Page 62 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Boston

60  BOST ON AREA B Y AREA

1 Omni Parker
House
60 School St. Map 1 C4.
Tel (617) 227-8600.  Park Street,
State, Government Center.
∑ omnihotels.com
Harvey D. Parker, raised on a farm
in Maine, became so successful
as the proprietor of his Boston
restaurant that he achieved his
ambition of expanding the
property into a first-class, grand
hotel. His Parker House opened
in 1855, with a façade clad in
white marble, standing five
stories high, and featuring the
first passenger elevator ever
seen in Boston. It underwent
several, rapid transformations Simply decorated, pure white interior of King’s Chapel on Tremont Street
during its early years, with
additions made to the main many claims to fame are its 2 King’s Chapel and
structure in the 1860s and a Boston Cream Pie, which was Burying Ground
10-story, French chateau-style first created here, and the word
annex completed later that “scrod,” a uniquely Bostonian 58 Tremont St. Map 1 C4.
century. The building saw term for the day’s freshest Tel (617) 523-1749.  Park Street,
many successive transform- seafood, still in common usage. State, Government Center. Open
ations, and its latest 14-story Two former Parker House 10am–5pm Mon–Sat, 1:30–5pm Sun;
call for off-season opening hours.
incarnation has stood across employees later became Music Recitals: 12:15pm Tue.
from King’s Chapel on School recognized for quite different 5 11am Sun, 6pm Wed.
Street since 1927. careers. Vietnamese revolu- ∑ kings-chapel.org
This hotel attained an instant tionary leader Ho Chi Minh
reputation for luxurious accom- worked in the hotel’s kitchens British crown officials were
modations and fine, even lavish, around 1915, while black among those who attended
dining, typified by 11-course activist Malcolm X was a Anglican services at the first
menus prepared by a French busboy in Parker’s Restau rant chapel on this site, which
chef. Among Parker House’s in the 1940s. was built in 1688. When
New England’s governor
decided that a larger church
Parker House Guests was needed, the present
Boston’s reputation as the “Athens granite edifice – on which
of America” was widely work begun in 1749 – was
acknowledged when members of constructed around the
a distinguished social club began original wooden chapel,
meeting for lengthy dinners and which was then dismantled
lively intellectual exchanges in and heaved out through the
1857. Their get-togethers took windows of its replacement.
place on the last Saturday of every After the Revolution, the
month at Harvey Parker’s fancy congregation’s religious
hotel. Regular participants allegiance switched from
included New England’s literary Anglican to Unitarian.
elite (see pp32–3): Henry The sanctuary’s raised pulpit –
Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph dating from 1717 and shaped
Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel John Wilkes Booth, infamous Parker like a wine glass – is one of the
Hawthorne, and Henry David House guest oldest in the United States.
Thoreau, to name a few. Charles
Dickens participated while staying High ceilings, open arches,
at the Parker House during his American speaking tours, and used and clear glass windows
his sitting-room mirror to rehearse the public readings he gave at enhance the interior’s sense
Tremont Temple next door. The mirror now hangs on a mezzanine of spaciousness and light.
wall. In 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth, in town to see his brother, a The bell inside the King’s
fellow thespian, stayed at the hotel and took target practice at a Chapel is the largest ever
nearby shooting gallery. Ten days later, at Ford’s Theatre in cast by Paul Revere (see p23).
Washington, he pulled a pistol and shot Abraham Lincoln. The adjacent cemetery is
the oldest in Boston.

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