The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-21
BOSTON WILL HAVE 'OLD HOME WEEK" Puritan Capital Will Celebrate
 This Month CHANGES IN THE TOWN Old City of the Last Generation Has Given Place to a Great and
 Unique Metropolitan
 Community.
CHANGES IN THE TOWN

Boston, July 2O.-Boston is the first of the larger cities in the United States to hold an "old horSe week. cc>Sbration. The celebration is to begin July 2S and end August 8, and it Is estimated that at least 100000 former Bostonians either na- lives or adopted sons and daughters, will come back to the old Bay State capital to take part in it.
 "Old home week" Is a New England institution that originated in New Hamp- shire a few years ago. Back of the insti- tuition lies the fact that there has been a steady migration from New England to other parts of the country, and particu- larly to the middle and far west, so 1t has been said there is scarcely a place in the other thirty-nine states that has not some sons or daughters of the northeast ern corner of the country Hence the keen interest which many people outside New England are taking in the coming Boston reunion.
 The home-comers, especially those who have been away from here for ten years or more, will find changed city Not that the streets of the downtown dis trict are any straighter than they used to be; the tradition that the town was laid out according to the cowpaths made in the old days of witches and British governors has lost little force. The sacred codhsh still hangs In the state house, and the Ancient and Honorable Artillery the only existing military remnant Of the earliest colonial times, and now recruited mainly from the ranks of the business men of the city, still holds its picturesque drumhead election on the common every year. The old North Church, where the fanOt1a nterna Wpra hung a signals to Paul Revere, is a well preserved relic; and so are the Old State House, with It's British lion and unicorn, and the Old South Meeting House, where the troopers of King George were quartered during the siege of Boston.
 Love for Relies.
 Boston's love for it's relics of the past is well illustrated in the preservation of the boasted Bulfinch front of the state capitol on Beacon Hill, where in ancient days signal fires were kept burning at night to help guide vessels up the tortu- ous harbor channel. The famous gilded dome of the building, the picturesque mark seen gleaming as one enters tho city, Is also preserved, and in addition 1t now is ablaze at night with electric lights. and the lone skyscraper on the eastern side of Beacon Hill, the mammoth Ames building-a pile of masonry antedating the era of modern steel frame construction still remains to point out where Bostons ambition to pierce the clouds began and ended.
 For Boston Is a city without skyscrap- CTS The Ames building. with It's thirteen stories would not be dignif1ed with the name of skyscraper in any other big city. But the next highest building here has only eleven stories. and, according to the present building law, this limit-to be exact, no feet-cannot be exceeded; while in the famous residential quarter Of the Rack Bay the height of structures Is still further restricted by statute. The old Bay State believes thoroughly in Its own conservatism, however; it is satisfied to pav for its principles in hard, cold cash even. A fashionable apartment hotel on Cooley Square, the show spot in the city. was, with the permission of the city authorities, built to height that Vlo- lated by one story, special building law which applied to no other part of the town The people began an agitation to have the offending top story removed. The fight was carried into the legisla- ture finally, and the people won; but the little bit off the top cost the citizens or Boston S4OOOO0. for the hotel proprietors areuing that they had violated the law by permission of the corporation council. won theirAsui for damages against the municipality
 Countless Changes.
 Though Boston still has a modestly re- pressed skyline countless changes have taken place in the city, most of them due to expansion in other directions than upwards. The real, the greater city at the head of Massachusetts Bay, has about twice the population credited by the census to the lesser municipality. It em- braces all the communities that are bound together by the metropolitan park, sewer and water systems, and other re- cent civic developments. From South Shore to North Shore, in semi-circle with a radius of about ten miles, there is now a complete chain of large and small parks and forest reservations, all inter- connected by boulevards and parkways. Such an observer as IT. c. Wells. the English novelist, who not long ago had some trat things to say about old Bos- ton, could find nothing but praise for the plan on which the newer Boston is