CultureNOW - Merrimac Street at Friend Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Merrimac Street at Friend Street

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ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"A building as a book: That is what we see in the marvelous photo taken in 1916 of the corner of Merrimac and Friend streets near North Station. Like the carved names of great thinkers on the facade of the Boston Public Library or the sculptures of saints around the doors of a Gothic cathedral, the signs on this small building advertise its contents.

‘Merrimac House,’ the topmost sign says. That surely means the building was a hotel or a rooming house, but it can’t have been so originally, not with those windows. Close inspection shows that the Merrimac was once two buildings; one of them, the rounded one at the comer, has Greek Revival details that suggest a date of around 1850, the era when the first railroads were coming into Boston, changing this neighborhood from residential to industrial and business uses. This site stood between one railroad station at Haymarket and another at the site of today’s land was once part of the harbor. A residential neighborhood was created here on fill moved from the top of Beacon Hill in the early 19th century.)

There are many lessons about city design to be learned from these modest buildings. The handsome curve of the facade fills and defines the street corner. The curve also gives a sense of movement and life. The Merrimac seems to be a little steam locomotive, chugging along and pulling a train of smaller buildings behind it. The small details – the way the top floor is set forward by the thickness of one brick, for instance, with flat brick pilasters beneath it – provide the wall with visual interest and a sense of measure and proportion. And the signs bring another kind of life and meaning in a very direct way. Unlike so much signage of our own day, they so respect the character and scale of the building that they truly become a part of its architecture. They are integral, readable ornament.

About the newer photograph of the same site, made in 1987, the less said the better. The blank wall and trivial gas station replace the well-shaped corner with empty chaos."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Signs of the times: How the corner of Merrimac and Friend lost its charm," Boston Globe, 20 December 1987

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Location

Merrimac Street & Friend Street
Boston, MA 02114
United States

Nearby Items

Sudden Presence		356 feet
Government Center Garage		417 feet
Human Element		937 feet
Merrimac Street		0.2 miles
John F. Kennedy Federal Building		0.2 miles
Thermoplyae		0.2 miles
Hanover Street at Blackstone Street		0.3 miles