For the second time since I have been living and working in Boston, the Boston Tea Party Museum is on fire. Boston tourists will remember this as the museum where visitors could reenact important historical tax evasion by throwing fake bundles of tea into the harbor (actually the Fort Point Channel). After a fire in August of 2001 caused by a lightning strike did great damage to the site, the entire site was demolished, and a new interpretive facility was under construction in its place.The original Tea Party Museum opened in 1973 and included a replica of the Brig Beaver, one of three ships raided by colonists in an act of defiance that helped sparked the American Revolution. The Beaver was hauled out of the water in 2004 and taken to the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center for what was described at the time as a $300,000 reconstruction.
The current renovation was supposed to double the size of the museum, which is owned by Historic Tours of America based in Key West, Fla. The plans called for the addition of replicas of the Dartmouth and the Eleanor, the two other tall ships raided by colonists in 1773.
The August 3, 2001 fire.Now it is on fire again:
The August 27, 2007 fire (Fort Point Channel in the foreground).
2 comments:
Hmmm. I guess God doesn't approve of revolutionary tax-evadin tea parties.
Did you take those photos yourself?
No, today's photos were taken by Adam Salsman, and the photo of the old fire was taken by David Ryan. The photos were posted on the Boston Globe website as the story developed.
Regardless, the use of photos "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research" is generally understood to be a fair use of otherwise copyrighted images.
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