One could discern throughout much of downtown Boston, and especially around the North End, the unmistakable aroma of molasses.Īs a boy, I never questioned that odor, so strong on hot days, so far-reaching when the wind came out of the east. The rich scent filled the streets around and lured customers by the score.Īlong with the coffee smell was another, equally pervading. You could smell Cornhill before you reached it because at its upper end was the Phoenix, a coffee-house marked by the aroma of freshly ground beans. The way to reach Iver Johnson's was to take the subway to Park Street and walk northeast to a wonderful little byway called Cornhill, which pitched downward to Washington Street. I went without-and so learned to hate many aspects of modernity.
GREAT BOSTON MOLASSES FLOOD PLAQUE HOW TO
It was supposed to be handed down to me, but there was now too much traffic in the Back Bay, even on Sunday mornings, for a kid to learn how to handle a big bike. My two older brothers had both been given Iver Johnson bikes, and one of these fine old 28-inch wheelers was reposing in our basement, heavy with dust.
Iver Johnson's displayed some of its own items in the window that overlooked Washington Street. This was a place in which to build dreams. I remember how surprised one of them was the day I actually bought something, but no matter.
Boys were under constant surveillance by supercilious clerks. There I could wander through aisles flanked by baseball bats through thickets of split-bamboo fly rods and stubbles of short, steel bait-casting rods (fiber-glass rods and spinning reels were as yet unknown) through an arsenal of rifles and shotguns, blue steel barrels glinting against the warm-grained walnut stocks and through a long array of heavy woolen winter clothes and thick leather hunting boots. "Always Something Doing, One to Eleven, at the Old Howard" read its ads in the Boston Globe, followed by the titillating phrase, "25 Beautiful Girls 25." Scollay Square was off limits to me, and no wonder.īut Iver Johnson's was a wholesome interest. It faced on Washington Street near the edge of Scollay Square, that opening in the cow-path streets where stood the Old Howard, a burlesque theater famous for supplementing the curricula of Harvard students.
My target was always Iver Johnson's, the famous old sporting-goods store that captured the hearts of Boston lads in those days. This was my Gobi Desert, my Mountains of the Moon, my Tarzan Country. I was finally deemed capable of handling the ancient subway system and the narrow, clogged streets, and I responded by making ritualistic expeditions from the boring security of the Back Bay to the perilous excitements of Washington Street. When I was a boy in Boston and had reached a sufficiently sophisticated age, I was allowed to go downtown by myself. Written by native Bostonian Edwards Park, a longtime contributor to Smithsonian, this chronicle of the deadly disaster details the lasting effects that the tragedy had on the city. Editor's note, January 14, 2019: In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Great Boston Molasses Flood, we are publishing online for the first time a story from our November 1983 issue.
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