Sunday, June 12, 2011

Kennedy Museum, Beacon Hill

Kennedy Museum
Today I went off to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It is situated rather dramatically overlooking the water and the building itself, with a soaring glass atrium, is impressive. The exhibition was informative without overwhelming, evoking the era and issues of the times. I hadn't known that Kennedy had won a Pulitzer prize for a biography about political courage. The museum had a lot of his reading notes from speeches, including his handwritten phonetic notes for 'Ich bin ein Berliner'. I did get goosebumps when in the last 'legacy' section there was a huge piece of the Berlin Wall. The museum gave a good and often intimate overview of the man and what he did (of course leaving out the scandal).

Central atrium taking up heat,  Gibson House
Back near Boston Common, I clicked a quick snap of the Cheers sign and Roberta and I went for a tour of the Gibson House. The last scion of the Gibsons fancied himself as a writer and started treating his family home as a museum, that it might one day be a pilgrimage destination for literary fans. He never won fame, but his house is a pretty complete example of a Victorian mansion in Back Bay.

I spent the rest of the day wandering Beacon Hill, the area in which the upper crust lived before they filled in the swamp flats in Back Bay. Like Back Bay, the gardens and window boxes were lovely.

Quickly looked in on the Kings Church that both royalists and revolutionaries attended. Then off by train to Providence, Rhode Island.
Boston Library and ornate T subway entrance, Back Bay

We stayed here at Buckingham Apartments

Entry at Buckingham Apartments

Back Bay

Commonwealth Ave, from in front of Buckingham Apt.s

Beacon Hill

Rare garden in Beacon Hill

Original 17th century pulpit and pews, Kings Church

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