Looking back 100 years, as Boston celebrated the arrival of the1900s, the interests of the day were - then as now - sports,politics, religion, and the weather. Churches were 'thronged' formidnight Mass, The Boston Globe reported on the first morning of thenew year, going on to call it, with some hyperbole, 'the greatestcelebration of the advent of a new year that the world has everknown.'First Night festivities were still three-quarters of a centuryoff. But in her 1903 book, 'Boston Days,' Lillian Whiting wrote thatthe 'ceremonial celebration' at the State House had been 'one ofsignificant and impressive beauty.'
From the balcony overlooking the Common, the venerable Unitarianminister Edward Everett Hale, then nearing 80, 'consecrated thehistoric hour and the years that waited, just over the threshold ofthis mystic midnight, with all their unknown potentialities, withtheir new and greater message to humanity.'
There were no fireworks that night. Instead, there was 'a greatfanfare of trumpets and 'the deep-toned bell of old King's Chapel.'
But to keep the advent of that year in perspective, the Globe'sfront page carried a 'tale-of-the-tape' report on the heavyweightmatch to be fought on New Year's night at the Coney Island SportingClub in New York between Charles 'Kid' McCoy and Peter Maher. Maherappeared the local favorite, but he would be knocked out in the fifthround.
As for politics, Thomas N. Hart, a Republican banker, was beinginaugurated as the mayor, returning to the then-new, now-old CityHall on School Street for a second term, a decade after his first.Hart had narrowly defeated John R. Murphy, the candidate ofDemocratic boss Martin Lomasney in the December election, and therewas more than a hint of Yankee 'good government' efforts in hispledge of 'government of law and order, not of partisanship orspoils.'
Hart's narrow win had been the big political story of the oldyear, but nobody could have known that the bigger political story -as it would be for the next half-century - was James Michael Curley'selection to the Common Council from Ward 17 in Roxbury. He took hisseat on the first afternoon of the new year.
As for the weather, after a relatively mild December, it hadturned cold enough to make an 'ideal day' for skating on BrightonPond and elsewhere in the city, much like for skaters at the BostonCommon's Frog Pond now.
As a century later, Bostonians waited a long time for snow. Itfinally came, a few days later, and the Globe reported that 'urchinswere happy' and that roads like Beacon Street and Blue Hill Avenuewere 'everywhere covered' with horse-drawn sleighs as riders enjoyed'winter's regal pastime.'
That was Boston, 100 years ago. It was a city, the 1900 censusrecorded, of 560,892 people - up from 448,477 a decade before - andalmost evenly divided between men (274,922) and women (285,970). Andit was very much a city of immigrants, with 194,953 people, or 35percent of the population, being foreign-born - mainly in Ireland -and another 206,937 classified as 'native white [of] foreignparents.'
Almost half the city's population worked: 181,183 men and 70,339women. It was a blue-collar municipality, with 19,679 laborers inaddition to 11,337 hackmen, teamsters, and draymen. It was also - asit is now - a city under construction, with 17,104 working in thebuilding trades and 772 architects, designers, and draftsmen (45 ofthem women).
In her 1902 book, 'Literary Boston of Today,' Helen M. Winslowlamented that the city had lost the literary giants of the immediatepast - William Dean Howells to New York, Henry James to London, andsome to death. But certifying Boston's claim to be the 'Athens ofAmerica,' there were almost twice as many musicians and musicteachers (1,984) as there were lawyers (1,008), along with 656artists and art teachers, and 412 'literary and scientific persons.'
