CultureNOW - Province Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Province Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
Nothing enriches the texture of a city more than its ghosts. Ghosts are traces of the past that linger into the present. The ghost in these two photographs of Province Street in Boston is a granite stair. You can just see the bottom steps peeking out at lower right in the old photo. In the new one, they're hidden behind the guy on the right.

The mysterious steps led up from Province House to its garden. Province House was the grandest mansion in Colonial Boston. From 1716 until the Revolution -- when Massachusetts was a British province -- it served as the residence of the British governor. Three hundred years later, the steps survive, a fragment of an earlier time, the kind of mystery that makes a city into a fascinating puzzle.

Everything else has changed. The guys in the foreground in the new photo are Patrick Grace and Gene O'Shea. They're the owner and the bartender, respectively, of the Littlest Bar, which we see at the far right. O'Shea, who seems to know all his customers, says he's been bartending here for 30 years. That can't quite be true, since a 1977 photo shows a ladies' shop on the site. Grace bought the tiny bar in 1991.

Both men were once with the military police, and the interior decoration is a colorful frieze of shoulder patches from police uniforms, pinned up over the bar. The place is well known. Poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and Hollywood filmmaker Quentin Tarantino are among those who have dropped in for a brew. The atmosphere is strongly Irish, and the bar was once written up in the Dublin Evening Herald: 'Lawyers, academics, and doctors (both medical and spin) rub shoulders with young immigrants, students, and a large body of regulars -- many pleasantly eccentric, but all devoted to the place.'

Behind the two men is Café Marliave, another historic presence. A Parisian named Henry Marliave moved it to this location in 1875.

The old photo shows Province Street in 1928, before it was widened. It reminds us of an era before the consumer culture of today, when clothes weren't throw-aways. Signs advertise a tailor, a show repair, and a 'Hat Hospital.'

The street crossing Province at the rear is Bromfield, a very Bostonian mix of architectural styles and diverse shops. Edward Logue, who for many years was Boston's chief planner, liked Bromfield Street. After he'd retired, a developer produced a proposed plan for the South Boston waterfront. Logue didn't like the plan, and he found a simple way of saying what he thought was wrong with it.

'Where,' asked Logue, 'is Bromfield Street?'"

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Stepping Back Into History," Boston Globe, 1 August 2004

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Location

Province Street & Province Court
Boston, MA 02108
United States

Nearby Items

Province Street (Governor's Alley)		49 feet
Province Court		69 feet
45 Province Street		106 feet
Bromfield Street		451 feet
Nine Zero Hotel		464 feet
Democratic Donkey		490 feet
Washington Street at Bromfield Street		518 feet