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Louisburg Square Review

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Louisburg Square

Address: Between Mt. Vernon and Pickney Sts., Beacon Hill, Boston, MA, 02108 | Map It

Category: Squares
Location: Beacon Hill and Boston Common

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Fodor's Review:

One of the most charming corners in a neighborhood that epitomizes charm, Louisburg Square was an 1840s model for town-house development that was never repeated on the Hill because of space restrictions. Today, the grassy square—enclosed by a wrought-iron fence and considered the very heart of Beacon Hill—belongs collectively to the owners of the houses facing it. The statue at the north end of the green is of Columbus, the one at the south end of Aristides the Just; both were donated in 1850 by a Greek merchant who lived on the square. The houses, most of which are now divided into apartments and condominiums, have seen their share of famous tenants, including author and critic William Dean Howells at Nos. 4 and 16, and the Alcotts at No. 10 (Louisa May not only lived but died here, on the day of her father's funeral). In 1852 the singer Jenny Lind was married in the parlor of No. 20. Louisburg Square is also the current home of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

There's a legend that Louisburg (proper Bostonians always pronounce the "s") Square was the location of the Rev. William Blaxton's spring, although there's no water there today. Blaxton, or Blackstone, was one of the first Bostonians, having come to the Shawmut Peninsula to live with his books and his apple trees in the mid-1620s, after the group with whom he arrived from England disbanded. When the Puritans, who had settled in Charlestown, found their water supply inadequate, Blaxton invited them to move across the river, where he assured them they would find an "excellent spring." Just a few years later, he sold them all but 6 acres of the peninsula he had bought from the Native Americans and left for Rhode Island, seeking greater seclusion; a plaque at 50 Beacon Street commemorates him.