Fresh Air and Salt Water

in the North End

The promenade (left) enclosed North End Beach to protect swimmers from the industrial harbor. But in later years, daring boys would jump off it and swim to the Charlestown Navy Yard and back, gaining much local prestige.

Courtesy of Boston Public Library

For over 50 years residents enjoyed a sandy harbor beach here. Designed by Charles Eliot, of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot, North End Park transformed an area of wharves and industrial buildings into a “neighborhood pleasure ground” that included the beach, public baths, a lawn, and a two-story promenade.

North End residents gained much-needed recreational space when the park opened in 1897. In time the beach attracted as many as 5,000 people a day. Swimming lessons were provided, and lifeguards kept watch from boats and shore. Intra-city swim meets were watched by enthusiastic crowds.

Championed by City Councilor John F. Fitzgerald, the park also revived Boston’s public bath movement, promoting cleanliness in a congested neighborhood where most homes lacked bathing facilities. Men’s and women’s bath houses—at opposite ends of the beach—were free, with clean towels and bathing suits supplied at nominal charge.

By the 1940s, harbor pollution led to frequent beach closures, prompting Boston to replace the beach in June 1952 with a swimming and wading pool, as well as playing fields—all still in active use today.

John F Fitzgerald

North End native John F. Fitzgerald (1863–1950) was a prominent Boston politician. In 1960, his grandson, John F. Kennedy, was elected U.S. president.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

1895 Bromley map

The first park plan included a footbridge connecting Copp’s Hill Terrace to the beach promenade. The footbridge was never built because a new elevated railway above Commercial Street took precedence.

1895 Bromley map, Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library

1927 Crowd at North End Beach

Bathers of all ages cooled off in the water to escape the heat. A 1923 redesign by Arthur Shurtleff created separate beaches for women and men and a playground in place of the lawn. Beyond, a Boston police station and fire-house replaced buildings destroyed by the 1919 Molasses Flood.

Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection

North End Beach postcard

Reproductions of this 1911 postcard adorn homes and offices of North End residents who remember the beach fondly.

Courtesy of Nicholas Dello Russo

Sign Location

More …

Community activists. Colonial law. Political will. New state regulations. The combination created the 43-mile Boston Harborwalk–a public path, stretching from Logan Airport through seven neighborhoods to the Neponset River. In 1978, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) sought to improve public access to the waterfront. They succeeded by integrating early Colonial laws into new state regulations.

In the decades that followed, community activists, city and state government, and developers of shoreline projects have worked together to ensure the Harborwalk is always constructed along the waterfront. Some sites also provide public amenities–bathrooms, meeting places, kayak launches,
etc. The result is a fabulous path welcoming residents and visitors to our vibrant clean harbor.

Early Colonial laws established public right of access along tidelands to protect citizens’ rights to fish, hunt, and navigate at sea and along the shorefront. These laws go back even further: They stem from Roman law, which was incorporated into English law and brought over to Massachusetts by English
settlers. Then, in the 1640s, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed laws permitting private docks in the intertidal area (between low and high tide) as long as public access was retained. Almost all of Boston’s waterfront is filled land that was once the intertidal area. This, together with the centuries-old legal right of access, served as the underpinnings for the 1978 CZM regulations.

Resources

  • Annual Report of the Department of Baths for the Year 1900. City of Boston, 1901.
  • Cole, William I. “Free Municipal Baths in Boston.” Mind and Body, Jan. 1900 pp. 241-245 and Feb. 1900 pp. 265-273.
  • Common Council Minutes 1892. City of Boston, 1892.
  • Della Russo, Nicholas. “Life on the Corner: The North End Beach.” NorthEndWaterfront.com, https://northendwaterfront.com/2016/05/life-corner-north-end-beach/. Accessed 11 December 2019.
  • Lee, Joseph. “Playgrounds, Beaches and Baths.” Fifty Years of Boston – A Memorial Volume Issued in Commemoration of the Tercentenary of 1930, edited by Herlihy, Elizabeth M., 1932, pp. 672-683.
  • “North End Pool to Be Opened Sunday, June 22.” The Boston Globe, Jun. 10, 1952.
  • Olmsted, F. L. Jr. “Neighborhood Pleasure Grounds in Boston.” Harpers Weekly, Dec. 25, 1897, pp. 1290-1293.
  • Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot. Plan for North End Park. 1894. City of Boston
  • “Pollution Closes North End Beach.” The Boston Globe, Jul. 15, 1949.
  • Riccio, Anthony V. Boston’s North End: Images and Recollections of an Italian-American Neighborhood. Insiders’ Guide – Globe Pequot Press, 1998.
  • Shurtleff, Arthur A. Sketch Plan of North End Bathing Beach. 1923. City of Boston
  • Stewart, Jane. “Boston’s Experience with Municipal Baths.” American Journal of Sociology, Nov. 1901, pp. 416-422
  • “Where North Enders Bathe. New Baths at the Park Have Been Well Patronized Since They Were Opened.” The Boston Globe, Jul. 15, 1897
  • Williams, Marilyn Thornton. Washing “The Great Unwashed”: Public Baths in North America 1840-1920. Ohio State University Press, 1991.
  • Zaitzevsky, Cynthia. Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System. The Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982.

Acknowledgments

Warm thanks to Nicholas Dello Russo, lifelong North End resident, who shared his many stories of North End Beach, along with the depicted postcard.

A special thank you to Alex Goldfeld, president of the North End Historical Society, who took time out of his busy schedule to review sign contents and offer helpful suggestions.