Boston - a Palimpsest of the Old and the New

The overlap of the Boston city tour bus with the Charles Street Meeting House, the home of a long segregationist tradition of church seating and the struggle against it, provides a snapshot of the different temporal layers that intersect in Beacon Hill. What was once a site of extreme segregation and racial tension is now frequented by modern-day tourists that can only hear about and imagine the deep history hidden behind the walls of these preserved structures.

A close-shot video clip of author's feet walking on the original floorboards of the African Meeting House, the oldest surviving black church building in the US. The ground featured in the clip is the same ground walked on by many prominent abolitionists including Frederick Douglass and the men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. The meeting house underwent a recent $9.5 million restoration, and the over two century-old floorboards of the first floor of the house were preserved in its original state.

In Boston, for example, an examination of the African American National Historic Site has revealed a fascinating interplay between the past and the present, as sites of the past have been both preserved as well as repurposed to incorporate both the old and the new in the composition of today’s Beacon Hill neighborhood[1]. The Black Heritage Trail that makes up much of the site leads visitors through tourist- and visitor-oriented landmarks such as the Museum of African American History (once the Abiel Smith School) and the African Meeting House, which no longer serve the purpose that they once did but remain open for people to dwell in the history that once occupied the space for centuries- as well as numerous residential homes that once housed prominent abolitionists and slaves and still continue to serve as the abodes of Beacon Hill’s modern-day inhabitants.  This conscious memorialization of Boston’s 19^th century African American community and their struggles and achievements throughout the abolitionist movement is manifested in modern-day landmarks that not only symbolize the past, but also the constantly evolving present by leaving room for modern-day inhabitants and visitors of Beacon Hill to play an active role in the preservation and presentation of these historical assets today. We notice the traces of the past through the visible antiquity of some of the structures and their accompanying plaques or museum exhibits that explain their history, as well as the intangible yet persistent efforts of people to keep the memory of Black Boston a key aspect of the city’s identity today. As time passes by, spaces reconstructed and repurposed, and memories revived and retold, an endless accumulation of these old and new layers, both visible and invisible, reshape contemporary Boston into a timeless and multifaceted urban palimpsest.