Commercial Buildings

Devonshire and Water Streets, Boston

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The northwest corner of Devonshire and Water Streets in Boston, around 1860. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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The scene in 2015:

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Based on its architecture, the building in the first photo was probably built sometime around the 1820s to the 1840s, and by the 1860s when the photo was taken it appears to have been a place for all things paper. According to the signs, the tenant on the left was a job printing company, which was a collective term for a printer who made small items such as tickets, cards, letterheads, and other such documents. To the right was Peter C. Jones’s wholesale paper business, which he operated in Boston for many years. He had four sons, so I don’t know which one was the “& Son” that is mentioned on the sign, but it certainly was not his son Peter, Jr., who moved to Hawaii in 1857 and became a prominent businessman and politician both before and after the kingdom was acquired by the United States.

I don’t know exactly when this building was demolished. The great Boston Fire of 1872 hit this area 12 years later, but according to maps of the disaster, the fire stopped just across the street from here. If this building was still standing at that point, it probably survived the fire, but it was certainly gone by 1908, when the present-day Lawrence Building was built on the site. When completed, it housed the Federal Trust Company commercial bank on the ground floor, and professional offices such as lawyers, investment brokers, and real estate agents. Today, the historic building is still standing here at the corner of Devonshire and Water Streets.

Equitable Building, Boston

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The Equitable Building at the corner of Milk and Devonshire Streets in Boston facing south on Devonshire Street, on June 17, 1875. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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The view down Devonshire Street in 2015:

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Like the photo in the previous post, taken just around the corner on Milk Street, this scene shows Boston during the 100th anniversary celebration of the Battle of Bunker Hill, when many of the city’s buildings were decorated with flags and patriotic bunting. The building in the foreground here was the home of the Equitable Life Assurance Society’s Boston branch, and it was also known as the Henry H. Hyde Building, after the company’s founder. This area was devastated by the Great Boston Fire of 1872, but within a few years the city had largely rebuilt, and in 1874 Equitable opened this elegant Second Empire style building as their Boston office, in a prominent location directly across from the Post Office, which can be seen to the left in the first photo.

Based on city maps, the Equitable Building was demolished sometime between 1912 and 1938, and was replaced with the old First National Bank Building. his was, in turn, demolished in the 1970s to build One Federal Street, a 38 story skyscraper that now fills the rectangular block between Milk, Devonshire, Arch, and Federal Streets. Since this is the heart of Boston’s Financial District and the home of many of its skyscrapers, there are no surviving buildings from the 1875 photo in the 2015 scene.

 

Milk Street, Boston (2)

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Looking west up Milk Street from Devonshire Street in Boston, on June 17, 1875. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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Milk Street in 2015:

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When the first photo was taken, the city was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and these buildings on Milk Street were covered in patriotic bunting. All three of the buildings in the center of the photo were new; just three years earlier the area had been destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872, as seen in the view looking down Milk Street in this post. However, the city soon rebuilt, and this area quickly became a major commercial center again.

All three of these buildings survive today, although with some alterations. The one on the left, at the corner of Milk and Hawkey Streets, is the Goddard Building. It was completed in 1873, and over the years it has been expanded, with two additional stories on top. The building to the right of it has also grown over the years. It was built on the site of Benjamin Franklin’s birthplace, and the decorative facade includes a bust of Franklin above the second story windows. The third building in the photo, on the right, was also built in 1873, at the corner of Milk and Washington Streets. It was originally the home of the Boston Transcript newspaper, which at the time was the largest circulating daily newspaper in New England. The newspaper has been defunct since 1941, but the historic building is still standing today.

Franklin Street, Boston (3)

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Looking west on Franklin Street from Devonshire Street in Boston, sometime in the late 1850s. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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Franklin Street in 2015:

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This view of Franklin Street shows the former Tontine Crescent section of the street from the opposite direction of the photos in these posts here and here. When this area was developed by architect Charles Bulfinch in the 1790s, it was an upscale residential neighborhood. Just a few years before the first photo was taken, this curve was lined with elegant townhouses, but by the late 1850s nothing remained of Bulfinch’s design except for a few trees in the middle of the street and the curve of the street itself.

The new commercial buildings in the first photo represented Boston’s growth and development as a prominent city, but they would turn out to be short-lived. Just over a decade later, the entire area was destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872. They were rebuilt within the next year or so with similar-looking buildings, and many are still standing today. The 2015 photo shows a number of these 1870s buildings, although the background is dominated by Boston’s newest skyscraper, the Millennium Tower, which was under construction in the first photo and is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2016.

Boylston Market, Boston

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Boylston Market, at the corner of Boylston and Washington Streets in Boston, around 1870. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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The scene in 2015:

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Boylston Market was built here in 1810, and it was designed by noted architect Charles Bulfinch. It functioned as a market on the first floor, and a meeting space and performance hall on the third floor, known as Boylston Hall. Both the building and the street were named for Ward Nicholas Boylston, a Boston philanthropist who gave substantial donations to Harvard in the early 19th century. Prior to its construction, the city’s primary marketplace was Faneuil Hall, which was a considerable distance away from here. At the time, this area was in the southern end of the city, and some of its residents, including future president John Quincy Adams, formed the Boylston Market Association to built the market here

Aside from its use as a marketplace, the building was also used by organizations such as the Handel and Hadyn Society, which held concerts in the third floor hall, and the New England Anti-Slavery Society, which held conventions in the same hall. In 1859, it was expanded, and in 1870 it was moved 11 feet south away from Boylston Street. This is presumably why the building to the left in the first photo, home of the White Bear Billiard Room, has a sign that reads “Building to be Torn Down.”

Although moving the large brick building was a significant undertaking, Boylston Market was demolished just 17 years later, in 1887. It was replaced by the Boylston Building, which served much the same function as its predecessor, with retail space on the first floor and warehouse and office space on the upper floors. As seen in the 2015 photo, it is still standing today, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There is at least one surviving element from the original building, though. The cupola was saved, and it now forms the steeple of the Calvary Methodist Church in the nearby town of Arlington.

Main Street, Lee, Mass

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Looking north on Main Street from near Park Street in Lee, in 1911. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

 

Main Street in 2015:

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The town of Lee is situated in the Berkshires region of Western Massachusetts, and in the 19th century it was a small but prominent industrial town. At its peak, the town had several dozen paper mills and several marble quarries, and the town’s prosperity was reflected in its downtown area here along Main Street. Most of the buildings in this scene date to the mid to late 19th century, including the historic Memorial Town Hall to the right. It was completed in 1874, and has housed the town offices ever since. Through the years, it has also taken on a variety of other uses, including a post office, Grand Army of the Republic hall, barber shop, movie theater, district court, and police station. In 1965, singer Arlo Guthrie faced littering charges in the courtroom here, an incident which later inspired his famous song “Alice’s Restaurant.” Today, in addition to the town offices, it is also the town police station, and although it has undergone renovations in 1912 and in 1990-1991, its exterior has remained well preserved for over 140 years.

Just beyond the Memorial Town Hall is the Baird and Benton Block, a three story commercial building that was built in 1875 by paper manufacturers Prentiss Baird and Charles and James Benton. It originally had a mansard roof like the neighboring Town Hall, but the roof was destroyed in a fire in the late 1800s. Aside from renovations to the first floor storefronts, the building’s appearance is similar to what it looked like in 1911, but the upper two floors were vacant from the 1950s until a renovation in 2012 that converted it into classroom and office space.

Most of the other commercial building in the scene date from the second half of the 19th century, but the oldest is the Morgan House, the wood-frame building with the two story porch on the left side of Main Street. It was built in 1817 by William Porter as a house, and in 1867 it was purchased by Edward Morgan, who enlarged the original building and turned it into the Morgan House inn. Over the years, its guests have included Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, John F. Kennedy, and George Bernard Shaw, and today it is still operated as an inn and restaurant.

Overall, the only significant change to this scene is the Park Building, located on the far left where the Lee Savings Bank building stood in the 1911 photo. It was built just a few years later in 1914, and it is one of the newest buildings along this section of Main Street. The entire area is now part of the Lower Main Street Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is an excellent surviving example of a historic 19th century New England town center.