CultureNOW - LaGrange Street: Peter Vanderwarker

LaGrange Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
From the 1960s through the '80s, LaGrange was Boston's Street of Shame: At the height of that era this one-block thoroughfare, which runs from Washington Street in the Combat Zone to Tremont, was lined by night with prostitutes who operated out of its bars and strip clubs to serve a seemingly endless parade of slow-moving cars.

The two photos show LaGrange before that time began and again, today, as it is coming to an end. LaGrange is now part of something the city calls the Midtown Cultural istrict, an area that, it is hoped, will soon be thriving with galleries and theaters. LaGrange also bisects the so-called Hinge Block, bounded by Tremont, Boylston,
Washington, and Stuart, a site regarded as ripe for redevelopment.

Already, the most notorious of the Combat Zone bars, Good Time Charlie's at No. 25, has disappeared, its former quarters occupied by an art and performance space nostalgically named Good Times (it's visible just behind the right-hand figure in the contemporary photograph), Across LaGrange at No. 12, just to the left of the four figures, a yuppieish new eatery, the Downtown Cafe, has opened. LaGrange is on the way back.

The four men in the new photo are active in the revival of LaGrange. They are, from left: Andre La Palme, waiter and poet at the Downtown Cafe; Nick Flynn, who operates
Good Times; Daniel Holmes, owner of the Downtown Cafe; and Mark Lynch, associate director of the Boston Theater District Association.

The old photo dates from the late 1920s. It shows a thriving streetscape of tailors, hatters, shoemakers, picture framers, and the like. Many of the buildings date from
the time the street was first laid out for 20 houses on the site of a former distillery in 1828. That was shortly after the last visit to Boston of the Marquis de Lafayette, and
laGrange was named, according to legend, in honor of Lafayette's home in France.

One stone stands still in the ever-moving stream of change on LaGrange. Hand the Hatter, at No. 20, has operated there for 55 years under the same owner, Arthur A.
Stephens. The business itself goes back at least a century. Stephens believes he is the only custom hatmaker left in Boston .

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Combat Zone Veteran", Boston Globe,1990

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Location

Tremont St & LaGrange St
Boston, MA 02116
United States

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