Boston - Trinity Church and Boston Public Library

We rode the hop on/hop off tour bus again. We made several stops. Highlights included Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library.

The Trinity Church congregation dates back to 1733. The current church and parish house were constructed after the Great Boston Fire of 1872 destroyed the parish's earlier buildings. The current Trinity Church took 5 years to build (1872 -1877). Henry Hobson Richardson was the architect and the church is considered one of the most important structures as it was the first and finest building in what is known as the Richarsonian Romanesque architectural style.

Trinity Church

The Boston Public Library directly across from Trinity Church on Copley Square is also a very impressive structure. The Boston Public Library has a collection of over 23 million items making it the third largest public library. Only the Library of Congress and the New York City Library have larger collections. Among the library's holdings are the personal libraries of President John Adams, the second president of the United States and Nathaniel Bowditch, mathematician and a leader in the development of modern maritime navigation. His book The New American Practical Navigator  which was first published in 1802 is still in print and used by navigators today. Although the libraries holdings and the building itself are tributes to the past, the library has kept itself current with large numbers of computer terminals and media support systems. It is as if you are in a modern library housed in a museum. We wandered through the building for about an hour.

Included in our hop on/hop off ticket was a harbor cruise. We enjoyed the tour as we could sit back and relax while someone else did the driving. The narrator gave a good running commentary about how the harbor developed over time and pointed out features we would not have known about or recognized on our own. One of the points of interest was a Nantucket Lightship which when on station warned ships approaching the dangerous Nantucket Shoals. The first lightship on these shoals was stationed there in 1854.

Nantucket Lightship

We went to the Charter House Restaurant for dinner after our harbor cruise. It was Restaurant Week in Boston with many of the finer restaurants preparing special meals at discounted prices. Dwayne had the crab stuffed scrod and Carla had fried coconut shrimp with angel hair pasta. We skipped dessert and had a doggie bag containing some shrimp and pasta. It was a great way to end the day.