Liberty Tree - 20th Century Remembrance

20th Century Remembrance

In October 1966, the Boston Herald began running stories pointing out that the only commemoration of the Liberty Tree site was a grimy plaque on a building three stories above what is now the intersection of Essex and Washington Streets. Reporter Ronald Kessler found that the plaque, a block east of Boston Common, was covered with bird droppings and obscured by a Kemp’s hamburger sign.

No one in the area had even noticed the site “where America was born.” Local guidebooks did not mention it.

Kessler persuaded then Massachusetts Governor John A. Volpe to visit the site. A photo of Volpe examining the plaque from a fire engine ladder appeared on page one of the 6 October 1966 edition of the Boston Herald.

According to Kessler, Volpe promised to preserve the site in the form of a park with monuments, and "Edward J. Logue, the administrator of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, said the park would be a 'handsome, open space' with grass, benches, plaques explaining the history of the tree, and 'the largest elm tree that can be transported and is resistant to Dutch elm disease.'...That promise was never fulfilled." The Boston Redevelopment Authority ultimately placed a small bronze plaque in the sidewalk across the street from the bas relief plaque. The plaque bears the inscription "Sons of Liberty, 1766; Independence of the Country, 1776."

Kessler explored the subject further and presented the entire history of the Liberty Tree in "America Must Remember Boston's Liberty Tree".