CultureNOW - Salem Street at Morton Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Salem Street at Morton Street

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ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"Salem Street in the North End is still a crowded, busy place, and it’s still the market street for the neighborhood. But it’s far different today from the dense clutter of food, crates, canopies, and signs in the older photo, taken in 1954.

The word ‘Italian’ never appears in the 1954 view. It doesn’t have to. The scene itself is a billboard of Mediterranean street life. This is a world in which people poured into the public arena from the small, crowded apartments of that era.

In the new photo, ‘Italian’ certainly does appear, over and over again. ‘Italian specialties,’ proclaims one sign, ‘Homestyle Italian Cooking,’ announces another. The North End isn’t as Italian as it used to be, so it now needs to assert its ethnicity for the enlightenment of visitors. Overhead, a banner that would have been unthinkable in the earlier era welcomes us. It suggests a certain anxiety. If we have to be welcomed, we must not be natives; and if it is so important to invite outsiders – as if to a parade – does this mean sales aren’t quite as healthy as they might be?

These details remind us of ways in which life has changed since 1954. In today’s more affluent era, the apartments are less crowded, they have TVs, and often they are air-conditioned. As a result, there’s less need to escape them. There’s less need to seek either entertainment or fresh air in the public world. And today we have more cars and supermarkets and refrigerators, so nobody has to walk out every morning to buy fresh produce for the day’s table.

What these photos reveal, in other words, is evidence of the privatization of life by means of technology. There’s a great gain in convenience and comfort. There’s a corresponding loss of the social and sensory richness of public life.

Compared to the 1954 view, the photo of today looks drained and sanitized. Yet the continuities are strong, too. Architecturally, Salem Street is almost unaltered. Frank Giuffre’s Fish Market – the one with the big sign at the upper right in the 1954 photo – is still in business, almost 41 years later, relocated just a couple of doors down the street. The man in the foreground is Joe Matera, proprietor of Dairy Fresh Candies and, like so many here, a longtime Salem Street merchant."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Salem Street," Boston Globe, 18 June 1995

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Location

Salem Street & Morton Street
Boston, MA 02113
United States

Nearby Items

Salem Street at Stillman Street		284 feet
Cross Street		381 feet
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway		586 feet
Salem Street		663 feet
Haymarket Square		666 feet
Hanover Street at Blackstone Street		692 feet
Asaroton		767 feet