Park Square, Boston, Massachusetts
AA-2026-98D8A2
On the image
Someone in an upper-floor window pointed a camera straight down at Park Square and caught the entire theory of 1960 campaigning in one frame: a convertible creeping through a crowd, two men standing in the back seat holding signs no one at street level could actually read, and a police-cleared lane of parked sedans left orphaned mid-block so the candidate could pass. The signs say NIXON LODGE, which was the whole message, on the theory that if you said a name enough times from a moving car, it would stick.
Directly beside the motorcade sits a giant inflated baseball reading JIMMY, promoting the Jimmy Fund cancer charity, because Boston in 1960 saw no contradiction in a presidential motorcade and a ballpark fundraiser sharing the same fifty feet of sidewalk. Nixon had already worked New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire that day before rolling into town around 5:30 for what he'd later call, without apparent irony, a light day. The Commonwealth Armory rally that evening would be the real event; this was just the part where a city stood in the street to watch a car go by.
From this height nobody in the crowd looks like an individual, just a texture of hats and raised placards, which is presumably the point of photographing a rally from six floors up. The neon restaurant sign burning in the corner didn't care who was president. It just wanted people to eat there afterward.
The historian's note
On September 29, 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon and running mate Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. made a campaign stop in Boston as part of a day that had already taken them through New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. The motorcade shown here passed through Park Square, at the junction of Boylston Street, Providence Street, and Columbus Avenue near the Boston Public Garden, en route to the evening's main event.
That night's rally was a large campaign dinner held at the Commonwealth Armory, one of the Republican ticket's major Massachusetts appearances during the 1960 presidential race against John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Nixon referred to the day's schedule as light despite the four-state itinerary, a characterization aimed at downplaying the physical demands of the campaign trail.
The Jimmy Fund promotional baseball visible at street level reflects the charity's long-standing Boston presence, tied to the Boston Braves and later the Red Sox, and its routine use of oversized street displays for public fundraising in this period.
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Nixon-Lodge Motorcade Passes the Jimmy Fund Ball, Park Square, Boston, 1960. 1960. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-98D8A2. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/nixon-lodge-motorcade-passes-the-jimmy-fund-ball-park-square-boston-1960.
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title = {Nixon-Lodge Motorcade Passes the Jimmy Fund Ball, Park Square, Boston, 1960},
year = {1960},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-98D8A2},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/nixon-lodge-motorcade-passes-the-jimmy-fund-ball-park-square-boston-1960}
}TY - ART TI - Nixon-Lodge Motorcade Passes the Jimmy Fund Ball, Park Square, Boston, 1960 PY - 1960 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-98D8A2 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/nixon-lodge-motorcade-passes-the-jimmy-fund-ball-park-square-boston-1960 ER -
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