Massachusetts Archives - Page 185 of 256

Sherman Building, Boston

September 10, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The Sherman Building at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Newbury Street in Boston, on October 28, 1911. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

The building in 2015:

This building at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Newbury Street was built in 1908, and housed a few of the many car dealerships in the Back Bay in the early 20th century. The first photo shows two different companies occupying the first floor: Oldsmobile had the more prominent corner storefront, and the Thomas B. Jeffery Company had the storefront on the far right. Like most early car companies, Jeffery didn’t survive the 1910s, but Oldsmobile lasted for almost another century.

Over time, car dealerships moved out of city centers and into the suburbs, so the building as used for a variety of other purposes, from apartments to an indoor golf course. It narrowly escaped demolition for the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike; the building directly across Newbury Street was replaced with a highway on-ramp when the Turnpike was extended through Boston in the 1960s. Today, the building is the Boston location of the Room & Board furniture store. It opened in 2014 following a massive renovation that modernized and expanded the building while retaining its original appearance from the street.

Kenmore Square Bus, Boston

September 10, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Passengers getting off of a bus at Kenmore Square, sometime in the 1940s and probably before 1947. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

The same location in 2015:

For all that has changed in the past 70 years, not much is different between these two photos. Many of the buildings in Kenmore Square are still there today, including the Peerless Motor Company Building in the background on the right. It was completed in 1911 as the New England headquarters of the Peerless Motor Company, an early luxury car brand that was in business until 1931. The building was used for offices, showrooms, and garage space for the company, but by the time the first photo was taken, Peerless had been gone for over a decade. Today, the exterior of the building is essentially the same as it was when it was built over a century ago, and it is used as Boston University’s bookstore. It isn’t visible in the photo, but this is also the building that has the famous Citgo sign that can be seen beyond the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

The most obvious change from the 1940s photo is the bus. Not only are bus styles different today, but so is the company that operates the city’s buses. The side of the bus reads “Boston Elevated Railway,” which was the company that ran Boston’s subways, streetcars, and buses until 1947. With increased competition from automobiles, the company was no longer profitable, so its operations were sold to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which later became today’s MBTA. As seen in the 2015 photo, Kenmore Square is still a major transportation hub, and the median of Commonwealth Avenue has a reserved lane for buses next to the bus shelter, which also offers access to the Green Line station directly underneath here.

Boston University East, Boston

September 9, 2015 by Derek Strahan

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

The scene in 2015:

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

September 6, 2015 by Derek Strahan

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

The hotel in 2015:

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.

H. H. Perry House, Agawam, Mass

October 7, 2018August 12, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The H. H. Perry House on River Road near the corner of Leonard Street in Agawam, around 1895-1896. Image courtesy of the Agawam Historical Association.

The house in 2015:

This house was built around 1880, replacing an earlier house that had been known as the Old Red House. Although identified as the H. H. Perry house, by the time the first photo was taken it was owned by Eudice J. Dyotte, a Canadian immigrant who appears here on county maps from both 1894 and 1912. Today, the old barn is gone, as is the back porch and the shutters,and the house appears to have siding instead of clapboards, although it is hard to tell from this distance.

William Allen House, Agawam, Mass

August 12, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The William Allen House on Main Street in Agawam, around 1895-1896. Image courtesy of the Agawam Historical Association.

The house in 2015:

The William Allen House is one of several similar houses along Main Street, including the Rufus Colton House and the Captain Charles Leonard House. All three houses were built around 1800 (this one is a little older, having been built around 1795), and all three may have been designed by, or were at least based on the designs of noted architect Asher Benjamin. The most distinctive feature on the houses is the Palladian window above the front door, but the Allen House is a little different from the others because of its gabled roof, as opposed to the hip roof on the Colton and Leonard houses.

The Allen House, like the other two, was built for a militia officer, Lieutenant William Allen. By the time the first photo was taken, it was the home of Frank E. Campbell, a farmer who grew tobacco in his fields behind the house. The fields have long since been subdivided and developed into houses, but the old farmhouse still stands on Main Street, without a whole lot of changes in the past 120 years. The only major change was a 1960s restoration, which returned the house to its early 1800s appearance by, among other things, removing the Victorian-era front porch.