Off the Bricks

Banned in Boston · STOP 09 · Chinatown

In 1929 Boston banned a Pulitzer Prize play from a theatre on Hollis Street. The play survived. The street didn't.

In 1929 Boston's mayor banned a Pulitzer Prize-winning Eugene O'Neill play from a theatre on Hollis Street. The producers moved it to Quincy, and by one account thousands went. The theatre is gone. So is Hollis Street, which isn't on the map anymore at all. Stand on Washington Street just south of Kneeland, where it used to begin, and see what has the block now.

Josiah Johnson Hawes's albumen print of the Hollis Street Church, c. 1860 - the building on whose lot the Hollis Street Theatre later stood.
Josiah Johnson Hawes, 'Hollis St. Church. 1810-1885,' c. 1860. Boston Public Library, Arts Department, via Digital Commonwealth.

This is stop 9 of Banned in Boston. Walk it - any two stops are free.

The plate

The Street Went Too

Collected on site

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Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Directions

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The street had shipped a building south before. The Bulfinch-designed church here was taken apart in 1810, floated on a barge to Braintree and rebuilt there in 1811.

More footnotes on the story card, in the app.

Censorship, Works after dark

In these collections: After Dark

Near Boylston · Near Chinatown

Sources (16)