CultureNOW - Hanover Street at Clark Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Hanover Street at Clark Street

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ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"Hanover Street in the North End, at about the time of the Civil War, is the subject of the older view. The photo was probably made by the partnership of Southworth and Hawes, among America’s first great photographers. The centerpiece is the Webster Hotel, designed in the Italianate style of the day, with tall hooded windows and a projecting cornice like those of the town houses of Florence. Especially appealing, to modern eyes, is the patterned street paving, with a crosswalk of smooth stone pavers where, today, you’d find asphalt painted with the garish stripes the British call a ‘zebra.’ Inlaid in the paving are tracks for horse-drawn cars, from a trolley line that linked Scollay Square to Boston Harbor well into the 20th century.

Nothing of the old view survives. By the 1930s, the Webster was ‘an ancient and bankrupt hotel,’ taken by the city for back taxes. The description is from a memoir by Sidney Shurcliff. Shurcliff’s father, Arthur, was the landscape architect who in 1933 replaced the Webster and its neighbors with today’s Paul Revere Mall.

We can see the mall at the right of the photo. It links Old North Church (the white steeple) with St. Stephen’s Church on Hanover Street. Historians cite three possible motives for the creation of the mall. One: Mayor James Michael Curley returned from a trip with an enthusiasm for the strolling urban parks of Europe. Two: The alley called Webster Avenue (the entrance to which is visible in the old photo at the left of the hotel) was the ‘worst and toughest slum in the Boston area’ (Arthur Shurliff’s words), and its crowded wood houses were a fire hazard to the two churches. (But the ‘slum’ conditions didn’t stop the inhabitants from protesting vigorously when the city evicted them.) Three: Curley wanted a Depression-era make-work project, and he needed Italian-American votes. The resulting mall was at first called the Prado. It’s Boston’s most European space, an outdoor room that seems to have been carved from a solid block of buildings.

The mall got its present name in 1940, when a statue of Paul Revere on horseback was installed. The statue had been modeled in 1885 by a sculptor named Cyrus Dallin, but it was never sold and never cast in bronze. It’s pleasant to report that Dallin was still alive, 55 years later, to see his work placed on this prominent site. Both the mall itself and the casting and erection of the statue were paid for by the George Robert White Fund, which still exists."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Hanover Street," Boston Globe, 25 April 1999

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Location

Boston, MA 02113
United States

Nearby Items

St. Stephen's Church		79 feet
Paul Revere		143 feet
Paul Revere Mall		171 feet
North End		425 feet
The Memorial Garden		546 feet
North End at North and Lewis Streets		843 feet
North Bennet Street School		869 feet