A Reggie Road Trip: Boston

Following is an essay about our recent, post-Christmas road trip to Boston.  Reggie forgot to bring his camera with him on the trip, so he is relying instead on images sourced on the Internet to illustrate it, for which he is most appreciative.

Once the roads were safe to drive after the Boxing Day Blizzard of 2010, Boy and I fired up the family jalopy and hightailed it over to Boston to spend several days of a much needed change of pace.  While I love spending time at Darlington House, particularly over the holidays, I enjoy taking a break from it, too—particularly after having been snowed in for two days, as we were.

An early postcard of the newly reopened Huntington Avenue entrance
to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Image courtesy of art.com

I have been to Boston many times over the years, and I know my way around the city.  Boy and I are familiar with its notable sights, museums, and restaurants—having visited most of them on previous visits, in some cases multiple times.  The express purpose of this visit was to spend a day taking in the new Americas Wing at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which opened to great acclaim at the end of November.  We also set aside time to visit some of our favorite haunts and dine in the city's restaurants.

A view of a portion of the new Americas Wing at the MFA
Image courtesy of curatedmag.com

One of the highlights of any visit to Boston for Reggie is staying at the Four Seasons Hotel, which is where I always stay whenever I have an overnight visit to the city, either on business or for pleasure.  I've been a guest in other hotels in Boston over the years, including the Ritz Carlton, the Taj (the former Ritz), 15 Beacon, and others, but my favorite hotel there is—by a wide margin—the Four Seasons.  Several years ago I decided that I need venture no farther than the Four Seasons' luxurious halls when staying in an hotel in Boston, and so I no longer consider staying anywhere else when I find myself there.  As they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The Four Seasons Hotel, Boston
Image courtesy of uptake.com

In addition to being a wonderfully comfortable hotel with exquisite service and a location overlooking the beautiful Public Garden that can't be beat, the Four Seasons is dog-friendly, so we were able to bring our beloved Pompey with us on our visit to Boston.  The hotel welcomes dogs weighing twenty-five pounds and under, and thoughtfully provides them with beds, bowls, and specially made treats during their visit.  For those of us who adore our four-footed friends and are bereft when we are parted from them, that is another compelling reason to choose the Four Seasons Hotel when staying in Boston.

An early postcard view of the Boston Public Garden
Image courtesy of nostalgia.esmartkid.com

We arrived in Boston on Tuesday afternoon and later met and dined with a fellow blogger at Pierrot Bistro, a little French restaurant he chose that caters to the locals of surrounding Beacon Hill.  It was a fascinating evening, and gave us much to talk about over the next several days.  Wednesday was devoted to ambling around the city, doing some post-Christmas sale shopping on Newbury Street and strolling around Beacon Hill, an exceptionally handsome, remarkably well-preserved area full of splendid eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses.

  

Louisburg Square, Beacon Hill, in 1944,
and virtually unchanged today
Image courtesy of life.com

We had dinner that evening at Locke-Ober, one of the city's oldest restaurants, founded in 1875.  We had an excellent, old-fashioned meal that started with raw oysters, followed by Wiener Schnitzel "à la Holstein," one of the restaurant's historic signature dishes, and culminated with an excellent Indian pudding.  Locke-Ober is located in a somewhat gritty mercantile area just off the Boston Common and is rather difficult to find, as it is hidden down an alley—be sure to chart your way in advance if you book a table there.

The main dining room at Locke-Ober
Image courtesy of same

The next day, Thursday, we met our friend Bitsy Adams at ten in the morning at the Museum of Fine Arts, where we blissfully spent the entire day.  Bitsy and I were classmates at Yale, and we both studied American decorative arts there under Charles Montgomery.  Bitsy, Boy, and I were the perfect companions for our visit to the museum, as we are all very interested in and knowledgeable about American fine and decorative arts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and we are all collectors of it.

And what a day it was!  We were absolutely bowled over by what we saw.  The MFA has been spectacularly transformed with the opening of its expansion, which cost half a billion dollars.  Exceptionally well designed by Foster+Partners of London, the MFA's expansion has led to a complete rethinking of the museum's spaces, and involved a reworking and reorientation of its entrances, circulation routes, and collection galleries.

The Americas Wing Courtyard
Image courtesy of berkshirefinearts.com

The centerpiece of the expansion is a new Art of the Americas wing, which is entered through a soaring central courtyard that connects it with the original Beaux Arts museum, designed by the Boston Brahmin architect Guy Lowell (1870-1927) and which opened its doors in 1909.  The new wing is a sensitive addition to the original structure and compliments it rather than overwhelms it, as so many new museum additions unfortunately do these days.  The three of us, all inveterate museumgoers, were extremely impressed.

The main gallery of the 18th-Century Art
of the Colonial Americas Galleries
Image courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

We entered the Americas wing on its ground floor, which contains an astonishing collection of eighteenth-century art of the colonial Americas, including the Nation's most comprehensive collection of paintings by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), the greatest artist that Boston produced.  Stunning.  What is not clear from the photograph, above, is that the paintings—which are the jewels of the collection—are displayed in many cases contextually along with examples of superb period furniture and decorative arts that they would have shared space with in the houses for which they were commissioned.

The next galleries feature the arts of the New Republic, including Thomas Sully's (1783-1872) enormous "The Passage of the Delaware," painted in 1819 and shown in the following photograph.  What is not entirely visible in the photograph are the unfinished pendant portraits by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) of George and Martha Washington; this likeness of George Washington is the basis for the one-dollar bill.

The main room of the Early 19th-Century Art Galleries
Image courtesy of shermanstravel.com

After taking a break to have a delicious luncheon in the museum's excellent Bravo restaurant, we returned to the Americas wing to resume our exploration.  Everywhere that one turns in the Americas Wing one is confronted with iconic examples of the greatest eighteenth and nineteenth century art this country produced.  Boy, Bitsy, and I were slacked jawed walking through the galleries, and found ourselves exclaiming, "Oh, my God!" at every turn, such that it almost become a joke.  But it wasn't a joke.  We meant it!

The main gallery of the Art of the 19th-Century Galleries
Image courtesy of curatedmag.com

The art of the mid-to-later-nineteenth century is displayed salon-style in the main gallery, as is shown in the above photograph, similarly to the way the collection of the nearby Boston Athenæum was displayed in the 1870s:

"Picture Gallery of the Boston Athenæum"
Painted by Enrico Meneghelli in 1876
Collection of the Boston Athenæum

Further galleries devoted to nineteenth-century American art radiate out from the main salon gallery, including one devoted to the works of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) that is full of his gorgeous paintings of society beauties and landscapes, as well as his masterpiece "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit," painted in 1882, which is displayed flanked by the two enormous Chinese vases depicted in the painting:

A view of the Sargent Room in the 19th-Century Galleries
Image courtesy of csmonitor.com

By that point we were beginning to lose steam, and we were also suffering visual stimulation overload.  We picked up our pace in the remaining galleries devoted to nineteenth-century art, including ones featuring paintings of Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) and Mary Cassatt (1844-1926).  By the time we hit the top floor, devoted to art of the twentieth century, we were done.  But that's not surprising, since it was a little after four in the afternoon, and we had been at the MFA for six hours by then.

A view of a room in the 20th-Century Art Galleries
Image courtesy of berkshirefinearts.com

We all agreed that we were incapable of looking at any more art that day and that we would have to return to the MFA many more times in order to take in all of the wonders of its incredible collections, beautifully displayed in its marvelous, comprehensive, sensitively executed expansion.  We also agreed that what we really needed at that point was a bit of a rest and a drink.  So we left the MFA, hailed a taxi, and went to the Four Seasons for a quick freshening up and an introduction of Bitsy to Pompey.  We then headed over to Bitsy's club, the Union Club, for drinks and an early dinner.

The Union Club, Boston
Image courtesy of flickr.com

The venerable Union Club overlooks the Boston Common and was founded in 1863 by breakaway members of the older Somerset Club, located across the park.  The Union's clubhouse is two early nineteenth-century townhouses designed by Charles Bullfinch (1763-1844), the brilliant architect of the Massachusetts State House (among other notable buildings), which is just up the street.  The clubhouse is handsome and well appointed, and we spent a delightful evening there as guests of  Bitsy, who stood us to several rounds of delicious cocktails and a very tasty dinner, for which we are most grateful.

It was with regret that we left Boston the next morning, New Year's Eve, to return to Darlington House.  After stopping at a dear friend's house along the way for a delightful and conversation-packed luncheon, we were happy to arrive home for a quiet evening of just ourselves, leaving the evening's revelries to others.  Reggie was happily snoring away long before the clock struck twelve and this New Year began.  And at this point in his life, that's just how he likes it.

Happy New Year, Dear Reader.


Please note: Reggie has received nothing in return for these reviews, nor does he expect to in the future.