AFTERWORD

The Church of the Commonwealth does not exist. The site I have given it, the northwest corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Clarendon Street, was once occupied by the Hotel Hamilton. The hotel was demolished in this century, and there is now a playground where it stood.

I apologize for tearing down a perfectly good apartment house on the northeast side of the same corner, in order to dig the excavation for a new hotel. The Church of the Annunciation is another fiction.

The rest of the Back Bay as it appears in this book is real enough: the streets paralleling the river, each with its own character—Boylston, Newbury, Commonwealth, Marlborough and Beacon; the alphabetical cross streets—Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth; the churches—Trinity, Emmanuel, Advent (all Episcopal), Old South and the Church of the Covenant (United Church of Christ), First and Second Church (Unitarian Universalist), First Lutheran and First Baptist. The Church of the Advent and St. John the Evangelist (both Episcopal) are at opposite ends of Beacon Hill; King’s Chapel (Unitarian Universalist) is near Boston Common on Tremont Street. The physical plant of the Church of the Commonwealth is modelled on that of Old South Church in Copley Square, but some of the illustrations are adaptations of Harvard Epworth Methodist Church on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. The stone vaults are a figment of my imagination.

The registration of the new tracker organ in the Church of the Commonwealth is very much like that of the Fisk organ in Harvard’s Memorial Church, with the addition of a Bärpfeiffe stop, Trumpets en Chamade, and a Glockenspiel. The Contrabassoon has been replaced by a Contra Bombarde. The drawings are sketches of this organ and of the Rieger organ in Wellesley’s Village Church.

Perhaps I should point out that storm drains and sewers in the Back Bay and the pilings supporting churches and houses, the Boston Public Library, and all the businesses and shops are in satisfactory condition, as far as I know. The water table rises and falls, as always, in whimsical patterns of its own.