I had always wondered what this castle was for as a child. It is right outside Chinatown near Castle Square... the housing projects where I grew up. On Wikipedia it says it was originally an armory and when it was built, much if the neighborhoods in Boston were not yet filled in with land. Much or Chinatown is in fact land fill which is why you see empty lots on Hudson street where in a prime real estate location. It's not that co dos can't be built there. But it takes money and modern technology of course.
So what is the Castle for. Well this goes to the beginnings of divisions by neighborhoods and immigrant ethnic group. (of course the first culture clash was contact between Europeans and people from here....)
The Castle was built to defend the Yankees in an event of an Irish Immigrant uprising (or so the story goes)
There were enough guns to hold them off (in theory) until troops arrived.
And of course much later the Irish would come to run the city, and now we are in a transition period between the old style of politics by ethnic group, and activism and diversity which changes things (somewhat) and whatever will happen next.
Will we become the integrated melting pot we claim to be and which we are shifting towards? ( or seemed to be)
What will the future of Boston look like and how will we interpret historical sites like this, and the Quincy school or the Chinatown gate?
Which neighborhoods will remain and which will seem unrecognizable?
More on how Chinatown's history fits in to the bug picture later....
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