Boylston Market

Boylston Market, BPL Flickr photo group. No overhead wires for streetcars, so perhaps 1880s.


Boylston Market was designed by Charles Bullfinch, erected in 1809-10, and named for philanthropist Ward Nicholas Boylston (Boylston street was so-named at the same time).

Note: The father of Ward Nicholas Boylston was the loyalist Captain Benjamin Hallowell, who lived in Jamaica Plain (then Roxbury). The Hallowells left Boston with General Howe in 1775. In time, the son, Ward Nicholas, took his uncle's surname, and returned from London to the United States in 1800 to fight for the return of the family property through his mother's line (his father being a loyalist). A magnanimous court returned the estate at Centre and Boylston streets in Jamaica Plain to him, and he remained there until he died in 1828. So Boylston street honors the son of a loyalist who returned and became a respected American.



This photo dated 1881-1883. BPL Flickr photo group.


More than just a market, Boylston market was home to various institutions, and housed a hall where concerts and meetings were held, including those of the Handel and Haydn Society and the New England Anti-Slavery Society.



Title: Corner of Washington and Boylston Streets, Boston. The old Boylston Market, Published in: Ballou's pictorial drawing-room companion, unknown date (possibly mid-1850s) BPL Flickr photo group.




The then-new Boylston Market, 1813. At the corner of Boylston and Orange (later Washington) streets (click on map for larger image).


Near the end: Boylston Market, 1883.


Boylston Market was torn down in 1888, and replaced by the Continental Clothing House, which I discussed in my last entry. The belfry was eventually placed on the Calvary Methodist Church in Arlington Massachusetts.

Continental Clothing House

The original Continental Clothing House building, at Washington and Harvard streets.


The Continental Clothing House, or Freeland, Loomis and Company, was founded in 1873. The store was preceded by the C.W. Freeland, Beard and Company, located at 152 Devonshire street, as revealed by the 1865 Boston Directory. At the same time, Silas Loomis was having success in business in in the Midwest. After the Chicago Fire of 1871, Loomis came to Boston and joined the firm Freeland, Loomis and Company. The first location of the new store was 744-756 Washington street. This was at the corner of Harvard street, which was one block south of Kneeland street. The contemporaneous print above boasts "The Largest Retail Clothing House in New England."

"King's Handbook of Boston said: "The first place of business in this country to make use of the electric light was the Continental Clothing House, at the south-west corner of Washington and Harvard Streets ; the proprietors, Freeland, Loomis, & Co., successfully making the experiment Nov. 14, 1878. In 1881 the light was introduced in illuminating Scollay Square and a section of Court Street at night; and it was also employed in a number of hotels, shops, and large establishments. Its general introduction in the street-lighting of the city has since been carried forward. "


Before I go on to the second location of the Continental Clothing House in Boston, this might be the appropriate place to insert mention of the Omaha branch store. Presumably based on Silas Loomis' experience in the West, the Omaha Illustrated of 1888 reported: "The proprietors of the establishment have fixed upon Omaha as the most important point for the western distributing branch of their business, and will eventually transfer a large portion of their manufacturing to this city, where, in the near future, it is proposed to enter into competition with the large western wholesale markets of Chicago and St. Louis in supplying the demand of the great West and Northwest, which must look to Omaha for its supplies of every description."

Evidently, Freeland and Loomis were thinking big. The Omaha Illustrated article also informs us that the stock for the store would be manufactured in Boston by between by "between five and six hundred hands," at the home facility. That's interesting. I take from that reference that the stock sold at the Boston store had been made on the premises as well.


The new building, at the corner of Boylston and Washington streets.



From an advertisement, Boston Globe, December 7, 1923.

Back to Boston. In 1888, the store moved up Washington street to the corner of Boylston street, on the site of the old Boylston Market (more on that building in a future entry).


Advertisement from The Tech, newspaper of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 10, 1896.



Another advertisement from The Tech, the newspaper of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 30, 1917. Stylish, aren't they?



Promotional pin from the Continental Clothing House.



The trade card for the Continental Clothing House shows, on opposite sides (above and below) the difference between your average suitor and the well dressed man.






On September 7, 1923, a Boston Globe article announced that the Continental Clothing House, under the name Freeland Loomis Company, had been bought by William Filene's Sons Company. Both the main Boylston street store and a newer store at Washington and Franklin streets were included in the sale. So now we know what happened to this major Boston retail institution. At least we know what happened to the name. I still don't know what Filene's did with the Boylston street location, and how long it remained as a retail establishment.

YMCA? YMCU!

The Young Men's Christian Association was founded in London in 1844, with the first American chapter opened in Boston in 1851. It was led by evangelical Christians, and intended to serve young men new to the city, and keep them on the straight and narrow. The organization went through several homes as it grew, ending up at the corner of Boylston and Berkeley streets in the Back Bay. The 1883 map below shows the location, opposite the Museum of Natural History and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Men could find housing, read in the library, attend lectures, take classes and exercise. This was part of the 'muscular Christianity' movement of the time.


Fire at the old YMCA building, circa 1930 (BPL Flickr photo group).


YMCA location, Boylston and Berkeley streets, 1883.



YMCA at Huntington avenue, 1920 (BPL Flickr photo group).


The organization would move from Berkeley street to Huntington avenue, where the Opera House sat on the opposite corner, the New England Conservatory and the new Museum of Fine Arts building was just up the street.


YMCA Huntington avenue, 1917.


Young Men's Christian Union building, Boylston street (still standing). Photo by Robert P. Burke, taken from a Boston Landmarks Study Report.

The YMCU was, like the YMCA, founded in 1851. So why two young men's Christian organizations at the same time? Wikipedia claims that Unitarians were excluded from the Evangelical YMCA (without citation, as usual). It was a group from Harvard that established the YMCU, and Harvard was primarily Unitarian at the time, so this would make sense. The building was designed by Nathaniel J. Bradlee, who was both a leading architect at the time and a life member of the organization. The 1883 map below shows the L-shaped wing in the back. The photo above does not show the long-lost clock tower that was situated at the top of the left section of the facade. The UMCU matched the YMCA in offering classes, a library, exercise facilities and the rest.


Young Men's Christian Union, on Boylston street between Washington and Tremont streets, 1883.

The Guns of Boston Harbor

Fort Warren, George's Island (BPL Flickr photo group).


A new series of photos was just released in the Boston Public Library Flickr photo group, including these images of the military batteries that once protected Boston Harbor. While Boston long had forts protecting the city, by the 1870s, they were obsolete. In the 1880s, the Presidential Endicott Commission recommended a dramatic expansion and modernization of America's coastal defense system. Between 1890 and 1910, earth and concrete batteries were constructed around Boston harbor, including the three shown here. They were manned during World Wars I and II, with most decommissioned during the Cold War.



Fort Strong, Long Island (BPL Flickr photo group).


Fort Andrews, Peddocks Island (BPL Flickr photo group).



Fort Standish, Lovells Island (PBL Flickr photo group).


For anyone interested in this subject, make sure you visit the Massachusetts Forts Wiki, which will tell you all you ever wanted to know.

Ghost Children on Albany Street

Albany and Troy street, February 17, 1915 (City of Boston Archive Flickr photo group). Click on photo for larger image.


The City of Boston has joined the Boston Public Library in posting images to a Flickr photo group, and every so often they post another group of photos or documents. The latest group is titled "Dilapidated and Demolished Boston," and includes building in various states of disrepair.

The photo above is one of two that shows the building that seems to lean out over the sidewalk, which was on the corner of Albany and Troy streets, in the New York streets section of the South End. I discussed the New York streets (which would later become the Boston Herald plant) in a post almost exactly a year ago, which can be seen here.

Back from the link? Good. The building on the corner of Troy and Albany street shown above contained a junk business at the time, and would soon be torn down. Most of the photos in this series are devoid of people, as if they didn't want a human presence spoiling the depressing scenes of broken windows and rotting wood. The picture above, however, includes spectral children, staring out at us from just shy of one hundred years ago. It is the figures of the children, blurred by movement, that make this the most interesting photograph of the group.

The Causeway Street Train Crossing

Causeway street, August 12, 1884 (click for larger image).


I've had this photo on my hard drive long enough that I've lost track of where I found it. The stone building in the background is the Fitchburg Railroad Depot, featured in an earlier post. This is the site of today's North Station. I love this photo. Note the carriage or omnibus in the lower left corner, and what may be a horse-car down the street towards the Fitchburg Depot. Some kind of construction seems to be going on along the Depot side of the street (edit: this scaffolding was part of a bucket conveyor to move dirt for a sewer construction project) . And in the center, gates are being closed as two locomotives prepare to cross Causeway street on their way to and from the Boston and Maine depot at Haymarket square.


Boston and Maine Railroad depot at the point of the Bullfinch Triangle, 1888. Note how the depot is approached by crossing Causeway street at the upper left.



Closer view of the 1888 map above. The two railroad tracks cross Causeway street near the Fitchburg Depot.

Not clear from this map is that standard railroad tracks also ran right down Atlantic avenue and Causeway street, servicing various wharves and warehouses between the depots that connected with what we would call South and North stations. Imagine the traffic - horse teams stopped; freight wagons, carriages, horsecars and trains all competing for precedence or biding their time. We tend to think of traffic congestion as a recent problem, but the pre-automobile era certainly had its share.

Streets in the Air

Not a particularly good reproduction of the drawing that went with the article. If you squint, you can see two elevated highway structures running down a wide, imaginary street. They seem to have seen this proposed elevated highway as simply a stacked up downtown street that would relieve traffic, rather than a through highway connecting the North and South Shores. The artist who drew the image above not only invented a very wide street with buildings on either side, he also managed to ignore the necessary on and off ramps. In any case, the planned roadway in the sky did get built, and it became the Central Artery. 

Daily Boston Globe December 21, 1930

Streets In The Air Only Solution To Boston's Traffic Problems

So Says the Planning Board That Asks for Two-Level Road Across City, Costing $28,000000, as First Item in a Big Scheme


Boston's plans for a system of overhead express motor highways withing the city for general relief of traffic congestion as still only on paper; New York city last week opened to public travel the first $6,500,000 "leg" of such an elevated thoroughfare, which is eventually to stretch along the Hudson River shore from the Battery clear through the Bronx.

The Boston scheme for about $50,000,000 worth of such overhead, unintersected highways, handsomely set forth in a Boston City Planning Board report of the thoroughfare plan for Boston, based on a three-year study of local problems by consultant Robert Whitten, who had to do with the New York project, is still being explained to and debated by local civic and professional organizations.

This is imperative, prior to Mayor Curley's effort to get Legislative sanction for it, wholly or in part.

Losing $24,000,000 a Year

Sorely as Boston apparently needs the relief that some such plan would give, nothing more is likely to be done about it for at least a year or two. Yet all who like to visualize the Boston of a half-century hence will secure and study a copy of this fascinating document, for some such means of public travel will inevitably be a part of the future Bostonian scene.

Arguments for abolition of street-traffic grade-crossings would be superfluous to motorists and truck-men driving through the present-day Boston. They know all the arguments, daily halting as them must, from two to eight minutes, at the city's multiple existing traffic-jammed crossroads.

Men whose word is authoritative calculate that delays in traffic movement in Boston impose a daily loss of $81,000 upon the collective Bostonian pocketbook. This conservatively-estimated $24,000,000 annually is computed as losses to ultimate consumers of foodstuffs and other merchandise caused by delays in trucking these across the congested city, and to time-losses to passengers in congestion-stalled automobiles.

Only a Beginning

The City Planning Board's overhead express highway system embodied in the report is based upon the authorized construction of the $16,000,000 East Boston vehicular tunnel. This tunnel will not be completed for four years, but unless the major part of the board's plans are in operation a few years after the tunnel is opened, downtown Boston traffic movement will come pretty near to complete paralysis by reason of heavier burned of tunnel traffic imposed upon an already strained situation, these authorities are convinced.

Anticipating that the next two or three decades may see in this corner of the country a doubling of the number of vehicles now upon the highways, and, convinced of the inadequacy of city-proper channels to handle with expedition even the loads that are now upon them, these authorities predict that the East Boston vehicular tunnel must necessarily have two two-way lanes, as has New York's Holland Tube, properly to accommodate the volume of traffic between Boston and the North that will eventually use the local under-harbor tunnel.

They are urging amendment of the enabling tunnel to act so as to provide this double tunnel act so as to provide this double tunnel, at perhaps a 70 percent increase in cost over the prescribed $16,000,000 for one double-lane tunnel.

Air the Only Room Left

The main feature of the relief plan sponsored by the Planning Board is a broad two-level highway, stretching from teh vicinity of the North Station through the heart of the city's business district, through Forest Hill sq and to the junction of Kneeland and Albany streets.

The upper-level structure, of reenforced concrete or of steel and granite, would be carried from the North Station to the junction named and then extended out over Albany st to a point beyond Dover st.

The cost of such a highway is reckoned at $28,000,000, since for many stretches it would require demolition of existing buildings and purchase of right of way. The argument for it is that it would for a century to come furnish adequate facilities for the rapid movement of north-south bound traffic that now stagnantly flows through the city proper.

The most potent argument against such a highway is the argument against all overhead structures within a city - the argument that eventually will bring the Boston Elevated superstructures in Charlestown and Roxbury underground.

Proponents of this 100-foot wide general overhead express motor highway scheme can answer, however, that inasmuch as Boston's present transportation-subway layout forbids some such tunnel underpass for traffic through the heart of the city, the natural alternative is to put such a highway on stilts rather than underground.

Picturing Future Conditions

A system of periodical ramps by which this upper-level surface could be mounted or demounted by through traffic would put this semi-loop in easy touch with local traffic centers, like the East Boston tunnel, the Northern artery, and all water-bridges linking Boston with northern and westerly points, its proponents claim.

To postpone adoption of some such general plan for relief of vehicle-crowded downtown highways would be about as disastrous to Boston's future as postponement a generation ago for the digging of the Park-st subway would have been, Planning Board spokesmen say.

They picture conditions as they might have been today had not the community the foresight to provide means of eventually taking all the trolly cars out of the downtown section by putting them underground.

In contrast to characteristic local inertia in tackling in a big way the solution of city-wide traffic congestion, they point to relief measures already adopted by New York and New Jersey, which has now in partial operation an elevated express highway for motor vehicles extending from the Jersey end of the Holland tunnel through Newark, Elizabeth and toward Philadelphia; they point to Detroit, Chicago and to California metropolises which have adopted the two-level express highway principle.

Items 1 and 2

They reckon that this proposed Boston two-level express highway for north-south traffic would reduce by 40 percent, at least, the existing congestion on surface highways in the downtown district - mainly, Washington and Tremont sts.

The Chamber of Commerce Retail Trade Board has approved all of the suggestions in principle.

The entire plan is, or course, tentative, and its execution would be staggered over 10 or 15 years. Thus there would be ample time to make amendments or modifications of the plan, as warranted.

The twin two-lane East Boston vehicular tunnel scheme and the Central Artery for express traffic between the North Station terrain and Dover st are simply Items 1 and 2 of this Boston City Planning Board scheme of wide scope. They are the immediately pressing ones, it is urged.

But, in order that maximum benefit may be derived, they must eventually be tied in with other mainn-stem through traffic routes; a two level Roxbury, crosstown double-decked highway and the North Shore radial, extending between Lynn and Boston between the lines of the present B & M R.R. and Narrow Gage Railroad rights of way, would be built by State appropriation, it is hoped.