Acorn Street

This guide to Acorn Street in Boston starts in the 1820s, when this cramped, sloping lane behind Beacon Hill's new brick mansions housed the cooks, coachmen and horses who kept those grand households running, back when it was known plainly as Kitchen Street. It follows the servants expected to move through the neighborhood unseen, and the residents a century and a half later who fought to keep its cobblestones from being paved over. Look down at the uneven stones underfoot as you walk.