CultureNOW - Salem Street at Stillman Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Salem Street at Stillman Street

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ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
One tends to think of the North End as a neighborhood where the people change but the buildings stay the same. Like many accepted beliefs, this one isn't true. On this stretch of Salem Street, for instance, only two small townhouses show up in both the old photo, made in 1901, and the new one, made in 1984. The most striking thing about the new photo is that in the middle of it, two people are holding up a print of the old one, as if it were a hole in time. The two are Frank Susi, co-owner of the Abruzzese Meat Market at 94 Salem, and Nancy Lavita. Susi keeps the print on display in his store.

By a strange coincidence, inside the old photo there is also a smaller picture being held up, this time not by people but by black crepe-covered ropes. It's right in the center, just above the horse and buggy, and it's a portrait of President William McKinley, who had just been shot and killed in Buffalo. (The two surviving townhouses, incidentally, are right behind McKinley.) The two photos tell of gradual, evolutionary change in Boston's oldest residential neighborhood. The Hebrew characters on the banner, for example, advertise religious goods, reminding us that the North End hasn't always been Italian. It was first Yankee, then heavily Irish, then heavily Jewish. A third of the buildings in the old photo are still made of wood.

Many have railings on the roofs, presumably for clothes - drying these are replaced in the new photo by TV aerials. Sometime between the making of the two photos, Salem Street has been widened, a fact that may account for the demolitions, but it remains one of the narrowest important streets in Boston and quite possibly, though not at the moment of the new photo, the most congested Its normal congestion is part of what makes Salem Street memorable and appealing. The people in the old photo are too well-dressed for this to be an ordinary day. Maybe it's the Sabbath, or maybe some form of memorial service for McKinley is taking place. Though it doesn't show in the reproduction, there'-s a huge, flag-bedecked, -McKinley poster right above what today is Centofanti's Meat Market.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - On the Street Where you Live", Boston Globe, 20 January 1984

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Location

Salem St & Stillman St
Boston, MA 02113
United States

Nearby Items

Salem Street at Morton Street		284 feet
North End Library Mosaics		505 feet
Cross Street		597 feet
The Old North Church (Christ Church)		604 feet
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway		822 feet
Pierce-Hichborn House		887 feet
The Paul Revere House		934 feet