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Trinity Church, a Parish Priest’s Dream

Boston’s Trinity Church owes its magnificent appearance to the Episcopal priest who wrote the lyrics to the Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem — and, of course, to architect Henry Hobson Richardson.

Trinity Church under construction, c. 1875

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) was descended from the Rev. John Cotton on his father’s side and Samuel Phillips, the founder of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., on his mother’s. Born in Boston, educated at Harvard and Virginia Theological Seminary, he once wrote his only ambition was to be a parish priest.

In 1869 he became rector of Trinity Church. The Great Boston Fire of 1872 destroyed the parish church on Summer Street, and Brooks began one of the most ambitious building campaigns in America.

Phillips Brooks

Trinity Church

Critics consider Trinity Church an architectural masterpiece, designed by Richardson, muralist John LaFarge and stained glass artists William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Finished in 1877, it established Richardson’s reputation. Historian Douglas Shand-Tucci described it as “an American Hagia Sophia.’

The style became known as the Richardsonian Romanesque style, with clay roof, heavy arches, rough stone and a massive tower. Architects adopted the style for a number of public buildings across the United States.

Trinity Church in Boston

Sunday after Sunday, Brooks preached at Trinity Church to large crowds drawn by his inspirational sermons. “Do not pray for easy lives,” he implored his congregation. “Pray to be stronger men.”

He told them, “Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.” And he could have been talking about his campaign to build Trinity Church when he said, “Set yourself earnestly to see what you are made to do, and then set yourself earnestly to do it.”

Brooks was consecrated Bishop of Massachusetts in 1891, but only served for 15 months before he died at the age of 57.

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Memorial to Phillips Brooks at Trinity Church. Of statues, Brooks said,, “Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.”

He wrote O Little Town of Bethlehem in 1868, after he visited the city in Palestine three years earlier. His organist, Lewis Redner, put the words to music. Redner recalled how it happened: “As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it,” he wrote. “Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, ‘Redner, have you ground out that music yet to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? I replied, ‘No,’ but that he should have it by Sunday.

“On the Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday-school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868.”

Trinity Church Nativity Windows

Buried Like A King

Brooks loved Christmas. “The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song of angels is sung,” he wrote.

People called him the greatest preacher of the 19th century. He is credited with strengthening the Episcopal Church, and with introducing Helen Keller to Christianity and to Anne Sullivan.

Phillips Brooks’ death in 1893 was a major event in Boston. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, where one observer wrote, ‘They buried him like a king.’

The Episcopal Church recognizes the day of his death, January 23, as a feast day.

Photos: Nativity stained glass windows, By Rebecca Kennison – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1585418; Memorial to Phillips Brooks, By Andrewrabbott – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18420785

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When Downtown Department Stores Spelled Christmas

Generations of New Englanders remember fondly the glorious downtown department stores at Christmas. Those great retail palaces brought magic to the holidays with stunning window displays, conversations on Santa’s lap and walks through enchanted villages.

The holiday season brought out the best in the great downtown department stores. They were at once arbiters of quality and fashion, makers of dreams, vibrant elements of city life and landmark consumer paradises.

A trip to a department store often marked a milestone. There we bought a back-to-school outfit, a wedding dress, a new suit for the first job. And at Christmas, the trip to the downtown department stores meant – well, Christmas.

Filene’s Christmas decorations, 1950. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Downtown Crossing

During the heyday of Downtown Crossing in Boston, carolers serenaded shoppers atop the Filene’s marquee. A giant manger scene loomed above Summer Street at Jordan Marsh and three large gold bells swayed with the Christmas music.

“I remember going to Downtown Crossing in the early 1970’s and being met by enormous crowds of people who were towered over by the Boston Police officers on their mounted horses…what a sight!,” commented Ellis Paulman.

“I visited Gilchrist’s, R. H. Stearns, Filene’s, and Jordan Marsh,” he wrote. “It was an exciting time and an exhilarating experience for this small-town boy from Connecticut!”

A Boston newspaper reporter in 1956 waxed elegiac about the scene: “Gay Christmas music on the streets and in the stores added to the spirit and helped brighten the mood for the intrepid shoppers,” he wrote. “Store windows, a kaleidoscope of color, added to the gay splashes of varied hues on Christmas-wrapped bundles. Everything was bright and cheerful and sparkled in the sun.”

Jordan Marsh nativity scene, 1950. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Under the Shepard’s Clock

It was the same on Congress Street in Portland, where Porteous boasted ‘lavish and delightful’ Christmas decorations of colored lights, thousands of yards of greenest evergreen and ‘truly fascinating show windows.’

In Hartford, a Christmas village with historic scale-model Connecticut buildings rested atop G. Fox’s marquee, and for several years the store windows featured Christmas paintings from the Wadsworth Athenaeum.

The Outlet, Image courtesy David Laroche.

The three great Providence stores on Westminster Street – Shepard’s, Cherry & Webb and Gladdings – decked themselves out for the holiday, and if you got lost you waited for your parents under the tall, neon-lit Shepard’s clock. The Outlet Company in downtown Providence outlasted them all. Founded in 1891, it grew to occupy a city block. Woonsocket, R.I., 15 miles north, had its own institution: McCarthy’s. It had a sidewalk clock, too, and a talking Christmas tree during the holidays.

McCarthy’s. Image courtesy David Laroche.

The Good Old Days

Internet sites are filled with blogs and websites devoted to department store history. eBay does a brisk business selling branded items from favorite stores. Books have been written about them: Denholms: The Story of Worcester’s Premier Department Store, G. Fox & Co.: Where Connecticut Shopped and Filene’s: Boston’s Great Specialty Store.

The Connecticut Historical Society not only houses the Remembering G. Fox & Co. archives, it hosts G. Fox talks that draw attendees dressed in G. Fox items (the store closed in 1993). Elizabeth Abbe, who presents the talks, compares the G. Fox & Co. fans to the cult following of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Downtown Providence at Christmas, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Today, the great Providence Shepard’s store – once the country’s largest — is used by the University of Rhode Island. The Porteous flagship store on Congress Street is the Maine College of Art. Sage-Allen in Hartford was converted to luxury apartments. Jordan Marsh’s Enchanted Village is now at a Jordan Furniture store in Avon. What remain as department stores are invariably Macy’s.

A $35 Teddy Bear

But back in the day, you brought your best self to the great old downtown department stores. You hoped to find the wondrous toy, the fantastic dress, the wild extravagance you just had to have.

In 1965, a 19-year-old Hartford Courant employee spent her entire Christmas bonus on a Stieff teddy bear at G. Fox. “I believe he cost $35,” she posted in The Department Store Museum blog. “That was outrageous for a 19 yr old to spend on a Teddy Bear. Oh my goodness I have so many great memories.”

A Boston Christmas shopper, date unknown. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

A shopper at Boston’s downtown department stores, date unknown. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

For roughly 50 years, from the 1920s to the 1970s, downtown department stores transported customers from their everyday cares. Their vast assortments of merchandise put flesh on our admittedly materialistic dreams. The stores sent buyers all over the world to bring back wares to would wow customers.

Filene’s

Filene’s opened a Paris office in 1910, which established its reputation as a fashion authority and sent stock to its high-end French Shop.

That was just one of many shops within Filene’s flagship store, designed by the great Daniel Burnham. There was ‘Young Breed,’ ‘Varsity Shop’ and ‘Junior Gown Shop.’ There was a special repair department, back when you repaired broken merchandise rather than replacing it.

Filene’s was known for its Lilly Pulitzer clothes, its Kimberly knits, its ski shop, its cruise shop, its Oxford shop and its fine men’s clothing.

And the basement! Filene’s paid 10 cents on the dollar for leftover merchandise from stores like I. Magnin. Bargain hunters could thrill to the shopping hunt with end-of-season luxury goods at a fraction of their original prices — with labels and original price tags still intact.

Christmas crowds at Downtown Crossing, date unknown. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Items purchased at the great department stores sometimes took on special significance. Such was the case of a handkerchief from Boston’s R. H. Stearns, a 10-story emporium that offered simple elegance to little old ladies from Beacon Hill.

A woman told the Department Store Museum that she met a handsome sailor on the Boston Common in 1958. “We went for a walk on Tremont St. I was having a sneezing attack from Hay Fever. My sailor friend went into RH Sterns and purchased a fancy lace hankie for me. I kept the hankie for over 50 years. We rediscovered each other in 2011 and just married this past April 2012. I gave him back the hankie. He couldn’t believe I kept it all these years. The hankie is still in good shape and just as beautiful as the day he gave it to me.”

Customer Is Always Right

Downtown department stores treated customers like royalty, but perhaps no store treated customers better than G. Fox. Its motto: The customer is always right.

G. Fox flagship store, Hartford.

Beatrice Fox Auerbach, the beloved matriarch who presided over G. Fox’s glory years, would not allow a customer to go away unhappy. The hallmark of G. Fox since her grandfather founded it in 1847 was free home delivery –- first by wheelbarrow, then by horse-drawn carriage, and finally by automobile and truck. In 1947, G. Fox celebrated its centennial by delivering packages by helicopter.

Recalled one G. Fox employee, “The policy was if a customer wanted to return a spool of thread, the great G. Fox fleet would pick up the thread.”

Auerbach was so anxious to please customers that on Christmas Eve she kept a small staff and drivers on standby until midnight for desperate parents who still needed a Christmas gift.

As far back as 1917, Hartford had an amazing emotional attachment to G. Fox. When the five-story store burned down that year, 98 percent of the customers still paid their bills though all customer records had been destroyed. The owners paid employees their salaries during construction of the new store, and Hartford merchants let G. Fox sell its goods in their storefronts.

Good Employers

The great downtown department stores treated their employees well, with employee cafeterias, on-site nurses, paid vacations and sick days and benefits. Auerbach promoted minority employees at G. Fox well before it was the norm. Edward Filene encouraged the company’s union and instituted profit-sharing. His brother Lincoln stood at the door on Christmas Eve and shook the hand of every Filene’s employee.

As a result, department store employees could be fiercely loyal. For example, a Cherry & Webb employee drowned during the Hurricane of 1938 while trying to rescue the furs in the Providence store’s basement.

Holiday decorations at Houghton & Dutton, one of Boston’s great lost downtown department stores.

Lowell’s Bon Marche in 1938 had 62 employees who were 10-year veterans of the store.

“I loved, loved, loved working for this store,” wrote one Jordan Marsh employee.

A G. Fox employee tells of his late mother who retired from G. Fox. She proudly won many customer service awards and was buried wearing her G. Fox name badge.

Sensory delights

Shopping filled the senses at the great downtown department stores: the ring of the bell, the smell of the city, the shining marble, mahogany and brass and most of all the merchandise displayed in tasteful wooden-and-glass cases.

Window shopping in Downtown Crossing. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Window shopping at the downtown department stores in Boston. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Children found it exciting to dine in the elegant restaurants of the downtown department stores, like the Venetian Tea Room at Read’s in Bridgeport or the Top o’ the Town Restaurant at Forbes & Wallace in Springfield. They had to wear their Sunday best and put on proper manners.

“It was a tradition in my family to go to Providence on Thanksgiving night to walk off our big dinner and to window shop,” commented Gail Merrill. “It was the first night that they lit the Christmas lights and all the store fronts had beautiful displays! The dolls and train sets were sure to be on every child’s list! Shepard’s, Gladdings, and the Outlet window displays rivaled New York’s. Oh the memories!!!

Each department store had a signature food item. Shepard’s in Providence had chicken croquettes, while Gilchrist’s in Boston had almond macaroons. Sage-Allen in Springfield smelled like sticky buns, so spicy they almost burned the tongue. The aroma from the bakery wafted up the escalators, drawing customers into the basement.

Date nut bread sandwiches with cream cheese were a favorite at G. Fox. And Jordan Marsh’s blueberry muffins were a required treat at the end of shopping trips to Boston. Since the bakery closed in the early 1990s, baker John Pupek opened the Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffin Co. in Brockton, which sells the muffins at Macy’s in Portland.

Window shopping at Christmas, Providence, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The Rise of Downtown Department Stores

With roots in 18^th– and 19^th-century dry goods stores, the department stores flourished because New England flourished. For a time, New England cities supported several of the country’s largest downtown department stores.

Providence merchant Benjamin Thurber in 1766 founded the oldest, Gladdings. The store’s bunch of grapes insignia therefore became the longest continuously used trade sign in American history.

Yankee merchants also founded Jordan Marsh and R. H. Stearns. Eben Jordan founded Jordan Marsh in 1841, and then R. H. Stearns founded his eponymous store in 1848.

Many department stores had immigrant roots. Gerson Fox, who opened G. Fox in 1847, was German Jewish, as was William Filene, who founded his namesake business in 1881. Forbes & Wallace founder Andrew Wallace was born in Scotland, and Worcester’s Denholm & McKay founder William Denholm was a native of Dundee.

Shopping for Christmas bargains in Providence, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Shopping for Christmas bargains at downtown department stores in Providence, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Bon Marche

The rise and fall of Bon Marche in Lowell, Mass., typified the fate of downtown department stores.

Lowell native Frederic Mitchell opened his first store on Merrimack Street in 1878, displaying merchandise on draped packing cases so the millworkers would eye it as they passed by. As a result, millworkers flocked to Bon Marche on the day the ghost walked – payday.

During the world wars, Lowell’s mills churned out munitions and textiles to clothe the troops, and Bon Marche helped with the war effort. During World War I, Bon Marche collected peach pits for gas masks, and sold war bonds and stamps during both wars.

After World War II, Bon Marche went back to its main marketing proposition by offering deals that couldn’t be beat and rock bottom prices. The store furthermore had a big rock sticking out of the basement floor, a glacial erratic too large to remove during construction.

When Lowell struggled, so did Bon Marche. By 1976, Bon Marche turned into a Jordan Marsh, and by the 1990s, the building had no tenants.

The high water mark for Boston’s downtown department stores probably came in 1956, when it had seven department stores at Christmas: R.H. White, Gilchrist’s, R.H. Stearn’s, Raymond’s, Kennedy’s, Jordan Marsh and Filene’s.

Downtown Crossing pre-1956. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

At Downtown Crossing pre-1956, the year downtown department stores reached their peak. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Suburban Flight

It would be the last Christmas for R.H. White’s, the first victim of the middle-class flight to the suburbs.

Then after 100 years in business, Raymond’s declared bankruptcy in 1972 and killed off its spokesman, the swamp Yankee Uncle Eph.

Subsequently in 1976, Gilchrist’s, one of the big three in Downtown Crossing with Jordan’s and Filene’s, closed 134 years after it opened.

R. H. Stearns, which had towered over Boston Common in a landmark building for seven decades, shut its doors in 1978.

Kennedy’s then closed in the early 1980s, having grown from a small men’s store in 1892 to a fixture of New England retailing.

Jordan Marsh became a Macy’s in 1996.

And finally Filene’s, the last to give up the ghost, became a Macy’s in 2006.

Memories

Memories of the great old downtown department stores live on, though, in tissue-wrapped ornaments tucked away in Steiger’s boxes or childhood Santa photos from Sage-Allen.

A typical sentiment expressed on the Forgotten New England site: “To mourn the loss of the Bon Marché Department Store in Downtown Lowell is almost like mourning the loss of a beloved grandparent.”

A Springfield resident posted on the Department Store Museum site that nothing could replace her beloved Forbes and Wallace. “My mother and I shopped that store ‘til the bitter end of July of 1976. Broken Hearted over the tearing down of that retail mecca! Nothing can replace my beloved Forbes and Steigers stores! Nor the magic of then-downtown Springfield, Mass!”

How we miss those downtown department stores.

* * *

Something else that spells Christmas — Italian Christmas cookies! The New England Historical Society presents dozens of recipes for them, along with the stories of the Italian New England neighborhoods where they were made. Available in paperback and as an ebook from Amazon (click here to order).

Special thanks to the Department Store Museum and Shopping Days in Retro Boston. This story about downtown department stores was updated in 2023.

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Edie Sedgwick, Poor Little Rich Girl

In 1965, Edie Sedgwick appeared in one of Andy Warhol’s underground films in 1965. In it, she said, “I’ve never been anywhere where I haven’t been known.”

Edie Sedgwick (center), with Pat Hartley, from Ciao! Manhattan.

The iconography of her aristocratic family litters the New England landscape. You can find it in sculpture, paintings, gravestones, government records, schools and even the name of a town.

Edie Sedgwick was a different kind of Sedgwick icon.

She was a celebrity within a year of moving to New York City. People, especially Warhol, were fascinated by her fragile beauty, her offbeat clothes and makeup, her upper-class poise, her charm and her wealth. During her short life she appeared on film, in magazines and on television. She also inspired some of the greatest rock ‘n roll songs ever written and recorded.

But Edie Sedgwick had troubles. She attributed her messed-up head to the suicides of two of her brothers within 18 months of each other. As a young teenager, she developed an eating disorder and spent two years in a mental hospital. She was dead at the age of 28.

The Sedgwick Family

I.N. Phelps Stokes and Edith Minturn Stokes by John Singer Sargent. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Edie Sedgwick was named for her father’s aunt, Edith Minturn, whose portrait by John Singer Sargent hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Theodore Sedgwick

A portrait of another ancestor, Theodore Sedgwick, by Gilbert Stuart, hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. He was a U.S. Senator and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives under President George Washington. Theodore Sedgwick also brought the lawsuit that freed Elizabeth Freeman and helped eliminate slavery in Massachusetts.

Detail from the memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment

The “Hope and Glory” bas relief across Beacon Street from the Massachusetts Statehouse is a memorial to the 54^th Infantry Regiment led by her great-great uncle, Robert Gould Shaw.

William Ellery

The signature of another ancestor, William Ellery, is on the Declaration of Independence.

Groton School

Her maternal ancestor, Ephraim Williams, founded Williams College. Her great-grandfather, Endicott Peabody, founded the Groton School in Groton, Mass., and tutored young Franklin Roosevelt.

Chapin Hall, Williams College

Sedgwick, Maine, is named for her ancestor, Maj. Robert Sedgwick, who in 1654 captured the fort Pentagoet (now Castine) from the French.

Edie Sedgwick

Bagheera Fountain

Though descended from an old New England family, she was born in Santa Barbara, Calif., on April 20, 1943, and raised on a ranch. The seventh of eight children, her parents home-schooled her. They also taught her about her superiority to others.

Her mother, Alice DeForest Sedgwick, was the daughter of Henry DeForest, chairman of the Southern Pacific Railroad and a descendant of Jesse DeForest, who founded New York City.

Edie Sedgwick developed an eating disorder as a young teenager, so her family sent her to Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn., in 1962. The next year she moved to Cambridge, Mass. There she studied sculpture with her cousin Lily Saarinen. (A Saarinan work, Bagheera Fountain, sits in Boston’s Public Garden.)

She moved to New York in 1964 because she wanted to pursue a career in modeling. Then in March 1965, she met Andy Warhol and began a yearlong relationship with him. She took him to parties in her Mercedes and he began to dress like her.

Edie and Andy appeared on the Merv Griffin Show together. She also hung out at his studio, The Factory, and met such counterculture stars as Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. Warhol filmed her in short pieces like Vinyl (see it here) and Poor Little Rich Girl (see it here).

Really Bad Effect

“Miss New York, Girl of the Year, socialite, millionairess bullshit, Andy Warhol superstar,” she later said. “All this had a really bad effect.”

Edie Sedgwick also said her two brothers’ suicides upset her. “It kind of screwed up my head,” she said. “I blossomed into a healthy young drug addict.”

Andy Warhol asked Lou Reed to write a song about her. The result, Femme Fatale, appeared on the Velvet Underground’s debut album.

In Bob Dylan’s Visions of Johanna she’s Louise, and she’s Miss Lonely in Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone. In Dylan’s Just Like A Woman he describes “your fog, your amphetamine and your pearls.” And she may be the “you” in Dylan’s Won’t You Please Crawl Out Your Window, interpreted as a plea for her to leave Andy Warhol’s Factory.

Andy Warhol

On Nov. 16, 1971, three months after she finished her final film, Ciao, Manhattan, Edie Sedgwick died of an overdose of barbiturates.

Writers have since published several biographies about her. Edie: American Girl, climbed to the bestseller list. Another movie, Factory Girl, was produced about her life and released in 2006. Her cousin, Kyra Sedgwick, is also a film star.

She was not buried in the family burial ground, the Sedgwick Pie, in Stockbridge, Mass., but in California.

Photos: Bagheera, by Lily Saarinan. By Susan Saarinen, Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia. Williams College photo By SERSeanCrane, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia. Groton School photo By Jplayforth – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia. Andy Warhol By Jack Mitchell, CC BY-SA 4.0–3.0–2.5-2.0–1.0. Wikimedia. Edie filming Ciao Manhattan! By fluctuat.net, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6800141.

This story about Edie Sedgwick was updated in 2023.

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The Carnegie Libraries of New England

Three Carnegie libraries had their cornerstones laid in one day, but those were only a fraction of the tycoon-funded libraries in New England.

Andrew Carnegie donated $75,000 for the three building, all in Worcester, Mass. He then laid all three cornerstones in three hours on March 26, 1913.

Reading, Mass., Carnegie Library

The Worcester Daily Telegram reported on the ceremonies:

At all three branch libraries Mr. Carnegie made brief extemporaneous remarks, at all of them expressing keen pleasure because the city accepted his offer to build the libraries. He said that he is the city’s debtor, not the city his. He said the donors of the sites in the three locations and the city council in providing for the maintenance for these libraries, are the ones entitled to the greatest praise.

The day was cold and raw, and Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie were unprepared for it, having left New York with the sun shining. Mr. Carnegie found he required rubbers, and stopped off at a store in Quinsigamond to equip himself with them.

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant who made a fortune in steel, then gave away most of it. One of his favorite philanthropies was libraries. He doubled the number of libraries in the United States, giving away 1,681. Of those, 95 were in New England. All but three are still standing. Two, in South Worcester and Rockport, Mass., are now private homes. One was an Abercrombie & Fitch outlet in Freeport, Maine, until 2021..

Carnegie was born in Dumfermine, Scotland, on Nov. 25, 1835, and immigrated to the United States in 1848.

Before the Civil War, Carnegie worked as a telegraph messenger in Allegheny City, Pa. He then learned a man named Col. James Anderson opened his library of 400 volumes to working boys on Saturday afternoons.

He credited the library with steering him “clear of low fellowship and bad habits,” and opening “precious treasures of knowledge and imagination.”

Fortune smiled on Carnegie, but he didn’t smile much on his workers. In 1892, his managers cut wages and locked out workers at the Homestead, Pa., steel works for 143 days. A bloody conflict resulted and scabs replaced the workers. It didn’t help Carnegie’s reputation for benevolence.

He believed anyone who worked hard could succeed as he did. He also believed in giving to the “industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others.”

Puck magazine cartoon, 1903

Beginning in 1881, Carnegie spent 20 years giving away money. Much of it went to libraries.

Carnegie Libraries

At first, Carnegie only gave libraries to places where he had a personal connection. He started in 1880 in his hometown in Scotland. Allegheny City, Pa., was the first U.S. city to receive a Carnegie gift for a library.

Until 1898, Carnegie only commissioned the Fairfield, Iowa, library outside of southwestern Pennsylvania in America.

A typical Carnegie Library cost $50,000. Rarely was a request turned down. He refused to endow his libraries, because, as he said, “an endowed institution is liable to become the prey of a clique. The public ceases to take interest.”

Towns had to show they needed a library, provide the building site and pay to staff and maintain the library. Free service had to be provided to all who entered.

After he gave away his first five public libraries, Carnegie created an open shelf policy, which lowered operating costs and encouraged readers to browse. To discourage theft, the circulation desks were made larger than usual and placed near the front door.

The libraries were unique, designed in a variety of styles selected by the town. They were formal, small and simple. Each had a large, welcoming doorway almost always at the top of a staircase, to symbolize the patrons’ elevation by learning. Outside nearly all the libraries had lampposts or lanterns, symbolizing enlightenment.

Variety of Styles

Classical Revival Carnegie Library in South Worcester, Mass.

They were built in a variety of architectural styles, selected by the town. In New England those styles included Classical Revival, or its offshoot, ‘Carnegie Classical Revival,’ Beaux Arts, Colonial Revival, Italianate and Queen Anne.

Prairie Style Carnegie Library in Vinalhaven, Maine

One was built in the Prairie Style on a very non-prairie location: Vinalhaven Island in Maine. John Calvin Stevens, the designer of Maine, designed two, in Houlton and Rumford.

Between 1901 and 1917, Carnegie donated:

43 public libraries in Massachusetts from 35 grants totaling $1,137,500;
18 public libraries in Maine from 18 grants totaling $241,450;
11 public libraries in Connecticut from 8 grants totaling $191,900;
Nine public libraries in New Hampshire from nine grants totaling $134,000;
Four public libraries in Vermont from four grants of $80,000.

(Take a virtual tour of New England’s public Carnegie Libraries here.)

Rhode Island’s Carnegie Library

The John Hay Carnegie library at Brown University in Providence

Rhode Island has only one Carnegie Library, but it’s a big one: the John Hay Library at Brown University. Carnegie donated $150,000 for the library, half the cost, and asked that it bear Hay’s name. Hay graduated from Brown in 1858, became Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary, U.S. Secretary of State and friend of the tycoon.

Carnegie’s academic libraries were larger and more elaborate than his spare, simple public libraries. The interior of the Williston Memorial Library at Mount Holyoke resembles Westminster Hall in England.

The Carnegie Library at Tufts.

In Massachusetts he also donated libraries to Tufts, Smith, Wellesley and Radcliffe. He gave a library to Norwich University in Vermont and the Hamilton Smith Library (now Hall) at the University of New Hampshire. And he donated Carnegie Hall at the University of Maine.

(Take a virtual tour of New England’s academic Carnegie Libraries here.)

Carnegie died Aug. 11, 1919, in Lenox, Mass., at his Shadow Brook estate, then reported to be the second largest private residence in the United States. By then he had given away 95 percent of his fortune.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: John Hay Library By Filetime – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93721309. Reading, Mass., Carnegie Library By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24513387. Granby Public Library By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23974164. Unionville Carnegie Library By Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States – Unionville, ConnecticutUploaded by Magicpiano, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29970923.

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Fanny Bullock Workman Shows Rich Brits What an American Woman Can Do

In 1898, a 39-year-old American woman named Fanny Bullock Workman did something that shocked the tiny clique of wealthy British men who had a monopoly on Himalayan mountain climbing.

In a wool skirt and hobnailed boots, she hiked over Himalayan passes as high as 18,000 feet, crashing their exclusive club.

During a life spent exploring exotic places, Fanny Bullock Workman set several altitude records for women. She also published eight travel books with her husband, championed women’s rights and broke the glass ceiling created by British male mountaineers.

Workman, as imperious as her British competitors, set out to prove she could do anything a man could do.

Her life can almost be summarized in a photograph taken in 1912 at 21,000 feet atop the unexplored Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas. Fanny Bullock Workman, wearing a skirt, holds up a newspaper with headlines that read, “Votes for Women.”

Fanny Bullock Workman

She was born Jan. 8, 1859 in Worcester, Mass. Her father, Alexander Hamilton Bullock, had served as governor of Massachusetts. She was raised by tutors and governesses and attended finishing school in New York. Then she moved to Paris and Dresden, where she lived alone and mingled with European society.

She returned to Worcester in 1879. Two years later she married William Workman, a wealthy surgeon 12 years older than she. He brought her along on his climbing expeditions to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Unlike European climbing clubs, American climbing clubs in the White Mountains encouraged women to join and allowed them membership. By 1886, there were sometimes more women than men on New England climbing expeditions.

Mountaineering gave Fanny Bullock Workman an identity as a New Woman. She was vigorous and athletic, unhampered by society’s expectations of her as a wife and mother. She had two children, Siegfried and Rachel, but Siegfried died of respiratory illnesses in 1893. Rachel was raised by nurses and governesses and sent to boarding school. Fanny missed Rachel’s wedding in 1912 while climbing mountains in India.

William Workman in 1889 retired from his medical practice, citing ill health. He recovered quickly though. Both he and Fanny had lost their fathers and gained large estates, which allowed them to move to Germany so they could take in the culture.

A Bicycle, A Gun and A Whip

By then, the pneumatic bicycle tire had been invented and cycling was all the rage. The Workmans interrupted their sophisticated pursuit of the arts with bicycle expeditions to Scandinavia, Italy and France. They began to range farther afield to more exotic places: Spain, Algeria, Indochina and India.

Fanny and William

From the lead seat in a bicycle built for two, Fanny carried a revolver and whip to clear a path and ward off troublesome natives who might want money. But she did notice how women were treated in the places they visited. She then included those observations in the travel books she and William published. The books were illustrated with photographs she took with her Kodak camera. The Workmans’ books won a following among readers who overlooked their literary deficiency, confused topography and cultural insensitivity. Through the travel books, Fanny Bullock Workman presented her athletic and organizational capabilities and showed how women were abused.

In 1898, at the ages of 38 and 50, William and Fanny Workman embarked on a 2-1/2-year, 14,000-mile cycling trip through Indochina. They carried few supplies and sometimes slept in railroad waiting rooms. They often stopped to fix tire punctures – as many as 40 a day. Then they got rid of their bicycles in northern India and hiked over mountain passes as high as 18,000 feet. They slept among rats, fought off mosquitos and often went hungry and thirsty.

Mountaineering

They returned to the Himalayas eight times. Fanny Bullock Workman set three women’s altitude records, though critics disputed them. The Workmans named two summits after themselves – Siegfriedhorn, after their lost son, and Mt. William Workman. They included scientific observations and maps in their writings, which impressed neither scholars nor cartographers.

Fanny’s greatest mountaineering achievement came in 1906 when she was 47. She climbed to the summit of Pinnacle Peak at 22,735 feet in long skirts with heavy equipment, no freeze-dried food, no sunscreen, no radio and no pitons. She probably couldn’t have done it had she not been immune to altitude sickness – and possessed tremendous resolve, skill and courage.

The iconic photo of Fanny Bullock Workman holding up a “Votes for Women” headline was taken on her last Himalayan expedition. After the trip she produced the best book yet, Two Summers in the Ice-Wilds of Eastern Karakoram. World War I ended the Workmans’ Himalayan adventures, and they spent the rest of their careers writing and lecturing.

She was the first woman to speak at the Sorbonne and the second to address the Royal Geographical Society.

Legacy

Intrepid explorer

Fanny Bullock Workman left a mixed legacy. At her best, she climbed more peaks than anyone else, but by vigorously following in the footsteps of Italian guides. The books she wrote with William were still useful in 1955 for their photographs, illustrations and descriptions of meteorological conditions, glaciology and the effect of high altitudes on humans, according to geographer Kenneth Mason.

At their worst, wrote Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver,

…they were aggressive self promoters who in their eagerness for recognition and honors sometimes exaggerated the originality and significance of what they had done.

They were also stereotypical American tourists: impatient, insensitive, pompous and condescending.

But despite their inaccurate maps and sometimes questionable claims, the Workmans did break the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, inspiring the national competition to scale the highest peaks.

Fanny Bullock Workman died in Cannes, France, on Jan. 22, 1925. She left $125,000 each to four colleges, Radcliffe, Wellesley, Smith, and Bryn Mawr women’s colleges.

With thanks to Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes by Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver. This story last updated in 2022.

Image of the Himalayas: By Mount_Everest_as_seen_from_Drukair2.jpg: shrimpo1967derivative work: Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) – This file was derived from: Mount Everest as seen from Drukair2.jpg:, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18262217.

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Flashback Photos: Prohibition Is Repealed and an Era Is Ended

To the great relief of many, the prohibition on the sale of alcohol was repealed on Dec. 5, 1933 at exactly 5:32 pm Eastern Standard Time. That’s when Utah became the requisite 36th state to ratify repeal, following Pennsylvania and Ohio earlier that day.

Celebrating the repeal of Prohibition in Boston. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Attempts to discourage alcohol consumption had a long history in New England. In 1657, the puritanical General Court of Massachusetts made it illegal to sell strong liquor “whether known by the name of rum, whisky, wine, brandy, etc.”

Maine was the birthplace of Prohibition. When the state went dry in 1851, people called the ban on alcohol “the Maine law.” Neal Dow, mayor of Portland, pushed the law through the Legislature (inspiring a rum riot in the process). He then ran for president of the United States on the Prohibition Party ticket in 1880 and lost.

The entire country had gone dry one year after the 18th amendment to the Constitution was ratified, on Jan. 29, 1920.

Boat with sign “Fresh Fish and Fruit” delivers bottled drinks to men on a Boston Harbor pier (probably selling illegal alcohol). Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Honored More in the Breach…

That didn’t stop people from making, or selling, or transporting or drinking alcohol.

The law was so widely flouted the Boston Herald held a contest in 1924 to come up with the best word for someone who flagrantly ignored Prohibition. There were 25,000 entries. Two readers split the $200 prize, as they came up with the same winning word: scofflaw.

King Charles Solomon, left, with his bandleader Joe Solomon (no relation); Dorothy ‘Dot’ England, his frequent companion; and maitre d’ Teddy Roy. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Charles ‘King’ Solomon ruled Boston’s underworld during Prohibition. He owned speakeasies, including the Cocoanut Grove, and a fleet of rum runners that brought bootleg liquor from Central America.

Rum chasers in East Boston. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Coast Guard needed a fleet of rum chasers to apprehend the rum runners — like the famous I’m Alone — that plied the waters from Canada to the Caribbean.

Speakeasy at 153 Causeway Street, raided and destroyed by Federal agents. ‘The most elaborate joint ever built in Boston.’ Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Under Oliver Garrett, the Boston Police vice squad made 25,000 raids n speakeasies and 17,000 arrests in nine years. It didn’t get any harder to find a drink. The mayor of Boston, England, visited the city in 1930 and proclaimed upon his return, “You can swim in liquor … you can drown in it.”

One reason? Oliver Garrett was on the take.

Prohibition Fatigue

The public became disillusioned with the lawlessness, corruption and scofflaw-ing of Prohibition. And governments needed the revenue from taxing alcohol. In 1925, H. L. Mencken wrote,

Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.

It then took less than eight months for the states to repeal the 18th amendment starting in April 1933. Rhode Island was the third state to ratify repeal (May 8, 1933), followed in New England by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Maine, appropriately, brought up the rear, ratifying repeal of Prohibition the day after Utah cast the decisive vote.

This story updated in 2022.

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