Photo Record
Images
Metadata
Catalog Number |
A2.946 |
Object Name |
Print, Photographic |
Description |
Monument tablet Cooper tavern Info on tablets from Richard Duffy: The monuments evolved from painted wooden signs erected for the centennial celebrations of 1875. A town committee was constituted to undertake the installation of lasting markers, and in 1877 the Town of Arlington appropriated $500.00 for five upright granite tablets. These were installed well under budget in 1878 at a cost of $418.70. The monuments were made by R.K. Carpenter at his granite works near the freight rail siding at West Medford. The incribed lettering was painted black (cost = $10 for all five tablets) by the Boston sign-making firm of F.N. & O.G. Leman. More about these businesses can be seen in the caption of the antique black-and-white image of the Samuel Whittemore monument below. Two of the monuments marked sites that had vanished by 1875: Black Horse Tavern near today’s Tufts Street, and Cooper’s Tavern, at the corner of Medford Street and Broadway. (A later building, with "Cooper Tavern" lettered on one side, was constructed in 1826; its attempt to capitalize on unearned Revolutionary fame by means of a paintbrush was openly derided.) Two monuments marked the approximate sites of events: the capture of a British supply convoy, and the wounds suffered by the aged combatant Samuel Whittemore. One is curiously phrased "Site of the House of Jason Russell," because the house of course is still very much standing. Perhaps the term "site of" was meant to refer to the fact that Jason Russell himself no longer owned the property. Why just these five monuments? I believe it is because most other sites, such as the Stephen Cutter House, and the Thomas Russell Store (where the marauding British soldiers famously left the casks of molasses running), among others, were still standing in 1875. For the most part, the permanence of the granite monuments seems to have been chosen as a way to focus on vanished aspects of 1775. All five monuments have been relocated over the past 142 years to accommodate changes in their built surroundings. None more often and more far ranging than the Samuel Whittemore monument, which was originally erected at the corner of Mystic and Chestnut streets, which in 1878 was on the edge of Russell Park (today’s municipal parking lot). |
People |
Wyman, Jabez |
Subjects |
Tablets Monuments & memorials |
Search Terms |
Cooper Tavern 445 Massachusetts Avenue Massachusetts Avenue Medford Street |
Print size |
4 1/2 x 7 |
Medium |
Photographic Paper |
Other number |
PH.2.137 |
Source |
Old archives |