Sights in New England
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Fort Knox State Historic Site
The newest attraction in town is the Penobscot Bridge Observatory, an enclosed observation deck offering panoramic views from its 420ft perch above the Penobscot Narrows. The elevators that whisk you up top are on the grounds of the Fort Knox State Historic Site, just out of town and north of the bridge on ME 174. Not to be confused with the US army’s bullion depository in Kentucky, this Fort Knox dates from 1844, and was built as a bulwark against a British invasion. The huge granite fortress dominates the Penobscot River Narrows, which was an important gateway to Bangor, the commercial heart of Maine’s rich timber industry. Bring a flashlight if you plan a close…
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Yale University
In 1702, James Pierpont founded a collegiate school in nearby Clinton. In 1717 it went to New Haven in response to a generous grant of funds by Elihu Yale. The next year the name was changed to Yale in his honor, and by 1887 it had expanded its offerings to such an extent that it was time to rename it Yale University. Phelps Gate on College St opens onto the campus, which is crowded with old Gothic buildings and dominates the northern and western portions of downtown New Haven. Tallest of its spires is 216ft Harkness Tower, from which a carillon peals at appropriate moments throughout the day. You don't need to share the students' ambitions to take a stroll around the…
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Lake Compounce Theme Park
If the kids are in dire need of a rollercoaster and funnel-cake infusion, Lake Compounce Theme Park is the ticket. This 100-acre lakeshore amusement park in the town of Bristol, 18 miles southwest of Hartford at the junction of CT 61 and CT 132, boasts two rollercoasters (one of which, Boulder Dash, is an excellent wooden specimen), a whitewater raft ride, historic steam train, interactive haunted house and many other amusements. Clipper Cove, with a 300-gallon water bucket, and Splash Harbor Water Park with its pools and waterslides, are perfect for a steaming summer’s day. The 180ft free-fall ‘swing’ will thrill even the most jaded of extreme- sports enthusiasts.…
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Bushnell Park
Spreading down the hill from Capitol Hill is the 37-acre Bushnell Park, designed by Jacob Weidenmann in the 1850s. The Gothic Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Arch, which frames the Trinity St entrance, commemorates Civil War veterans and offers fine views from its turrets, unfortunately accessible only on a tour. If you're a botany buff, take the self-guided tree tour of the park. Pick up a brochure at the Memorial Arch. The Tudor-style Pump House Gallery (1947) features art exhibits and a summer concert series. The park's carousel is a 1914 merry-go-round designed by Stein and Goldstein, with 48 horses and a 1925 Wurlitzer band organ. Even if you’re not game for a ride, stop…
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Rock of Ages Quarries
The world’s largest granite quarries, 4 miles southeast of Barre off I-89 exit 6, cover 50 acres. The granite vein that’s mined here is a whopping 6 miles long, 4 miles wide and 10 miles deep. The beautiful, durable, granular stone, formed more than 330 million years ago, is used for tombstones, building facades, monuments, curbstones and tabletops. From the onsite Rock of Ages Visitor Center there's a quarry tour which includes a short video and historical exhibits. This 35-minute guided minibus tour of an active quarry heads off-site. At the onsite Rock of Ages Manufacturing Division, you can watch granite products being made – some with an accuracy that approaches…
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Mary Baker Eddy Library & Mapparium
The Mary Baker Eddy Library houses one of Boston’s hidden treasures, the intriguing Mapparium. The Mapparium is a room-size, stained-glass globe that visitors walk through on a glass bridge. It was created in 1935, which is reflected in the globe’s geopolitical boundaries. The acoustics, which surprised even the designer, allow everyone in the room to hear even the tiniest whisper.
Besides the Mapparium, the library has an odd amalgam of exhibits related to its full name, the MBE Library for the Betterment of Humanity. Second-floor galleries deal with the ‘search for the meaning of life,’ both on a personal and global level. The heart of the library’s collections,…
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Widener Library
Behind this mass of Corinthian columns and steep stairs are more than 5 miles of books. Widener was built in memory of rare-book collector Harry Elkins Widener, who had the misfortune of returning from England aboard the Titanic. Apparently Harry gave up his seat in a lifeboat to retrieve his favorite book from his stateroom. The Widener family made two stipulations in their library grant: that the building’s exterior mortar or bricks not be altered (Harvard circumvented this by connecting the library to another with a glass breezeway) and that a reading room like Harry’s be built and fresh flowers placed in it daily. Legend states that the bequest also required that…
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Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)
Perhaps the top art school in the United States, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) leaves an imprint on Providence that is easily felt. From public statuary to film performances to indecipherable screen-printed flyers stapled to College Hill telephone poles, creativity oozes palatably from it across the small cityscape.
Though some experience the pleasure of RISD by putting together portfolios that will eventually be rejected by the admissions committee, others earn style points simply by visiting the school's many galleries.
A few times a year (several weeks in May and shortly before Christmas), RISD hosts massive art shows where you can buy paintings, ceramics,…
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Icon Exhibit
Since WWII it has been illegal to export icons from Russia, so the collection of 60 rare works preserved at the icon exhibit at the St Anne Shrine is a treasure. Monsignor Pie Neveu, a Roman Catholic Assumptionist bishop, ministered to a diocese in Russia from 1906 to 1936. While at his post, Bishop Neveu collected valuable Russian icons, a hobby no doubt made easier by the collapse of the old order and the advent of secularist communism. The collection was further augmented by acquisitions brought to the USA by the Assumptionist fathers who served as chaplains at the US embassy in Moscow between 1934 and 1941. The collection was installed at the St Anne Shrine in 1971.…
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Wharves
Bannister's and Bowen's Wharves typify Newport's transformation from working city-by-the-sea to a tourist destination. While much of the experience of downtown and Thames St involves shopping and eating within a cobblestone context, it is at Bowen's Wharf that you'll feel commercialism most tangibly.
Fishing boats and pleasure vessels sit around the periphery of fudge shops, places selling sculpture made of shells, and lots of clothing stores (some local, some chain) all housed in an outdoor mall on a former wharf meant to blend into the old city by virtue of the liberal use of grey shingles. The shear number of people hanging out here lends it the air of excitement.…
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Maine Maritime Museum
The museum, south of the ironworks on the western bank of the Kennebec River, preserves the Kennebec’s long shipbuilding tradition. In summer, the 19th-century Percy & Small Shipyard here still has boatwrights hard at work building wooden craft. The Maritime History Building contains paintings, models and hands-on exhibits that tell the tale of the last 400 years of seafaring. In the apprentice shop of the Percy & Small Shipyard, boat builders restore and construct wooden boats using traditional tools and methods. In summer, the museum offers a variety of boat trip and tours along Kennebec Waterway, to the lighthouse or trolley tours through the Bath Iron Works.
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Old Corner Bookstore
In the 19th century, this historic house was leased to a bookseller, Carter & Hendlee. This was the first of nine bookshops and publishing companies that would occupy the spot, making it a breeding ground for literary and philosophical ideas. The most illustrious was Ticknor & Fields, publisher of books by Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
In the earliest days of Boston history, this was the site of the home of Anne Hutchinson, the religious dissident who was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay colony and co-founded the Rhode Island colony. The current brick building dates to 1718, when it served as a pharmacy and residence. Today…
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New Bedford Whaling Museum
A 66ft skeleton of a blue whale and a smaller skeleton of a sperm whale welcome you to the New Bedford Whaling Museum. This excellent, hands-on museum occupies seven buildings situated between William and Union Sts. To learn what whaling was all about, you need only tramp the decks of the Lagoda, a fully rigged, half-size replica of an actual whaling bark. The onboard tryworks (a brick furnace where try-pots are placed) converted huge chunks of whale blubber into valuable oil. Old photographs and a 22-minute video of an actual whale chase bring this historic period to life. Exhibits of delicate scrimshaw, and the carving of whalebone into jewelry, knick-knacks and…
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Discovery Museums
The Discovery Museums consist of two unique side-by-side museums – both great for children. Occupying an old Victorian house, the Children’s Museum (adult & child/senior $9/8; 9am-4:30pm Tue-Sun) invites kids to play make-believe, cooking up some eats in a bite-size diner, hunting for wildlife on safari, conducting a toy train and more. The Science Museum (adult & child/under 5yr $9/5; 1-4:30pm Tue, Thu & Fri, 1-6pm Wed, 9am-4:30pm Sat & Sun) is for slightly older kids, but it’s equally playful with hands-on exhibits such as earth science and an inventor’s workshop. You can get admission to both museums for $13/12 per adult or child/senior.
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Blackstone Block
Bounded by Union, Hanover, Blackstone and North Sts, and named after Boston’s first settler, this tiny warren of streets dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries.
Established in 1826, the Union Oyster House is Boston’s oldest restaurant. Around the corner in Creek Sq, the c 1767 Ebenezer Hancock House was the home of John Hancock’s brother. At the base of the shop next door, the 1737 Boston Stone served as the terminus for measuring distances to and from ‘the Hub.’ (The State House dome now serves this purpose.)
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French Cable Museum
Today’s multibillion-dollar telecommunications industry owes a debt of gratitude to Cape Cod’s Atlantic shore. The first cable connection between Europe and the US was established in 1879 by the French Telegraph Company on a windswept bluff in Eastham. When conditions there proved inhospitable, the station was moved to Orleans in 1890, and until the mid-20th century the French Cable Station transmitted communications via a 3000-mile-long cable between Orleans and Brest, France. Charles Lindbergh’s arrival in Paris and Germany’s invasion of France were among the messages relayed. The French Cable Museum in Orleans contains all the original equipment, and staff help…
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Christ Church
Cambridge’s oldest church was designed in 1761 by America’s first formally trained architect, Peter Harrison (who also did King’s Chapel in Boston). Washington’s troops used it as a barracks after its Tory congregation fled.
Christ Church’s favorite son is Teddy Roosevelt, who taught Sunday school here when he was a student at Harvard. An interesting addendum to that story is that the future president was actually discharged because he refused to convert to Episcopalianism but chose to remain a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. Adjacent to the church, the Old Burying Ground is a tranquil revolutionary-era cemetery, where Harvard’s first eight presidents…
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List Visual Arts Center
The stated goal of the List Center is to explore the boundaries of artistic inquiry – to use art to ask questions, not only about aesthetics, but also about culture, society and of course science. Rotating exhibits push the contemporary art envelope in painting, sculpture, photography, video and just about every other medium imaginable.
This is also where you can pick up a map of MIT’s public art, proof enough that this university supports artistic as well as technological innovation. The university’s progressive Percent-for-Art program requires that a certain percentage of every new building and renovation project be earmarked for art acquisitions. If you want a…
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Williams College Museum of Art
Showcases works by American luminaries such as Mary Cassett, Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe.
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Little Brewster
Little Brewster is the country’s oldest light station and site of the iconic Boston Light. Although the first lighthouse was built on this spot in 1715, it was demolished by the British in the revolution; today’s lighthouse dates from 1783. To visit Little Brewster, you must take an organized tour (reservations recommended). Learn about Boston’s maritime history during a one-hour sail around the harbor, then spend two hours exploring the island. Adventurous travelers can climb the 76 steps to the top of the light for a close-up view of the rotating light and a far-off view of the city skyline. Tours depart from Moakley Courthouse Dock in the Seaport District.
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Newport Mansions
During the 19th century, the wealthiest New York bankers and business families chose Newport as their summer resort. This was pre-income-tax America, their fortunes were fabulous and their 'summer cottages' - actually mansions and palaces - were fabulous as well. Most Newport Mansions are on Bellevue Ave, and they frequently turn up as settings for films like The Great Gatsby and PBS series featuring actors with British accents. One of the best ways to see the mansions is by bicycle. Cruising along Bellevue Ave at a leisurely place allows you to enjoy the view of the grounds, explore side streets and paths, and ride right up to the mansion entrances without having to…
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Stata Center
Of all the funky buildings on the MIT campus, none has received more attention than this avant-garde edifice that was designed by architectural legend Frank Gehry. Like something out of Dr Seuss, the Stata Center for Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is composed of whimsical, colorful shapes and tilting metallic towers.
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Tall Ship Friendship
Of the 50 wharves that once lined Salem Harbor, only three remain, the longest of which is Derby Wharf. Visitors can stroll out to the end and peek inside the 1871 lighthouse. The most prominent building along Derby St is the Custom House, where permits and certificates were issued and, of course, taxes paid. Other buildings at the site include warehouses, the scale house, and Elias Hasket Derby’s 1762 home. Stop by at the West India Goods Store, a working store with spices and other items similar to those sold two centuries ago. You can also board the replica of the tall ship Friendship to see how the sailors lived.
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John F Kennedy National Historic Site
In 1914 newlyweds Joseph and Rose Kennedy moved into this modest three-story house. Four of their nine children would be born and raised here, including Jack, who was born in the master bedroom in 1917. Matriarch Rose Kennedy oversaw the restoration of the house in the late 1960s; today her narrative sheds light on the Kennedys’ family life.
Guided tours allow visitors to see furnishings, photographs and mementos that have been preserved from the time the family lived here. A self-guided walking tour of the surrounding neighborhood sets the scene for the Kennedy family’s day-to-day life, including church, school and shopping.
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American Independence Museum
Exeter’s early history is still widely celebrated, thanks in part to the American Independence Museum, which maintains the town’s collections inside the historic Ladd-Gilman House. Among the highlights of this National Landmark Property are the furnishings and possessions of the Gilman family, who lived here from 1720 to 1820, along with a document archive, including two original drafts of the US Constitution and personal correspondence of George Washington, Pierre L’Enfant and other notables. The museum also maintains Folsom Tavern, which was once an important meeting place for George Washington and his revolutionary officers.
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