Saturday, April 16, 2011

There Is Nothing Like This Dame

Came upon this sign while wandering around the Back Bay. It's on the fence in front of the townhouse that sits where Isabella Stewart Gardner's Beacon Street mansion once stood. She caused quite a stir when she decamped from here to the Venetian-inspired palazzo she built for herself and her art in the much more peaceful, yet marshy Fens. (Home today to the Gardner Museum.) What I hadn't realized was that Mrs. Jack, as she was know, had stipulated that her house number, 152, never be used on Beacon Street again! And you know what? It isn't! The townhouses go from 150 to 154. Talk about chuzpah! And power!
(Did you know her will stipulates that anyone named Isabella gets into the museum for free?)

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