Saturday is Flag Dag and I want to call attention to a Boston building that has a strong and unique connection to the American flag. Technically called the Youth’s Companion Building, this bright structure has two addresses: 209 Columbus Avenue and 142 Berkeley Street. Bostonians also know it as the Pledge of Allegiance Building.

The Youth’s Companion Building

The Pledge of Allegiance Building

It was built in 1892 by Daniel Ford and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

From 19892 to 1915, it housed the offices of The Youth’s Companion, a popular boys’ weekly magazine that was owned and edited by Mr. Ford. Designed by architects Henry W. Hartwell and William Cummings Richardson, the building originally rose five stories in the Romanesque style popularized by H.H. Richardson’s Trinity Church. (No relation.)

The firm of Hartwell and Richardson also designed Belmont’s Town Hall and Boston’s First Spiritual Temple, which later became the Exeter Theater and is now a school.

A Richardsonian Romanesque Arch

The Romanesque Arch

A long facade of brown sandstone and matching buff-colored brick runs down the Columbus Avenue side over a ground floor of Longmeadow sandstone.

A very large, two-story round arch with a coffered ceiling marks the entrance portal. This arch represents the largest Romanesque design element and anchors the Columbus Avenue facade. The Berkeley Street facade has a smaller round-arch entrance with floral ornamentation. Four other arches frame windows on both sides.

As originally constructed, a traditional corbeled cornice and parapet finished the roof line. Another set-back story was added later.

Designed for Light

Large windows and skylights provided the magazine’s offices with light. According to Wikipedia,

“When used by The Youth’s Companion, the first floor of the building held the business office, correspondence department, subscription and advertising departments with Ford’s office in the back. The third floor held the premium department, packing and mailing room, and stitching machines. The fifth floor contained the editorial offices, art department and library that had an encyclopedic collection of clippings from over 200 magazines from around the world. The press room was in the basement along with the presses, collators, steam tubular boilers for power binding equipment and two dynamos which generated electricity for lighting.”

The Pledge of Allegiance

In one of these sunny offices, the magazine’s circulation manager, a man named Francis Bellamy, sat down at his desk to edit a poem written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Office in the Civil War. This original version consisted of just one line:

“We give our heads and hearts to God and our country;
one country, one language, one flag!”

Mr. Bellamy revised and added to Capt. Balch’s verse as part of a magazine promotion surrounding the World’s Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus coming to the Americas.

Capt. Balch’s poem must have seemed appropriate to the time, given that he later authored a book on how to teach patriotism to public-school students. Yet Mr. Bellamy, who was a Baptist minister and a Christian socialist, described Capt. Balch’s version as, “too juvenile and lacking in dignity.”

Pushing Patriotism 

“Mr. Bellamy helped persuade then-president Benjamin Harrison to institute Columbus Day as a national holiday and lobbied Congress for a national school celebration of the day.

The magazine sent leaflets containing part of Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance to schools across the country and on October 21, 1892, over 10,000 children recited the verse together.

Although Capt. Balch wrote the original verse, Mr. Bellamy usually gets credit for authoring the Pledge of Allegiance.

Fifty years later, Congress adopted a version of the Pledge of Allegiance that was largely the same as Mr. Bellamy’s version. The official name “Pledge of Allegiance” was adopted in 1945 and the words “under God” were added on Flag Day (June 14) in 1954,

A Sunny Spot in the Back Bay

A lion ornament

Although “The Youth’s Companion” magazine moved to a new building near today’s Boston University in 1915, Hartwell and Richardson’s massive structure remains at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Berkeley Street. Like the New Riding Club, the brownstone and yellow brick building stands out in contrast to the granite and gray-brick structures around it. On sunny days, it seems to glow, bringing a spot of warmth to the area. Today it houses a variety of businesses, including a club.

The Columbus Avenue façade fronts on the Massachusetts Turnpike, which makes it clearly visible from the highway. Or you can reach it by just walking through the Back Bay. Go on in. The lobby is interesting with historical posters on the walls. No one will stop you.

The Youth’s Companion Building

209 Columbus Avenue and 142 Berkeley Street

You can park at the Boston Common garage and walk down Berkeley Street to the corner of Columbus Avenue. The Youth’s Companion Building is too big to miss. It’s also not far from the Parker Memorial Building on Berkeley Street. One short walk will give you a two-fer.

The tiled lobby floor