The Bunker Hill Monument is a monument erected at the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill in Boston, Massachusetts, which was among the first major battles between the Red Coats and Patriots in the American Revolutionary War. The 221-foot (67 m) granite obelisk was erected between 1825 and 1843 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, with granite from nearby Quincy conveyed to the site via the purpose-built Granite Railway, followed by a trip by barge. There are 294 steps to the top.
An exhibit lodge built near the base of the monument in the late 19th century houses a statue of fallen hero Dr. Joseph Warren. Bunker Hill is one of the sites along the Freedom Trail and is part of Boston National Historical Park.
The monument underwent a $3.7 million renovation, completed in 2007, that included repairs, handicap accessibility improvements, and new lighting. The Bunker Hill Museum across the street was dedicated in June of that year and includes many exhibits about the battle. No admission charge applies to the museum or monument.
Background
The monument was one of the first in the United States. It is not on Bunker Hill, but instead on Breed's Hill, where most of the fighting in the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill actually took place. An earlier memorial at the site, an wooden column topped with a gilt urn, had been erected in memory of fallen Bunker Hill hero Dr. Joseph Warren, a Mason, in 1794 by King Solomon's Lodge of Masons.
The Monument Association, which had purchased the entire battlefield site by 1825, was forced to sell off all but the summit of the hill in 1838 to cover the cost of completing the monument.
In front of the current obelisk is a statue of Col. William Prescott, a native of Groton, Massachusetts, another hero of Bunker Hill. Some popular stories claim he coined the famous phrase "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes" during this battle; others have instead attributed it to Israel Putnam, John Stark, or Richard Gridley, rather than Prescott; but the main consensus is that none of them said it. In any case, no one at Bunker Hill could have coined the phrase; the idea behind it was already more than a hundred years old when this battle took place, and the modern phrasing of it had been used by British commanders Sir Andrew Agnew in the 1740s and James Wolfe in the 1750s, as well as by Prince Charles of Prussia in 1745, famously repeated in 1755 by Frederick the Great.
Breed's Hill
Breed's Hill is a glacial drumlin located in the Charlestown section of Boston, Massachusetts. It is located in the southern portion of the Charlestown Peninsula, a historically oval, but now more roughly triangular, peninsula that was originally connected to the mainland portion of Charlestown (now the separate city of Somerville) in colonial times by a short, narrow isthmus known as the Charlestown Neck. It is best known as the location where in 1775, early in the American Revolutionary War, most of the fighting in the Battle of Bunker Hill took place. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the peninsula's shape and connections to other landforms were significantly altered, with the waters of the Charles River between Cambridge and Charlestown heavily filled in. Much of the hill is now occupied by residential construction, but the summit area is the location of the Bunker Hill Monument and other memorials commemorating the battle.
The hill is about high, and is topped by Monument Square, site of the Bunker Hill Monument. The hill slopes fairly steeply to the east and west. In addition to its historic sites and tourist-oriented facilities, the hill is the site of a great deal of residential property, as well as supporting municipal and retail infrastructure. It is about from Bunker Hill.
History
The Americans, having caught word of a British plan to fortify the Charlestown peninsula, decided to get to the peninsula first, fortify it, and present sufficient threat to cause the British to leave Boston. On June 16, 1775, under the leadership of General Putnam and Colonel Prescott, the Americans stole out onto the Charlestown Peninsula with instructions to establish defensive positions on the hills overlooking Boston.