Suffolk University started in 1906 as a single law school, founded by a lawyer who wanted to offer evening classes to working people who couldn’t afford the city’s elite colleges. His first classroom was in his own law office, and the students paid by the lecture. Today it’s the tenth-largest university in metropolitan Boston, its campus woven through the downtown streets beside Beacon Hill. The same pragmatic spirit survives in its namesake Political Research Center, whose Suffolk University poll tracks American elections and is followed across the country.
Audio guide Boston
Tella is a free audio guide for any place on Earth. Here are 30 places in Boston worth a story. Open one on the map and hear it read aloud in English, or take the Android app on a walk and let it narrate whatever you pass.
Places worth a story
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, founded 1861
Photo: Fcb981, this edited version by Thermos · CC BY-SA 3.0
Boston University
private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Photo: Fletcher6 · CC BY-SA 3.0
Logan International Airport
airport in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Photo: ajay_suresh · CC BY 4.0
TD Garden
multi-purpose arena in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Photo: ajay_suresh · CC BY 4.0
Berklee College of Music
independent college of contemporary music in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Northeastern University
private university in Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Photo: Amoran002 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Harvard Medical School
medical school in Boston, Massachusetts
Photo: The original uploader was JosephBarillari at English Wikipedia . · CC BY-SA 3.0
Harvard College
undergraduate college of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Photo: The original uploader was Mancala at English Wikipedia . · Public domain
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
presidential library and museum for U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Boston, Massachusetts
Photo: Fcb981 , this edit (cropped to pano, corrected distortion) by mixpix 18:33, 28… · CC BY-SA 3.0
Massachusetts General Hospital
teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Boston Garden
indoor arena in Boston, Massachusetts, USA between 1928-1997
Photo: Copyright by Steve Lipofsky Basketballphoto.com · CC BY 3.0
Boston Common
public park in Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Before it was a park, this was a grazing pasture — every Boston family had the right to keep one cow on Boston Common. That’s how the city’s oldest public green began, back in 1634. Over the centuries it’s been a British army camp, a hanging ground, and a gathering point for revolutionaries. Today the fifty acres form the start of the Emerald Necklace, the chain of parks Frederick Law Olmsted threaded through the city.
Faneuil Hall
historic building in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Samuel Adams stood on its second floor in 1773 and demanded that tea ships leave Boston harbor, said the roof was shaking under the crowds. Merchants below sold meat and bread while revolution got planned upstairs. It started as Peter Faneuil’s gift to the city, opened 1742, burned down, and got rebuilt. The Great Hall drew abolitionists, suffragists, and Frederick Douglass. Faneuil Hall still hosts naturalization ceremonies for new citizens.
Emerson College
private coeducational university located in Boston, Massachusetts
Massachusetts State House
state capitol building for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Its gilded dome was once covered in copper by Paul Revere’s company, and in 1874 it was painted in 23-karat gold leaf. The Massachusetts State House has crowned Beacon Hill since 1798, designed by Charles Bulfinch as a masterpiece of Federal architecture. The building went more than five times over budget, and it remains one of the oldest state capitols still in use today.
MIT Sloan School of Management
business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Prudential Tower
skyscraper in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Boston Children's Hospital
children's hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Photo: Daderot · Public domain
Old North Church
historic church building in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Two lanterns hung in its steeple turned this church into the fuse of the American Revolution. On the night of April 18, 1775, the sexton climbed the tower of Christ Church—Boston’s oldest standing church, finished in 1723—and lit them: two if the British were coming by sea. Paul Revere, waiting across the Charles River, saw the signal and began his midnight ride. The church still holds services, and its steeple remains the one landmark every schoolchild in America can describe before they can find Boston on a map.
Photo: Seasider53 · CC BY 4.0
Old State House
state house in Boston, MA
Outside the Old State House, five men died in a snowy street in under ten seconds, and the shots they took became the opening argument of the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre happened at its doorstep in 1770, and Paul Revere turned the clash into an engraving that rallied the colonies. Six years later, the Declaration of Independence was first read to Bostonians from its balcony. The building itself went up in 1713 and was the tallest thing in town for three decades. It was nearly demolished in 1881, but the city chose to keep its oldest public building instead, and it has worked as a museum ever since.
Stories are written by an AI from public map and encyclopaedia data and may contain mistakes.