September 27 from 8.00 – 11.00 am 
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We gather beneath Edgar Allan Poe’s inscribed name on the façade of the Boston Public Library, located next to the ornate inbound headhouse of the Copley subway station at 700 Boylston St
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We begin our journey at the Boston Public Library, the oldest public library of United States. In 1848, the Boston Public Library opened its doors, providing free access to knowledge and literary resources for all citizens. After the library we heading into the city along Boylston Street, formerly known as Frog Lane. Edgar Allan Poe fondly referred to Boston as “Frogpondium.” At the corner of Boylston and Park Plaza, we encounter the sculpture “Poe Returning to Boston” by American sculptor Stefanie Rocknak. This statue portrays Poe walking away from Boston Common, accompanied by an oversized raven, with his suitcase open and a “paper trail” of literary works embedded in the sidewalk behind him. Poe was born nearby this statue at 62 Carver Street, though the house no longer exists, and the street has been renamed Charles Street South.
After a brief poetry reading in front of this amazing sculpture, we cycle via Boylston Street Subway station, this is the oldest subway system of America build in 1897, to the Central Burying Ground. This cemetery is the final resting place of notable figures such as artist Gilbert Stuart, famed for his portraits of George and Martha Washington, and Samuel Sprague and his son Charles Sprague, one of America’s earliest poets. Samuel Sprague participated in the Boston Tea Party and fought in the American Revolutionary War. Near or at the Central Burying Ground, Ann Glover (died November 16, 1688) was the last person to be hanged in Boston as a witch, although the Salem witch trials in nearby Salem occurred four years after in 1692. In 1988, the Boston City Council proclaimed November 16 as Goody Glover Day.
Our next stop is the Frog Pond in Boston Common, the oldest public park in the United States. This historic park has played a crucial role in the conservation, landscape architecture, military, and political history of Massachusetts. The Common and the adjacent Public Garden are among Boston’s most cherished and frequently visited outdoor spaces. In the Boston Common park we also visit the Founders’ Memorail depicts early English Settlers arriving in Boston and also includes Native Americans bearing witness to the scene. In 2016 protesters wrote in the colours of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe flag with yellow, blue and red chalk on the steps of the monument: ‘Immigrants #Standingrock We Won’t Be Silenced’. The protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) turned into a national fight for Indigenous rights. Soon after DAPL received in 2016 its first permits for construction, large-scale, grassroots protests spread the word that a proposed oil pipeline was threatening the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota. It became one of the most powerful protests in history. In late 2016, President Obama halted construction on DAPL and called for a thorough environmental review. Just a month later, a newly inaugurated President Trump reversed the decision. Oil began flowing in June 2017.
We then visit the Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States, founded in 1807 by the Anthology Club of Boston. After exploring this impressive library, we head to the Old Boston City Hall. This building, which housed the city council from 1865 to 1969, is one of the first in the United States to be built in the French Second Empire style. The style later became popular for many public buildings, including Providence City Hall, Baltimore City Hall, and Philadelphia City Hall, all of which we will visit during this festival.
Our next destination is the Granary Burying Ground, the burial site of several Revolutionary War patriots, including Paul Revere, the victims of the Boston Massacre, and three signers of the Declaration of Independence: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Treat Paine. At the corner we find the Park Street Church in the church the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison gave his first antislavery speech in 1829.
After the church we cycle back to School street. Here we find the statue of Benjamin Franklin. It overlooks the first site of the Latin School, the oldest public school in America. Franklin, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock all attended the Latin School. Puritan settlers built the first schoolhouse on this location in 1635. On our way to Old South Meeting House we pass the 1718 Old Corner Bookstore, the oldest commercial building in Downtown Boston. It had been a home and apothecary in the 1700s, and later became a literary center in the mid-1800s. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others brought their manuscripts here to be published by Ticknor and Fields Company. The nonprofit preservation organization Historic Boston Inc. was formed to save the Old Corner Bookstore from demolition in 1960.
In the days leading to the American Revolution, citizens gathered at the Old South Meeting House to challenge British policies, protesting the Boston Massacre and the tea tax. Here, at an overflow meeting on December 16, 1773, the Boston Tea Party began. Saved from destruction in 1876, in the first successful historic preservation effort in New England, the building is now an active meeting place, a haven for free speech, and a museum exhibit, “Voices of Protest.”
Continuing our tour, we cycle through the historic commercial row on Bromfield Street, one of the few surviving 19th-century granite structures in downtown Boston. We then proceed via Hawley Street, where Melvil Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal Classification system in 1870. This system is still widely used by libraries and bookstores worldwide. Next is Summer Street, in the basement of an store at 83-85 Summer Street, the Great Boston Fire on November 9-10, 1872 started, which destroyed 776 buildings and caused significant damage.
After the fire, the area was redeveloped into the Financial District, paving the way for the construction of South Station on Summer Street, which opened in 1899. Crossing the Fort Point Channel over the Congress Street Bridge, we pass the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. Following the Harborwalk, we enjoy a fantastic view of the city skyline and pass the Institute of Contemporary Art and Mass Robotics. At Mass Robotics, we read an excerpt from Poe’s satire “The Man That Was Used Up,” in which a striking soldier is revealed to be composed almost entirely of prosthetics. It was the first cyborg story!
Our journey concludes with a cycle over the Raymond Flynn Memorial Bridge and the Butler Freight Corridor Bridge, along the container terminal to Fort Independence. Poe was stationed at Fort Independence for five months at the age of 18. He enlisted in the army in 1827 due to financial desperation after a falling out with his foster father and dropping out of the University of Virginia. While stationed on Castle Island, he published 50 copies of his first volume of poetry, “Tamerlane,” under the pseudonym “A Bostonian.”
