CultureNOW - Massachusetts Avenue at St Germain Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Massachusetts Avenue at St Germain Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"Often in this space, we see a Boston that is ever-changing. It’s reassuring to look at this stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, where, after 50 years, very little is different.

We’re looking north at the Fenway side of the avenue in 1946 and again in 1997. Some architectural detail has disappeared, notably the parapet across the roof of 161 Massachusetts Avenue, the big building in the center. Parapets on older buildings get removed all the time when they become loose and hazardous. You would think an owner with pride would restore them, but restoration is costly, and few do. The new crew – cut top is dull and doesn’t complement the lively carving below it. Dull, too, is the canopy at the sidewalk, which obscures what remains of the original ornament.

Number 161 and its neighbors date from about 1915. That they’ve survived at all is something of a miracle. In the Fenway Urban Renewal Plan of the early 1970s, the city proposed that everything we see in these photos be demolished. The old buildings were to be replaced by a solid wall of much bigger buildings, megastructures that would have stretched all the way to the corner of Boylston Street, beyond the right edge of the photos. The new buildings would probably have resembled, but been taller than, the Church Park Apartments, which did get built just out of sight to the left, and which few people love. The city got as far as designating a developer before the plan collapsed for reasons nobody now remembers. In the very different world of the 1990s, the existence of a politically active, preservation-minded Fenway community would render any such proposal preposterous. With the growth of Berklee College of Music, which faces these buildings across Massachusetts Avenue, the once-threatened block today is a lively and successful chunk of Boston."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Massachusetts Avenue," Boston Globe, 6 April 1997

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Location

Massachusetts Avenue & St Germain Street
Boston, MA 02115
United States

Nearby Items

Edgerly Road Playground		454 feet
Convergence: Boston Sculptors Gallery Exhibits at the Christian Science Plaza		484 feet
Mary Eddy Baker Library		561 feet
Boylston Street at Massachusetts Avenue		822 feet
The Mapparium		863 feet
Fountain		867 feet
Hilton at Dalton Street		929 feet