Commonwealth Avenue Mall

Commonwealth Avenue Mall Review

The mall that extends down the middle of the Back Bay's Commonwealth Avenue is studded with statuary. One of the most interesting memorials, at the Exeter Street intersection, is a portrayal of naval historian and author Samuel Eliot Morison seated on a rock as if he were peering out to sea. The most recent addition was the Boston Women's Memorial in 2003 by Meredith Bergmann, between Fairfield and Gloucester streets. Statues of Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phillis Wheatley celebrate the progressive ideas of these three women and their contributions to Boston's history.

A dramatic and personal memorial was added to the mall in 1997 near Dartmouth Street: the Vendome Monument, dedicated to the nine firemen who died in a 1972 blaze at the Back Bay's Vendome Hotel, which, now office space, is across the street. The curved black-granite block, 29 feet long and waist high, is etched with the names of the dead. A bronze cast of a fireman's coat and hat are draped over the granite.