Buildings

Copley Square, Boston (2)

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Copley Square as seen from in front of the New Old South Church in Boston, in 1893. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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Copley Square in 2015:

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The first photo shows Copley Square as it appeared only about 20 years after this section of Boston was developed.  In the second half of the 19th century, the Back Bay was transformed from a polluted marsh to one of the city’s premier neighborhoods.  Many of the city’s important cultural institutions moved here, with many of them surrounding the Copley Square area, including the New Old South Church on the left, the Trinity Church in the center, and the Museum of Fine Arts on the right.  Also under construction, but just out of view of the camera on the right, was the main branch of the Boston Public Library.

Today, the Copley Square area has seen some significant changes from the 19th century.  It remains the focal point of the Back Bay, but what started as neighborhoods of Victorian rowhouses evolved into low-rise commercial buildings, and eventually modern skyscrapers, especially in the area south of Boylston Street.  The two churches from the 1893 photo are still standing, but all of the other buildings are gone, including the Museum of Fine Arts, which moved to a larger facility further down Huntington Avenue in the early 1900s.  The old building was demolished, and replaced in 1912 with the Copley Plaza Hotel, which still stands today.

The most prominent new building in the 2015 scene is the John Hancock Tower, which was completed in 1976 and is the tallest building in New England.  Beyond it, near the center of the photo, is the 1947 Berkeley Building, which is also known as the Old John Hancock Building.  Together, these skyscrapers, along with the ones seen facing the other direction in this post, make up Boston’s High Spine, a string of skyscrapers extending west from downtown Boston, roughly along the Boylston Street and the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Beacon and Park Streets, Boston

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Looking east on Beacon Street from in front of the State House, sometime around 1885. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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The scene in 2022:

 

Despite all of the changes in downtown Boston during the past 130 years, there are several buildings from the first photo that survive today.  The building at the corner doesn’t bear much resemblance to its former self, but it is the same one that is seen in the first photo.  It was built in 1804 for merchant Thomas Amory Jr., and was one of several houses on Park Street that were designed by Charles Bulfinch.  The home occupies a prominent position next to the Boston Common and across the street from the Massachusetts State House, but the cost for the massive house ruined Amory’s finances, and he had to sell it in 1807.

After Amory sold it, the house was divided into four different units, which were rented to some of Boston’s most prominent citizens.  Senator and Cabinet member Samuel Dexter lived here, and Christopher Gore took advantage of the house’s proximity to the State House and lived here while serving as governor in 1809 and 1810.  In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette stayed here during his tour of the United States, and Boston Public Library founder George Ticknor lived on the Park Street side of the house from 1830 until his death in 1871.  Around 1885, the house was extensively renovated on the exterior, with iron storefronts replacing the original first floor windows, oriel windows on the third and fourth floors, and three dormers on the right-hand side of the roof.  Today, several different businesses occupy the first floor storefronts, including Fox 25 News in the corner storefront.

The other historic building that has survived from the first photo is the Claflin Building, located just beyond the Amory-Ticknor House on Beacon Street.  It was completed in 1884, and is one of architect William Gibbons Preston’s several surviving buildings in Boston, along with the Armory of the First Corps of Cadets and the Museum of Natural History building.  The Claflin Building was built for the newly-founded Boston University, who used the upper floors for school offices and rented the first floor storefronts.  The school owned the building until the 1940s, when it moved to its present campus on Commonwealth Avenue, and today it has been renovated into condominiums.

Old City Hall, Boston

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Johnson Hall, which served as a courthouse and later as City Hall, on School Street around 1855-1862. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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Boston’s old City Hall, which replaced Johnson Hall, as seen in 1865. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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Old City Hall in 2015:

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This site on School Street has had two different City Hall buildings, as seen in the photos above, but the history here goes back even further.  From 1704 to 1748, Boston Latin School was located here, and during this time many of the Founding Fathers attended the school, including Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine.  Years later, Charles Bulfinch designed a courthouse that was built here in 1810; this building, which is shown in the first photo, was used as both a county and federal courthouse in the early 19th century.  From 1841 until 1862, it was Boston’s City Hall, before being demolished and replaced with a newer, larger building.

The new City Hall was completed in 1865, and was one of the first examples of Second Empire architecture in the United States.  This French-inspired style would become very popular in the late 1860s and 1870s, especially in government buildings.  Boston’s old post office, which was built a decade later and just a few blocks away, shares many similar features.  On a much larger scale, the Old Executive Building next to the White House in Washington, DC also reflects the influence of Second Empire designs.

During its time as City Hall, this building saw the rapid growth in the city during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  When it was completed, the city had fewer than 200,000 people, but by the 1950s there were over 800,000, and the city government had long since outgrown this building.  The City Hall Annex, located behind this building on Court Street, was built in 1912 to accommodate more offices, but by the 1960s the city was looking to build a new City Hall.  The current building was completed in 1968, and since then the old building has been extensively renovated on the inside for commercial uses, but the exterior is essentially unchanged from 150 years ago.

Post Office, Boston

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The old post office at Post Office Square in Boston, around 1906-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The scene in 2015:

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The triangular intersection of Congress, Pearl, and Milk Streets has been known as Post Office Square since 1874, with the completion of the post office seen in the first photo. The square was actually the result of the Great Boston Fire of 1872, which destroyed most of the buildings around the post office, which was under construction at the time.  The small park is still there, although most of the buildings around it have changed.

The old post office was demolished to build the John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse, which was completed in 1933 and is still standing today.  It features Art Deco architecture, and at 22 stories and 600,000 square feet it is substantially larger than its predecessor.  It was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and it is still used as a federal courthouse, post office, and federal office building.  Just to the right of it is the former National Shawmut Bank Building, which was built in 1906 and can be seen in both photos.  At least one other building from the first photo, the 1893 International Trust Company Building, is still standing today; it is visible in the distance on the left, at the corner of Devonshire and Milk Streets.

Boston and Maine Station, Boston

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The Boston and Maine Railroad station at Haymarket Square in Boston, around 1894. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

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The Boston City Hospital Relief Station, on the site of the former railroad station in 1905. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

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The location in 2015:

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Of the eight major railroads that served Boston in the late 1800s, the Boston and Maine came the closest to the downtown area, with its depot at Haymarket Square. It was opened in 1845, and over the years Boston and Maine became the dominant railroad in northern New England, with many of its lines converging here.  However, because there were four different railroads that had their own stations within a few blocks of here, the companies built North Station in 1893, about 300 yards up Canal Street from here.

The old station had been built in the early years of railroad travel, and it stood until 1897, when it was demolished to make way for a new type of rail travel.  Boston’s Tremont Street Subway was the first subway tunnel in the country, and the northern entrance of the tunnel was built on the site of the station.  From here, the tracks ran along the surface between Canal and Haverhill Streets, where the station platforms used to be.  The only new building on the site was the Boston City Hospital Relief Station, as seen in the 1905 photo.  It was built in 1902 as a branch of the Boston City Hospital, in order to provide emergency services in the downtown area, and it stood until the early 1960s.

Today, there isn’t much left from either of the first two photos.  A few of the buildings on Canal Street are still standing, such as the one on the far left in both the 1891 and 1905 photos.  It is barely visible on the left of the 2015 photo, above the bus in the foreground.  Haymarket Square itself is completely changed, though, through a series of urban renewal projects in the 20th century.  To the left is a parking garage, with the Haymarket Square subway station underneath it.  On the right-hand side of the photo, the elevated Central Artery once passed through here.  Built in the 1950s, it cut a swath through downtown Boston until 2003, when the highway was rerouted through the Tip O’Neill Tunnel as part of the Big Dig.  The building under construction in the background is being built on land that the Central Artery once passed through.

Cocoanut Grove, Boston (4)

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One more view of the Cocoanut Grove from Shawmut Street, following the November 28, 1942 fire. Image courtesy the Boston Public Library.

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The scene in 2015:

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The first photo here shows almost the same scene as the one in this post, but this one was taken earlier, before the debris was cleaned off the sidewalk and the windows boarded up.  Around a thousand people were in the nightclub at the time of the fire, and only about half survived.  The fast-moving flames, combined with the few unlocked exits, trapped hundreds of victims in the building. Here in the dining room, the fire was largely confined to the ceiling, but many died from carbon monoxide poisoning or from the superheated air.  The debris outside gives some indication of the pattern of the fire; while the flammable ceiling decorations quickly burned, other objects in the room such as chairs, artwork, and even music sheets survived relatively unscathed.

Today, the entire area has been redeveloped, and a street now crosses through where the dining room was once located.  As seen in the 2015 photo, it is named Cocoanut Grove Lane, in memory of the 492 people who died here over 70 years ago.