CultureNOW - Causeway Street at Canal Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Causeway Street at Canal Street

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ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"We’re looking down Causeway Street toward the North End in both photos. In the older one, the overhead tracks of the Green Line created a shadowy, denlike neighborhood underneath. Such places collect marginal uses. Causeway was lined with bars and pornographic theaters.

The elevated line is gone now, and so is the nearby overhead Central Artery. The sun shines onto Causeway again. But it reveals a somewhat desolate place. Many large lots stand empty, awaiting redevelopment. There’s an air of unfulfilled expectation.

Causeway is one edge of a neighborhood known as the Bulfinch Triangle. It’s named for famed architect Charles Bulfinch, designer of the State House, who drew up a street plan for the area in 1808. At that time, much of the area was a pond. Causeway Street follows the alignment of a former dam, hence the name.

The triangle’s handsome brick buildings were created for industrial uses. But today they exhibit most of the early signs of gentrification: They house boutique hotels a health club, architects’ offices. The building at the center of the new photo, 226 Causeway Street, is an example. Formerly the Stop &
Shop bakery, it was doubled in height in 2005 by architects Feingold Alexander & Associates and now is home to shops, apartments, and the offices of the Boston Celtics.

At the extreme left in both photos you can see a sliver of the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Federal Building. Notice, at lower left in the new photo, the curved row of white shapes. This is an anti-truck-bomb barricade, made of plastic casks filled with water.

The O’Neill already resembled a fortress when it was dedicated in 1987, its occupants hidden like a hated dictator behind massive granite steps and triangular abutments. Now the O’Neill is even uglier. Perhaps we don’t need to trash our cities to make our government safer."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, 'CITYSCAPES - Common Causeway: Letting the sunshine in gives a neighborhood a chance to grow," Boston Globe, 23 July 2006

"The corner of Causeway and Canal streets has been a transit interchange for a century. These photographs – made in 1908 and 1987 – show that it has grown more chaotic.

In both photos we’re looking southward toward downtown Boston. What is now North Station is behind us. Causeway Street runs left to right directly below us. In the 1908 view we see two orderly rows of buildings, along Haverhill Street on the left and along Canal Street on the right. (The photographer was standing on the roof of Union Station, later replaced by North Station.) Tracks for an elevated train – not today’s Green Line, but an earlier version – can be seen on the left. A wood fence encloses a construction site beneath which another new subway, today’s Orange Line, is being finished.

The 1987 photo shows the impact of yet another transportation addition, the Central Artery. For the artery, all the buildings along Haverhill Street have been demolished. The Green Line has replaced the older elevated. And another transportation facility, the Government Center garage, closes the far end of Canal Street.

The city’s master plan for the North Station area calls for the Green Line eventually to be placed underground. And the Central Artery, too, is to be buried. If those things happen, this scene may gain the serenity it now so obviously lacks."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Mass transition: North Station's increasing chaos," Boston Globe, 1987

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Location

Boston, MA 02114
United States

Nearby Items

TD Bank North Garden		98 feet
The Sports Museum		103 feet
Currents		112 feet
North Station		238 feet
Causeway Street at Beverly Street		759 feet
Telltale LIghts		929 feet
Merrimac Street		0.2 miles