CultureNOW - Beach Street at Oxford Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Beach Street at Oxford Street

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ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"The surprise in this look at Beach Street in today's Chinatown is how much of the past remains, not how much has disappeared. The street got its name because once – before a major landfill in the 1830s – it lay along Boston's beachfront, at the edge of the harbor. The water lay to the south of the street, outside the older photo, toward the left. The handsome row of town houses we see was built around 1840, in a simplified version of the Greek Revival style. Notice the alert elegance of the paired dormers at the attic level, looking out over the city like treetop owls. Notice, too, the grace with which the nearest house pirouettes around the tight corner onto Oxford Street. Even its windows are curved, although the glass panes themselves are flat.

In an 1874 city atlas, the property owners possessed Yankee names: Temple, Shirley, Thayer, Jackson, Page, Haynes, Phinney. But by 1901, the houses were converted to other uses. Albert Weil's German Boarding House occupies most of the upper floors. There's a restaurant at the far end of the block. On the ground floor are Globe Towel Supply, Prendergast & Co. Premier Lager, Rogers Dairy Lunch, and a fish store.

It sometimes seems that new ethnicities pass through Boston, and other American cities, with the speed of time-lapse photography. The Germans, like the Yankees, are long gone from Beach Street. Today, many of the signs are in both Chinese and European characters: Ho Yuen Bakery, Sunlight Construction (perhaps a Sun family?), Gao Chow Seafood Restaurant, Cathay Comer. But look more closely. Of the eight original town houses, five remain, filling the middle of the block. Three of them still have their attic dormers. The other two have replaced the attic with a fourth floor.
All the major changes are at the ends of the block. A squat new building, at the foreground corner, is a pathetic runt compared to its predecessor. The sweeping curve of the past is replaced by a flat corner that looks brutally chopped off. Only at the block’s far end has there been complete change, where a new eight-story midrise replaces the last two houses.

Architectural ghosts inhabit Beach Street. Through the translucent page of the present, we can read deeply into the past. You can't say that today’s Beach Street is beautiful. But you can say that it's interesting. And, in the end, that may be the more important quality."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Beach Street," Boston Globe, 9 January 2000

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Location

Beach Street & Oxford Street
Boston, MA 02111
United States

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