The exterior of Fenway Park in 1914. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Bain Collection.
The same view in 2006:
The scene in 2024:
This is probably the only part of Fenway Park that is virtually unchanged since it opened nearly 102 years ago. Several fires, a massive reconstruction in 1934, and a number of smaller changes along the way have left very little remaining from the original park. However, the Jersey Street façade hasn’t changed much, aside from the addition of various championship banners that the team has won since they first made Fenway their home.
2024 update: I have added a 2024 photo of the same scene. Not a whole lot has changed, but there are a few additional World Series championship banners in the distance.
The Old Capitol Prison, around 1863. Photo by Mathew Brady, courtesy of the National Archives.
The building around 1866. Photo by William R. Pywell, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Civil War Collection.
Between 1910 and 1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
The same location in 2012:
Clearly, much has changed in 147 years at the corner of 1st St. NE and A St. NE. The building in the first two photos (which is actually the same building in the third photo) is the Old Capitol Prison. As its name suggests, the building once served as the temporary United States Capitol. After the Capitol was burned in the War of 1812, this building was hastily built to serve as the Capitol until the repairs could be completed.
After Congress and the Supreme Court returned to the Capitol in 1819, the building was used as a private school and later as a boarding house. It was in this boarding house that former Vice President John C. Calhoun died in 1850; years earlier he had served as a Representative from South Carolina in the same building. During the Civil War, the building was used as a prison, and in 1867 it was sold and converted into rowhouses, as seen in the third photo. In 1929, it was demolished to allow for the construction of the US Supreme Court building, which, as seen in the 2012 photo, remains on the site today.
Union Station in Washington, DC, between 1910 and 1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
The same building in 2012:
Union Station was built in 1907, by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Since then, a lot has changed in the city, but the building has remained the same. Neither the Pennsylvania nor the Baltimore & Ohio Railroads exist anymore, but the station is now a major Amtrak hub, and is the southern terminal of the Northeast Corridor, which stretches from DC to Boston, and is the busiest passenger rail line in the country. The modes of transportation to the trains, however, has changed a lot in the past 100 years. While the first photo shows trolleys unloading passengers at the station, they have been replaced by cars and buses in the 2012 photo.
The Buckman Tavern in Lexington, between 1890 and 1901. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
Between 1910 and 1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
In 2013:
This building, located just to the east of the Lexington Green, was built around 1710 by Benjamin Muzzy. His son John operated it as a tavern for many years, and the tavern was eventually acquired by John Buckman after his marriage to John’s granddaughter Ruth Stone in 1768.
It was during Buckman’s time here that the tavern gained attention as the site where many of Lexington’s militiamen gathered on the morning of April 19, 1775, just before the Battle of Lexington. This battle—really more of a small skirmish—occurred directly in front of the tavern on the Green, and it marked the start of the American Revolution. There was at least one bullet that passed through the front door of the tavern, and later in the day there were two wounded British soldiers who were brought here, and one of them died here in the tavern.
After the battle, John Buckman continued to operate this tavern until his death in 1792. Two years later, it was acquired by Rufus Merriam, who had witnessed the battle nearly 20 years earlier as a 13-year-old boy. He later became postmaster, and the town’s post office was located here starting in 1813, but the building does not appear to have been used as a tavern for much longer after that.
The property would remain in the Merriam family for many years, and it was eventually acquired by the town of Lexington in 1913. The interior was subsequently restored to its colonial-era appearance, and the old tavern is now leased by the Lexington Historical Society, which operates it as a museum.
2023 update: I have added some photos from the interior of the tavern, which were taken during a May 2023 visit:
The kitchen in the back of the tavernThe ladies’ parlorThe room in the northwestern corner of the ground floorThe front entryway. On the left side, behind the plexiglass, is the original front door, with a yellow arrow pointing to the bullet hole.The tap room, where the militiamen gathered prior to the battle.
Long Wharf in Boston, around 1910. Image courtesy of Boston Public Library.
Long Wharf around 1930. Image courtesy of Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.
The same view in 2024:
Boston’s Long Wharf was originally much longer than it is now, although the wharf didn’t get shorter – the city grew outwards. At the beginning of the 18th century, a longer wharf was needed to extend further into the harbor, in order to accommodate deeper oceangoing ships. Originally, it started where Faneuil Hall is today, but as time went on, the city expanded by filling in Boston Harbor, sometimes with dirt and rocks, and sometimes with sunken ships and construction debris. Either way, the city ended up filling in much of the space between Long Wharf and other wharves, and the city built up around it. In the 1930’s, the wharf was much the same as it is today, but at the time this part was used by the United Fruit Company, hence the cargo ships. Today, the cargo ships are gone, replaced by ferries to other parts of Boston and surrounding communities. Some of the older buildings remain, including the granite 1848 Custom House Block, which is visible on the far left of both photos. The cargo ships in the two photos, however, do not exist anymore. I don’t know what happened to the Vera, the steamer in the first photo, but a ship of the same name was sunk by a German U-boat in World War I. The same fate definitely did happen to the ship in the 1930 photo, the Oriskany, though; it was sunk by a U-boat in 1945 off the coast of England.
The view of Easthampton from the Summit House atop Mount Tom, between 1905 and 1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
The scene in 2019:
The Summit House no longer exists, so I wasn’t able to perfectly re-create the early 20th century photo, but the 2019 photo shows the remains of the promenade that is in the foreground of the older photo. President William McKinley once walked along it, but now all that remains is the concrete that once supported the wooden boardwalk and the rusty metal railings that tourists once admired the view from alongside. The Summit House from the older photo was built in 1901, replacing the 1897 structure that had burned just three years later. The 1901 building also burned, in 1929, and the third one was closed in 1938. The site of the summit houses is now off-limits; it is the site of numerous radio and TV antennas for the Springfield area.
