CultureNOW - Park Square: Peter Vanderwarker

Park Square

Dates

Constructed, 1914
Constructed, 1923
Constructed, 1927
Constructed, 1988

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"We tend to think of Boston as an old city. Park Square, for instance, with its traditional, often richly detailed buildings of brick and stone, its elegant street lamps, its trees and benches, feels rather Old World to us. But that feeling is an illusion.

In these two photos, we're looking along Providence Street toward its crossing with Arlington. The older one shows that, like most of Boston, Park Square is the product of endless, restless change. No significant buildings existed here as recently as 1914 — well within the memory of thousands of Bostonians.

Until 1900, Park Square was the site of the vast Boston & Providence railroad station. That year the railroad departed for South Station. The land remained vacant until 1914, when the Paine Furniture Company planted a sign in the earth. The sign, visible in the old photo, although too small to make out in this reproduction, reads: "Paine Furniture Co. have purchased this site containing 25,000 square feet upon which they will erect a ten story fireproof building.''

The Paine building is visible behind the American flag in the 1990 photo. The flag hangs from the Park Plaza Hotel, formerly the Statler, which came along in 1927. In the center of the photo is the Park Square Building of 1923. On the far right is The Heritage, a mix of shops, condos, and offices erected as recently as 1988.

All of these buildings, new and old, are excellent — simple, elegant, rational, unpretentious, possessing just enough ornament to be alive. The most remarkable is the Park Square Building, designed by the little-known firm of Densmore, LeCiear & Robbins (which, nine years earlier, as Densmore & LeClear, did Paine as well). The Park Square Building is an early example of a shopping mall. It is organized rather like Quincy Market, being split down the middle by an indoor public arcade more than 650 feet long, handsomely detailed in bronze and lined with shops on both sides. Business isn't brisk but perhaps will pick up with the completion of the vast new Two Twenty Two Berkeley complex opposite the arcade's far end.

Park Square today is an outdoor room — a room with an interesting shape, a ceiling of sky, and walls formed by the facades of the buildings. It is one of the pleasanter urban spaces in Boston."

-Robert Campbell and Peter and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Park Square: Urban Room," Boston Globe, 1990

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Location

Park Plaza & Arlington Street
Boston, MA 02116
United States

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