Buildings

Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

by

Looking east on Commonwealth Avenue from near Kenmore Square, around 1910-1914. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

707_1910-1920c loc

Commonwealth Avenue in 2015:

707_2015
When the first photo was taken, the Kenmore section of Boston was still being developed. The apartment building on the right, which is missing in the first photo, was built in 1916, and the other houses in the photo aren’t much older.  These late Victorian-era homes were built in the late 1890s, around the same time as the Hotel Somerset, which can be seen in the distance in the lower center of the photos.  To the left is the median of Commonwealth Avenue, which was part of the original design of the Back Bay to have a wide avenue with a large, landscaped central median.  Although today Commonwealth Avenue has one way traffic on each side of the median, this apparently wasn’t the case in the early 1900s; the first photo shows traffic traveling in both directions on what is now the eastbound side of the road.

Around 100 years later, most of the buildings from the first photo are still standing today.  The houses to the right now have stores on the ground floors, but despite this there haven’t been any drastic alterations.  As mentioned in the previous post, the Hotel Somerset is still standing on the other side of the elevated Charlesgate, but it was converted into condominiums in the 1980s.  To the left in the median, part of the old subway portal is visible in the 2015 photo.  This section of the subway opened in 1914, probably not long after the first photo was taken, with the trolleys coming to the surface at this spot in the median before crossing Kenmore Square.  This portal has since been closed off, but the arch at the top is still above ground.

Hotel Somerset, Boston

by

The Hotel Somerset at the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Charlesgate East in Boston, around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

706_1910-1920c loc

The building in 2015:

706_2015
When this historic building was completed in 1897, it was at the very edge of the city.  There were parts of Boston further west of here, such as today’s Fenway/Kenmore neighborhood, but at that point there was very little development going on.  Even the 1898 city atlas didn’t cover further west of here, and it shows that many of the building lots around the hotel were still vacant.

Although the Hotel Somerset was initially surrounded by vacant lots, the city soon grew up around it, as the first photo shows. It was a prominent city hotel, with notable guests such as The Beatles, who stayed here during their visit to Boston in 1966, as well as visiting baseball teams, since Fenway Park is just a quarter mile away.  Ted Williams also stayed here during the baseball season, renting Room 231 for many years.

In the century since the first photo was taken, many of the surroundings have changed.  The Massachusetts Turnpike passes within 50 feet of the building on the other side, and on this side an elevated roadway crosses Commonwealth Avenue, with an off-ramp on the right side of the photo in front of the building.  The hotel itself was converted to condominiums in the 1980s, but from the outside it still doesn’t look much different from the first photo.

Back Street, Boston (2)

by

Looking east on Back Street in Boston from Hereford Street, probably in 1907. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

705_1880-1915c coba

Back Street in 2015:

705_2015
These photos show the scene only a block further down Back Street from the ones in this post, and the old photo here was probably taken on the same day as the other one.  As mentioned in the other post, Back Street is a narrow alley that is used to access the rear of the houses along the north side of Beacon Street.  When the first photo was taken, Back Street was the very northern end of the Back Bay, with only a flimsy-looking wooden guardrail separating the street from the Charles River.

Over time, this has changed, with the first change coming soon after the photo was taken.  In 1910, the Charles River Esplanade was completed along the Charles River, creating a long, narrow strip of public parkland between Back Street and the Charles River.  However, later in the 20th century much of the original park was taken to build Storrow Drive, a parkway connecting downtown Boston to the western parts of the city.  It isn’t visible because of the dumpster in the foreground, but Storrow Drive runs right next to the street, with only a low chain link fence separating the two.  On the other side of Storrow Drive, the Esplanade has been expanded, and can be accessed from Back Street via several pedestrian bridges.

Back Street, Boston

by

Looking east along Back Street in Boston from Massachusetts Avenue, on October 14, 1907. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

703_1907-10-14 coba

Back Street in 2015:

703_2015
When the Back Bay was filled and developed into a residential neighborhood in the late 1800s, the houses on the north side of Beacon Street were only a few feet away from the Charles River, separated only by the narrow Back Street, which serves as an alley to access the back of the houses.  Within a few years after the first photo was taken, though, this area began to change.  In 1910, the Charles River Esplanade was completed as a public park along the banks of the Charles River, and the first photo was probably taken as part of the city’s preliminary work on the project.

By the late 1940s, traffic congestion in Boston required some of the land to be used to build a parkway, so in 1951 Storrow Drive was completed as a six lane, automobile-only road with low clearances and no shoulders.  Most of the original parkland was lost, so more land was reclaimed from the Charles River on the other side of Storrow Drive.  As a result, this section of Back Street is now over 250 feet from the Charles River, which isn’t even visible from the ground level anymore.  Many of the 19th century rowhouses are still standing here, but the view from the north-facing windows has been drastically changed now that they have a highway in their backyards.

Division 16 Police Station, Boston

by

The Division 16 Police Station on Boylston Street, just west of Hereford Street, around 1914. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

701_1914c coba

The buildings in 2015:

701_2015
When the first photo was taken, this police station on Boylston Street consisted of the larger building in the background and the small one-story building in the center.  The larger building is attached to the Ladder 15/Engine 33 Firehouse, and it was completed in the mid-1880s.  At some point in the early 20th century, the police station added the small building to the left of it, and the two buildings were used by the Boston Police Department until 1976.

Today, neither building has seen drastic changes in appearance.  They narrowly survived the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike, which was completed in 1965 and runs directly under the spot where the photo was taken.  From 1976 to 2007, the larger building was the Institute of Contemporary Art, and it is now owned by the Boston Architectural College.  The smaller building has since been converted into a restaurant, and as of 2015 it is Dillon’s Restaurant and Bar, which is named after a police captain who was stationed here from 1920 to 1950.

Tennis and Racquet Club, Boston

by

The Tennis and Racquet Club at the corner of Boylston and Hereford Streets in Boston, on April 5, 1912. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

700_1912-04-05 coba

The building in 2015:

700_2015
This building has been home to the Tennis and Racquet Club since it opened in 1902, 10 years before the first photo was taken.  As the Back Bay developed as one of the city’s premier neighborhoods in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a number of private social clubs sprung up for the neighborhood’s wealthy residents.  The Tennis and Racquet was one such social and athletic club, and it is still active today in this historic building, with its original court tennis and racquets courts in the large, mostly windowless area above the second floor.