CultureNOW - Franklin Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Franklin Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
In the same way that a mattress can conform to the body of the person who sleeps on it, this block of Franklin Street in downtown Boston retains the curved shape of a group of buildings that once stood here but was demolished long ago, in 1858.

We're at the corner of Devonshire Street, looking west along Franklin. The ghost from the past whose imprint remains is that of the Tontine Crescent, a lovely row of 16 Federal-style town houses built in the 1790s. They were designed and developed by Charles Bulfinch, one of the most famous of Boston architects, whose memory is oddly preserved by the name of the Bull and Finch pub on Beacon Street, the model for the TV show Cheers.

The crescent stood on the left side of Franklin as it appears in the photos. It faced a small park, and at the center, it was penetrated by an open archway, which led back to the thoroughfare we still call Arch Street. Why the name "Tontine"? A tontine is a group of investors who agree that as each member dies, his share will pass on to the remaining investors, until eventually the whole property is owned by the last investor alive.

The crescent was a financial disaster. It bankrupted Bulfinch. His ambition led him to start construction before he'd acquired even half the investors he needed, and he did so in the face of an economic recession. He wasn't the first or last architect to be burned by dreaming he could get rich as a developer. By mid-century, the neighborhood had turned into a business district, and the beautiful Crescent came down.

There's another ghost that hangs around today's Franklin Street. It's that of the Great Boston Fire of 1872, which destroyed 776 downtown buildings, including everything we see in the old photo.

Among those doomed was the handsome, gently curving group of office buildings that replaced the Crescent. These were designed by another notable Boston architect, Gridley J. Fox Bryant. Their sloping mansard roofs were in the Parisian style, which was coming into vogue in the United States in imitation of the redevelopment of Paris under Napoleon III. Notice, too, the curving row of trees boldly planted in the middle of Franklin Street. Before the automobile came to dominate our streets, such gracious gestures were possible.

The new photo shows a typically Boston mix of buildings high and low, new and old, all jostling comfortably together. The best is the Wigglesworth Building of 1873, at far left, which so pleasingly carries the Tontine curve around the corner onto Devonshire Street.

One fragment of the Crescent survives. An urn that Bulfinch placed in front of it now stands at his grave in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - What Goes Around", Boston Globe, 10 July 2005

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Location

Franklin Street & Devonshire Street
Boston, MA 02110
United States

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