Month: January 2016

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1)

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The Museum of Fine Arts on Huntington Street in Boston, around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The museum in 2015:

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This view of the Museum of Fine Arts really hasn’t changed much in the past century, although it is hard to tell with all of the trees blocking the view in the second photo.  The Museum of Fine Arts had been established in 1870, and its first permanent home was opened at Copley Square in 1876.  The original building soon became too small for the museum’s growing collections, though, and in 1899 they purchased this plot of land on Huntington Avenue, a little over a mile west of Copley Square.

The new museum was designed by architect Guy Lowell, who deliberately designed it so that it could easily be expanded as the museum grew and as money became available.  Since then, it has grown substantially beyond its original 1909 footprint, and is now over 600,000 square feet in area.  One major addition was the West Wing, now the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, which was designed by noted architect I.M. Pei in 1981, and the most recent was in 2010, when the new Art of the Americas wing was completed.  It is now one of the largest art museums in the United States, with an internationally-significant collection of nearly half a million works from around the world.  Much of their collection has also been digitized, and it can be viewed online through their website.  At least one of their works, an early photograph by J.J. Hawes, is featured in this blog post about Arlington Street Church.

Opera House, Boston

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The Boston Opera House on Huntington Avenue, around 1909-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The site in 2015:

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The first decade of the 20th century was a busy time for this section of Huntington Avenue.  It came to be nicknamed “The Avenue of the Arts” because of the number of institutions that opened new buildings here during this time, including the Boston Opera House, Symphony Hall, Chickering Hall, Horticultural Hall, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Museum of Fine Arts.

The Boston Opera House was built thanks to the efforts of Eben Dyer Jordan, Jr., the son of the co-founder of Jordan Marsh & Company, a Boston-based department store.  Jordan provided much of the funds necessary to create a world-class opera house in the city, and also established the Boston Opera Company to perform in the building.  It opened in 1909, in an area that was sparsely developed at the time.  The building barely visible to the left in the first photo was a warehouse, and directly across the street from here was Huntington Avenue Grounds, which served as the home of the Boston Red Sox from 1901 until 1911.  Otherwise, there were plenty of vacant lots in the area, although these would steadily be developed over the next few decades as the city continued to grow westward.

The first photo was probably taken soon after the opera house opened, and the signs outside the front doors list some of the Boston Opera Company’s upcoming performances, including Aida, La traviata, Rigoletto, Faust, and Pagliacci.  However, its glory days as an opera house were brief.  The Boston Opera Company went bankrupt in 1915 after just six seasons, and Eben Jordan died the following year.  The popularity of opera was declining, and although the massive 3,000 seat building was idea for opera, it was ill-suited for most other uses.

In 1918, the building was sold, and the new owners renovated the interior to make it more practical for other uses.  Over the next 40 years, it would be used for everything from operas to circuses, and even boxing matches and, in 1950, a broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show.  However, by the late 1950s the building was in need of serious repair, and both the owners and the city of Boston were indifferent toward the fate of the building.  The nearby Northeastern University was looking to expand, so in 1958 the old opera house was demolished to make a parking lot.  Later, the university built Speare Hall, the dormitory that now stands on the site.  Today, the only reminder of this site’s past is the short, one-way street to the right, which is still named Opera Place.

Horticultural Hall, Boston

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Horticultural Hall, at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, around 1901-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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Horticultural Hall was built in 1901, around the same time as its neighbors, Symphony Hall to the left across Massachusetts Avenue, and Chickering Hall, visible to the right in the first photo.  Chickering Hall has long since been demolished as part of the development of the Christian Science Center in the 1960s, but both Horticultural Hall and Symphony Hall still stand here at the corner of Massachusetts and Huntington Avenues.

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society was founded in 1829 to promote modern practices in horticulture, and this building was the organization’s third facility.  It included a large exhibition hall for plant shows, with would have included the flower show that was advertised on the sign at the corner of the building in the first photo.  The building also had a smaller exhibition hall, a 300-seat lecture hall, a library, and offices.

In more than a century since the first photo was taken, most of the scene has changed.  The buildings in the background have all been demolished, the streetcar line on Huntington Avenue is now underground as the “E” Branch of the Green Line, and Massachusetts Avenue now passes over Huntington Avenue on a bridge in the foreground.  As for the building itself, the Horticultural Society sold the building to the neighboring Christian Science Church in 1992, but its exterior has seen very few changes, and along with the neighboring Symphony Hall it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Symphony Hall, Boston

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Symphony Hall, at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, around 1904. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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Boston’s Symphony Hall is one of many prominent concert halls in this section of Boston, and it has been the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops ever since it opened in 1900.  It was designed by McKim, Mead and White, the same architectural firm that built the Boston Public Library at Copley Square a few years earlier.  Like the library, it is an excellent example of Renaissance Revival architecture, but Symphony Hall is perhaps best known not for its visual appeal, but rather its acoustic properties.  Harvard professor and physicist Wallace Clement Sabine used his knowledge of acoustics to design the auditorium, making it the world’s first concert hall to be scientifically designed in such a way.  Because of this, it is still regarded as one of the best concert halls in the world.

Over the years, this section of the Back Bay has seen some dramatic changes, but Symphony Hall is essentially the same, both on the exterior and interior.  The Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Pops continue to perform here, along with the Handel and Hadyn Society.  With a seating capacity of over 2,000, it has also been used for a number of other civil purposes, ranging from political rallies and inaugurations to business conventions and fashion shows.  In addition, many renowned authors have given lectures here; the building’s National Register of Historic Places registration form identifies many visiting writers from the early 20th century, including Edward Everett Hale, Julia Ward Howe, Booker T. Washington, G.K. Chesterton, Robert Frost, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Chickering Hall, Boston

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Chickering Hall on Huntington Avenue near Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, around 1901-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The site in 2015:

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This section of Huntington Avenue is also known as “Avenue of the Arts,” and it is home to a number of theaters, as well as Northeastern University, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the Museum of Fine Arts.  One of the early concert halls here was Chickering Hall, which was built in 1901 by Chickering & Sons, a Boston piano manufacturer.  The name didn’t last for long, though; it was sold in 1912 and became the St. James Theatre.  The new owners renovated the building and doubled the seating capacity from 800 to 1,600, and it was used for both vaudeville performances and early films.

In 1929, it was renamed the Uptown Theatre, and a large vertical neon sign and marquee were added to the front entrance.  It was primarily a second run movie theater for local college students, and it lasted until 1968, when it was demolished to build the Christian Science Center, which features the Mother Church and the religion’s administrative offices.  There is one landmark still standing in the first photo, though.  Horticultural Hall, located just to the left of Chickering Hall, was also built in 1901, and it is still standing today, at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue.

Copley Square Hotel, Boston

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The Copley Square Hotel at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Exeter Street, around 1909. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The hotel in 2015:

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Not to be confused with the nearby Copley Plaza Hotel, this historic hotel was built in 1891 and has remained here for the past 125 years.  It was originally located at the edge of a large rail yard, with the tracks coming all the way up to the west side of Exeter Street, just out of the frame to the left.  Despite the name, the hotel is actually a block away from Copley Square, but it was still a convenient location for guests.  By the time the hotel opened in 1891, Copley Square had become a major cultural center in Boston, with the Trinity Church, New Old South Church, Museum of Fine Arts, and MIT all located right around the square, and the Boston Public Library’s McKim Building under construction at the time.

In the century since the first photo was taken, this section of the Back Bay south of Boylston Street has undergone some dramatic changes.  The rail yard was replaced with the Prudential Center in the 1960s, and some of Boston’s tallest buildings are within a couple blocks of here, including the John Hancock Tower, the Prudential Tower, and 111 Huntington Avenue.  Other historic buildings, including Mechanics Hall just down Huntington Avenue from here, have been demolished, but the Copley Square Hotel is still standing as the only surviving 19th century building on Huntington Avenue between Copley Square and Massachusetts Avenue.  The building’s interior was extensively renovated in 2008, but from the outside it doesn’t look much different today than it did in 1909.