History of the Land of the Free
These cities might as well have been twin cities and any visit to one is incomplete without to the other. Philadelphia and Boston, both cities over three hundred years old and collectively hosting the history of America’s fight for liberation lying in the state of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are to be visited if you believe in knowing the history of the places you visit. I for one believe that turning your back on your history is giving yourself no chance with the future, for that which is your future today is your history tomorrow.
Anyway, my visits to these places can broadly be classified to a major and a minor part.
The major part consists of tracing the history of America’s struggle for independence. I began this journey in Philadelphia, the oldest city in United States and the bedrock of the revolution that liberated the America’s. The streets here are narrow and so while you drive down to the city centre (where all the attractions are) Chestnut Street, while driving up you have to use the Walnut Street. Very few streets are broad enough to support two way traffic.
The first thing to see here is the Liberty Bell that was the clarion call for American Independence. In fact the security for this bell is as much as any international airport if not more. Right next to the Bell is the Independence Hall, where USA declared its dependence and the declaration of independence was signed. After this we can take a walk through the rest of the city centre to the other various attractions. These include the house and grave of Benjamin Franklin, the father of America and the Betsy Ross House, the lady credited with sewing the first Stars and Stripes national flag. The walk down the by lanes will lead you to the first Anglican church in USA and the Franklin Court, where we could say the first American Congress met. This august gathering of the founder fathers of America included names like George Washington, Samuel Adams (presidents of USA), Benjamin Franklin (father of the nation) and John Hancock (first signatory in the declaration of independence). Since Philadelphia was also the first city of USA then you have two other star attractions: the first stock exchange and the first bank in the United States. I further spent a lot of time simply walking the streets, as they seemed enticingly charming to me, and even went to a tavern that has stood since the time of independence. For those from Calcutta, this place was like Coffee House, as it was here that the intelligencia met to discuss and decide the fate of the nation.
In Philadelphia, the way to go about is to identify the places of interest, chalk out a path and then keep visiting them, while reserving some time to simply walk the streets. Boston on the other hand has the Freedom Trail. So if Philadelphia is where the actions were carried out Boston is the place where the seeds of thought were sown. The Freedom Trail is a marked path for tourists to see all the places of historical relevance in Boston. It’s a path marked out by red cobblestones and red lines across streets and pavements that takes a total of about four to five hours to walk. A lot of the historical buildings are very contextual to USA history; the purpose is not to see great buildings. It’s to experience the places that lead to the Boston Tea Party, the first organized revolt against the British. This city, also the birthplace of Franklin do have a few important buildings and so on but the best thing about the walk along the freedom trail is that you get to experience American history that very few people who visit this promised land ever do.
The walk along the freedom trail takes you through graveyards with the tombs of John Hancock (first person to sign the declaration of independence) to Samuel Adams (which my friend insisted on being photographed by, since its his favourite brand of beer), moves on to places of residence of the people who lead the revolution and more importantly the meeting places where they discussed their thoughts and firmed up action plans. Somewhere along the way, we stopped for lunch in what appeared to be a very old market place and had chowder, supposed to be a speciality, shopped at the souvenir shop and then walked through a market as crowded and as dirty as Gariahat market. The trail finally ends where two historic war ships are kept for display and maintained by the US Navy. The first is USS Enterprise which is about 300 years old, and had seen action in the War for Independence. The second is a more recent one and was used in World War II, a destroyer, USS Cassin Young. In fact this ship was hit by a Kamikaze bomber and survived that to tell its tale. I was super thrilled to see what depth charges and torpedoes really looked like and ended up chatting with the US Navy officer on duty for quite some time.
The minor part is very interesting for anyone connected with the world of education. I managed to visit three of the world’s most famous institutes. The first was obviously University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, having the Wharton Business School. The other two were in Boston; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the mecca for all engineers of the world and host to the famous Sloan School of Business, while the other is simply the historic Harvard University. Each of these institutes at least in appearance was unique in their own ways. UPenn for example has a huge campus right inside the city and the Wharton School is one impressive building inside it. The guards were kind enough to let me go inside and wander about the corridors, class rooms, cafeterias etc. in what I thought was one modern swank jazzy building. To find the Sloan School in MIT however I had to literally hunt around for however famous the B School might be its not what makes MIT what it is today. It still appears to be a real techie place with not much pretence in the architecture. I did however take a walk down what is known as the endless corridors of MIT and take a look at the majestic dome of MIT right on the river. However the place that I liked best was Harvard, which had class, elegance, heritage and quality written all over. The campus is probably the most pictorious, even though among the three most famous departments only law is situated inside the campus. The B school is a walk across the river while the med school is in fact somewhere else in downtown Boston. I spent a lot of time walking around Harvard Square where you have a place where you challenged to play chess with the people there, some of whom professors at Harvard and some even rumoured to be Nobel laureates!
As usual on the way back me and my friend managed to lose my way and walk what would easily be a distance of about six to seven miles but I seem to not mind this getting lost at all as there is no better way to know a city than to walk about it when lost!
Anyway, my visits to these places can broadly be classified to a major and a minor part.
The major part consists of tracing the history of America’s struggle for independence. I began this journey in Philadelphia, the oldest city in United States and the bedrock of the revolution that liberated the America’s. The streets here are narrow and so while you drive down to the city centre (where all the attractions are) Chestnut Street, while driving up you have to use the Walnut Street. Very few streets are broad enough to support two way traffic.
The first thing to see here is the Liberty Bell that was the clarion call for American Independence. In fact the security for this bell is as much as any international airport if not more. Right next to the Bell is the Independence Hall, where USA declared its dependence and the declaration of independence was signed. After this we can take a walk through the rest of the city centre to the other various attractions. These include the house and grave of Benjamin Franklin, the father of America and the Betsy Ross House, the lady credited with sewing the first Stars and Stripes national flag. The walk down the by lanes will lead you to the first Anglican church in USA and the Franklin Court, where we could say the first American Congress met. This august gathering of the founder fathers of America included names like George Washington, Samuel Adams (presidents of USA), Benjamin Franklin (father of the nation) and John Hancock (first signatory in the declaration of independence). Since Philadelphia was also the first city of USA then you have two other star attractions: the first stock exchange and the first bank in the United States. I further spent a lot of time simply walking the streets, as they seemed enticingly charming to me, and even went to a tavern that has stood since the time of independence. For those from Calcutta, this place was like Coffee House, as it was here that the intelligencia met to discuss and decide the fate of the nation.
In Philadelphia, the way to go about is to identify the places of interest, chalk out a path and then keep visiting them, while reserving some time to simply walk the streets. Boston on the other hand has the Freedom Trail. So if Philadelphia is where the actions were carried out Boston is the place where the seeds of thought were sown. The Freedom Trail is a marked path for tourists to see all the places of historical relevance in Boston. It’s a path marked out by red cobblestones and red lines across streets and pavements that takes a total of about four to five hours to walk. A lot of the historical buildings are very contextual to USA history; the purpose is not to see great buildings. It’s to experience the places that lead to the Boston Tea Party, the first organized revolt against the British. This city, also the birthplace of Franklin do have a few important buildings and so on but the best thing about the walk along the freedom trail is that you get to experience American history that very few people who visit this promised land ever do.
The walk along the freedom trail takes you through graveyards with the tombs of John Hancock (first person to sign the declaration of independence) to Samuel Adams (which my friend insisted on being photographed by, since its his favourite brand of beer), moves on to places of residence of the people who lead the revolution and more importantly the meeting places where they discussed their thoughts and firmed up action plans. Somewhere along the way, we stopped for lunch in what appeared to be a very old market place and had chowder, supposed to be a speciality, shopped at the souvenir shop and then walked through a market as crowded and as dirty as Gariahat market. The trail finally ends where two historic war ships are kept for display and maintained by the US Navy. The first is USS Enterprise which is about 300 years old, and had seen action in the War for Independence. The second is a more recent one and was used in World War II, a destroyer, USS Cassin Young. In fact this ship was hit by a Kamikaze bomber and survived that to tell its tale. I was super thrilled to see what depth charges and torpedoes really looked like and ended up chatting with the US Navy officer on duty for quite some time.
The minor part is very interesting for anyone connected with the world of education. I managed to visit three of the world’s most famous institutes. The first was obviously University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, having the Wharton Business School. The other two were in Boston; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the mecca for all engineers of the world and host to the famous Sloan School of Business, while the other is simply the historic Harvard University. Each of these institutes at least in appearance was unique in their own ways. UPenn for example has a huge campus right inside the city and the Wharton School is one impressive building inside it. The guards were kind enough to let me go inside and wander about the corridors, class rooms, cafeterias etc. in what I thought was one modern swank jazzy building. To find the Sloan School in MIT however I had to literally hunt around for however famous the B School might be its not what makes MIT what it is today. It still appears to be a real techie place with not much pretence in the architecture. I did however take a walk down what is known as the endless corridors of MIT and take a look at the majestic dome of MIT right on the river. However the place that I liked best was Harvard, which had class, elegance, heritage and quality written all over. The campus is probably the most pictorious, even though among the three most famous departments only law is situated inside the campus. The B school is a walk across the river while the med school is in fact somewhere else in downtown Boston. I spent a lot of time walking around Harvard Square where you have a place where you challenged to play chess with the people there, some of whom professors at Harvard and some even rumoured to be Nobel laureates!
As usual on the way back me and my friend managed to lose my way and walk what would easily be a distance of about six to seven miles but I seem to not mind this getting lost at all as there is no better way to know a city than to walk about it when lost!
posted by Abilin Mukherjee at 5:19 AM
0 comments
