CultureNOW - Kenmore Square at Commonwealth Ave: Peter Vanderwarker

Kenmore Square at Commonwealth Ave

There are no podcasts available.

Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"Kenmore Square is a great place for billboards. It’s like Times Square in New York: Both are intersections where major streets cross at a sharp angle. Coming by car or on foot, you can see the billboards for a long way. At Kenmore Square, the streets are Commonwealth Avenue and Beacon Street. In both these photos, we’re looking downtown along Commonwealth.

The famous Citgo sign, with its changing colors – it replaced a Cities Service sign about 1965 – is the last of the great billboards in the square (the equally prominent White Fuel sign is fondly remembered). The Citgo sign was slated to come down in the late 1970s after a governor, looking for easy answers, turned it off in response to the energy crisis – though neon, in fact, draws little power. But a group of citizens petitioned the Boston Landmarks Commission to save it. The commission reported: ‘The Citgo sign is a fine and locally very rare example of the spectacular neon display, which, in its extravagant use of neon lighting, its marketing of petroleum products, and its appeal to the moving automobile, represents a less energy-conscious, highly automobile-dominated period in America’s cultural history.’

The commission decided that while the sign deserved to be a landmark, it couldn’t be one, because it stood atop a building of sub-landmark quality (today’s Boston University bookstore). But the company got the message and renovated the billboard anyway in 1983. Its neon returned to the night sky during the seventh-inning stretch in nearby Fenway Park on August 10, 1983.

At the left in both views, the Boston College trolley emerges from its tunnel. The tunnel was extended here from Arlington Street in 1932. Kenmore Square gets its name from the T station, named for a minor cross street; Governor Square was the earlier name. From the teens to the ‘50s, Kenmore was a major hotel center, with the Kenmore, Buckminster, Somerset, Braemore, Sheraton (where the playwright Eugene O'Neill lived and died), and others. All eventually were converted for apartments or dormitories, although the Buckminster recently returned to hotel use. The square was also the showcase of the auto business, with dealerships marching out Beacon and Commonwealth. Then, in the 1970s, came rock clubs. Today, the square is increasingly dominated by an expanding Boston University, which arrived in the neighborhood in the 1940s."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Kenmore Square," Boston Globe, 26 November 1995

map not available at this time.

Location

Commonwealth Avenue & Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215
United States

Nearby Items

Bay State Road/ Back Bay West		593 feet
Boston University, Center for Student Services		714 feet
Kenmore Square		736 feet
Explosion		879 feet
Fenway Park at Lansdowne Street		0.3 miles
Fenway Park		0.3 miles
Dream Catching: Phil David Phine Memorial		0.4 miles