Holy Moses! Look at These Old Tablets

From Dave Brigham:

Unlike Moses, I didn't need to ascend an Egyptian mountain to find amazing hand-carved tablets. Rather, my Mount Sinai moment came at the foot of a former trash heap in the leafy outskirts of Boston.

Somewhere, somehow (I really need to keep track of this stuff), I learned while minding my own business on the World Wide Internet about two large carved-stone blocks located along the Charles River in West Roxbury's Millennium Park. In a flash, I was gobbling up information at this blog post at And This Is Good Old Boston.

"The first is labeled 'Machinery' above the word are two machine gears, and to the sides are two classical figures swinging hammers," I read at the blog. "In the middle of the stone is a large shield, with a smaller American stars and stripes shield above it. On a ribbon running behind the American shield are the words E. Pluribus Unum....The second block is labeled Leather. Again, there is an elaborate shield in the center of the carving. This time, the smaller shield at the top represents the shield of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

Within relatively short order, I drove due south through several Newton villages and into West Roxbury. I parked in Millennium's kayak launch lot and followed the path at the western end, as instructed in the blog post. There were lots of families and couples walking dogs and generally enjoying a cool yet still warmer-than-normal autumn day.

I'd hiked a bit at the park a few times over the years, but I was still surprised at the steep angle of the former dump. At the top of the landfill cap are a handful of athletic fields, walking trails and a parking lot. But my quarry was located at the bottom of the hill, near the Charles River.

Sciatica pain be damned, I hobbled down the paved path, took a wrong turn, doubled back, and found a dirt path that seemed promising. I thought perhaps I was on the wrong trail, but when it turned left along the Charles River, I began to get a good feeling. And sure enough, about 30 feet past the lookout area where some folks had stopped to observe the river's drought-stricken water level, I found what I was looking for.

Despite knowing I would find them here, still I was fascinated (and dumbfounded) by these slabs. Measuring perhaps 5 feet by 3 feet, they are heavy and ostentatious and nearly otherworldly laying there just a few feet from where people hike every day. I sense your puzzlement. "What the hell are those things, and what are they doing there?"

"The seals were part of the 'First National Bank of Boston' façade," according to an anonymous commenter on the above-linked blog post. "I found some photos/ artist renderings along with a news article describing the building as having 5 of these carved 'plaques' in recognition of Bostons (sic) significant contribution to the textile industry."

While a subsequent commenter doubted whether that bank was the origin of the panels, further research by a Boston Globe reporter and the Boston City Archeologist confirmed that theory. "We pored over image archives and were able to find that the Boston Public Library had an image of the bank from 1910," the Globe article reports. "The tablets are just visible on the right side of the image, enough to confirm that the leftmost tablet is the 'Leather' tablet and the far right tablet is 'Machinery.'"

To see video of the tablets, check out this separate Globe article (I apologize if it's behind a paywall).

As I made photos, several people walked by. Since I was just a few feet off the trail, I assumed that to these folks, the discarded stone slabs were old news. I'm so happy I stumbled across mention of this bizarre treasure, because I never would have found myself walking along this part of the park, and if by some miracle I had, I likely wouldn't have noticed the large stone blocks.

While the detectives mentioned in this post were able to determine where the tablets came from, no one has definitively been able to say how they ended up in their current position. The First National Bank of Boston was demolished in 1944. "In the mid-20th century, the hill [now known as Millennium Park] was first used as a gravel quarry, resulting in a massive hole in its center," according to the Globe article featuring the city archeologist. "That hole became a convenient place to dump trash, so the city turned it into the Gardner Street Landfill, a municipal dump that was used into the 1980s. As the First National Bank was demolished during a time when the landfill was active, it’s likely that these and other fragments of the bank were dumped unceremoniously in West Roxbury."

These big chunks are pretty far from the old landfill site, located very close to the river. It's likely somebody dragged the stones there. But how long ago? And why?

For a post about another slab of stone sitting in a puzzling site, check out "I Seek Newton, Part III: Highlands", a March 23, 2016, post about the Newton Highlands neighborhood and Cold Spring Park.