1890s

Tremont House, Boston

by

The Tremont House on Tremont Street in Boston, sometime in the 1890s. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

1890s

The scene in 2014:

321_2014

The Tremont House in the first photo was built in 1829, and it holds a significant place in American history – it was the first hotel with running water and indoor plumbing. It opened to much fanfare, with mayor Josiah Quincy (of Quincy Market fame) presiding over the event. The guest list included a number of distinguished Bostonians, including Congressmen Daniel Webster and Edward Everett. Webster would go on to become one of the most influential men in 19th century America, and Everett also went on to bigger and better things, serving as governor, ambassador, senator, and Secretary of State. He gave a speech at the ceremony, and some 34 years later he would be the keynote speaker at another event – the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, although his two hour speech was overshadowed by President Lincoln’s two minute remarks.

The building stood at the corner of Tremont and Beacon Streets until 1895, and during its existence it had a number of notable guests, including Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alexis de Tocqueville, and President Andrew Jackson. It was also where, in 1848, Abraham Lincoln, at the time a virtually unknown Illinois Congressman, stayed during a visit to Boston. Coincidentally, years later John Wilkes Booth would also stay at the hotel, not long before he assassinated Lincoln.

Explosion, Corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets, Boston

by

An explosion at the corner of Tremont and Boylston during the construction of the Tremont Street Subway on March 4, 1897.  Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

319_1897-03-04-2Bbpl

The scene in 2014:

319_2014

The corner of Boylston and Tremont is the location of a sharp 90 degree curve on the Green Line, where the underground tracks turn off of Boylston and onto Tremont.  In 1897, however, this was still under construction.  During this time, one of the gas lines at the intersection began leaking.  The escaped gas accumulated in the empty space underground, until a horse-drawn streetcar, the one marked “Mount Auburn” in the photo, ignited the gas as it passed above ground.  The explosion killed ten people and caused significant damage to the surrounding buildings, including the Hotel Touraine, which was still under construction in the first photo and stands to this day.  The subway itself would go on to open on September 1, and the location of the explosion became the Boylston station.

Hancock Tavern, Boston

by

The Hancock Tavern on Corn Court, Boston, around 1898. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

313_1898c-2Bbpl

The same site in 2014:

313_2014

Throughout the 19th century, rumors abounded that this building, known as Hancock Tavern, was the meeting-place prior to the Boston Tea Party.  However, while old, this building was not that old – a 1917 estimate put its date of construction between 1807 and 1812. Even the site has no direct connection to the Tea Party – the previous building had been a four room house, with no record of any tavern existing there in the 1770s. In short, as one historian put it in 1903, “As an old landmark the Hancock Tavern is a failure.”

The first photo is intriguing, however, because it shows a glimpse of what 19th century Boston looked like, with narrow, winding cobblestone streets that seem to literally vanish into the city blocks.  The scene wouldn’t last for much longer after the first photo was taken, though.  It was demolished by 1903 and replaced with a more modern building; the narrow Corn Court alley went with it as well.  Today, the site has been completely redeveloped again, and is located just south of Faneuil Hall, between Faneuil Hall, State Street, Congress Street, and the South Market building.

Sun Tavern, Dock Square, Boston

by

The Sun Tavern at Dock Square, across from Faneuil Hall in Boston, sometime in the 1800s. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

Taverns

Dock Square and the Sun Tavern around 1898. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

312_1898c-2Bbpl

The scene in 2014:

312_2014

According to the sign above the building in the first photo, the Sun Tavern was built in 1690, although some estimates that I have seen have dated its construction even earlier.  In either case, the building was extremely old by the time it was photographed in 1898,  It was a tavern by the first decade of the 18th century, although possibly earlier, and was at the time located right next to the town dock, hence the name of Dock Square.  It wouldn’t be until over 50 years after it opened that its familiar neighbor, Faneuil Hall, was built, and another 80 years after that before Quincy Market was built atop what was once Boston Harbor.

The building survived until about 1910 (it appears in the 1908 atlas, but is gone by the 1912 one), and sometime in the 1920s or 1930s a good portion of Dock Square was torn down.  The rest would come down in the 1960s, when the area that once made up Dock Square, Adams Square, and Scollay Square was demolished to build Boston City Hall, seen on the right-hand side of the 2014 photo.

Old Suffolk County Courthouse, Boston

by

The old Suffolk County Courthouse at Court Square, Boston, between 1904 and 1912. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

283_1890c-2Bbpl

The scene today:

The Boston Public Library Flickr page for the first photo estimates that it was taken around 1890, but it’s way off.  The signs on either side of the steps read “East Boston Tunnel,” which wasn’t opened until 1904.  The building itself, which was built in 1836, was demolished in 1912 to make way for the present-day building, so the first photo was evidently taken sometime in between.

The original building was the old Suffolk County Courthouse; Suffolk County at the time included a number of municipalities surrounding Boston, but by the time the second photo was taken, most of those had been annexed by Boston.  The courthouse, though, was conveniently located right behind the old Boston City Hall, which still survives today, although the city government has since moved a few blocks away.  The building can be seen in both photos, in the distance on the left-hand side.  The courthouse itself is long gone, but the building that replaced it retains the same footprint, and similar architectural features, although it is significantly taller.

Summer Street near Atlantic Avenue, Boston

by

Looking toward the northern side of Summer Street, with Atlantic Avenue in the distance, sometime in the 1800s. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

282_1800sc-2Bbpl

The scene in 2014:

These photos were taken from alongside South Station (although I’m not sure if South Station was here at the time of the first photo), around the spot where the present-day station facade ends.  The buildings in the first photo are the Hathaway Building (distance) and the New England Building (foreground), and an 1898 atlas of Boston lists both buildings as belonging to Francis Hathaway.  I don’t know when the buildings were demolished, but they were gone by the late 1960s, when construction began on the building that currently occupies the site, Boston’s Federal Reserve Bank Building, which takes up most of the right-hand side of the photo.