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Sometimes life throws you a curve

Curved trolley tracks in old Boston

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.

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Comments

Packard's Corner.

No idea if it's right, just feels right.

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But since that sign says "Boston Eye and Ear Infirmary" I'm guess it's Charles St and Cambridge St or something like that.

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The cut off building at the far right has window keystones that match the current building where Beacon Hill Cleaners is located, 151 Charles Street, by my estimation. That would mean the buildings to its left are gone, replaced by the current CVS.

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I looked at the Bromley atlases from that era and there don't appear to be any buildings similar to these near the corner of Charles and Cambridge. By 1886, the Eye and Ear Infirmary was in a big, free-standing building at 176 Charles Street, west side, just south of Cambridge St. -- where the big parking garage is today. And electric streetcars weren't introduced until 1889.

Maybe the Eye and Ear had a branch clinic in another part of the city?

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…though the location might not be Charles St. at all.. Boston Eye and Ear is the precursor to Mass. Eye and Ear and was founded in 1824. I haven’t been able to find that original location, but in 1850 they built a larger, state-of-the-art clinic on the banks of the Charles by the Longfellow Bridge. If you look at the 1883 map linked below, you’ll see there is no comparable curve in the area. But there is one further down Cambridge St. at Bowdoin Square. So I’ll go with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Street_(Boston)#/media/File:1883_CharlesSt_Boston_map_Walker_detail.png

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The MCA makes me think it's somewhere near Paul's Boutique in Brooklyn.

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Ask For Janice.

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Park St at Beacon St?

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Is that a traditional Boston detail cop in the foreground watching those guys with the shovels?

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and Huntington

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I kind of though that as well, but I may be wrong. It looks a lot like the intersection of South Huntington and Huntington.

edit -- actually, it's not even close as far as buildings/architecture go. Was wrong.

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Scollay Square or thereabouts? Standing on State, looking towards Cambridge St, Tremont out of view to the left.

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… or Staniford near Green. With Green Street disappearing when most of the West End was razed.

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South Huntington

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Goldsmith, Silver, & Co. is more fruitful search than Mass Eye and Ear. I found a letter ( here: https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3644r ) with 44 Summer St. stamped on it but the corner of Merrimac and Causeway is where it says it was located on the letterhead. I suspect the Mass Eye and Ear was a clinic of some sort not attached to the main building on Charles St.

Did not know that Boston had a cigar manufacturing industry of sorts.

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Cigar making may have been a bit of a cottage industry with small shops here and there. Many locals refer to the building on the south side of Cambridge St. at the corner of Garden, where Anna’s Taqueria is, as “the old cigar factory” it was heavily modified about 20 years ago; before the current residential use it was a church; cigar factory before that.

Edit to add: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_cigar_makers_strike_of_1919

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Is the answer being used as a space-saver somewhere? Don't leave us hanging, Archives!!

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I can't sleep until I know!

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