Faneuil Hall Marketplace is dead. Long live Faneuil Hall Marketplace
Faneuil Hall Marketplace (dammit: Quincy Market) was meant to bring life back to a somnolent downtown. It succeeded. Now it's basically a Natick Mall but with a better food court. Brand Avenue considers the birth, life and slow death of the nation's first "festival marketplace" and wonders what could replace it, especially now that its operator is trying to stave off bankruptcy.
Via Joanne McNeil, who also notes the market's migration from quirky only-in-Boston shops to chain stores:
How curious that urban pedestrian walks grow to tedious and commercial.
Yup, and it's all rather ironic
that Quincy Market has become a victim of its own success, especially because it was so successful in its day that it was copied all over the country.