CultureNOW - Dock Square: Peter Vanderwarker

Dock Square
Cultural Landmarks

Dates

Created, ca. 1630

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
No two photographs could better dramatize the transformation of certain parts of Boston in recent decades. It's been a change from smallness, variety, and intricacy to bigness, blankness, and monotony. In the old photo, made in 1934, we're standing in Dock Square, then known as Adams Square. Faneuil Hall is at our backs. A statue of Samuel Adams, a hero of the American Revolution, stands just left of center; it was created in 1880 by self-taught Watertown sculptor Ann Whitney.

The buildings are numerous and small and diverse; they jostle one another like spectators at a sports event, as if they were looking at Adams. The building just to Adams's right is a surprise in Boston: It features the triple "Chicago window" of the 1890s. Overall, you get the sense of a city created by many small entrepreneurs rather than a few big corporations.

A century ago, the square mile at the center of Boston contained 276 blocks, with more
than 400 street intersections. Nine different streets entered Dock Square alone. But by the 1980s, there were 100 fewer blocks and 170 fewer intersections in that same square mile. Streets were closed to permit the assemblage of the big parcels of land desired by modern developers and planners. The streets that remained were widened, thus creating a vehicular, rather than pedestrian, sense of scale. A street intersection is a place of choice; old Boston offered many more choices.

In the new photo, we've moved the camera forward a little (thus omitting Adams, who's
still there) and twisted to the left in order to look down Congress Street. You can measure the change in scale by comparing the new towers to the turn-of-the-century "skyscrapers" at the photo'S center. The scene may soon change again. A proposed bridge would carry pedestrians from City Hall Plaza, at right, across Congress Street to Dock Square.

People still refer to Boston as a "European city." Once, it did possess something of the
scale of old Europe's twisting streetscapes. But at Dock Square, for better or worse, Boston is European no longer.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Dock Square", Boston Globe, 1997

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Location

Congress St & North St
Boston, MA 02203
United States

Nearby Items

A Once and Future Shoreline (orignal shoreline c. 1630)		24 feet
Mayor Kevin White		57 feet
Mayor Kevin Hagan White Park		80 feet
Samuel Adams		103 feet
Wind Wind Wind		182 feet
North Street at Union Street		208 feet
Faneuil Hall		223 feet