22 May 2025 Old Corner Bookstore to be a canvas for UnMonument
Historic Boston is proud to announce that the Old Corner Bookstore will serve as a canvas for a temporary, but significant UnMonument art installation later this year. On May 14th, the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture announced the selected artists and temporary public art projects for year two of the City’s Un-monument | Re-monument | De-monument: Transforming Boston initiative.
Artist Joanne Kaliontzis’ concept “Untold Stories from the Old Corner Bookstore,” will shed light on the stories of two enslaved Black Bostonians from the 18th century.
Adjacent to the Old Corner Bookstore at 277 Washington Street, the Cunningham House was once the home and/or workplace of “Boston” and “Fanny.” The house was built in 1728 by Andrew Cunningham, whose 1752 probate records reveal that he had enslaved a Black man named “Boston” and a Black woman named “Fanny.” Boston and Fanny were listed among his possessions and were also left to his wife, Mary Cunningham, after his death.
Historians estimate that enslaved Black individuals comprised 10-15% of Boston’s 18th century population. Fanny was likely a domestic servant. But Boston could have specialized in a trade, which was not uncommon at the time, and would have made him more valuable to the family. Andrew Cunningham was a glazier and it is likely Boston may have acted as his apprentice. This would have enabled Cunningham to enslave a skilled worker in his own business and also give him the opportunity to “rent” Boston out to make additional money for the Cunningham’s.
Occasionally, (though less common), enslaved individuals in Boston were given the option to go out and earn money for themselves, allowing enslavers like the Cunningham’s to not provide the food and lodging expected of them. Historian Jared Ross Hardesty argues that skilled enslaved individuals in Boston recognized their value and “began setting limits and manipulating the terms of his or her slavery, in effect redrawing its boundaries.”
Both Cunninghams are buried in the Granary Burying Ground around the corner from this site, but little more is known about the fates of Fanny and Boston. If they remained in the state and lived long enough, they would have been emancipated when Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783.
The details of northern urban enslavement in the United States are not as well-known as the southern plantation equivalent, making it that much more important for us to elevate these stories across Boston. Additionally, with the Nation’s 250th anniversary on the horizon, it is vital that we continue to tell those stories that are often deliberately written out of our national narratives.
While the Old Corner Bookstore was known for the abolitionists published here in the 19th century, we must keep in view the fact that Black Americans were enslaved right next door, with barely a century and a brick wall between them. As many sites along the Freedom Trail grapple with their history of enslavement, this one too witnessed the many modes of unfreedom that shaped the lives of 18th century Bostonians. We look forward to the stories of Boston and Fanny finally being brought to light.
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Further reading:
Jared Ross Hardesty, “Negro at the Gate”: Enslaved Labor in Eighteenth Century Boston,” Vol. 87, No. 1, March 2014.The New England Quarterly 87, no. 1 (2014): 72–98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43285054