Looking down Milk Street, with Old South Meeting House on the left, following the Great Boston Fire of 1872. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.
The same location in 2014:
The first photo really illustrates just how close the historic Old South Meeting House came to being destroyed in the Great Fire of 1872. However, firefighters managed to save the building, which survived with minimal damage, including some broken windows as seen in the photo. This scene shows the upper limit of the fire, which started several blocks south of here on Summer Street and extended all the way up to Milk Street. A similar view of this scene, taken around 1911, can be seen in this post; the photo was taken a little further down the road, about where the three people are standing on the far right-hand side of the 2014 photo here.
