During my travels through America I spent a few days in Boston, Massachusetts. The historic parts of the city are beautiful and on my first evening there I was charmed to see the lighting of the gas lamps.
I wondered about the gas lamps and found out that they first came to life at Haymarket Square in 1828, spreading to other parts of the city relatively quickly. By the late 1800s however, electric lamps had replaced the quaint gas lamps. The electric lamps remained until 1962, when the city, hoping to recapture the charm of an earlier era, reverted to gas lamps in Boston’s historic neighborhoods. Today the gas lamps are a big draw for tourists in Boston.
The life lesson here is that sometimes in striving for progress and the convenience of modern amenities, we lose sight of the benefits of what we already have.
It was not the modern electric lamps that turned out to be the most beneficial for the city, but rather the gas lamps. In order to capitalize on the tourism revenue, Boston had to revert back to what they originally had.