CultureNOW - Bromfield Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Bromfield Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
Recently, the city of Boston produced a new plan for one of its waterfront districts. The plan featured megablocks, super-wide streets, big buildings. When it was shown to Edward J. Logue, the retired dean of American city planners, he had one comment: "Where's Bromfield Street?" It's not a bad question to throw at any city. Boston's Bromfield Street is tightly packed with small, useful shops, the kind of places you walk into on your lunch hour. It's the opposite of today's faceless malls.

They're called the "ladder streets," these short streets that span between Washington and Tremont streets like rungs. In both photographs, we're looking up Bromfield from the corner of Washington. Except for different vehicles and different costumes, little has changed. In the distance, we can sec history, as the Boston Athenaeum ( 1851) rises behind the Granary Burying Ground (1660), on Tremont Street. At No. 21 Bromfield, Abraham Lincoln once spoke, and at No. 36, John Wilkes Booth once boarded - the kind of everyday coincidence that thrills conspiracy theorists. (Both buildings disappeared long ago.) In mid-block, on the left, there's a rare survival: 22-28
Bromfield ( 1848), whose Egyptoid architecture was surely a responsive
echo of the monumental gate that was added in 1830 to the Burying Ground.

Take a walk down Bromfield. In its two short blocks, you will pass photo stores, markets, bars, cafes, jewelers, emporiums for sports cards and memorabilia,
coin shops, optometrists, optical suppliers, a pen store, a chic clothing store, picture framers, a watch hospital, a pizza parlor, a barber, a sports store, a manicure
shop, a Bible society, one of America's oldest restaurants - the Cafe Marliave (1875) - and much more. Notice something about a lot of those stores? They're dealing in
things you can touch, things that glitter and clink - lenses, jewels, coins, fountain pens with platinum tips, watches with real hands - the kind of treasured physical artifacts that are disappearing as pens give way to keyboards, cameras and watches go digital, and
gold-rimmed glasses shrink to plastic contacts.

Suffolk University's new law school, under construction at the corner of Tremont, surely will trigger change along Bromfield. We can only hope it will remain a true downtown street, a place where endless variety and choice are compressed into a small, walkable space.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Bromfield Street", Boston Globe, 1998

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Location

Bromfield St & Washington St
Boston, MA 02108
United States

Nearby Items

Washington Street at Bromfield Street		158 feet
45 Province Street		406 feet
Province Street (Governor's Alley)		424 feet
Province Street		451 feet
Province Court		476 feet
Old South Meeting House		540 feet
Northeast Savings Bank		585 feet