Boston vs. New York: The Flower Fight You Didn’t Know About 🌸🥊⁠ ⁠ Forget Fenway vs. Yankee Stadium—at the turn of the 20th century, Boston and New York duked it out over… a carnation.⁠ ⁠ Boston financier Thomas W. Lawson wasn’t about to let a prize bloom slip away to New York or Chicago. In 1900, he shelled out $30,000 - the equivalent of $1.2 million today - to keep a carnation variety firmly rooted in Boston. ⁠ Why? ⁠ Because, in his words, he couldn’t stand the idea of it going to the “hurly-burly modern Babylons” down the coast. (AKA NYC)⁠ ⁠ And then, in true Boston fashion, he went off the rails. Lawson declared that the carnation’s pink was “found nowhere but on the rosy cheeks of Boston maidens” and that its “big, generous fullness” reminded him of “the white-aproned, Saturday-doughnut-frying mothers of the Cape.” ⁠ And after this sentimental smack-talk, he threw down a gauntlet: $5,000 to anyone who could breed a finer carnation within a year, plus $30,000 for their whole cro...