Never doubt your artistic voice, you can't know who will hear it or when.

One summer day in 1854, Hannah Cohoon, a longtime Shaker, had a vision of a singular and curious tree. She saw plainly the branches, leaves and fruit, and she painted them on a sheet of white paper. One of the Shaker elders told her the name of the tree: the Tree of Life.

In the 1930s, The Tree of Life was discovered in a drawer. It has since become an icon of all things Shaker. The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited it twice. It appeared on the cover of magazines and books, in gallery and museum exhibits and on a postcard for Unicef.

Hannah Cohoon’s paintings survive as part of a body of 200 works created by Shakers, mostly by women, in Hancock Shaker Village, Mass. and Lebanon, N.Y. The Shakers called them ‘gift drawings’ because they were gifts from the Spirit, based on messages they received during ecstatic spiritual visitations.

It was the Era of Manifestation, a time of spiritual revival when Shakers had visions– gifts -- that they expressed in song, dance and drawings. The era lasted from 1837 to the mid-1850s, when the Shakers decided their emotional excesses were embarrassing.

Many Shakers created gift paintings, but Hannah Cohoon’s were unusually bold and graceful. She may have thought so too, because she signed her paintings when others didn’t.

Hannah Cohoon was born Feb. 1, 1788, in Williamstown, Mass., the youngest of three daughters born to Noah Harrison. He had been a drummer boy in the American Revolution. She had two older sisters, Lois and Polly.

On March 15, 1817 when she was 29, Hannah Cohoon entered the Shaker community of Hancock, Mass., with her 5-year-old son Harrison and 3-year-old daughter Mariah. Nothing has been discovered about her husband or her marriage.

Hannah Cohoon painted A Bower of Mulberry Trees from her vision of Shaker elders feasting on cakes under mulberry trees. The doves represent the bounties of heaven, the table depicts holy feasts held biennially.

She is remembered today for her gift drawings, but she also wrote music.

She described how the Tree of Life came about in pencil on the painting:

"I recieved a draft of a beautiful Tree penciled on a large sheet of white     paper bearing ripe fruit I saw it plainly it looked very singular and     curious to me. I have since learned that this tree grows in the Spirit     Land. Afterwards the spirit showed me plainly the branches, leaves, and     fruit presented or drawn upon paper. The leaves were checked or (unreadable)     and the same color you see here. I entreated Mother Ann to tell me the     name of this tree which she did Oct 1st 4th hour PM by moving the hand    of a medium to write twice over Your Tree is the Tree of Life."

Hannah Harrison Cohoon died in Hancock, Mass., on January 7, 1864.

via The New England Historical Society, 

Beware old scratch!

va Black Cats, Lucky Bones and Superstitious New Englanders

Where the elite meet to eat and greet.

 

The Ritz-Carlton from the Public Garden. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

In the spring of 1927, the Ritz-Carlton hotel opened in Boston and required guests to adhere to a dress code, forbade women to dine alone and sometimes rejected guests if they requested reservations on writing paper deemed too cheap.

It was a smashing success.

Boston’s Ritz-Carlton combined European luxury with Bostonian snobbery. It offered a bathroom in every guest room, a la carte dining according to Escoffier, waiters in white tie and fresh flowers everywhere.

Guests viewed the Ritz-Carlton as their private club, and their privacy was carefully guarded. The riff-raff was kept away. Hotel management checked to see if the guests were in the Social Register or Who’s Who.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the Ritz-Carlton. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel was very nearly an apartment building called the Mayflower.

Edward Wyner, 29, was a real estate developer who had bought a third of an acre across from the Public Garden in 1926 and built the first two stories of an apartment building. Then he got a phone call from Mayor James Michael Curley, who persuaded him to build a world-class hotel instead.

Cesar Ritz, ‘the “king of hoteliers and hotelier to kings,’ had set the world standard for luxury, service, cuisine and privacy at the Ritz in Paris and the Carlton in London.

Ritz died in 1918, but his wife continued to expand the hotel management business bearing his name. Wynne got permission to use the Ritz-Carlton name.

On May 19, 1927 the Ritz-Carlton opened to Boston’s elite — at least those willing to pay $15 a for a room. The hotel’s signature dish was served that first night — Lobster au Whiskey. signifying the rich and insouciant tenor of the hotel. For although the Ritz-Carlton catered to the Social Register crowd, it was also a magnet for celebrities, world leaders and artists.

Privacy was protected — if you wanted it to be — and whims were indulged. Winston Churchill’s favorite color was red, so the furniture in his room was reupholstered in that color. Joan Crawford’s room was decorated with a theme of peppermint Lifesavers, her favorite candy.

Clara Bow at the Ritz-Carlton. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The restaurants were a place to swing, as the Roof at the Ritz hosted Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Oscar Hammerstein wrote the lyrics to “Edelweiss” in the shower during a stay. Richard Rodgers composed Ten Cents a Dance  on a piano in a Ritz-Carlton suite.  Tennessee Williams wrote part of  A Streetcar Named Desire while staying at the hotel.

Then came the Great Depression. Times were bad and Wynne struggled to keep up appearances. Though only 30 rooms of the hotel’s 300 were occupied one grim night, Wyner kept every light in the hotel on.

The Ritz-Carlton survived the Depression and remained Boston’s society hotel through the 1950s. Ed Wyner died of a heart attack in 1961. In 1964 the Ritz-Carlton Boston was sold to Gerald F. Blakeley and associates.

Blakeley owned the hotel for 20 years. It only made money in three of those years. But, he said, “from a public relations standpoint … it was a tremendous asset.”

From 1951 to 1975, the Ritz-Carlton Boston was one of only two Ritz-Carltons in the United States. The other one was in Atlantic City, and has since been converted to condominiums. In 1975, Blakeley sold the Ritz-Carlton trademark to real estate developer William Johnson, who expanded the company worldwide.

The Ritz-Carlton Boston is now the Taj Boston.

via

"For many years, North End residents said they smelled molasses on hot summer days."

On this day in history:

The Great Molasses Disaster

The aftermath of the molasses disaster. Boston Globe Photo, Courtesy Boston Public Library

On Jan. 15, 1919, a large molasses storage tank burst in Boston’s North End, and a 25-foot-high wave of molasses surged through the streets at 35 miles per house.

Twenty-one people were killed, including 17 workers, and 150 were injured. Witnesses said the rivets popping out of the tank sounded like a machine gun.

The tank, 50 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, contained 2.3 million gallons of molasses originally destined to be made into rum. The deadly goo damaged the Boston Elevated Railway on Atlantic Avenue, tipped over a rail car and knocked buildings off their foundations. The molasses surge picked up a truck and threw it into Boston Harbor.

Inside the Boston and Worcester freight terminal, the river of molasses poured through the doors and windows, killing workers like trapped animals.

Outside, some people were caught by the wall of goo, some hurled into the air, some flung against freight cars, some smothered by the boiling sludge.

The molasses was waist deep in the streets, and covered struggling forms trying to escape the sticky mass. It was hard to tell if they were men, women, children or horses. The more they struggled, the more ensnared they became.

The USS Nantucket, a training ship, was docked near the disaster and 116 cadets ran to the scene to rescue victims and keep onlookers away from danger. The police and Red Cross arrived. A makeshift hospital was set up in a nearby building, and for the next four days rescuers searched for victims.

The Boston Evening Globe reported:
"Fragments of the great tank were thrown into the air, buildings in the neighborhood began to crumple up as though the underpinnings had been pulled away from under them, and scores of people in the various buildings were buried in the ruins, some dead and others badly injured.

The explosion came without the slightest warning. The workmen were at their noontime meal, some eating in the building or just outside, and many of the men in the Department of Public Works 
Buildings and stables, which are close by, and where many were injured badly, were away at lunch.
Once the low, rumbling sound was heard no one had a chance to escape. The buildings seemed to cringe up as though they were made of pasteboard"

In the aftermath, local residents filed a class-action suit against the company, Purity Distilling Company. Purity claimed anarchists blew up the tank, but investigators found it was poorly constructed and never tested for safety. When filled, it leaked molasses, and the company painted it brown to hide the leaks.

For many years, North End residents said they smelled molasses on hot summer days.

Via The New England Historical Society