Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1918 — OLD FANEUIL HALL [ARTICLE]

OLD FANEUIL HALL

Cradle of American Liberty Is Soon to Be -Restored. Boston Landmark, Erooted In 1740, for Scores of Years Afforded Place for Patriotic Gatherings. Faneull hall is to ba made fireproof, also made over on the old model. New York has an interest in the matter. It was a native of New York state, Peter Faneull, born In New Rochelle, who built the hall and presented it to Boston in 1740. When he died three years later it was the scene of memorial exercises in his honor. What glorious patriotic meetings have been held in the building and its reconstructions since that time; in the Revolutionary war and all our wars, in abolition times and whenever the times demanded that free speech should have utterance, observes the New York Sun. No political campaign in the old days was complete without mass meetings in Faneull ball, on whose saw-dust-covered floor stood the democracy to listen, to applaud and to show its displeasure. What a wellspring of inspiration the picture of Webster replying to Hayne has been for two generations! The sight of that quaint and homely building, as one approaches it in.the bustle and tide of city life, brings back the stirring scenes of Revolutionary days when it got its name of the Cradle of American Liberty.

» Faneull hall, with its market below and meeting hall above, is to be restored to the original fabric and design as well as may be, and to be made as secure as possible against fire. In 1761 all but the shell was burned. Not since then, we believe, have the building and its additions been seriously threatened. Yet it has always been deplorably combustible. Here is what the finance commission has to say about it: “In the basement the floor timbers are unprotected. The refrigerator rooms are packed with cork. The cork and the unprotected timbers give an opportunity for fire damage in this part of the building. The windows are of commog glass- with wooden sashes and present a danger from fire on the outside. Over the upper hall there is a dumb waiter running from the room used as a kitchen which is constructed of Inflammable material.” And there is much more of the same kind. It is a painful thought that modern Boston has neglected the Cradle of American Liberty. Such, however, seems to be the case. What columns of grief and reminiscence there would have been if fire had gutted it and leveled its walls! Big Faneull hall Is to be -saved for poster. Ity now:. Bravo, Boston! Has the war waked you up to your duty? “If property done,” says a report of the society of architects, “the architectural restoration proposed will make of this building a unique possession of the city.” Faneull hall has always been that. Guard It well.