The Freedom Trail: An Artist's View

Each year over three million people visit the Freedom Trail, a two-and-one-half mile red brick line that tells a story over two centuries old.

In 1958, local journalist William Schofield had the idea that Boston's revolutionary sights could be made more accessible to residents and visitors, and conceived of the Freedom Trail. "Tourists were going berserk," he wrote, "bumbling around and frothing at the mouth because they couldn't find what they were looking for." Along with Bob Winn of the Old North Church, Schofield convinced the city of Boston to "connect the dots" between the historic sites and buildings that were the birthplace of the American Revolution. A natural and easily accomplished idea, a foundation was created that put the idea in place and gave it a name. In this simple way, the Freedom Trail, known and beloved around the world, was born. In addition to its great historical importance, the beauty of the sites, sounds, and neighborhoods along the way made walking the Freedom Trail an instantly popular activity.

Some forty-six years later, at the age of eighty-seven the artist Leonard Weber has created a lasting tribute to those who established and maintained one of the treasures of Boston's and the Nation's heritage. He has painted a fold-out panorama of the whole horizon of Boston's revolutionary history, a portrait of each of the sixteen landmarks together with a selection of their most important artifacts--from the State House and the Sacred Cod to the House and Tomb of Paul Revere, and on to "Old Ironsides" and the Bunker Hill Monument. Len Weber'sThe Freedom Trailis a visual treasure house of our nation's history, a glorious rekindling of Boston's patriotic past in its present-day glory.