,000), the Boston Society of Natural History (founded 1830; about 35,000 volumes and 27,000 pamphlets).

The leading educational institutions are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the largest purely scientific and technical school in the country, opened to students (including women) in 1865, four years after the granting of a charter to Prof. W. B. Rogers, the first president; Boston University (chartered in 1869; Methodist Episcopal; co-educational); the New England Conservatory of Music (co-educational; private; 1867, incorporated 1880), the largest in the United States, having 2400 students in 1905–1906; the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy (1852); the Massachusetts Normal Art School (1873); the School of Drawing and Painting (1876) of the Museum of Fine Arts; Boston College (1860), Roman Catholic, under the Society of Jesus; St John’s Theological Seminary (1880), Roman Catholic; Simmons College (1899) for women, and several departments of Harvard University. The Institute of Technology has an exceptional reputation for the wide range of its instruction and its high standards of scholarship. It was a pioneer in introducing as a feature of its original plans laboratory instruction in physics, mechanics and mining. The architects of the United States navy are sent here for instruction in their most advanced courses. Boston University was endowed by Isaac Rich (1801–1872), a Boston fish-merchant, Lee Claflin (1791–1871), a shoe manufacturer and a benefactor of Wesleyan University and of Wilbraham Seminary, and Jacob Sleeper. It has been co-educational from the beginning. Its faculties of theology—founded in 1841 at Newbury, Vt., as the Biblical Institute; in 1847–1867 in Concord, N.H.; and in 1867–1871 the Boston Theological Seminary—law, music, medicine, liberal arts and agriculture (at Amherst, in association with the Massachusetts Agricultural College), all antedate 1876. The funds for Simmons College were left by John Simmons in 1870, who wished to found a school to teach the professions and “branches of art, science and industry best calculated to enable the scholars to acquire an independent livelihood.” The Lowell Institute (q.v.), established in 1839 (by John Lowell, Jr., who bequeathed $237,000 for the purpose), provides yearly courses of free public lectures, and its lecturers have included many of the leading scholars of America and Europe. During each winter, also, a series of public lectures on American history is delivered in the Old South meeting house. The public schools, particularly the secondary schools, enjoy a very high reputation. The new English High and Latin school, founded in 1635, is the oldest school of the country. A girls’ Latin school, with the same standards as the boys’ school, was established in 1878 (an outcome of the same movement that founded Radcliffe College). There are large numbers of private schools, in art, music and academic studies.

In theatrical matters Boston is now one of the chief American centres. The Federal Street theatre—the first regular theatre—was established in 1794, the old Puritan feeling having had its natural influence in keeping Boston behind New York and Philadelphia in this respect. The dramatic history of the city is largely associated with the Boston Museum, built in 1841 by Moses Kimball on Tremont Street, and rebuilt in 1846 and 1880; here for half a century the principal theatrical performances were given (see an interesting article in the New England Magazine, June 1903), in later years under the management of R. Montgomery Field, until in 1903 the famous Boston Museum was swept away, as other interesting old places of entertainment (the old Federal Street theatre, the Tremont theatre, &c.) had been, in the course of further building changes. The Boston theatre dates from 1854, and there were seventeen theatres altogether in 1900.

As a musical centre Boston rivals New York. Among musical organizations may be mentioned the Handel and Haydn Society (1815), the Harvard Musical Association (1837), the Philharmonic (1880) and the Symphony Orchestra, organized in 1881 by the generosity of Henry Lee Higginson. This orchestra has done much for music not only in Boston but in the United States generally. In 1908 the Boston Opera Company was incorporated, and an opera house has been erected on the north side of Huntington Avenue.

Boston was the undisputed literary centre of America until the later decades of the 19th century, and still retains a considerable and important colony of writers and artists. Its ascendancy was identical with the long predominance of the New England literary school, who lived in Boston or in the country round about. Two Boston periodicals (one no longer so) that still hold an exceptional position in periodical literature, the North American Review (1815) and the Atlantic Monthly (1857), date from this period. The great majority of names in the long list of worthies of the commonwealth—writers, statesmen, orators, artists, philanthropists, reformers and scholars, are intimately connected with Boston. Among the city’s daily newspapers the Boston Herald (1846), the Boston Globe, the Evening Transcript (1830), the Advertiser (1813) and the Post (1831) are the most important.