Boston University East, Boston

The Boston University East MBTA station on Commonwealth Avenue, around 1939. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

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The scene in 2015:

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The first photo shows passengers boarding a Boston Elevated Railway trolley at the Boston University East station, in front of the Charles Hayden Memorial Building at Boston University.  It appears to be a Type 4 trolley, which was found on Boston’s many streetcar lines from 1911 until 1950.  Most of those lines have long since been converted into buses, but the line along Commonwealth Avenue is still in use, as the MBTA “B” branch of the Green Line.

The Charles Hayden Memorial Building in the background of both photos was completed in 1939, and it provides an earliest possible date for the photo, which the City of Boston Archives estimated as being in the 1930s.  The building was the first to be built on BU’s Charles River Campus, and just over two years after it opened the United States entered World War II, postponing other construction projects on the campus.  The other buildings along this section of Commonwealth Avenue would not be completed until 1948, but today this area between the Massachusetts Turnpike to the south and the Charles River to the north has become the school’s main campus.

Hotel Buckminster, Boston

The Hotel Buckminster at Kenmore Square in Boston, around 1911. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

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The hotel in 2015:

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The present-day Kenmore Square area was once just swampy land along the edge of the Charles River, separated from Boston the tidal flats of the Back Bay.  Boston began to fill in this land starting in the late 1850s at Arlington Street and steadily moving west.  The landfill project in the Fenway area was completed by the 1890s, and in 1897 the Hotel Buckminster opened as the first hotel at Kenmore Square, in between Brookline Avenue to the left and Beacon Street to the right.  Even by 1911, as seen in the first photo, the neighborhood was still sparsely developed.  Just a year after the photo was taken, the Red Sox would open Fenway Park on a vacant lot just two blocks south of here along Brookline Avenue.

Because of its proximity to Fenway Park, visiting teams would often stay at the hotel while they were in town.  Babe Ruth had a favorite room on the top floor along the Brookline Avenue side that overlooked Fenway Park, and it was also here that Boston bookmaker Joseph “Sport” Sullivan met with Chicago White Sox first baseman Chick Gandil and conspired to fix the 1919 World Series.  Later on, the radio station WNAC had its studio in the hotel, and in 1929 the world’s first network radio broadcast was sent from here.  From 191 to 1953, the Storyville nightclub was located in the building, and featured a number of notable jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker.

Over a century after the first photo was taken, the Hotel Buckminster is still around, although the neighborhood around it has grown significantly.  Although visiting teams probably don’t stay at this hotel anymore, the Kenmore Square is the primary subway station for fans going to and leaving Fenway Park, and there are a number of restaurants and other businesses that benefit from the sizable gameday crowds.  It is also a major intersection, with Beacon Street, Commonwealth Avenue, and Brookline Avenue all converging here above ground, and the “B”, “C”, and “D” branches of the Green Line meeting underground.  State Route 2 passes through here as well, and US Route 20, the longest road in the country, ends at Beacon Street, right in front of the hotel.

Enfield Congregational Church, Enfield, Connecticut

The Enfield Congregational Church on Route 5 in Enfield, around 1911. Image from Some Old Time Meeting Houses of the Connecticut Valley (1911).

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The church in 2015:

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In terms of churches, Enfield is probably best known as the place where Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  The actual church that he preached in no longer exists, but it stood about a third of a mile south of here along present-day Route 5.  In 1775, a new church was built on this spot, and it was later moved across the street, where it still stands today as the Enfield Historical Society.  The current church, seen here, was built in 1849, in the Greek Revival style that was popular in the first half of the 19th century.  Its design was outdated almost as soon as it was finished, though. Not long after its completion, Greek Revival architecture went out of style, and most new church buildings in the second half of the century were either Gothic Revival or Romanesque.  However, over the years it has been the wood, white-steepled churches of the early 19th century that have become a symbol of small-town New England, and Enfield’s example survives today, essentially unchanged on the exterior from the photo over a century earlier.

J.R. Montgomery Company Buildings, Windor Locks, Connecticut

The J.R. Montgomery Company, along the canal in Windsor Locks in October 1939. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA-OWI Collection.

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The factory in 2015:

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The town of Windsor Locks gets its name from the canal locks that were located here, which allowed boats to bypass the Enfield Falls just to the north.  More of a series of rapids than a true waterfall, the Enfield Falls are the natural head of navigation on the Connecticut River, and were a significant obstacle to river trade with Springfield and other cities to the north.  This problem was resolved in 1829, with the opening of a 5.25 mile long canal that ran parallel to the river.  However, it never became a major transportation route, because like many other early 19th century canals it was soon superseded by railroads.  However, at least one notable visitor did pass through here on the canal; author Charles Dickens traveled along the river on a steamboat in 1842, just two years before the construction of the Hartford and Springfield Railroad, which can be seen next to the canal in the foreground of both photos.

Although the heyday of transportation canals was short-lived, the Enfield Falls Canal was soon put to a different use.  Here in Windsor Locks, at the southern end of the canal, the 30-foot drop from the canal to the river made it an ideal location for factories.  Industrialist J.R. Montgomery established a thread and yarn factory here in 1871, eventually producing a variety of, as the sign atop the building reads, “Novelty Yarns” and “Tinsel Products.”

The brick building in the distance was built in 1891 and expanded to the north (further from the camera) in 1904. The white concrete section was added in 1920, so the entire structure combines 30 years of factory architecture styles into one building.  However, the Montgomery Company closed in 1989, and the building has stood vacant ever since.  It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but three fires and over 25 years of neglect have certainly taken their toll, so at this point the future of the historic property is certainly in question.

First Church of Christ, Wethersfield, Connecticut

The First Church of Christ in Wethersfield, photographed on July 29, 1940. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey Collection.

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The church in 2015:

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The First Church of Christ in Wethersfield is one of the oldest existing church buildings in the Connecticut River Valley.  Along with Hartford and Windsor, Wethersfield was one of the original three towns in the colony of Connecticut, and today its Old Wethersfield Historic District includes around 100 colonial-era buildings.  The church was built in 1761, and like many New England churches of the era the main entrance is on the side of the building, with the pews facing the left-hand side of the building instead of the back.  Its steeple also reflects mid-18th century tastes, and it is nearly identical to the one on Old North Church in Boston.

Wethersfield is located along two of the three main routes of the old Boston Post Road, which connected New York and Boston, so over the years this church has had several notable visitors, including future presidents George Washington, who attended a service here on May 20, 1781, and John Adams, who climbed the steeple in 1774 while on his way to the First Continental Congress.  Washington’s visit was part of a five day stay in Wethersfield, when he met with French General Rochambeau at the nearby Joseph Webb House to plan the Siege of Yorktown.

At first glance, the church doesn’t appear to have changed much in the past 75 years, but there are a few differences.  In the 1880s, the church was renovated to bring it more in line with Victorian-era styles, which included long stained glass windows that extended almost from the ground to the roofline.  The building is partially hidden by trees in both photos, but some of the windows are visible in the 1940 photo.  In the early 1970s, the tall Victorian windows were removed as part of an extensive restoration that returned the building to its original 1761 appearance, so today the historic church doesn’t look much different from when John Adams stopped by on his way to Philadelphia, or when George Washington planned the final battle of the American Revolution across the street.

Main Street, Southington, Connecticut (2)

The view looking north on Main Street in Southington, from just south of Columbus Avenue, around 1885-1891. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

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Main Street in 2015:

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This view is very similar to the photos in this post, which were taken just a little further up the street beyond the intersection.  Unlike the other Southington photos that I have featured here, this one was not taken by the Office of War Information during World War II; instead, this image was from a 19th century stereocard.  In this scene, the Soldiers’ Monument on the green had just recently been dedicated, and most of the town’s Civil War veterans would have still been alive.  World War I was still a generation away at this point, and it would be more than 50 years before the OWI would capture photos of the town in the early years of World War II.

The only building from the first photo that is still standing today is the First Congregational Church. It is essentially unchanged from its appearance when it was built in 1830, and it is one of several nearly identical church buildings of the era that can still be seen in small towns throughout Connecticut.  Across Main Street is the town green, where the Soldiers’ Monument still stands today, although it is now accompanied by monuments to the veterans of the wars of the 20th century. The dirt roads around the town green in the first photo have several horse-drawn carriages, but within a decade or so automobiles would begin to appear, eventually leading to the paved roads and traffic lights of the present-day scene.