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8 Boston bars with cozy fireplaces
Historic taverns and hotel bars, if you get there before the seats go. Boston winter is coming whether anyone wants it to or not. The useful response is to know which bars have an actual fireplace, then get there before every nearby seat is taken by someone nursing one drink for three hours. A few of these are restaurants with very good bars. We included them because ruling out food would also rule out some of the best fireplaces in the city, which seems unnecessarily strict. Warren Tavern opened in Charlestown in 1780, and very little about the place suggests anyone has been in a hurry to modernize it. That is exactly why it works. The low ceilings, old wood, pub food, and fireplace make it the stop on this list that most closely resembles the Boston winter fantasy people have before the wind hits them in the face. Go for a pint and a burger, then stay because it is warmer inside. Near the State House, 21st Amendment is dark, compact, and refreshingly uncomplicated. There is a fireplace, a full bar, and the kind of pub menu that understands nobody came in from the cold looking for a deconstructed salad. This is a good choice when you want the fire without turning the night into an occasion. Just know that the seats near it are limited, and Beacon Hill has also heard about fireplaces. The large stone fireplace toward the back of Capo looks like it belongs in a lodge that somehow ended up serving pasta. Capo says the wood-burning fireplace runs about 18 feet, and it sits beside the open kitchen in the rear dining room. Capo is louder and busier than the historic taverns on this list, which makes it better for a group dinner or a night when sitting silently beside a fire is not the plan. Order drinks, split some Italian food, and try not to resent whoever got the table closest to the flames. OAK Long Bar + Kitchen sits inside the Fairmont Copley Plaza and is anchored by an 83-foot copper bar. Beside the open kitchen, a fireplace and wood hearth oven do most of the atmospheric work. It is polished without requiring you to whisper, and the long bar gives you a reasonable chance of finding somewhere to sit. Come here when you want a martini near a fire and are willing to wear something slightly nicer than the coat you use to shovel. Across from the Public Garden at The Newbury Boston, The Street Bar has wood paneling, classic cocktails, serious bar food, and crackling fireplaces. It feels like an old Boston hotel bar because that is exactly what it is. The Street Bar takes walk-ins. Reservations are for Afternoon Tea only. Hotel guests get priority seating, so you may get the fireplace, a window, both, or the chance to stand politely near the entrance. Walk past the main bar at Yvonne’s and into the Library, where the hand-cut mahogany bar and Locke-Ober’s original gilded fireplace have survived into the building’s current life as a supper club. This is the dramatic option. The room is dark, the drinks are elaborate, and the fireplace looks like it has witnessed at least one inheritance dispute. Make a reservation if you plan to eat. The Banks Seafood and Steak has two floors, two bars, and multiple fireplaces in Back Bay. On the first floor, a fireplace sits in the dining area with high tops and booths, so you can enjoy it without fighting for the single most competitive seat in the room. Upstairs adds another bar, more fireplaces, and windows that look onto Trinity Church. This is where to order oysters, a steak, or a martini and briefly pretend you have always understood hotel-adjacent seafood restaurants. Bistro du Midi has a casual bar and bistro downstairs, then a more formal dining room upstairs with a second bar, a fireplace, and views across to the Public Garden. Go upstairs when you want dinner to be the main event. The fireplace is not beside every table, so request a nearby seat when booking and accept that several other people will have had the same very original idea. Fireplaces are seasonal and may not be lit every night. If the fire is the entire reason you are going, call ahead or mention it when making a reservation. Also, “has a fireplace” does not mean “will personally reserve the best chair beside it for you at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.” Boston remains Boston.
5 Boston bars for a hot toddy crawl
The first cold night in Boston is a reminder that pumpkin beer is not a winter strategy. Order something hot, strong, and made by someone who cares. These five stops, four with booze and one without, split into two walkable legs. Do both in one night if you like, or treat them as separate evenings and skip the long gap between Kendall and Fort Point. Start in Davis Square, then cross into Kendall. The walks are short. The drinks get less classic as you go. Batifol is where you should eat something before the toddies add up. Foundry on Elm is the purist stop. Their Hot Toddy is a clean, balanced classic of bourbon, lemon, honey, and clove. Nothing clever. Just done right. If someone in your group wants mulled wine or an adult hot chocolate instead, Foundry carries those too, including non-alcoholic versions. Start here at 255 Elm Street in Somerville, then head toward Kendall on the Red Line or a short rideshare. State Park sits downstairs in One Kendall Square, in the Alexandria Plaza lower level. It is the dive bar with the toddy nobody expects. The Hot Hibiscus Toddy mixes apple brandy and Bénédictine with pomegranate, hibiscus, ginger, and lemon, served steaming. Tart, bright, and stronger than it looks. This is the drink that turns the crawl from classic to interesting. Five minutes away at 291 Third Street, Batifol is full Paris brasserie mood. Order La Folie Douce, a hot drink of whiskey and Drambuie with maple syrup, lemon, and orange juice. It is a toddy in everything but name. Stay for the onion soup. If you want a second winter warmer, Batifol also pours L’Après Ski, a hot red-wine drink with brandy, citrus, apple, and spice. Five toddies is not a dinner. Eat here before you keep going. The second leg sits on the other side of the river. Uber the gap, or save it for another night. Matria is the pause for anyone skipping alcohol. The Envoy rooftop is the finale once the winter igloos are up. Matria, inside the InterContinental Boston at 510 Atlantic Avenue, is the non-alcoholic pick. The Twilight Toddy has no booze at all. It is built on lemon and honey with chamomile and cinnamon. Bring the friend who is not drinking, or take a break mid-crawl. The room looks out over the waterfront, which helps when the first leg has already done its work. No hangover from this round. From here, the walk to the Seaport is short. Rooftop at The Envoy is the finale, but time it for winter, when the heated igloos go up seven floors above the harbor at 70 Sleeper Street. Igloo seats are reserved, usually for small groups of about four to eight, and they go quickly on weekends. The toddy changes with the season’s gin sponsor. Last winter it was the Gin-gle Bell Hot Toddy made with Empress 1908 Gin. Book an igloo if you can. If not, the rooftop bar still runs walk-up seating when it is open. End the night here. Two legs, two nights works cleanly. One night works if you Uber between Kendall and Fort Point. Go on a weeknight. Igloos and prime seats disappear on weekends. Eat at Batifol. Confirm the current toddy names before you go. Seasonal menus move around, and the Envoy drink in particular changes with the sponsor. If the fire, the igloo, or a specific drink is the whole point, call ahead the day you go.
Get to know Boston
How the Irish saved Halloween in Boston
Samhain (pronounced SAH-win or SOW-in) is an ancient Gaelic festival that marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter Halloween customs turned up in other American colonies. Massachusetts sat them out. Anglican and Lutheran churches kept All Saints' Day. Maryland's Catholics did too. In the South, Scotch-Irish settlers, Scots who had lived in northern Ireland, sometimes went out in costume and called it guising. The Puritans who settled here took a dim view of all of it. The Commonwealth Museum's history of the holiday traces the night to Samhain, the Celtic new year on November 1, when the dead of the past year were thought to come back for a verdict. Disguises, and a candle in a hollowed turnip, were supposed to keep the spirits away. In the eighth century, the museum says, Pope Gregory III set All Saints' Day on November 1. The eve became All Hallows Eve. Halloween is that name, worn down. The church would rather you dressed as a saint. What people actually did on October 31 still changed from one place to the next. Artist's depiction of Pope Night in Boston, 1768 Pope Night was a different riot Boston already knew how to wreck an evening in early November. The occasion was Pope Night, November 5. Old North Church traces it to Guy Fawkes Day, the anniversary of the 1605 plot to blow up Parliament. The North End and the South End each built an effigy, the pope and often the devil, and hauled it through the streets. The crowds met and fought for the figures. North End winners burned them on Copp's Hill. South End winners burned them on the Common. Isaiah Thomas, who was in the fights, wrote that broken heads were not infrequent. In 1764 a boy was run over by a cart and killed. Houses along the way were expected to hand over money. Skip the payment and the windows could go. That is still not Halloween. The Commonwealth Museum says the connection to later Halloween pranks is not clear, and that Guy Fawkes Day is a stretch as an origin. Pope Night was an anti-Catholic riot with its own date. In 1775 George Washington ordered the army to stop burning the pope in effigy. The colonies wanted Catholic allies in Canada. Old North treats that order as the end of the holiday in Boston. Traditional Irish halloween Jack-o'-lantern made out of a turnip. Photo by rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid County Cork, then a pumpkin The customs Bostonians now recognize arrived with Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century, after the Great Famine began in 1845. In County Cork, the museum says, people wore costumes on Halloween and announced themselves at a house with cow's horns. Food or a drink from the household was supposed to bring prosperity. The lantern was a turnip with a candle in it. Once those immigrants were here, a pumpkin did the job better. There is more face on a pumpkin than on a turnip, and less of a fight. They did not invent trick-or-treating. One older thread, also in the museum's account, is the medieval soul cake: bread for the poor, prayers for the dead in exchange. The pillowcase version came later. Costumes, a stop at the door, and a lantern were the Irish Halloween traditions that Boston actually got. The Globe caught on in 1884 On October 31, 1884, the Boston Daily Globe ran "Why Thousands Will Think of Erin Tonight." The Commonwealth Museum cites the headline. Halloween historian Lesley Bannatyne quotes the article. It describes Ireland, not a candy route through Boston: a church fast that fell apart when the party started, colcannon sent from the country, and "parties of young men and their sweethearts" going house to house among relatives and friends. The candy holiday was still ahead of that. Newspapers, magazines, and clubs from the Scouts to the Rotary spread Halloween in the twentieth century, the museum says. Trick-or-treaters were being spotted in Wellesley by the 1920s. After the Second World War, the baby boom made it a product. Manufactured costumes and decorations arrived then.
Boston’s weather beacon has a special signal for the Red Sox
Boston’s weather beacon has a baseball setting. The red and blue lights on the old John Hancock building were designed to announce a forecast, but a flashing red signal during baseball season has also meant a Red Sox home game was postponed. Apparently rain is not specific enough until it affects Fenway. The beacon sits on the Berkeley Building at 200 Berkeley Street in Back Bay. It is the older Hancock building, not the much taller glass tower at 200 Clarendon Street. If you are looking for the lights on the glass one, you have the wrong Hancock. How to read Boston’s weather beacon The basic weather-beacon code uses two colors and two behaviors. Steady blue means clear weather. Flashing blue means clouds. Steady red means rain, while flashing red is the snow signal. Notice both parts before trying to read it. Blue alone does not supply the whole message, and neither does red. Whether the light holds steady or flashes makes the difference between two forecasts. The familiar rhyme pairs a clear view with steady blue, clouds due with flashing blue, rain ahead with steady red and snow instead with flashing red. You do not need to recite it on the sidewalk. Remembering the colors and the flashing pattern will do. The system gives you a broad category rather than a detailed forecast. It cannot tell you how many inches of snow to expect, what time the rain will start or whether your particular walk home will be dry. That was never information two colors could comfortably carry. The lights arrived after the building The Berkeley Building opened in 1947. Its weather beacon first lit on March 15, 1950, according to Atlas Obscura’s history of the structure. The beacon rises above the office tower, making the signal visible beyond the immediate block. A building that communicated by colored light was a useful idea before everyone carried a screen. Someone who knew the code could glance up and get the message without buying a paper or waiting for a broadcast. The weather service has not been continuous. The beacon went dark during the 1973 energy crisis and returned in 1983. In 2020, steady blue was used as a tribute to hospital workers during the pandemic, temporarily giving a familiar color a different meaning. Those interruptions are a reason to understand the lights as a piece of Boston history, rather than treat every photograph of them as an exact record of the weather. A blue beacon in an old image may be carrying a message other than clear skies. The Red Sox got their own signal The baseball connection extends beyond a rainout. After the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, the beacon flashed red and blue together. The usual forecast could wait. The combination was repeated for the championships in 2007 and 2013. It is a pleasingly Boston use of an office-building fixture: two colors responsible for clouds and precipitation recruited to announce that the Red Sox had done something worth looking up for. The Curse of the Bambino story explains why 2004 carried so much weight. The championship ended a wait that had lasted since 1918, long before the Berkeley Building or its lights existed. Look for the older Hancock The two Hancock buildings can make directions confusing. The Berkeley Building is the one with the stepped top and beacon. The reflective glass skyscraper is 200 Clarendon, the later tower associated with the same company. The beacon belongs in a wider collection of Boston signs and signals that people recognize without necessarily knowing their original job. A corporate building can become a reference point for people who have never worked inside it. View the lights from a public sidewalk or another open vantage point, and give yourself a few seconds to distinguish steady from flashing. For a game-day decision, check the Red Sox’s announcement directly. The skyline is good at shorthand, but it cannot explain what happens to your ticket.