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The Olde Towne
By adamg on Thu, 01/29/2009 - 9:37pm
The Boston Public Library is doing something very cool: They're posting photos from their collections on Flickr. They've already got several collections up, from Boston stereographs to baseball photos to postcards from across New England.
The only problem is the whole thing is like a giant vat of popcorn - you just can't stop eating, flicking from one photo to the next. I'm particularly fascinated by the postcards of old Boston, because they show how the city has changed - sometimes pretty dramatically, as on this postcard of a pre-Storrow Esplanade down by the "West Boston Bridge" (what we'd call the Longfellow). There are long-gone hotels and restaurants; hotels and car dealerships that are now BU dorms, even a huge Gulf "Super Service" station right on Beacon Street in Coolidge Corner (OK, not Boston, but still), where this Town Taxi might have filled up.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
thank you
I love this kind of stuff. I get nostalgic for times and places I never knew!
North Station -- Huh??
That's an ... imaginative rendering of the old North Station/Boston Garden, which fronted directly onto Causeway Street and never had a big empty parking lot in front. It did, however, have an elevated Green Line rail obscuring most of its façade. The elevated rail was already there before the Garden was built.
Were there plans to tear down the El 60 years ago?
Actually, it seems like it was a common practice to remove buildings/objects from the front of buildings on those postcards. There's one of the BPL main branch that seems to have eliminated Trinity Church, for example.
Yes. Jamaica Plain people
Yes. Jamaica Plain people were demanding that the Forest Hills line be torn down in the 1940s.
http://rememberjamaicaplain.blogspot.com/2007/11/t...
Open Space
These postcards look like old photographs of more spacious western cities rather than what we know Boston looked like. Pasadena comes to mind here ... as do certain outlying cities around Chicago. These cities were planned and built in the early 20th century, and were laid out with intentional lines and "breathing space" despite being compact.
In these postcards, Boston has been "updated" and idealized to the then current urban asthetic by adding incongruous greenery (like California style palm fronds in one shot!) and removing the crowding - the small lots, narrow streets, solid blocks of buildings - of a very medieval city plan that Boston retains.
I think there is one of King's Chapel that shows no neighboring buildings, yet the buildings that flank it in reality are older than that postcard. That wide plaza in front of the North Station/Boston Garden complex exists, but I think it goes in front of Union Station in Los Angeles.
Artistic license? Yep.
The exception ..
I like this rendering of Tremont Street because of how crowded it is on the side with all the stores. Imagine that today!
yes!
SwirlyGrrl, you're right! They look like old postcards from LA, Hollywood, and other California locales!
It also appears there's some Paris influence going on??? To make the city look grander, more European than in reality???
I find these postcards fascinating to stare at and imagine.
Artistic license was typical then
Always with the nice manicured greenery, always airbrush isolating the buildings from their neighbors. That's how it was with postcard art.
I guess they figured if you were sending these postcards to outtatownas, it wouldn't quite matter. I love the way the perspectives always look.
Another imaginative rendering
The proposed Boston College High School.
Wishful thinking?
And then there's
This one
These drawings are also from sort of fictional points of view. The front of this building is pretty close to a fence enclosing Hebrew Memorial, and the POV looks like it's somewhere in their parking lot.
PS happy sledding.
really, really cool
I just clicked on the postcards posted by Adam, which leads to a set of some 1800 postcards -- great, great stuff. This is a history buff's delight. Like having your own personal collection, but without spending gazillions on e-Bay to assemble it.
I found a print of scenes from Tremont Street (where I work), circa 1800. Again, fascinating.
Eminently browse worthy during the next winter storm.
Service Men's Club
Red Shield
Lower left. Those fellows look very happy.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Thanks!
I may look at this all day long.
When Boston was in the middle of a 50-year decline
This large view of a card that's supposedly of MIT is interesting because look how flat downtown is left of the Custom House (and is that a ghost building right near it?).
Also, look at the vast expanse of water beyond the Custom House where the airport wasn't.
Tremont along the Common, 1800
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library...
Looks slightly different
Good thing King's Chapel is there to orient yourself with!
Absolutely
I don't know what folks did back then without the Dunkin' Donuts and 7-11 at the Park Street intersection.