TRANSCRIPT
of Live Storytelling Event @ FEDERAL HILL GREEN

Here we are, on Federal Hill Green. It was in this spot where the West Woods began its transformation into the city of Bristol. And that story - is our story. 

This spot was where the community of Bristol began. Communities, in the beginning, they need a quartet of four things. And it was all found here, at Federal Hill Green. 

First, the church. 

Second, the school.

Third, the tavern. 

And fourth, the green, or the commons. 

The church was a social, but formal, institution. The tavern - a social, but informal. The schoolhouse was administrative and formal. And the green was flexible. In times where the militia was training, it was formal and administrative. At other times, it was a gathering spot for festivities, for the grazing of livestock. 

And in these ways, all of these pieces functioned together to become the beating heart of the community that would become New Cambridge, and later, Bristol. 

Federal Hill. Federal, a word with Latin origins meaning both covenant and faith. The roots of that word, federal - covenant and faith - pair very easily and rightfully with the community that the early settlers of Bristol envisioned. And as they began to build up their community, they raised up their houses, their dwelling places. 

You can see the houses here scattered across Federal Hill in many different styles. Over there, the federal style - two-story house, triangle-shaped roof, box-shaped walls. Symmetry. Clean. Organized. And against the backdrop of a wilderness of zig-zaggy shapes of all kinds of plants and trees and shapes and colors and lines... Here stands tall, a geometrically 90-degree angle, almost symmetrically perfect structure that pops out and says, "Here we are, in command of our life, we've brought order to the wilderness." 

And that's what the architecture, the early architecture, was meant to symbolize. Beyond the veil of just raising four walls and a roof for shelter, the architecture, when it was allowed to, was embedded with other meanings. And that's what's interesting about Federal Hill, this spot that we're standing on. 

Not just this house over here, traditional colonial, but there are other architectural styles that evolved on Federal Hill beyond the traditional federal style, the simple style. Because Bristol didn't stay simple. It grew. New Cambridge became Bristol, became Boomtown Bristol, an industrial manufacturing powerhouse, a Clock Town. 

And as clock fever took hold, as fortunes were made, dwelling houses became more than just a place to rest one's head. They became a symbol of one's status, prosperity, power. And other symbols were embedded in the architecture with different purposes and meanings. 

Over there, down at the corner of Bellevue and Sessions, you find a perfect example of a much different type of architecture than the clean, simple, colonial federal houses. Here is more elaborate architecture. It's asymmetric, meaning that its windows don't always align. Its features are not evenly spaced, or logical. It has triangle roof shapes combined with squares, a porch, but most notably - it has a tower, a turret on its front. 

The reasons for which are not just one, but many. First, putting a tower on your house is almost a signal of status. 

It's a castle. It's not a house, it's a fortress, or a prestigious palace. The tower that rises and is capped by an ornament, and in this case, a crown, how much more symbolic can you be, right? Here is someone who dwells in a castle, who must be, therefore, a king. 

But what if I told you that the turret had not just an ornamental feature and purpose, but there was a duality to it, that there was something else that it was built for? Because as we're standing here looking at this tower attached to this ornamental house ... if you look over there, 90 degrees away, you also can see a tower attached to a different house in an ornamental way. 

Both towers in our direct line of sight, both towers unique in their shape. They are octagonal, eight-sided towers. In and of themselves, an eight-sided tower would not be of much note, because many houses share ornamental eight-sided towers throughout this area. 

But here on Federal Hill, what's interesting is that the placement and appearance and number of these towers is somewhat unique and somewhat interesting. Not only these two towers that we're looking at now ... there are other towers on Federal Hill of the same type. And here, as we look inside the clue tent, we can discover that Federal Hill has not one, but many octagonal, unique towers. 

We can discover that Federal Hill has many of these watchtowers. Towers whose height and line of sight allows them to be not just ornamental, but purposeful - for the purpose of watching, of seeing, of, if we can presume, keeping tabs of and guarding certain other residences or persons on Federal Hill from which they look across from. And if you look at the map of them as we go from Bellevue to Sessions, High Street to Summer, top of Main Street, corners of Spring Street, and again Summer, we can see an encirclement of towers. 

We can see a ring of watchtowers all throughout Federal Hill, strung in a circle around its heart, and watching something in the center. And so this is the secret that is revealed today, that Federal Hill is not just a place of ornamental architecture, but is a place where towers are constructed with purpose to watch. A place where architecture serves dual purposes, just like knowledge. 

Knowledge can be visible, can be public, but it can also be secret. And these watchtowers represent not only a house where a king may live, but a watchtower - a guardian - observant of something in its proximity. 

And if you start to connect the lines of sight of the watchtowers of Federal Hill, you begin to see a web - a web of surveillance. Watchtowers positioned very purposefully across from prominent residences of Bristol's notable industrialists. 

And so the question becomes ... Were these watchtowers part of a society - a secret society of watchers - whose purpose was to keep an eye upon the prominent persons of Federal Hill, of their ongoings, of their business, of things they are trying to achieve or conceal?

Or also one might imagine the opposite. It's not always a story of heroes and villains - but it could be a story of collective defense. 

Maybe these are not watchtowers for the purpose of surveillance of the community, but these are watchtowers for the benefit of the whole community. These are towers for defense, looking not in but outward, lighting fires and warning, staffed with guardians who would sit like bodyguards across from their king. Praetorian guards, watching from across the way, with their web of lines of sight, keeping an eye on the different avenues, the lines of approach, looking always vigilant for what might be coming in a sinister way and positioned to provide warning. Encircling Federal Hill, not to watch it and surveil it, but to protect it. 

And of all the watchtowers, of all the octagonal towers on Federal Hill, one stands out as unique among the others.

It is positioned on the corner of the Prospect Methodist Church, and there can be no clearer sign of to whom it belongs. The church is a symbol of the community, and the man who built it, John Humphrey Sessions, placed this very specific symbol on its shoulder. The eight-sided watchtower - a secret clue. A symbol that a watch was being set. 

Against whom? For whom? Against what? We do not know ... yet.

 CONTINUE THE STORY >     Listen to Podcast Episode 3, "The Choice"