Paul Revere Mall Statue, Boston, North End, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Paul Revere Mall Statue, Boston, North End, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Paul Revere Mall Statue, Boston, North End, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-D647B4

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A tourist in 1950s Boston stood behind Cyrus Dallin's bronze Paul Revere and pointed a camera at the rider's back, which is exactly the angle that captures the steeple of the Old North Church framing the scene as though history arranged itself for the composition. The joke the tourist didn't quite intend is that Revere is gesturing forward — urgently, dramatically, toward the lantern church that launched the whole enterprise — while the person taking the picture stood behind him, also looking at the church, having independently arrived at the same conclusion about where the interesting thing was. The Paul Revere Mall, known locally as the Prado, was laid out in the 1930s to give the crowded North End a breathing space, and by the 1950s it had become a standard stop on the Freedom Trail circuit, meaning thousands of Americans stood in roughly this spot and photographed roughly this view on the logic that overlapping monuments proved you'd been thorough. The elm trees in autumn leaf give the scene the air of a civics lesson the whole family agreed to attend. Revere has been riding toward Old North for decades now and has yet to arrive, which is the kind of irony that bronze statues are very good at sustaining.

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