Boston's Library Trustees' shield, designed in 1878 by the late Augustus Saint-Gaudens, has as supporters two nude children (male). On complaints from a group of citizens led by Rev. Michael A. Gearin, Mayor James Michael Curley requested last week that the supporters of the shield graven on the facade of the Mission Hill Public Library should have their pudenda shrouded in granite ribbons. Whether all reproductions of the shield should be similarly ribboned then became a hot argument in Boston.
Boston's reputation for civic censorship is old and well established. It was...
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