The Charles Street Meeting House is for sale by Karen Cord Taylor
A landmark property on Beacon Hill is for sale, but there is no asking price, and the broker won’t give out the address or other information unless the interested party signs a confidentiality agreement.
The property is the Charles Street Meeting House, on the corner of Charles and Mount Vernon streets. The entrance is at 121 Mount Vernon.
Dan McGee of NAI Hunneman, a commercial broker, said he can’t talk about it, but that he was authorized by the owner to present the property to potential buyers in a confidential manner.
One Beacon Hill resident who received a flyer from the listing agent Carl Christie, said the real estate firm was soliciting bids from interested parties. He said even though the property was not identified, it would be obvious to any Beacon Hill resident which building it was. Another Beacon Hill resident also reported learning about the sale last Wednesday after receiving the flyer. It is not clear why there is secrecy over the matter.
The building owner, John Sharratt, is an architect who bought the building in the early 1980s and transformed it from a down-and-out coffee house and community meeting space into retail shops, offices and a dramatic living space for himself. Sharratt also runs an art gallery near the glass entrance to the building. Sharratt was out of town and couldn’t be reached for comment.
There was controversy in the beginning over uses in the building, and bad feelings arose between Sharratt and the Beacon Hill Civic Association, but in the last two decades, all has been quiet.
The 1804 federal-style brick building was designed by Asher Benjamin and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was originally used as the Third Baptist Church. Prominent abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, spoke from its pulpit. In 1876, The African Methodist Episcopal Church took it over. It later was also used by the Unitarian-Universalists.
In 1920, when Charles Street was widened, the church building was moved ten feet toward the river.
City records value the building at $3,234,500. Annual taxes are $83,315.54. The NAI Hunneman flyer describes the building as having around 20,698 square feet.
The Beacon Hill Times follows the progress, or lack thereof, on Cambridge Street through direct observation and interviews with the project’s supervisor John Lepore.
Progress during the week of Aug. 13 - 17
Traffic signals: Pedestrians reported problems last week with flashing yellow lights instead of red and green and no police officers at such intersections. Lepore said the problems began with lightning striking two controllers, which did in the traffic lights. Best Electric fixed them this week, but did little work elsewhere.
Street paving: More striping was done up at the Somerset end of the project and more signs were hung.
Street lights: Still not working properly.
Plants: Workers replaced some plants that died along the curb in the tree pits. Lepore thinks they may not have survived because of people opening car doors and stepping out onto them. NStar ran power to the timers on the irrigation system, which is still not working. Plants have been watered by hose.
Annelie Kleffmann, who will move to River Street in September, shows her friend Caludia Ferraro, a visitor from Milan, Italy around Charles Street.
CREDIT:
Karen Cord Taylor
Eileen Fitzpatrick of Gary Drug has her favorite question from tourists. “Where is the historical part of Boston?” That’s what they ask when they are standing in front of Gary Drug on the 200-year-old Mount Vernon Street.
Jack Gurnon has his stories too. “One comes to mind because it struck a nerve,” the Charles Street Supply owner said. He said an English couple and their little boy were walking by. Independent
hardware stores must have been run out of business by the big box stores in England as well as in the United States because the boy had to ask his father while pointing to Charles Street Supply, “What kind of a store is this?” The father patiently explained that it was a hardware shop, “like a mini-Home Depot.” As you can imagine, Gurnon does not like to be compared in any way to Home Depot.
About five million tourists come to Boston during the summer, according to Larry Meehan, vice president of media relations and tourism sales for the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, and a good portion of them visit Beacon Hill. Meehan said that Beacon Hill is one of the locations that most impresses visitors.
Perhaps it is because this neighborhood is different from the rest of the country and different from other countries also. Many people comment on those differences or ask questions about them.
Most Beacon Hill residents and business owners with whom we spoke said they saw tourists’ surprise and delight at the small, local hardware and drug store and the one-off shops. “They are kind of amazed at the drugstore itself,” Fitzpatrick observed. “How many towns still have an independent pharmacy?”
“They love the fact that there are so few chains here,” said Sally Deane, a co-owner of the Charles Street Inn. She said guests also comment often on the brick sidewalks, wondering if they are more dangerous or safer than the usual American-style concrete.
Gurnon said he’s heard some funny comments. One person walked by his store and told a companion, “It’s so exclusive up on Louisburg Square, they have their own police and security force.”
We wondered who the person thought was such a threat to Louisburg Square folks — maybe the riff-raff on Pinckney Street?
Sometimes the questions are baffling. “I’ve had people ask where is the street with the pretty houses,” reported Danielle Lasden of Red Wagon. “ Or they’ll ask where the famous street is. I tell them there may be more than one. I’ve tried to help but they can’t give me any clear answers.”
One street they may be thinking of is Acorn Street. Acorn Street resident Karin Dumbaugh said she has heard tour guides telling tourists that Acorn Street is where the Mount Vernon Street houses kept their stables. Of course, Acorn Street has always housed people — the stables were on the flat of the Hill or up the street on Mount Vernon.
Dumbaugh is an active participant in the tourist phenomenon. She said that Acorn Street makes such a pretty picture that sometimes tourists ask for her help. One person asked if she could straighten the flag that hangs from a location near a second story window so that their picture would be even more perfect.
Since then she decided to keep postcards with a professional’s picture of Acorn Street so that tourists can take home an actual perfect picture. She also keeps real estate publications on hand so that when tourists ask her how much houses in the neighborhood are worth, they can find out on their own.
One person with particular insight into tourists and their thoughts and questions about Beacon Hill is Julie Gleason, an independent tour guide who works part-time at the Nichols House Museum on Mount Vernon Street.
She also said that tourists asked about house prices and that they were fascinated by how Beacon Hill residents deal with their cars. She said they marvel at the concept of parking stickers, parking spaces for sale and private ways on which only adjacent property owners may park. They also marvel that Beacon Hill residents can manage without owning a car at all.
She said one of the most common complaints from tourists is that they have to walk so much in Boston. But once they accept that they’re not going to able to depend on a car, she said they begin to enjoy it, especially if they can also use the tourist trolleys and duck boats.
Another common question from Americans from other states is why Massachusetts voters continue to send Ted Kennedy back to the Senate. Gleason thinks they see his behavior of long ago and the behavior of some of his family members and don’t understand the regard based on other factors that so many voters here have for him.
French tourists ask why Americans don’t have bidets, especially after they’ve seen the bathrooms in the Nichols House. She said French tourists and other European tourists are surprised that Beacon Hill has so few restaurants.
She said that her friends in the tourist industry have some funny stories to tell. Her friend on duty at the Mayflower ship replica in Plymouth once had a perplexed tourist who said she didn’t understand how the Pilgrims could have fit two of each kind of animal on that small ship. Another asked where the other two ships were. Not being able to separate Noah and Columbus from the Pilgrims gave Gleason a start. “It scares me that these women are driving around and voting,” she said.
Other questions Gleason fields are those asking for restaurant recommendations, which she won’t give, and where visitors can find toilets. She tells people that toilets in Boston are not plentiful, and that they should make sure they don’t wait until the last minute.
Everyone we talked to said that one of the most common questions in this neighborhood was where’s Cheers. But after they see it, some are confused since it doesn’t look exactly like the bar in the television show. “People are always asking if they changed the inside,” said Pat Baitler, who suspects that many television viewers thought they were actually seeing the bar in the Hampshire House rather than a set in a building in Los Angeles.
One of the funniest questions is reported by the tourist czar Larry Meehan. He said that one tourist asked, “Do you have fall foliage every day or is it only on weekends?”
Meehand thinks that this country could do with a little better science education.
We can’t trust the FBI. Who would have suspected that its agents would blatantly frame four Boston men, not just to protect their “sources,” such as they were, but to advance their own careers? The bureau is paying millions in restitution to these hapless chaps, thanks to Judge Gertner, but it’s actually our tax money they are using.
We can’t trust the Justice Department after they fired their Republican appointees who didn’t prosecute Democrats enough. Then, according to an interesting article in a recent New Yorker magazine, they didn’t sufficiently investigate a murder of one of their own in Seattle, possibly because he supported gun control. With its torture-promoting attitudes, the US Justice Department is day by day seeming more like the Ministry of Justice building in a place like Argentina, where you know it wasn’t justice that was done.
We can’t trust the CIA or any of our intelligence agencies. Not only did they get Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction all wrong, they can’t find Osama bin Laden.
We can’t trust the defense department. Any nitwit would have known that you better have a pretty good plan when you decide to decimate a country ruled by a dictator who has kept tribal animosities from flaring solely by his brutality. We had such a good example when the Soviet Union broke up into bitter, warring little pieces.
We can’t trust Minnesota anymore. In the past two years, the state’s Republican governor twice vetoed legislation to raise the state’s gas tax to pay for road repairs and the like. (Apparently, he has now seen the light.) If a populist state with a record of good government, despite Jesse Ventura, couldn’t keep its bridges in good repair, how can we?
We can’t trust the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. After running the best roads in the state for many years, they lost their heads in the Big Dig.
We can’t even trust the Democrats in Congress. The Senate Democrats once again believed the same guys who told them about Saddam’s weapons, and they caved in to Bush’s bleating about how we must continue being afraid and gave him license to listen in to all the calls you receive from overseas. So many people dislike him in other countries that he’s liable to label anyone a terrorist.
We can’t trust FEMA, the church, the airlines, General Motors, insurance companies or the big national banks anymore. You all know why.
Despite all the institutions we can no longer rely on, we’re doing pretty well in this neighborhood. Ninety-nine percent of us have a fine place to live, enough food, and some extra money and time for some fun in our lives. We have free entertainment when we go out to watch the street life or walk along the Esplanade. We have generally good relations with our neighbors. No matter what religion, race, national origin or sexual orientation, people are generally accepted without a thought. No one is throwing acid in the girls’ faces on Newbury Street, as has been happening in Pakistan, because they are showing too much skin.
The world may be screwed up, but it doesn’t affect us — yet.
CAPTION: A view from behind the cupola over the Charles River.
CREDIT: Courtesy photo
The Liberty Hotel is ready to roll.
This new neighborhood spot, with its impressive architecture, will open September 5 with a ribbon cutting, according to Regan Dillon, who is in charge of public relations for the hotel.
Scampo, an Italian-concept restaurant run by the Lyons Group, will operate out of the ground floor space and spill out onto an open terrace.
Alibi will be the nearby bar, also run by the Lyons Group.
These two restaurants appeared before the licensing board last Wednesday and were approved.
The hotel itself will run Clink on the second floor, partially under the central rotunda. This restaurant will feature small plates in a “gastro-pub” style, which means eating and drinking in the same place, said Dillon.
Dillon said she hopes Beacon Hill residents will not be afraid to cross to the other side to take advantage of what the hotel as to offer. Several Beacon Hill groups have parties scheduled during the next few months at the hotel. The Beacon Hill Business Association will put on its Harvest Moon festival at the hotel on October 4. The Beacon Hill Civic Association’s Winter Dance will be held there on February 8.
Bittersweet Gardens will sell local produce, fruit and flowers next to Savenor’s Market on Fridays from 3 to 7 p.m. On their first day of operations, Kara Kilodziej, head dirt digger, (at left) and owner Julie Raymond sold two kinds of basil, gooseberries, zinnias, squash and Swiss chard, among other delectibles. Cash only if you want to purchase a fresh treat!
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