CultureNOW - Dudley Street at Warren Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Dudley Street at Warren Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS

Two fine but underused buildings stand here at the corner of Dudley and Warren streets in Roxbury, next to the old Dudley Station on the former Orange Line.

For more than a century and until recently, this comer was a major transportation hub. Horse trolleys and then elevated lines ran from here to downtown Boston. As nearly always happens at transit nodes, the neighborhood became a commercial center.

The building at the left in both photos was built as the Dartmouth Hotel, an apartment hotel, in 1871. It replaced an assemblage of small clapboard sheds and houses, immediately transforming an almost rural crossroads into a bustling mini-downtown.

The older photo dates from 1934. By that time the former Dartmouth had already been converted into offices on its upper floors. But it was still clearly the commercial ‘capital’ of the neighborhood. A lively looking if not very sophisticated piece of architecture, it was designed by an architect named John Roulestone Hall, who gave it the French-style sloping mansard roof that had recently become fashionable in the United States.

The building on the right, even more handsome, was designed in 1871 by a noted Boston architect, Nathaniel J. Bradlee, who also owned it and may have intended it for his own office. He called it ‘Palladio Hall,’ after the great Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladia, and he employed elegant Renaissance details around the windows on the top floor.

The new photo was made in 1988. It shows a neighborhood suffering abandonment and decay. Much of the old Dartmouth Hotel is boarded up, as it has been now for years. Palladia Hall looks a little better, but it is still shabby. No longer a transit hub, Dudley today is an area whose future is up for grabs.

Physically, both buildings are in surprisingly good shape. The Dartmouth’s cast-iron shop fronts are intact, as are its marble walls and much of its slate roof. Palladia Hall’s more ornate storefronts and sandstone walls remain, too. Whatever the future of this ever-changing neighborhood – once Irish, then Jewish, and since 1960 largely black – these historic structures still have much to contribute. Both are now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Built to last: Two handsome structures stand witness to change," Boston Globe, 8 May 1988

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Location

Dudley Street & Warren Street
Boston, MA 02119
United States

Nearby Items

Dudley Square Police Station		357 feet
The Word		463 feet
Faces of Dudley		747 feet
Washington Street at Vernon Street		0.2 miles
Community Youth Artwork at Dudley Station		0.3 miles
Boston Historic Mural at Dudley Station		0.3 miles
Dudley Station		0.3 miles