Copley Square

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Lewis Cohen's John Singleton Copley, with Copley Square, Trinity Church, and the John Hancock Tower behind him.

Copley Square, named for painter John Singleton Copley, is a public square in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, bounded by Boylston Street, Clarendon Street, St. James Avenue, and Dartmouth Street.

Trinity Church

The Boston Public Library's McKim Building, seen across Dartmouth St. from the Square.

Detail of 1888 map of Boston, showing Art Square and vicinity

The Museum of Fine Arts' original home (on the site of the present Copley Plaza Hotel).

Copley Square fountain, with Old South Church tower in distance

Architecture

The Square is outstanding for the number and variety of important architectural works that have been built there, many of them official landmarks.^{[citation needed]} Prominent structures still standing include:

Old South Church (1873), by Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears in the Venetian Gothic Revival style.
Trinity Church (1877, Romanesque Revival), considered H. H. Richardson's tour de force.
Boston Public Library (1895), by Charles Follen McKim in a revival of Italian Renaissance style, incorporates artworks by John Singer Sargent, Edwin Austin Abbey, Daniel Chester French, and others.
The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel (1912) by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in the Beaux-Arts style (on the site of the original Museum of Fine Arts).
The John Hancock Tower (1976, late Modernist) by Henry N. Cobb, at 790 feet (241 m) New England's tallest building.
The Bostix Kiosk (1992, Postmodernist), at the corner of Dartmouth and Boylston streets, by Graham Gund with inspiration from Parisian park pavilions.^[1]

Among buildings no longer standing are:

Chauncy Hall School (ca. 1874, demolished 1908), a tall-gabled High Victorian brick school building on Boylston St. near Dartmouth St.
Museum of Fine Arts (1876, demolished 1910) by John Hubbard Sturgis and Charles Brigham in the Gothic Revival style, was the first purpose-built public art museum in the world.
S.S. Pierce Building, (1887, demolished 1958) by S. Edwin Tobey, "no masterpiece of architecture, [but] great urban design. A heap of dark Romanesque masonry..."^[2]

History

A remarkable number of important Boston educational and cultural institutions were originally located adjacent to (or very near) Copley Square, reflecting 19th-century Boston's aspirations for it as a center of culture and progress.^[3] These include the Museum of Fine Arts, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School, the New England Museum of Natural History (today's Museum of Science), Trinity Church, the New Old South Church, the Boston Public Library, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Massachusetts Normal Art School (today's Massachusetts College of Art), the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, Boston University, Emerson College and Northeastern University.

Known as Art Square until 1883,^[4] Copley Square was originally cut diagonally by Huntington Avenue; it took its present form in 1966 when Huntington Avenue was truncated at the corner of Dartmouth Street, the Square partially paved, and a pyramidal fountain sculpture added. In 1991, after further changes including a new fountain, the new Copley Square Park was dedicated. The nonprofit Friends of Copley Square raises funds for care of the square's plantings, fountain, and monuments.

The Boston Marathon has finished at Copley Square since 1986.^[5] A memorial celebrating the race's 100th running (in 1996) is located in the park, near the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth streets.^[6]

2013 Boston Marathon bombings

Main article: Boston Marathon bombings

On April 15, 2013, around 2:50 p.m. EDT, about three hours after the men's and women's winners crossed the line, two loud explosions were heard from Copley Square, 14 seconds apart, one near the finish line alongside the Boston Public Library, the other about a block farther west. Three people were killed and at least 183 reported injured, including at least 14 victims confirmed to have lost limbs.

Image gallery

Stereoptic view of New England Museum of Natural History Boylston St., corner Berkeley St., ca.1870
Chauncy Hall School, Boylston and Dartmouth St., ca.1881
Laying the cornerstone of the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library, Nov. 28, 1888.
Cyclists, ca.1888
S.S. Pierce & Co., Copley Square, Boston, 1888, now the site of the Copley Place retail/hotel/office complex
1920
1920
Hancock building, 1994
2005
2007
2007
Night view, Nov. 2009
Northwest corner of Copley Square showing the Boston Public Library, McKim Building at left and Old South Church to the right, 2010
The Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel replaced the Museum of Fine Arts in 1912
Overview of Copley Square, looking down Boylston Street, 2009
The Copley Square Farmer's Market, held twice weekly from May to November
Copley Square, 2013

References

↑ Mary Melvin Petronella, ed., Victorian Boston Today: Twelve Walking Tours (Northeastern University Press, 2004), 69, available onlime, access September 9, 2012
↑ Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker. Coming into Copley. Boston Globe.Mar 26, 2006. p.BGM.16.
↑ Douglass Shand-Tucci, The Gods of Copley Square, lecture series, 2009, sponsored by Back Bay Historical/Boston-centric Global Studies and the New England Historical Genealogical Society
↑ {{http://friendsofcopleysquare.org/history.htm}}
↑ Powers, John (April 16, 2010). "Evolution of the Boston Marathon finish line". Boston Globe. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
↑ Boston Marathon Memorial, Boston Art Commission, 100 Public Artworks, p. 3

Aldrich, Megan. Gothic Revival. Phaidon Press Ltd: 1994. ISBN 0-7148-2886-6.
Bunting, Bainbridge. Houses of Boston's Back Bay: An Architectural History, 1840-1917. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 1967. ISBN 0-674-40901-9.
Forbes, Esther, and Arthur Griffin. The Boston Book. Houghton Mifflin Company: 1947.
Holtz Kay, Jane. Lost Boston. Houghton Mifflin: 1999. ISBN 0-395-96610-8.
Shand-Tucci, Douglass. "The Gods of Copley Square: Dawn of the Modern American Experience, 1865-1915", www.backbayhistorical.org/Blog, 2009.
Shand-Tucci, Douglass. "Built in Boston, City and Suburb, 1800-2000". Little, Brown. (Third edition) 1999.
Shand-Tucci, Douglass. "Renaissance Rome and Emersonian Boston: Michelangelo and Sargent, between Triumph and Doubt", Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2002, 995-1008.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Copley Square, Boston.

Coordinates: 42°21′00″N 71°04′34″W / 42.350°N 71.076°W / 42.350; -71.076 (Copley Square, Boston)

v t e Streets and squares in Boston

Streets	Arborway Atlantic Avenue Beacon Street Bennington Street Blue Hills Parkway Bowdoin Street Boylston Street Brookline Avenue Charles Street Columbus Avenue Commonwealth Avenue Congress Street Court Street Day Boulevard Dorchester Avenue Federal Street Fenway Franklin Street Gallivan Boulevard Hanover Street Huntington Avenue Jamaicaway Massachusetts Avenue Melnea Cass Boulevard Memorial Drive Milk Street Morrissey Boulevard Morton Street New Chardon Street Newbury Street North Street Park Street Park Drive Riverway School Street Soldiers Field Road State Street Stony Brook Reservation Parkways Storrow Drive Summer Street Tremont Street Truman Parkway Union Street Veterans of Foreign Wars Parkway Washington Street West Roxbury Parkway Winter Street Yawkey Way

Squares, circles, crossings and corners	Andrew Square Brigham Circle Central Square Chester Square City Square Cleveland Circle Codman Square Copley Square Day Square Dewey Square Dock Square Downtown Crossing Dudley Square Egleston Square Fields Corner Haymarket Square Hyde Square Jackson Square Kenmore Square Louisburg Square Maverick Square Packard's Corner Park Square Peabody Square Post Office Square Roxbury Crossing Sullivan Square Thompson Square Union Square Uphams Corner

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