CultureNOW - Northeastern University at Huntington Avenue: Peter Vanderwarker

Northeastern University at Huntington Avenue

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
The first World Series ever played is the subject of the older of these two photos. The Boston Americans Qater to become the Red Sox) and the Pittsburgh Nationals met here in the old Huntington Avenue Base Ball Grounds in 1903. The Boston team won five games to three in the best-of-nine series, collecting the first of five world championships it was to win over a 16-year period that ended in 1918. As all Bostonians know, the team hasn't won in the 67 years since then. Acquired in 1906 by General Charles Taylor, founder of the Globe, the Americans became the Red Sox in 1907.

One hopes the photo does not show a game actually in progress, although unruly crowds were common in the old days of baseball, and spectators often stood on the playing field itself, restrained only by a rope. Shadows prove it is late afternoon, so perhaps what we see is a post game crowd unwilling to leave. The photo must have been made from a balloon. The new photo, shot from the same spot in 1986, shows how radically this part of Boston has changed. Northeastern University, founded in 1898, first came to Huntington Avenue in 1913 as a tenant of the then-new YMCA building (the building farthest on the left in the new photo) and eventually grew to occupy the whole of the old Huntington Base Ball Grounds site. (The Sox left for the new Fenway Park after the 1911 season.)

The Cabot Physical Education Center, built in 1954, occupies the center of the old ballpark site, with the rest of Northeastern's 50- acre campus stretching beyond. Although it's hard to spot, there is a second baseball park in the old photo. Just beyond the Huntington Grounds, on the far side of the Boston and Providence railroad tracks, is the Boston Baseball Grounds, home of the Boston Nationals (later the Braves); you can make out the grandstand roof behind the right end of the train shed at the upper
right of the photo.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - National Past Time", Boston Globe, 1986

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Location

Huntington Ave & Massachusetts Ave
Boston, MA 02115
United States

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