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| The 1868 Ether Monument |
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| Charles Gibson's Convenience Station |
Last month, museum docent Timothy Spezia wrote his final blog post on Dr. John Collins Warren, grandfather of Rosamond Warren Gibson, and his groundbreaking use of ether in 1846. Coincidentally, while walking through the Boston Public Garden a few days ago, I happened to notice a monument in the northwest corner. I had seen it before but never thought anything of it; compared to the grand equestrian statue of George Washington amongst the flowers nearby, this monument is more subdued under the shade of trees. Upon further inspection, and much to my surprise, the structure revealed itself as the 1868 Ether Monument.
The Ether Monument does not memorialize one person, but rather the historic MGH operation when dentist William T. G. Morton assisted John Collins Warren in using ether as an anesthetic for the first time. Atop the granite tower kneels the Good Samaritan aiding a wounded stranger. The tower’s four sides feature an assortment of scenes and inscriptions illustrating medically relevant themes. The monument’s status as the oldest in the Garden—preceding the George Washington statue by one year—makes it evident that Bostonians highly valued this medical advance and took pride in the historic operation.
The Ether Monument, which is not far from the Gibson House, commemorates a valued contribution made by a Gibson relative to Boston, the United States, and the world. On the other side of Charles Street, on the Boston Common, stands another Gibson family–related structure: one that became shrouded in controversy despite its planners’ good intentions.
The building on the Common is a “convenience station” whose construction was overseen by Charles Gibson, Jr., this museum’s founder, while he served as a volunteer commissioner of Boston’s Park and Recreation Department from 1914 to 1916. What should have been a straightforward task proved a massive headache for all involved.
Plans for a new Boston Common convenience station had been in the works since 1910. After three attempts at finding a suitable location, the Park and Recreation Department finally landed on the Common’s Flagstaff Hill, where there was already an old wooden sanitary structure. Charlie and his fellow commissioners employed architect G. Henri Desmond to design plans for a new station. Desmond’s decision to model the station on the Petit Trianon at Versailles is what ignited the controversy.
In January 1916, when construction on the convenience station began, a flurry of criticism erupted from different areas of the community. Articulating the Boston Society of Architects’ opposition to the design, the Architectural Review exclaimed, “Even the one-time sacred Common … supposedly maintained by statute law safe from harm forever, has, before the public vote had been fairly counted and registered, been misused by its official guardians, the Park Commission…. They have quietly, in the dark o’ night, commenced a ‘Public Convenience’ station—adapted, by an uninspired architectural genius with a rare feeling for propriety, from the ‘Temple of Love’ at Versailles!—in defiance of public desire…”
In general, opponents, with the city’s Art Commission at the forefront, decried the use of such high architectural design for a glorified men’s bathroom. Mayor James Michael Curley finally suspended work on the convenience station amidst the mudslinging.
Despite the criticism, many people did support Charlie, who became the personification of the Park and Rec Dept. during this episode. Lawyer James M. Keyes wrote a letter in support, noting that “The arguments of the Art Commission appear petty and absurd when we realize that the only issue in this entire discussion is, namely; what is best for the public in general? I heartily endorse the attitude of the Park and Recreation Dept.”
The Boston Herald, mockingly referring to the convenience station as “the temple,” fired off a string of editorials in Charlie’s direction in late January. In “Gibson vs. Art Board,” the editor wrote, “Too much power now rests in the hands of one man.… In a commission of three, Mr. Gibson is the one architect. His decision in matters architectural must be pretty generally followed by the other two members. With their cooperation, he now has the power to place buildings on any part of the Common, and in any style that satisfies his personal taste.”
In response, Charlie denied having sole responsibility for the architectural decisions, contending that “Until [this issue goes before the City Council] it would perhaps be well to suspend judgment and not take it for granted … that this building is an artistic atrocity or that the money of the city is being ill-spent.”
Eventually, construction started up again on Charlie’s convenience station, and the controversy died down. As of 1945, the Flagstaff Hill convenience station was one of three on the Common. For a few decades before 2012, the building stood abandoned and locked up to the public. That year the Earl of Sandwich fast-food chain gutted the structure and turned it into a place of utility once more. No longer known as “Gibson’s Folly” or “the temple,” the inconspicuous building next to the Parkman Bandstand now rarely induces a second glance. If only passing Bostonians knew how up in arms their forebears were about a Beaux Arts bathroom corrupting the sacred Common.
By the time of Charlie’s death in 1954, the Boston Herald, his foe in the conflict, had erased the debacle from history, observing that “As an unpaid member of the old Boston Parks and Recreation Commission, Mr. Gibson … played a major role in beautifying the Boston Common and the Public Garden.”
By Maddie Webster, museum guide and intern
Sources:
Architectural Review, January 1916, https://books.google.com/books?id=rqNAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA13&dq=boston+society+of+architects+jan+1916+convenience+station&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDuZ2Rg5nNAhUCpB4KHTnlD58Q6wEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=boston%20society%20of%20architects%20jan%201916%20convenience%20station&f=false.
“Charles Hammond Gibson Dies, Poet, 79, Was ‘Proper Bostonian,’” Boston Herald, November 1954, Charles Gibson, Jr. Personal Papers, 1954, Gibson House Archives.
Gibson, Charles Jr., “Response to ‘Gibson vs. Art Board,’” January 20, 1916, Charles Gibson, Jr. Personal Papers, 1916 M, Gibson House Archives.
“Gibson vs. Art Board,” Boston Herald, January 1916, Charles Gibson, Jr. Personal Papers, 1916 M, Gibson House Archives.
Keyes, James M., Letter to the Parks and Recreation Department, January 21, 1916, Charles Gibson, Jr. Personal Papers, 1916 G, Gibson House Archives.
“Reports and Communications” (Boston Finance Commission, 1916), https://books.google.com/books?id=fMpJAAAAMAAJ&dq=convenience+station+boston+common&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
“Sculpture & Memorials,” Friends of the Public Garden, accessed June 10, 2016, http://friendsofthepublicgarden.org/our-parks/public-garden/sculpture-memorials/.
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