Renaming Myles Standish Hall
The Exhibition
Drawing on the university archives and rare books collection, this exhibition looks at what we know about the building at 610 Beacon Street as a hotel, a dormitory, and its place at BU. The materials on display, including rare books, archival photographs, newsletters, correspondence, and ephemera, are part of the university archives held in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.
This exhibition is an invitation to “Learn More” and was prepared in collaboration with the BU Diversity & Inclusion’s Learn More Series 2024–25 annual theme: Indigenous Identities and Experiences.
On display at 610 Beacon Street through the spring 2025 semester.
The History of Myles Standish Hall and its Name Change
The stories held in the archival records bear witness to history. The absence of stories also bear witness.
The Myles Standish Hotel, at the corner of Beacon Street and Bay State Road in Kenmore Square, served as a hotel and then luxury apartment building before being bought by Boston University in 1949 to be a dormitory for male students returning from World War II. Myles Standish Hall would serve as the name of the building for the next 60-plus years until advocacy efforts by students, faculty, and local tribal members, led the Boston University’s Board of Trustees to approve its name change. Drawing on the university archives and rare books collection, this exhibition looks at what we know about the building, and its place at BU.
Myles Standish, a military officer for the early Plymouth Colony Pilgrim settlers, committed acts of violence against the Native American tribes in the area, leading the Massacre at Wessagusset, in which he and his company lured members of the Neponset Band of the Massachusetts Tribe into a small building and murdered them, taking Chief Wituwamat’s head as a so-called trophy. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1858 romantic poem The Courtship of Miles Standish, on display here, promoted Standish’s legend in the 19th century.
In the Summer of 2021, postdoctoral candidate at the Kilachand Honors College Travis Franks teamed with Thomas Green of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag to launch a petition to rename Myles Standish Hall to Wituwamat Memorial Hall. In 2022, two BU students, Adam Shamsi (CAS’24) and Anne Jospeh (CAS’24), penned an open letter on behalf of over 150 student organizations and clubs to BU’s then-President Robert A. Brown and the Board of Trustees demanding the University to rename Myles Standish Hall and supporting Indigenous students, faculty, staff, and community members. Anna Ward, a Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development lecturer in counseling psychology, and Laura Jiménez, Wheelock’s associate dean for equity, diversity, and inclusion and a senior lecturer in literacy education, led a campaign in the Wheelock Faculty Assembly, which advanced it to the BU Faculty Council in 2023. The Board of Trustees approved the name change of the Myles Standish Hall to 610 Beacon Street on May 16, 2024.