Street Scenes Archives - Page 48 of 95

Hotel Aspinwall Entrance, Lenox, Mass

February 20, 2016February 19, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The entrance to the Hotel Aspinwall, looking up the driveway from Main Street around 1905-1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2015:

The Hotel Aspinwall was one of many popular hotels in the Lenox area during the early 1900s. It was built in 1902 by Thomas H. Hubbard, a New York lawyer and businessman who had served as a colonel in the Civil War many years earlier. Located at the end of this long driveway, it was on top of a hill that offered views of the Berkshires to the east and the west, and as the signs indicate in the first photo, it was approved by both the American Automobile Association and the Automobile Club of America. However, as was the case with so many wooden hotels of the early 1900s, it caught fire and was completely destroyed in an early morning blaze on April 25, 1931. The hotel was never rebuilt, and today it is a public park with. In this scene, the only remaining signs of the hotel are the stone pillars on either side of the driveway.

Main Street, Lee, Mass

November 30, 2022February 7, 2016 by Derek Strahan

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:

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.

Washington Street, Boston

February 9, 2018January 27, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking north on Washington Street from School Street in Boston, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Washington Street in 2015:

In the days before radio, television, and internet, the only major news source for most people was newspapers. At the turn of the 20th century, large cities had many newspapers, which were often published twice daily. However, for timelier updates, newspapers often posted breaking news, election results, and sports scores on bulletin boards outside of their offices. In some cities, such as New York and here in Boston, many newspapers had offices in the same area, known as Newspaper Row.

Boston’s Newspaper Row was located along Washington Street, between Milk and State Streets, and at one point included up to 17 newspapers, including several in this scene. On the far left of the first photo, partially blocked by the trolley car, is the Boston Post, and further down the street, the tall building to the left had been the home of the Boston Herald. As the advertisement on the building indicates, the Herald had recently moved to a new location on Tremont Street. Both the Post and the Herald buildings have since been demolished, and a parking garage now stands there. The Post, which was established in 1831, was a major daily newspaper in New England until it closed in 1956. The Herald, however, is still around today, 170 years after it was first published in 1846.

The large building in the distance in the left-center of the first photo was the home of the Boston Globe, the narrow building next to it was the Boston Advertiser, and the tall building in the center of the photo was the Boston Journal. Of these three, the Globe was by far the newest of these newspapers, having been established in 1872. The Advertiser, on the other hand, had been published since 1813 as the first daily newspaper in the city, and the Journal since 1833. However, the Globe ended up outliving both of them, as the Journal merged with the Herald in 1917, and the Advertiser was purchased by William Randolph Hearst the same year and was discontinued in 1929. Both the Globe and the Advertiser buildings here have since been demolished, but the Journal building still stands as the only survivor of the five turn-of-the-century newspaper buildings in this scene. The building opened in 1901, and was the home of the Journal until its merger with the Herald. Since then, it has been used for other professional offices.

There are no longer any newspaper offices along this section of Washington Street; the Globe left in 1958, and it has been many years since Newspaper Row was the center of news information in the city. It is also much less crowded; the first photo shows the narrow street filled with pedestrians, carriages, and trolleys, but within a few years the Washington Street Tunnel would be completed. This subway tunnel eliminated some of the congestion by taking the trolleys off of the streets, and it formed the precursor to today’s Orange Line, which still runs under this section of Washington Street.

Despite the changes over the years, there have been several constants. The Old Corner Bookstore, which is just out of view in the first photo but visible on the far left in the second one, is the oldest of them all. It was built in 1712, and it is still standing as one of the oldest buildings in downtown Boston, and just beyond it is the Andrew Cunningham House, which was built a few years later around 1725. Aside from these two colonial-era buildings, though, there are several other historic buildings in the scene. On the far right is the Old South Building, a large office building that was completed shortly before the first photo was taken. It wraps around the Old South Church between Washington and Milk Streets, and its Milk Street facade can be seen in this post. The other prominent historic building here is the Winthrop Building, located just beyond the Old South Building at the corner of Washington and Water Streets. A view of the long side of this building can be seen in the “now” photo of this post, which shows it from the Water Street side. It was built in 1893 on a long, narrow, irregularly-shaped lot, and it was Boston’s first steel frame skyscraper. It is still standing today, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Horticultural Hall, Boston

February 11, 2016January 17, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Horticultural Hall, at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, around 1901-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The building in 2015:

Horticultural Hall was built in 1901, around the same time as its neighbors, Symphony Hall to the left across Massachusetts Avenue, and Chickering Hall, visible to the right in the first photo. Chickering Hall has long since been demolished as part of the development of the Christian Science Center in the 1960s, but both Horticultural Hall and Symphony Hall still stand here at the corner of Massachusetts and Huntington Avenues.

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society was founded in 1829 to promote modern practices in horticulture, and this building was the organization’s third facility. It included a large exhibition hall for plant shows, with would have included the flower show that was advertised on the sign at the corner of the building in the first photo. The building also had a smaller exhibition hall, a 300-seat lecture hall, a library, and offices.

In more than a century since the first photo was taken, most of the scene has changed. The buildings in the background have all been demolished, the streetcar line on Huntington Avenue is now underground as the “E” Branch of the Green Line, and Massachusetts Avenue now passes over Huntington Avenue on a bridge in the foreground. As for the building itself, the Horticultural Society sold the building to the neighboring Christian Science Church in 1992, but its exterior has seen very few changes, and along with the neighboring Symphony Hall it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Copley Square Hotel, Boston

February 9, 2018January 16, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Copley Square Hotel at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Exeter Street, around 1909. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The hotel in 2015:

Not to be confused with the nearby Copley Plaza Hotel, this historic hotel was built in 1891 and has remained here for the past 125 years. It was originally located at the edge of a large rail yard, with the tracks coming all the way up to the west side of Exeter Street, just out of the frame to the left. Despite the name, the hotel is actually a block away from Copley Square, but it was still a convenient location for guests. By the time the hotel opened in 1891, Copley Square had become a major cultural center in Boston, with the Trinity Church, New Old South Church, Museum of Fine Arts, and MIT all located right around the square, and the Boston Public Library’s McKim Building under construction at the time.

In the century since the first photo was taken, this section of the Back Bay south of Boylston Street has undergone some dramatic changes. The rail yard was replaced with the Prudential Center in the 1960s, and some of Boston’s tallest buildings are within a couple blocks of here, including the John Hancock Tower, the Prudential Tower, and 111 Huntington Avenue. Other historic buildings, including Mechanics Hall just down Huntington Avenue from here, have been demolished, but the Copley Square Hotel is still standing as the only surviving 19th century building on Huntington Avenue between Copley Square and Massachusetts Avenue. The building’s interior was extensively renovated in 2008, but from the outside it doesn’t look much different today than it did in 1909.

Main Street, Monson, Mass

January 8, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking north on Main Street from near State Street in Monson, around 1890-1910. Image courtesy of the Monson Free Library.

Main Street in 2015:

This section of Main Street was once known as “Millionaires’ Mile,” and it featured a number of elegant 19th century homes that were owned by prominent factory owners and other businessmen in Monson. In previous posts I highlighted two neighboring homes that belonged to the Norcross family and Cushman family, and this photo was taken just north of them, in front of Cushman Hall.

Many of the homes from the first photo are still standing today, despite over a century of change and a devastating tornado that passed directly through this scene in 2011. The trees hide some of the houses in the first photo, but nearly all of them from the foreground to the crest of the hill are nearly identical Greek Revival homes that date back to around the 1840s. This style was particularly popular in industrialized New England cities like Hartford, New Haven, and New Bedford, but it can also be seen here in Monson, where similar industrial growth was occurring on a smaller scale.

The two houses on the far left, which are painted white and yellow in the 2015 photo, are essentially identical, and they were both built in 1842. The one on the left was the home of Rufus and Sarah Fay, and the yellow one to the right was the home of Charles and Mary Ann Merrick. Aside from being family, though, the two men were also business partners; they owned a straw hat factory across the street, where the Monson Town Offices are today. Together they, and later their children, ran Merrick & Fay for over 50 years, and the company was a major employer in the town. Their sons sold the company in 1891, and the factory burned down in 1912, but their twin houses are still standing on Main Street.

Other wealthy 19th century residents of this section of Main Street included Edward Cushman, who lived in the house on the far right. He left it to the town in his will, and today it is the Monson Senior Center. Further up the hill, the Victorian mansion just to the left of center was the home of Cyrus W. Holmes, a factory owner who lived in the Victorian mansion seen on the hill just to the left of center.

In more than 100 years since the first photo was taken, Main Street has seen many changes. A trolley line was added and later removed, the road was paved, automobiles replaced both the horse-drawn carriages and the trolleys, and the 1938 hurricane destroyed most of the elms that once lined both sides of the street. The street is no longer filled with millionaire businessmen either, but their former homes help contribute to the character of downtown Monson and serve as a reminder of the town’s industrial history.