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.