Arlington Station appears in The Handmaid’s Tale during the fourth episode of season 1, when Offred and Moira attempt to escape Gilead by taking a train out of Boston. Photo by George Kraychyk/Hulu

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Take a Tour of 10 Locales from The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale fans, this one’s for you. The 1985 best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood and popular Hulu series, now in its third season, hits a little too close to home for Bostonians, as it is filled with Massachusetts references throughout. Set in Gilead, protagonist Offred (played by Elisabeth Moss) narrates the story as she navigates a totalitarian society that was formerly a part of the United States, where women are treated as property of the state due to a plummeting birth rate. 

Handmaid’s won eight Emmys in its first season, including one for lead actress Elisabeth Moss and one for supporting actress Ann Dowd. Season 2 took home 3 Emmys, and the show earned nominations in 10 different categories. Hulu announced Friday that the show has been renewed for a fourth season, and claims it is the streaming service’s most popular show, which helped its number of subscribers jump by 48 percent last year. 

Whether you’d like to see the locations of some Handmaid’s scenes for yourself, or you need an excuse to explore more of Boston and Cambridge, here are 10 places we picked where scenes from The Handmaid’s Tale book and show take place. 

St. Paul Church, Cambridge

In the second episode of the first season, Ofglen and Offred see the cathedral being torn down on their walk home from grocery shopping.

Charles River 

Offred realizes that she’s crossing the Charles River into Boston, “or what used to be Boston” at a security checkpoint in episode 8 of the first season. 

Fenway Park 

Season 2 opens with a mass of Handmaids being forced into an abandoned baseball stadium that used to be Fenway Park. 

Logan Airport 

ICE agents and passengers fill the airport in the second episode of season 2 as they stop people attempting to flee the country. 

Church Street, Cambridge

According to BostonBookBlog.com, Offred and Ofglen pause somewhere on the east end of Church Street on page 30 of the book:

A block past All Flesh, Ofglen pauses, as if hesitant about which way to go. We have a choice. We could go straight back, or we could walk the long way around. We already know which way we will take, because we always take it. 

“I’d like to pass by the church,” says Ofglen, as if piously. 

“All right,” I say, though I know as well as she does what she’s really after.

We walk, sedately. The sun is out, in the sky there are white fluffy clouds, the kind that look like headless sheep. Given our wings, our blinkers, it’s hard to look up, hard to get the full view, of the sky, of anything. But we can do it, a little at a time, a quick move of the head, up and down, to the side and back. We have learned to see the world in gasps.

Weld Boathouse, Harvard University

Also mentioned on the same page is Weld Boathouse: 

To the right, if you could walk along, there’s a street that would take you down towards the river. There’s a boathouse, where they kept the sculls once, and some bridges; trees, green banks, where you could sit and watch the water, and the young men with their naked arms, their oars lifting into the sunlight as they played at winning.

First Parish Church, Cambridge

Those who are familiar with the corner of Church Street and Massachusetts Ave may have picked up on the reference to First Parish Church on page 31: 

The church is a small one, one of the first erected here, hundreds of years ago. It isn’t used anymore, except as a museum. Inside it you can see paintings, of women in long somber dresses, their hair covered by white caps, and of upright men, darkly clothed and unsmiling. Our ancestors. Admission is free.

Johnston Gate, one of the entrances to Harvard Yard

Johnston Gate is referred to as “The Wall” on pages 31 and 32: 

Now we turn our backs to the church and there is the thing we’ve in truth come to see: the Wall. 

The Wall is hundreds of years old too; or over a hundred, at least. Like the sidewalks, it’s red brick, and must once have been plain but handsome. Now the gates have sentries and there are ugly new floodlights mounted on metal posts above it, and barbed wire along the bottom and broken glass set in concrete along the top.

Widener Library, Harvard University

Offred describes the room where Harry Widener’s study is preserved on page 166:

Maybe he’s in the Library. Somewhere in the vaults. The stacks. 

The Library is like a temple. There’s a long flight of white steps, leading to the rank of doors. Then, inside, another white staircase going up. To either side of it, on the wall, there are angels. Also there are men fighting, or about to fight, looking clean and noble, not dirty and bloodstained and smelly the way they must have looked. Victory is on one side of the inner doorway, leading them on, and Death is on the other. It’s a mural in honor of some war or other. The men on the side of Death are still alive. They’re going to heaven. Death is a beautiful woman, with wings and one breast almost bare; or is that victory? I can’t remember. 

They won’t have destroyed that.

Memorial Hall, Harvard University

Finally, a location identified by name on page 201, as Offred and Ofglen walk to the Science Center: 

Today we turn in the opposite direction from Soul Scrolls, to where there’s an open park of sorts, with a large old building on it; ornate late Victorian, with stained glass. It used to be called Memorial Hall, though I never knew what it was a memorial for. Dead people of some kind. 

Moira told me once that it used to be where the undergraduates ate, in the earlier days of the university.