Three more problematic landmarks that Boston should rename
As some of my fellow Bostonians know, the city council recently passed a resolution or addendum or whatever city councils have the authority to pass, which calls for Faneuil Hall to be renamed. For those who aren’t from this neck of the woods, Faneuil Hall is essentially a small shopping/bar/restaurant hub near downtown Boston where tourists go to give street performers money, buy a hat that looks like a lobster, and eat clam chowder made in very close proximity to a Ben & Jerry’s. Locals like myself only ever really venture over there if we want to eat mall Chinese food then impatiently shove a family of midwesterners taking up the whole hallway.
Anyways, apparently the council decided to rename this tourist trap in an effort to "begin a process of addressing anti-Black racist symbols prevalent in Boston.”
Stop saying ‘Whereas’! Yeah but turns out not only was Faneuil a real guy, he was a bad guy, owning a small collection of slaves and an apparently large collection of wine, per his Wikipedia. The latter doesn’t make him a bad guy — that’s more the owning other people thing — but you know a guy with a wine cellar so vast that it warrants inclusion in your biography was an insufferable hang.
Having just found out this history two days ago, I for one say good! About time that son of a bitch Faneuil got what was coming to him. As a staunch advocate of purely symbolic and easily achievable gestures, I’m glad that the city council is so effectively using it’s time passing a resolution it apparently has no authority to enact.
Actually doing stuff to fix longstanding racial inequality in Boston seems really complicated so I think we just keep renaming stuff that people will still call by its original name due to sheer force of habit until we have one, unified Boston, united under God!
(Seriously though, I don’t care if some slave-owning bitch doesn’t get to keep his name on a food court, just don’t get rid of the mall Chinese food).
After doing some digging, I fear that the council’s powerless resolution doesn’t go far enough. Here are three other problematic Boston landmarks that I think could use a rebrand.
1. TD Garden
Boston’s main hub for sporting joy unfortunately bears the name of someone who stood for anything but. Theodore Delano Gardens, or T.D., as he was known to his friends and the many prostitutes he frequented, was one of New England’s most prolific child serial killers of the 18th century. A wealthy benefactor, Gardens operated some of the country’s first summer camps, offering children the opportunity to play basketball and hockey recreationally while their parents were out being poor. Hundreds of children disappeared at those camps over a period of 7 years, never to be seen again. To allay suspicion, Gardens offered alcohol to the parents of his young charges when they would pick them up, charging them 5x what he had paid for the booze. It is a tradition that continues in the Garden to this very day. In hindsight though, the police should have suspected something was amiss given that a camp was offering an ice sport in the middle of the summer and neither basketball nor hockey would be invented for another hundred years or so.
2. The Bunker Hill Monument
Many of you likely know the Bunker Hill Memorial as the site of the famed Battle of Bunker Hill during the Revolutionary War. However, that name didn’t come until later — approximately 150 years later when the sordid tale of Bartholomew Bunker came to be. A lifelong Charlestown resident, Bunker was frequently teased in his youth, presumably because his name was Bartholomew. As a result, he became reclusive and developed a callous view of his fellow man. It should come as no surprise then that when young Bartholomew grew up to become Charlestown’s first (and still only) millionaire after selling his screenplay for The Town, he was less than content to share his wealth. When the town fell on hard times after the market crash of ‘29, many of the torementers of Bunker’s youth came to him, hat in hand, begging him to save their stores or lend a few bucks for a hot meal. But Bunker, warped by years of self-imposed solitude, refused to hand over a single cent. Contrarily, he sought to rub his wealth in the face of those he viewed as beneath him, converting all of his money into $1 notes, raking them into a big pile as if they were fallen leaves and diving headfirst into his fortune like Scrooge McDuck. Every day as families starved and livelihoods were lost, Bartholomew would head to the center of town, and dive into what became known as “Bunker’s Hill.” (The apostrophe-s was lost to the ages).
3. Fenway Park
While it pains me to yet again sully a sacred Boston sports institution, I’m afraid that Fenway Park is perhaps the city’s most glaring example of cultural appropriation. In 1911, John I. Taylor, the original owner of the Boston Red Sox, was trying to come up with a catchy name for his brand new ballpark. He wanted it to be representative of the local area, but “Irish-Italian Shantytown Stadium” was too long to fit on a W2. Desperate, he went off on holiday to try and clear his head and find inspiration in a foreign land. It wasn’t until he arrived in Japan, however, that he found it. Japan and its people were intoxicating to Taylor who, from the moment he stepped off the boat in Okinawa, was sure of two things:
We will never get into the biggest war ever with these wonderful people
I will find my stadium name here
One night, while wandering the streets of Kyoto, Taylor spotted a large crowd gathered to watch what appeared to be a rudimentary form of baseball. Granted it was 1912 so every version of baseball was rudimentary. The players were capable but not overly skilled and the game proceeded quite methodically. Taylor was ready to leave when all of a sudden, a behemoth of a man came to the plate. Unlike the rest of his teammates, this man was not Japanese — he was a Korean immigrant. The baseball enthusiasts among you may recognize him as the Korean Jackie Robinson because, weirdly, his name in Korean literally translates to Jackie Robinson; total coincidence. However, John I. Taylor only knew him by his given name back then: Feng Wey Park. Taylor knew his long journey was finally over and he returned at once to Boston with the name of his new ballpark in tow. Feng Wey Park was never paid a single won for his contribution to history.
There you have it Boston city council, three locations that should be next up on the rename resolution list. Let’s work together to make this city a better, more equitable place, one un-enforceable change at a time.
