Washington Street, Boston

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

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Washington Street in 2015:

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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

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.

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The building in 2015:

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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.

Symphony Hall, Boston

Symphony Hall, at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, around 1904. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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Boston’s Symphony Hall is one of many prominent concert halls in this section of Boston, and it has been the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops ever since it opened in 1900.  It was designed by McKim, Mead and White, the same architectural firm that built the Boston Public Library at Copley Square a few years earlier.  Like the library, it is an excellent example of Renaissance Revival architecture, but Symphony Hall is perhaps best known not for its visual appeal, but rather its acoustic properties.  Harvard professor and physicist Wallace Clement Sabine used his knowledge of acoustics to design the auditorium, making it the world’s first concert hall to be scientifically designed in such a way.  Because of this, it is still regarded as one of the best concert halls in the world.

Over the years, this section of the Back Bay has seen some dramatic changes, but Symphony Hall is essentially the same, both on the exterior and interior.  The Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Pops continue to perform here, along with the Handel and Hadyn Society.  With a seating capacity of over 2,000, it has also been used for a number of other civil purposes, ranging from political rallies and inaugurations to business conventions and fashion shows.  In addition, many renowned authors have given lectures here; the building’s National Register of Historic Places registration form identifies many visiting writers from the early 20th century, including Edward Everett Hale, Julia Ward Howe, Booker T. Washington, G.K. Chesterton, Robert Frost, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, Maine (3)

Another view of Portland Head Light, probably taken around the 1870s. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

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The lighthouse in 2015:

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The first photo here was probably taken around 10-20 years before the ones in the previous two posts here and here, and it shows the tower as it appeared following its 1865 height change.  As mentioned in more detail in the first post, the lighthouse was built in 1791, but was reduced in height by 20 feet in 1812, to the spot below the lantern where a horizontal band runs around the tower.  Those 20 feet were restored in 1865, as seen in the first photo, but the tower was trimmed down again in 1883.  Just two years later, though, enough sailors complained that it was raised 20 feet yet again, with changes such as a larger lantern room at the top and  a second gallery below it.  Since 1885, it hasn’t seen very many changes, and it remains an active lighthouse as well as a popular tourist destination along the southern coast of Maine.

Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, Maine (2)

Another view of Portland Head Light, taken from the north side probably around 1890. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The lighthouse in 2015:

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The angle here isn’t exact; the first photo was taken from the water, a little to the left of where the 2015 photo was taken.  The previous post explains more about the history of the lighthouse, which was built in 1791 on a rocky outcropping at the entrance to Portland Harbor.  The first view was presumably taken around the same time as the one on the other post, because it shows the old 1816 keeper’s house, which was replaced by the current one in 1891.

Being surrounded by water on three sides and facing the open ocean provides some dramatic views for visitors and photographers, and it probably also provided the inspiration for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Lighthouse.”  Longfellow grew up in Portland, and the certainly seemed to be describing this lighthouse, writing in the first two stanzas:

The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.

Even at this distance I can see the tides,
Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
In the white lip and tremor of the face.

The lighthouse would have looked a little different when Longfellow wrote the poem, though.  The keeper’s house would have been the same as the one in the first photo, but as mentioned in the previous post, its height was periodically changed throughout the 19th century, and did not assume its present-day appearance until 1885, three years after Longfellow’s death.  Today, with the old keeper’s house gone, the only thing left from Longfellow’s childhood visits is the section of the tower below the horizontal band a little below the lantern.

Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, Maine (1)

The view of Portland Head Light, possibly around 1890. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The lighthouse in 2015:

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Aside from perhaps lobsters and pine trees, Portland Head Light is one of Maine’s most recognizable symbols.  The iconic lighthouse is among the most famous in the world, and in the past few years it has been featured in lists such as USA Today’s “10 best lighthouses around the USA“, The Weather Channel’s “11 Amazing Lighthouses of the World“, and Mental Floss’s “10 of the Most Beautiful Lighthouses in the World.”  However, this is not a recent phenomenon; the picturesque lighthouse overlooking Portland’s Casco Bay has attracted generations of photographers, as seen in the photo from the Detroit Publishing Company over a hundred years earlier.

The lighthouse was completed in 1791, in what was at the time part of Massachusetts.  As its name suggests, Portland was, and still is, one of New England’s major commercial ports, so a lighthouse was needed to mark the southern edge of the main shipping channel into the harbor. It was the first lighthouse to be built by the United States government (all earlier lighthouses were built prior to the Revolution or prior to the federal government assuming control over lighthouses), and it was also the first of many lighthouses in present-day Maine.

As built, Portland Head Light looked very different from today.  It was only 72 feet tall, but poor construction of both the tower and the keeper’s house became evident within 20 years.  The leaking lighthouse was lowered by 20 feet in 1812, and the keeper’s house was replaced in 1816 by the one seen in the first photo.  This website provides more details, along with a few historic photos of the lighthouse, including one from 1859 that is barely recognizable compared to the two views shown above.

The tower’s height continued to fluctuate throughout the 19th century.  In response to a deadly 1864 shipwreck, it was raised 20 feet for better visibility, only to be reduced again in 1883.  Two years later, though, the third and final height change gave the tower its present appearance.  This is still noticeable today; the ring around the upper section of the tower separates the 1885 addition from the original 1791 structure.

The only obvious difference between the two photos above is the keeper’s house to the left, and this is where there is somewhat of a discrepancy with the date of the photo.  The Library of Congress estimates that the first photo was taken around 1902. However, the records indicate that the present-day keeper’s house was built in 1891, and assuming this is correct, it would make that the earliest that this photo could have been taken.  This is far earlier than most of the other photos in the Detroit Publishing Company collection, though, so the exact date seems to be questionable.

Date questions aside, the lighthouse is still an active aid to navigation for one of the busiest ports on the east coast, although the keeper’s house is no longer used as a residence.  The light was automated in 1989, eliminating the need for a full-time lighthouse keeper. so today the house is owned by the town of Cape Elizabeth, and is operated as a maritime museum as part of Fort Williams Park.