Free Stories in Stone by David B. Williams

addition of eighteen courses. The obelisk-to-be stood at eighty-five feet. 28
    Construction did not begin again until May 1841. In the intervening years, the association sold ten of their fifteen acres
     to raise cash. 29 The final money came from a fair held in Boston in September 1840. Organized by the “inspiring influence and delicate hands
     of the gentler sex,” the fair netted over thirty thousand dollars on sales of a “variety of things to please the eye, to adorn
     the house or person, or to supply the common wants of life.” 30
    Workers placed the final stone on the monument at six A.M. on July 23, 1842. A formal dedication took place on June 17, 1843,
     with 110 Revolutionary War veterans present, including ninety-seven-year-old Phineas Johnson, who had fought at Bunker Hill
     sixty-eight years earlier. The cost to build the monument was $101,680, basically on budget. 31
    The best way to see the great obelisk is to follow the Freedom Trail from downtown Boston across the Charles River to Charlestown.
     Designated by a red line, either painted or made of brick, the trail winds for three miles through Boston and highlights many
     Revolutionary War sites, such as Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church. After crossing the river, the red line heads
     up a small hill, bordered by a wind tunnel of brick,wood, and granite row houses.
    The narrow street leads to an open square at the top of the hill and more row houses. A final short flight of stairs enters
     the monument grounds, where you can look back at Boston and see the recently built Charles River Bridge, whose 270-foot-tall,
     cable-support towers were designed to look like the monument. Greeting you is a statue of Colonel William Prescott, who famously
     warned his men,“Don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes,” just hours after he had set up his defenses
     on the wrong hill; Bunker is higher and better situated for controlling Charlestown than Breed’s Hill. With a sword in his
     right hand and his left hand trailing behind warning his men to wait, Prescott stands ready to take on any soldier or park
     visitor.
    Behind Prescott and a metal gate towers the 221-foot-5-inch-tall monument. Its Quincy Granite building blocks are immense.
     Over 13.2 million pounds of stone make up the obelisk. The biggest stones measure 32 inches high by 90 inches long and weigh
     up to five tons. Unlike the King’s Chapel blocks, the Quincy Granite stones are smooth and matching in color, gray with a
     few dark streaks. Outside of lightning rods that run up two corners of the obelisk, no other ornamentation mars the simple
     structure.
    To access the monument, you go into the visitor center, exit by a side door, and enter the obelisk. Spiraling up around the
     central column are 294 steps. In winter, water dripping from granite can create long icicles, whereas in summer, the monument
     is pleasantly cool. A handful of narrow windows—which occasionally contain birds’ nests—bring in both light and air. An open
     room made by the pyramid at the top has four small square windows that provide an unparalleled view of Boston and the surrounding
     area.
    Even before completion of the monument, its construction, as well as the development of the Granite Railway, led to granite
     finally becoming the preeminent building stone in Boston. Willard showed that large blocks could be used and transported,
     and by refining quarry techniques, he helped drive the price down by 75 percent.
    Willard’s work became “the standard for public building in Boston— monumental, severe, and permanent,” wrote art historian
     Jane Holtz Kay in Lost Boston . 32 Designated the Boston granite style, the buildings were often massive, such as the 535-foot-long Quincy Market or Boston
     Custom House with its forty-two-ton columns that took fifty-five oxen and twelve horses to pull. Many of these early structures
     still bear the perforation marks of Tarbox’s plug and