Grand Opening

One of the city’s most impressive sculptures? It’s on a pair of doors you’ve probably walked right past.

veryone knows about the Boston Tea Party, when tons of the stuff were dumped into the harbor, but it’s another of the city’s ties to tea that gave rise to one of its least known but most impressive sculptures. The Salada Tea Company’s original U.S. headquarters and manufacturing plant, built on Stuart Street in 1917, incorporated ornate and enormous doors designed by British sculptor Henry Wilson and awarded a medal at the 1927 Paris Salon. Twelve feet tall, weighing in at two tons, the doors comprise an architectural masterpiece worth stopping to admire (it’s now the entrance to the restaurant Grill 23 & Bar), depicting the cultivation of tea on an impressive series of carved bronze panels. Templeton

Shhhh! To this day, the Salada Tea Company supports the annual Boston Tea Party
re-enactment, which begins—just like the original event—at the Old South Meeting House.

Shhhh! The company, named for a tea garden
in Sri Lanka (and now based in Little Falls,
New York) made its name with the invention of individual foil packages, before which time tea
was sold loose, and with the witty sayings printed
on each one (“Fun is what they fine you for”).

Shhh who knew

Salada Tea Building sculptor Henry Wilson also designed Holy Trinity Church on London’s Sloane Street and the bronze bas-relief west doors of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.