The Boston & Maine Railroad opened in 1845, and over the years, became the dominant railroad in northern New England with many of its lines terminating at this station for a half-century until the original Union/North Station was built in 1893 consolidating many of these northbound lines under one roof. The Boston & Maine Station was located in Haymarket Square, southeast of the present North Station and the building was a landmark in the Greek Revival style. The brick building with monumental pilasters and pediment at the facade commanded the heavily trafficked site until it was demolished in 1893 when the lines relocated to the newly built Union Station on Causeway Street. The architect for the station was Richard Bond.
The Bulfinch Triangle area just south of the TD Garden in Boston is a cohesive and historically preserved district of similar commercial and industrial buildings of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Somehow, the area has been preserved largely intact besides some sites serving as surface parking lots and some incompatible infill developments. Historically, the area was a tidal flat, before the land here was filled beginning in 1807, with Causeway Street as the northern boundary. The area’s namesake, architect Charles Bulfinch, designed the street layout for the landowners, and the area was filled with material taken by lowering Beacon Hill and Copp’s Hill. Development was fairly slow until railroad companies built depots in the area around present-day North Station, many of which connected the area to cities north of Boston. These new train lines boosted the value of the surrounding land, with manufacturers and developers building factories and hotels in the area. This handsome structure on Causeway Street was built in 1870 by William G. Means, a manufacturer who also invested in real estate in Boston. He commissioned architect Samuel J. F. Thayer to furnish plans for the apartment hotel in the Second Empire style with a mansard roof and window lintels of diminishing detail as the floors increase. In later years, the Arlington House Hotel changed hands and names, later known as the Eastern Hotel and Hotel Haymarket. Stay tuned for more Boston history in this series highlighting the North Station and Bulfinch Triangle district!
Located seven miles by boat from downtown Boston, Georges Island is a must-visit location for history-buffs and those looking to see the city from a new vantage point! The island in its early days was used for agriculture for 200 years until 1825, when the U.S. government acquired it for coastal defense. Fort Warren was first-dedicated in 1847 and is named for Revolutionary War hero Dr. Joseph Warren, who sent Paul Revere on his famous ride, and was later killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Fort Warren is a pentagonalbastion fort, made of granite, and was constructed from 1833 to 1861, overseen by Col. Sylvanus Thayer, and completed shortly after the beginning of the American Civil War. Fort Warren defended the harbor in Boston, Massachusetts, off-and-on from 1861 through the end of World War II. It’s highest use was during the Civil War, where it served as a training facility and as a prison for Confederate officers and government officials. Unused after WWII, Fort Warren was acquired by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the Federal government and is today maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation as the centerpiece of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area.
Boston is ever-changing and while change can be good, there have been some major architectural losses. This trend of redevelopment is not new however, as this single site on Beacon Street has seen two major losses, all before 1918! This lot on Beacon Street was originally home to Hancock Manor, a landmark Georgian mansion built between 1734-1737 for the wealthy merchant Thomas Hancock (1703–1764), and later inherited and occupied as the home of United States Founding FatherJohn Hancock, yes, that John Hancock. In 1863, the Hancock Manor was sold at public auction and was purchased for $230. The house was demolished within days. While the building was torn down, souvenirs of it were actively sought as it fell. To replace it, two of the finest homes ever built in Boston were constructed on the site, from plans by elite Boston architect, Gridley James Fox Bryant. The double Second Empire style homes were first occupied by wealthy merchants, James Madison Beebe (the house on the left) and Gardner Brewer (right). In 1916, plans for the extension of the Massachusetts State House necessitated a taking of these (and other nearby) properties. These two houses were razed by 1917.
I wonder if the Hancock Manor would have survived to this time, would preservation prevail to save it?
Breaking ground in 1915, this early Modern church building must have turned heads when it was being built in Roxbury! In October, 1907, a fine lot of land with a house on it, at the corner of Elm Hill Avenue and Howland Street, was purchased for eighteen thousand dollars by a group of Christian Science followers. In October, 1911, a building committee of five was elected by the church, and by the summer of 1914 the building fund had made such satisfactory growth that ground was broken and work for the new structure begun in September. The congregation hired the illustrious architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge to design the edifice of classic and imposing design. Constructed of gray tapestry brick with limestone trimmings, the auditorium seated upwards of one thousand members, under the dome roof. Today, the building is occupied by Grace Church of All Nations.
One of the more exuberant and ornate homes in Roxbury’s Washington Park neighborhood is this charmer on Howland Street. The eclectic house was built in around 1894 for Ellen S. Johnston from plans by local architect Timothy Edward Sheehan and stands out for its preserved exterior in a neighborhood where many homes are covered in later siding, obscuring the ornate details underneath. Details include: swag and garland applied ornament, two bays at the facade (one polygonal and one rounded), a Colonial Revival style porch, and central rounded dormer. Wow!
As much of the streets north of Franklin Park were developed in the early 20th century, a mix of middle-class apartment buildings and stately single-family homes began to sprout up. Boston contractor Hugh Nawn hired architect Julius Adolphe Schweinfurth to design this house, seemingly on spec, as an income-producing venture. Schweinfurth was employed by the architectural firm of Peabody and Stearns and worked as chief designer there until 1895, when he opened his own practice. His design for Mr. Nawn was this stately Colonial Revival style mansion, similar to Nawn’s own home just across the street, which overlooked Franklin Park. After WWII, Roxbury’s population saw an increase in Black residents, who began to be pushed out of the South End due to increased cost of living. This home was purchased by Dr. Charles A. Pinderhughes (1919-1998), Chief of Psychiatry at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in West Roxbury who also taught at Boston University, Tufts, and Harvard. He was engaged in the local chapter of the NAACP and advocated for African American residents when Urban Renewal began to destroy much of the surrounding neighborhood by the Mayor and Boston Redevelopment Authority. The Pinderhughes House is a well-preserved architectural landmark that also has ties to a more recent and overlooked history of the neighborhood. I hope this house stays like this forever!
Tucked away in a residential neighborhood, the William Lloyd Garrison School in Roxbury’s Washington Park neighborhood is among one of the more successful school building designs of the early 20th century. Built in four stages between 1910 and 1929 to service a growing neighborhood over time, the school is named for abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who formerly lived in a home relatively closeby. The school complex consists of several different sections organized around a central courtyard and joined by passageways, all designed by the extremely underrated architectural firm of Newhall & Blevins in the Tudor style. Following the period of Urban Renewal in the neighborhood, the school district built contemporary schools and deaccessioned older schools. Today, the former William Lloyd Garrison School houses apartments.
As populations boomed in the decades following the conclusion of WWII and suburbs drew wealthier residents to single-family neighborhoods, city governments were desperate to keep tax dollars in city limits. As a result, many cities instituted a policy called Urban Renewal, where neighborhoods (often with higher percentages of minority or immigrant populations) and historic housing were demolished as a form of “slum clearance” and modern housing centered around the automobile sprouted up in their place. The Washington Park section of Roxbury in Boston was one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the 1960s as part of a series of neighborhood plans by the Boston Redevelopment Authority. This housing development, called Westminster Court, was developed on one of the new Urban Renewal parcels in Washington Park. Designed by famed modernist architect Carl Koch, the Mid-Century Modern buildings were constructed in modular units to cut costs and expedite construction time. The buildings utilize precast frames with contrasting exterior panels of brick, exposed aggregate concrete, and aluminum. While many dislike these buildings, it is important to understand the history behind them and how they are part of the complex history of many cities.
Once located at the entrance to the Hutchings-Pfaff Mansion, this small stone gatehouse is all that remains of a great Roxbury estate. Built of locally quarried Roxbury Puddingstone decades after the main house was completed, the Victorian Gothic style cottage surprisingly survived the subdividing of the large property and was sold as a private home in the early 20th century. It is uncommon to see these types of outbuildings survive into the 21st century, so I hope to see this charming cottage survive another 150 years!
Buildings of New England 