Travel: Bunker Hill’s Monumental Improvement

The monument itself. The statue in front of it is of Col. William Prescott, a hero of the battle.

The 221-foot-high Bunker Hill Monument is a towering memorial to the men who fought in the first major battle of the American Revolution. But hardly anyone notices it. It’s the final stop on Boston’s 2.5-mile Freedom Trail, which snakes past the city’s colonial landmarks. Faced with a 10-minute uphill walk and 294 steps to the top of the obelisk, most weary walkers forgo a visit to one of the most important spots in America’s fight for independence. They shouldn’t.

And they’ll be less likely to after the recent completion of a two-year, $3.7 million refurbishment of the monument and the opening of a new 5,000-square-foot museum across the street. The improvements have reinvigorated the site, provided much-needed space to tell the story of the battle, and offered an added incentive to make the trek to the Freedom Trail’s final outpost in Charlestown. Workers have repointed the monument’s granite blocks, and new exterior lighting has restored its visual prominence in Boston’s night skyline after several years of being so poorly lit it got lost in the darkness.

Despite a popular misconception, the Bunker Hill Monument commemorates a military defeat for the colonial forces. It was the British who ultimately prevailed at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. However, the victory proved to be ruinous.

Two months after the first shots of the war were fired at Lexington and Concord, the British found themselves under siege in Boston. In a bid to break the siege and squash the growing rebellion before it could further strengthen, they planned to seize the strategic hills in Dorchester and Charlestown, which looked down on Boston and its harbor. The colonists learned of the plan, and under cover of darkness they spent the night before the assault hastily building earthworks on the Charlestown heights.

The next afternoon, the British attacked in a bloody fight that lasted for hours. Despite the redcoats’ advantages in training, manpower, and weaponry, the inexperienced colonial forces repelled the first two waves. But the patriots were unable to throw back the third charge. Out of ammunition, they resorted to flinging rocks and firing nails from their guns. The British succeeded in scaling the redoubt, and fierce hand-to-hand combat followed. The British bayonets won the ultimate advantage.

The victory came at a terrible price for the British, with nearly half of their roughly 2,400 troops killed or wounded in the fighting. Britain’s Gen. Henry Clinton wrote in his diary afterwards that “a few more such victories would have surely put an end to British dominion in America.” The colonial militia took high casualties as well, approximately 400 dead and wounded, but their performance was a moral victory in proving they could stand against the world’s greatest military power. Moreover, the battle thwarted the British plans to seize Dorchester, and the battered redcoats would eventually be forced to abandon Boston, in March 1776.

“The Battle of Bunker Hill may well have been the turning point in the oncoming of the War for Independence,” says Martin H. Blatt, chief of cultural resources for Boston National Historical Park. “Historians can make a plausible case that there still was the possibility of reconciliation after the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Now, war between Britain and the colonies seemed much more certain.”

One of the historical curiosities about the battle is that, despite its name, most of the fighting in fact took place a half mile south of Bunker Hill on Breed’s Hill, which is where the monument rises from the battlefield. The two hills were often confused on colonial-era maps, and to Bostonians watching through the smoke from their rooftops as the battle raged across the water, the fighting appeared to be taking place on Bunker Hill.

Today, in an increasingly gentrified neighborhood, restored townhouses occupy most of the original battlefield. Eleven acres were sold and subdivided in the 1830s to help pay for the monument. Most people treat the remaining four acres of open land around the monument more as a city park than as hallowed ground, jogging, tossing Frisbees, and sunbathing—activities that might be considered something near sacrilege at battlefields like Gettysburg. However, with green space at a premium in Charlestown, Blatt says, the National Park Service must respect the desires of those who want to use the land for recreation.

Charlestown’s urban landscape makes it difficult to envision that bloody afternoon in 1775, but the interpretive displays in the new museum, which opened in June, help recapture the scene. Three dioramas, which used to be housed in a cramped building at the base of the monument, depict scenes from the battle, showing the placement of patriot forces and their defenses along with the British attack positions. The dioramas have been perennial children’s favorites, with their tiny stone walls, rail fences, and thousands of miniature soldiers bearing muskets, bayonets, and battle flags. The largest of them has been entirely refurbished and should draw children and adults alike with its new accompanying audiovisual presentation.

The museum, in a former branch of the Boston Public Library, also displays artifacts from the battle such as swords, a British drum, and cannonballs. A cyclorama 28 feet across gives a 360-degree view from the middle of the battlefield during the height of the third attack. The 11-panel painting is based on an 1880s one that was originally a popular attraction in Boston’s South End. “This dramatic circular perspective of the battle has not been available to the public since the original was dismantled in the late nineteenth century,” Blatt says.

One especially interesting exhibit is of 10 of the 50 original submissions for the competition to design the monument. Most of the designs are columns in the Greco-Roman tradition, unlike the Egyptian-inspired obelisk ultimately chosen. It led to a revival of Egyptian monumental style in the nineteenth century, most prominently seen in the choice of an obelisk for the Washington Monument in the nation’s capital. (The winning architect for the Washington Monument commission, Robert Mills, had submitted unsuccessful obelisk designs for Bunker Hill.)

The Marquis de Lafayette helped lay the cornerstone for the obelisk in front of a crowd estimated at 100,000 people in 1825. It was the first major commemorative monument in the young United States, and because of funding difficulties it took 18 years to complete. It has been a Boston landmark ever since its dedication, and the opening of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge in 2003, connecting the neighborhood to downtown, revived interest in it. Bostonians have latched onto the bridge as a symbol of the city, perhaps because it’s one of the few achievements of the Big Dig highway project that they can point to with pride. The bridge’s two tall, illuminated towers echo the monument, which soars on the hill above it.

The top of the monument provides sweeping views of the bridge, Boston Harbor, and the city skyline. Unfortunately, the refurbished structure still lacks an elevator. The spiral staircase is the only way up, and climbing it provides a workout, as signs at the base warn. The numbered steps seemingly mock climbers who do the math to figure out how many of the 294 remain to be scaled.

When you get to the top, you’ll want to stay for a while to catch your breath, but the commanding view may take it away again. The golden dome of the State House glitters in the distance, the steeple of Old North Church rises over the surrounding North End neighborhood, and the frigate USS Constitution rides at anchor out in the harbor. The sight is a well-deserved reward for those who make it to this last stop on the Freedom Trail.

The Bunker Hill Monument and Museum is part of the Boston National Historical Park. For more information visit www.nps.gov/bost or call 617-242-5641.

—Christopher Klein is a travel writer who lives outside of Boston.