Purple Windows, Blue Blood
Boston’s Beacon Hill, one of its oldest neighborhoods, was once home to Boston Brahmins. Take a walk there and you’ll notice that some homes have purple tinted windows. And the panes are sometimes mismatched? What’s the deal?
Between 1818 and 1824, an English company sent shipments of glass that contained too much manganese oxide which gave this glass a touch of purple, the same tint you’d get from dissolving potassium permanganate crystals in water. You probably remember this color from chem lab. When the panes broke, the home owners couldn’t find a tinted replacement so you have the checkered panes. Once an annoyance, now a USP.