Thin religiosity and archaic roads

On a typically narrow Boston road — Hull Street. From left to right: the Skinny House, the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge and the Copp's Hill Burying Ground. The Skinny House, built soon after the Civil War, is reportedly the most narrow in Boston, and is said to have been built to spite the neighbors.

“Even after thirty years, I still think New Englanders sound funny, that they expect too much of the Red Sox, that their religiosity is more procedural than deeply felt, and that their highways are built with the conviction that automobiles could not possibly replace the horse-drawn buggy, and therefore need not be wide, permanent, or especially well-designed.’’

-- C. Michael Curtis (1934-2023) in New England Stories (1992). A New York City native, he was the long-time fiction editor of The Atlantic (magazine ), which was based in Boston from its founding, in 1857, until it was moved to Washington, D.C., in 2006

First Unitarian Church of Providence.

Procedural religion and bad roads

''Even after thirty years, I still think New Englanders sound funny, that they expect too much of the Red Sox, that their religiosity is procedural than deeply  felt, and that their highways were built with the conviction that automobiles could not possibly replace the horse-drawn buggy, and therefore need not be wide, permanent, or especially well-designed.''

-- C. Michael Curtis, in Contemporary New England Stories (1992)

The interior of the Arlington Street Church, in Boston, sometimes called "The Unitarian Vatican.'' The old line about the Unitarians was that they respected "The fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and the neighborhood of Boston.''