Charlestown: USS Constitution and the Bunker Hill Monument

Charlestown occupies a peninsula north of the Charles River connected to downtown Boston by bridge and by the MBTA Orange Line, and its identity is shaped by two events in American history that occurred within a decade of each other: the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), fought on the peninsula's heights during the opening months of the Revolutionary War and commemorated by the 67-metre granite obelisk that has dominated Charlestown's skyline since its 1843 completion, and the commissioning of the USS Constitution (1797), the oldest commissioned warship still afloat in the world, which has been berthed at the Charlestown Navy Yard since 1897 and whose three-century survival makes it the most extraordinary preserved artifact of early American naval history. Both sites are free to visit and together constitute the best concentration of Revolutionary-era American history accessible in a single Charlestown morning.

The USS Constitution — nicknamed Old Ironsides for the British cannonballs that reportedly bounced off her hull during the War of 1812 — is staffed by active-duty Navy sailors who serve as her crew and guides, providing tours of the gun decks, captain's quarters, and below-decks spaces that convey the reality of life aboard a frigate of the period with a specificity that museum exhibits cannot replicate. The ship's constitution as a commissioned warship rather than a museum piece means that it occasionally sails under its own power — the Constitution's annual turnaround cruise on Constitution Day (September 17) under tow and with its cannons firing a presidential salute is one of Boston's oldest annual traditions. The adjacent USS Constitution Museum provides the historical context that the ship tour assumes, and the Navy Yard's preserved industrial infrastructure (dry docks, rope walk building, shipyard cranes) documents the physical environment of American naval power from the late 18th century through the 20th.

Charlestown's residential neighbourhood surrounding the two major historical sites has undergone a transformation comparable to Beacon Hill's: the working-class Irish-American neighbourhood of the 20th century has been substantially replaced by a professional residential population attracted by the neighbourhood's proximity to downtown, its Federal-era row houses, and the views from the Monument Hill area over the entire Boston harbor. The commercial life of City Square and the streets surrounding the Navy Yard holds the neighbourhood restaurants and cafés that serve this population — the Warren Tavern, operating since 1780 and claiming to be Boston's oldest tavern, serves as the neighbourhood's historical anchor in the way that only an institution that has actually been operating for two centuries can. The combination of extraordinary historical monuments and a neighbourhood in active residential transition makes Charlestown the area of Boston that most dramatically juxtaposes the American past and present.