CultureNOW - Back Bay at Beacon Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Back Bay at Beacon Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
Few photographs can convey so vividly what the Back Bay must have been like in the 1860s. This one, taken by, Josiah Hawes in 1864, shows the isolation of the early houses, built on newly filled land, with back windows overlooking the tidal basin, across to the little village of East Cambridge. The house is 234 Beacon Street, at the comer of Dartmouth, the west half of a double house built for Alfred Reed and George Chase a year before the photo was taken. It stands on what people always called
"the water side of Beacon," for decades one of the city's prestigious addresses. In the 1860s, the fashion in Boston was French.

The boulevards of Paris had just been created, and the first . Americans to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts had just come home. Boston's taste
changed suddenly. The traditional brick bowfronts, grouped around small patches of green space (an English model followed on Beacon Hill and in the South End), began to look provincial. There was a yearning for more grand, more sweeping vistas like those of Paris. As the historian Bainbridge Bunting writes in Houses of Boston's Back Bay: "The chief responsibility of each facade is to enhance the total street rather
than divert attention to itself. A house front is merely one section of the long, continuous wall that defines the street-corridor."

The recent photograph tells much about how the Back Bay has changed. The brick house on the left was built in 1869 for the John Slater family. At some point both houses were stripped of much of their ornament and converted into apartments.
At 234 Beacon, stucco covers the brownstone, which undoubtedly was flaking off in Boston's inappropriate climate. The wealthy families who built the Back Bay had largely deserted it by 1950, and in the 1970 census, amazingly enough, only 1 percent of Back Bay dwelling units were owner-occupied. Many mansions had become dormitories or lodging houses for students. In the early 1960s, Mayor John Collins swore he would
revive the declining neighborhood by building new high rises, but he was stymied by an emerging preservation ethic.

In 1966, the Back Bay Architectural Commission was created to assure preservation of the neighborhood. In the 1970s the area changed radically once again, returning to affluence, as many houses were converted to condominiums. By 1980, the owner occupied rate was up to 18 percent, and it continues to rise.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Newly landed gentry", Boston Globe, 13 May 1984

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Location

Beacon St & Dartmouth St
Boston, MA 02116
United States

Nearby Items

191 Marlborough Street		868 feet
121 Commonwealth Avenue		956 feet
Beacon Street at Exeter Street		0.2 miles
Trimbloid X		0.2 miles
Vendome Fire Memorial		0.2 miles
Patrick Andrew Collins		0.2 miles
William Lloyd Garrison Memorial		0.2 miles