Word: curleys
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Bostonians never got around to naming anything much after Curley except a recreation building at a city hospital, an elementary school and a public bath. Then Boston planners learned that the city was about to receive some special building funds. The bequest came from an upper-crust Yankee lawyer named Edward Ingersoll Browne, who left part of his trust to the city of Boston "for the adornment and benefit of said city by the erection of statues, monuments, fountains for men and beasts and for the adornment of its streets, ways, squares and parks." James Michael Curley's commemorative...
When something called the Browne Commission was created to distribute the money, a group of architects produced a plan for a Curley Mall along the Freedom Trail, which included benches for footsore travelers bound for such historic sites as Faneuil Hall, the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church. On the middle bench, they proposed to seat a life-sized statue of James Michael Curley, resting himself among the citizenry. The plan gathered dust until last fall when the commission was finally persuaded to spring a paltry $65,000 for James Michael Curley's park and bronze statue...
...brief notice of the appropriation in the Boston Globe stirred little comment until City Councillor Frederick Langone spoke out about it. "Curley never sat on a bench in his life," Langone cried. He should have something "more dignified." In reply, one William E. O'Halloran of Newtonville took pen in hand and tongue in cheek. A mere $65,000 was "not nearly enough," O'Halloran opined in the Boston Globe's letters column. But there is another way that "will cost us nothing and accomplish much." Concluded O'Halloran: "There is no longer any viable reason...
...Charles separates Boston from Cambridge, Mass, (and Harvard College). It was soon apparent that in Greater Boston, passionate feeling about an English King who had his head chopped off in 1649, James Michael Curley and history in general flowed as deep and murky as the Charles itself. "Unfortunate," snapped Benjamin R. Sears Jr. of Boston, replying to O'Halloran. "King Charles, while perhaps not one of England's great rulers, was King during much of the time Boston was being colonized," Sears noted. "What better way to remember part of our heritage...
...named Philip C. Thibodeau of Dedham was all for the O'Halloran plan. "It's an extremely crooked river," said he. "The name Curley River would be most appropriate. We could settle for one of the more crooked sections of the Charles, preferably in a Democratic precinct, and christen that area 'The Curley Way.' You know, like Hell's Gate at the narrows near New York City...