Boston Bits ~ Insiders’ Tips -- our monthly journal of things Bostonian, to give Boston Your Way site visitors a sense of our city.

Back Bay addresses and Old Bostonian pedigrees
Victorian Bostonians had a street-wise indicator of wealth among the elite in their new Back Bay enclave. If you lived on…
Beacon Street, you were Old Family and Old Money
Marlborough Street…Old Family but No Money
Commonwealth Avenue…New Family and New Money
Newbury Street…No Family and No Money

Today, such stratifying has virtually disappeared. Many of the old homes have been broken up into condos. The old families long ago moved to the best suburbs. The neighborhood belongs to young professionals and families of all backgrounds. And “poor” Newbury Street has become The upscale shopping street in the city.

The Ice King
An unbearably hot stay in the West Indies in the early 1800s inspired a visionary Boston entrepreneur to export New England "cold.” After many false starts, Frederic Tudor devised a way to harvest great blocks of ice from local ponds, most notably Walden Pond, and ship it to tropical ports around the world, including Cuba and India.

With this innovation, Tudor had created the worldwide ice trade and become The Ice King. He developed a local market, as well, for his winter crop, by inventing the craze for ice cream and cold drinks in New England. By the time electric refrigeration took over in the 20th Century, the United States had more than 200 ice plants.

Tudor died in 1864. The site of his shipping pier and icehouse, renamed Tudor’s Wharf, still exists -- next to the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) in Charlestown.

What is missing from George Washington’s statue?
Thank you to my recent BYW guest, Ed Spillane, for this way-out-of-the-ordinary Bit about Boston.

A Boston native, Ed knows a lot about the city. He challenged me to guess what was wrong with the famous statue, in the Boston Public Garden, of George Washington astride his mount. I studied the sculpture and could not could not find any flaw. He admitted that it was difficult to spot and that few people are aware of it. A knowledgeable park ranger was impressed that Ed knew. The answer: the horse does not have a tongue.