Five

Temples of Fun

The Walpole Street Grounds, often called the South End Grounds, was the baseball park of such diverse teams as the Rustlers, the Red Caps, the Doves, and the Boston Bean Eaters! The grandstand, considered one of the most elaborate of its day, rose sharply in the distance and provided a shelter for avid baseball fans until it was destroyed by fire in 1894 during a heated baseball game between the Boston Bean Eaters and the Baltimore Orioles.

The Cyclorama, designed by Cummings and Sears and built in 1884 on Tremont Street, was intended to house the cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg, a colossal circular painting by Paul Philippoteaux. The building had a plethora of crenelated towers and battlements and had two large towers flanking the entrance on Tremont Street. After 1899, it was used as an automobile factory and garage before it became the Boston Flower Exchange in 1923. Since 1970, the cyclorama building has been home to the Boston Center for the Arts.

Pickett’s Charge, the final day of fighting at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, was depicted by Paul Philippoteaux in a long canvas that was displayed at the Cyclorama in 1884. Four hundred feet in length and approximately two stories high (it was originally five stories high), the cyclorama depicted one of the fiercest battles during the Civil War; the realism was further enhanced by faux terrain that was built up in front of the canvas, making the views seem even more realistic. (Courtesy of the South End Historical Society.)

An enjoyable Sunday afternoon in the late nineteenth century might be spent cheering-on a bicycle race such as this one on Columbus Avenue in 1879. Colonel Albert A. Pope manufactured the high-wheel bicycle at his factory on Columbus Avenue, and he “promoted interest in bicycling by sponsoring races, including a four-day world championship bicycle race in Boston.” The church on the left is the Second Universalist Church.

John L. Sullivan strikes a boxing pose when he was the world heavyweight boxing champion. A resident of the South End, Sullivan retained his title in an 1889 fight with Jake Kilrain, who finally succumbed in the 75th round of the last major bareknuckle bout in America. In 1892, however, Sullivan lost his title to James J. Corbett in the first world championship fight under modern rules. (Courtesy of the South End Historical Society.)

On Opening Day in 1888, the Boston Bean Eaters baseball team poses on the Walpole Street Grounds with the grandstand thronged with spectators. (Courtesy of the South End Historical Society.)

Avid baseball fans would throng the grandstand of the Walpole Street Grounds and cheer for their favorite baseball players. The grandstand was a two-story affair with a roof that was punctuated by conically shaped caps. Many of the spectators wore derbies or silk top hats when attending baseball games in the 1890s. (Courtesy of the South End Historical Society.)

The Castle Square Hotel and Theatre had an elegant rococo theatre that was built in 1894 on Tremont Street at the corner of Chandler Street. A home of stock companies, it also hosted opera and touring vaudeville acts. It was renamed the Arlington before it was razed in 1932.

Mary Young, who often starred with her actor husband, John Craig, strikes quite a pose with her upturned umbrella about 1905. Miss Young “was beloved and faithfully supported by playgoers” until silent movies proved far too great an attraction for the former patrons of the vaudeville acts and plays.

John Craig managed the Castle Square Theatre between 1911 and 1916, when it was at its zenith, offering a $500 prize and a production to students of Walter Baker’s drama courses at Harvard University (these dramas, known as the Harvard Prize Plays, were popular in the pre–World War I years and often went on to Broadway). Craig was also a popular star at the Castle Square Theatre in the early years of the twentieth century, entertaining his audiences in the elegant rococo theatre.

The Grand Opera House was a popular theatre of melodramas. In the early twentieth century the opera house was a venue for Yiddish plays as well as the center of Boston’s wrestling matches. The building underwent a series of adaptive reuses over the next few decades until it was eventually demolished.

The Columbia Theatre was at 978–986 Washington Street and was built in 1827 as the South Congregational Church. Formerly a three-story Romanesque Revival church, it became a theater in 1891, long after the congregation had moved to Union Park Street. As a theater, the Columbia Theatre was a popular destination until it was demolished in 1957. (Courtesy of the South End Historical Society.)

The entrance to the Columbia Theatre had a stained-glass window above the marquee on Washington Street. The theater offered a wide variety of performances, including legitimate dramas, burlesque, vaudeville, silent movies, and talkies. These different shows went on until 1957, when the Columbia could no longer compete with larger theaters and was demolished. Notice the support, on the right, to the Boston Elevated Railway that ran above Washington Street. (Courtesy of SPNEA.)

The Grand Museum was at the corner of Washington and Dover (now East Berkeley) Streets in the former Williams Market. Here, about 1895, Rip Van Winkle is being advertised for the following week, and playbills and posters proclaim upcoming productions.

A group of boys read the advertising poster for Rip Van Winkle at the Grand Museum, about 1895. The novel, written by James Fenimore Cooper, had become a lively play in the late nineteenth century.