Park Street Church
Federal-style meetinghouse whose towering steeple once dominated the American skyline entirely.
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About this audio guide
This guide to Park Street Church in Boston starts with the nickname Brimstone Corner, earned first for its preachers' fire-and-brimstone sermons and then for gunpowder barrels the local militia stored in its basement during the War of 1812. It moves to a Fourth of July children's Sunday school gathering in 1831, where a young seminary student had spent the afternoon writing new words to a borrowed British tune. You'll hear what became of that song, and what William Lloyd Garrison said from roughly the same spot two years earlier. Look up at the steeple, still the tallest thing on this corner two centuries later.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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