CultureNOW - Northeast Savings Bank: Peter Vanderwarker

Northeast Savings Bank

Dates

1874
Renovation, 1957

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"A look at tomorrow today ... Colorful, clean-lined First Federal Savings Building is part of the New Boston plan, symbolic of the faith this organization has placed in Boston' s
growing future." So read the adverting copy in a newspaper supplement announcing the opening of a renovated building on Franklin Street in 1957. The building contractor used more graphic language: "They wanted to put a little paint, powder and rouge on the old girl." The rouged-up First Federal is visible in the lower photo, made in 1980. In the oldest photo (inset), made in the mid-1950s, you can see the building before the makeup job; and in the upper photo, made in 1986, you see it as it is today - with the makeup removed and the old building restored.

The building dates from 1874, having been built to replace another lost in the Great Fire of 1872. Its architect is not known. The 1957 renovation was by Bastille Halsey Associates. Robert Bastille, now practicing in Needham, recalls that the bank "wanted to put the place on the map. They wanted to make sure people would not fail to see it."
At the time, "modernization" of older buildings was common, and metal-and-glass in fashion, though few were as sporty as First Federal's red, orange, and blue accents.
First Federal is now Northeast Savings, and recently the bank and the building's current owner decided it needed another face lift to get in step with another era. The metal skin was pulled off and the old building carefully restored. The result is handsome, although a bit stiff at sidewalk level, compared with the engaging jumble of signs we see in the 1950s.

Also visible in all the photos are 109-123 Franklin (State Street Bank) at top center, Boston's most elaborate Art Deco skyscraper, designed by Thomas M. James in 1929; and, just beneath it, 89-93 Franklin (Wigglesworth Building), designed by Bradlee and Winslow and built in 1873. The newer photos show, in the background, the Shawmut tower at One Federal Street designed by The Architects Collaborative in 1975. The graceful curve of Franklin Street, by the way, traces the memory of a lost masterpiece, the lovely Tontine Crescent, a sweep of 16 Federal-style row houses designed by Charles Bulfinch in the 1790s and demolished in 1858 .

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Face Lift", Boston Globe, 1986

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Location

50 Franklin Street
Boston, MA 02110
United States

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