Boston has been my adopted home town for nineteen years. I thought I had done a pretty good job of exploring almost every nook and cranny of the city. From Maverick to Forest Hills, I knew it all! I was proven wrong when I discovered the Fort Hill Tower in the Roxbury section of Boston in 2007.
Although I had ventured into the neighborhood on more than one occasion, the Highland Park area of Roxbury was new to me. Pulling off the main thoroughfare, Columbus Avenue, I was immediately thrown into the hilly twists and turns of this section of town. When I arrived on Fort Avenue I was shocked to find what was to greet me. It is a turreted tower that slightly resembled the castle in Disney’s Magic Kingdom. My first reaction was “why had I never heard of this!?” I never had in all of my years researching the city as an American Studies major at Boston University.
I could not get over the majesty of the tower and its strange location in the midst of a residential neighborhood of astounding houses. On Fort Avenue facing the park is a block of brownstones. These would not be out of place in Boston’s Beacon Hill or Back Bay. Taking a right onto Highland from Fort Ave, grandiose Victorian homes line the street as it meanders back down the hill.
A Frequent Destination
Fort Hill became the place I took friends following late-night city rides. The reaction was always the same, astonishment. “How did I never know that this existed!” echoed my original thoughts exactly. It fits the expression “hidden in plain sight”. I discovered that from the standing room only section on the first base side at Fenway Park, the tower can be seen rising above its surroundings. Boston has its share of unique towers. These include Dorchester Heights, Bunker Hill Monument, and even an observation tower in Mount Auburn Cemetery. That one strikes the same surprising chord as Fort Hill.
Although I knew it was fascinating, I did not know the story behind the tower and had to find out. I knew that the grounds had something to do with the American Revolution. Also, I figured the tower was erected to commemorate an achievement related to this. Boy was I wrong!
The Cochituate Standpipe
The “Fort Hill Tower” (or at least that is what I call it), is actually the Cochituate Standpipe with use as an incredibly ornate water tower.
Fort Hill is the location of the standpipe. It is in the Gothic Revival style by architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee. He also designed impressive structures like Danvers State Hospital and Boston’s Young Men’s Christian Union Building. The idea was to create a place to store water that could be pumped out to the homes and businesses of Roxbury. The structure’s use as a water tower did not last long, only ten years. The name “Cochituate” comes from the water company that owned the tower. (Product placement in names goes back awhile!) The tower’s design is white brick with lancet windows around the neck of the tower. The top has eight sides and a green steeple rising from it. The tower would not look out of place as a spire of Castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria.
A Little History
The tower is located on the spot where the Roxbury High Fort was. The fort was not made of stone or wood but was an earthwork fortification. This is basically an earthen stronghold. It was created in June of 1776 during the Siege of Boston. It occurred during the first phase of the American Revolution. In the end, the Colonists forced the retreat of the British out of Boston. During that time Roxbury was a separate town and was connected to Boston by a small, narrow spit of land. On a side note, much of present-day Boston is actually on landfill and was water during this time.
The park which surrounds the tower is the work of famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead in 1895. In 1917 became open to the public. It was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. By the 1960s the tower was in sad shape but was fixed up in the 1980s. Visitors could even climb it.
Today the park and tower are under the jurisdiction of the Boston Public Facilities Department. In 2013 the park received a much-needed facelift with a fresh coat of paint and window repairs.
If you find yourself at a Red Sox game on an upper level on the first base side, for a moment gaze behind you into the city. See if you can locate the spire of the Fort Hill Tower. The next time you really want to impress friends, take them somewhere in Boston where they have never been, Roxbury’s Fort Hill.
For more Backyard Road Trips Boston, read about Jonathan Richman’s Boston and Fenway Park. And try this for a different Fort Hill.
I found this so interesting that I went in a search for more information on the Cochituate Standpipe which eventually led me to this article on the history of Boston’s water supply: https://wpmarchione.com/2017/09/24/water-for-the-city-a-short-history-of-bostons-water-supply-system/
I’ve never really given much thought to how big cities have obtained their water supplies so I found this to be quite interesting, especially given how much and how quickly the population of Boston expanded from its first settlement. The article talks about the eventual flooding of the Swift River Valley to form the Quabbin Reservoir which is someplace that I’ve always meant to visit having heard the stories of how the few towns that were there had to be moved along with the exhumation and re-interment about 6,000 souls to the newly-formed Quabbin Park Cemetery.
Anyhow, thank you for writing about this unique and interesting feature in Roxbury which led me down a rather interesting rabbit hole and has reignited my interest in taking a drive up to the Quabbin Reservoir!
Thanks for the link! It is fascinating- underground aqueducts which many on the surface level have become paths, are routed west of Boston and are fun tangible pieces of the past. The Quabbin is quite beautiful. I’d like to get back up to that area too. The “lost towns” of the Quabbin- so cool.