History
Historic Prospect Hill's castle and park overlook Union Square and points south and west and provide outstanding panoramic views. Because of its location and height, the hill, dominating the road from Charlestown, had great strategic importance in the Revolutionary War and became known as the "Citadel". The castle, dating back to 1902, is a monument commemorating the fortifications atop the hill during that war. A tablet inside reads: "This tablet is erected in memory of the soldiers of the Revolution and of the Civil War who encamped on Prospect Hill and of the banners under which they valiantly fought." It is said by some that George Washington first raised an early version of the U.S. Flag, called the Grand Union Flag, on Prospect Hill, on January 1, 1776. Others, however, claim evidence the flag was flown earlier. Somerville is one of several locales claiming to have hosted the flag's first raising.
In its early years, Somerville was an agricultural suburb, supplying the growing urban area surrounding Boston. Union Square, originally known as Milk Row, was a busy sales point for these products. In the 1800s, rail access through Boynton Yards and the Union Square passenger stop served the meat packing and manufacturing district, which included a slaughterhouse, brickyard, and glass shop. Later the rail yards became an industrial area.
Read more about this topic: Union Square (Somerville)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)