18 Jun 2026 Hamilton Street before the Reading Room: Camp Meigs, Training Grounds for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment
As Historic Boston Inc. continues to evaluate opportunities at the Phillips Brooks Memorial Reading Room located at 12 Hamilton Street in Hyde Park, in partnership with the Hyde Park Historical Society and community partners, we wanted to spotlight the neighborhood’s history in honor of Juneteenth. The Hyde Park neighborhood known as Readville was training grounds for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiments that would turn the tide of the Civil War under the leadership of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.
Special thanks to Frank O’ Brien of the Hyde Park Historical Society for his contributions to this blog.
Nestled in the heart of Readville, a quiet park dappled with trees hints at a valiant history. The Readville neighborhood of Hyde Park had been part of Camp Meigs, the historic site where infantrymen of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment trained prior to their engagement in the Union Army under the command of Col. Robert Gould Shaw in 1863. Situated on the periphery of the Camp Meigs site, the land 12 Hamilton Street sits upon shares in this significant history.
Map of Camp Meigs, Readville, Hyde Park. Courtesy of Hyde Park Historical Society.
The 54th was one of the first Black regiments to serve in the Civil War after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln in January 1863. Shaw and the 54th recruited Black infantrymen and trained at Camp Meigs in Readville before departing to the war front in late May. Frederick Douglass was among the foremost Bostonians to assist in publicizing recruiting efforts. His two sons, Charles and Lewis Douglass, were the most famous enlistees in the 54th. In September 2025 the Douglass family legacy was celebrated at the Camp Meigs site.
During their heroic July 18th assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina, 281 soldiers, approximately half of the 54th Regiment, tragically perished, Col. Shaw among them. Word of their brave charge on Fort Wagner would spread across the north, inspiring more than 180,000 Black men to enlist in the Union Army, providing an unparalleled advantage over the Confederacy. The service of the 54th and the mobilization of Black soldiers that followed has been credited with considerably shortening the war as well.
Outside the State House, the memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment by Augustus Saint-Gaudens depicts Shaw and the 54th as they had marched through Boston and up Beacon Street before heading to battlefields in the South. Dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment took place on May 31, 1897. Attending survivors of the 54th were honored at the dedication and marched counter to their fellow soldiers depicted in the relief, coming back from southern battlefields as so many of their regiment did not.
1897 dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial on Boston Common. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
To honor this history, Camp Meigs Memorial Park – known today as Hamilton Park – was dedicated on July 11th, 1903.
Camp Meigs pictured 1932. Courtesy of Historic New England.
Since then, the legend of the 54th and 55th Volunteer Infantry Regiments has endured in our culture, in Robert Lowell’s 1964 poem “For the Union Dead”, for example, and of course the movie Glory.
Hyde Park resident and Regiment Reenactor, the late Lt. Benny White, Commander, Company A, talks about “holding the line” in this 2018 interview from the PBS special “10 Monuments That Changed America.”
The Juneteenth holiday commemorates the date in which freedom was finally realized for all enslaved Black Americans when Union General Gordon Granger led about 2,000 Union troops into Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865, to announce that the more than 250,000 enslaved people in the state were free. This was over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed, ushering in national celebrations of Juneteenth, otherwise known as Emancipation Day.
The memory of the brave men of the 54th and the cause they served remains alive today. In Hyde Park, the regiment’s war experience is proudly expressed by the Regiment Reenactors; these volunteers serve as a color guard at annual Juneteenth celebrations and other community events.
Juneteenth Celebration, Hyde Park, MA, 2026. 54th Volunteer Infantry Regiment Color Guard with Ms. Cecily Graham, Hyde Park resident and Mayor Wu’s Office of Neighborhood Services.