Downtown Boston in the 1970s

Those photos were great. I must admit I have a fondness for tripping down memory lane.

Fantastic! Thanks for linking to these.

My workplace recently moved downtown. I briefly worked downtown during a summer in the early 80s. I remember walking by many of these things, and I now daily see both the new stuff and the old. "Tucked away" is a fact of life in this area, because the streets are so narrow and the buildings are so huge. There are entire streets that never see the light of day in full glory. My coworkers and I are still finding little stuff every day.

One thing these photos bring back was how flat out grime-coated and filthy the city was back then - sure, there were grand, old, tall buildings to see, but so much of it was shockingly dirty (My in-laws started to travel in the late 70s and were surprised that other cities were clean). Less obvious from the photos is how trashy and dirty the streets were, too. Boston is much cleaner now, and not because modern buildings have replaced these grand old piles here and there. Boston is cleaner because they actually clean the grime off the buildings and clean up the streets and collect garbage from the cans, and the soot-belching trucks have been cleaned up a bit and sent underground.