CultureNOW - Beach Street at Tyler Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Beach Street at Tyler Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
"A street corner of old Boston is elegantly turned by the crisp brick buildings of the Boston Hotel in the older of these photos, made in November 1898. The corner is that of Tyler (left) and Beach (right), in what is now Chinatown.

Like most photos from the days before popular hand-held cameras, this one seems to be recording a special occasion. Three men pose beneath a canopy that heralds snuff, tobacco, and the ‘manufacturer of fine cigars.’ We are surely witnessing the opening of a new business, apparently tucked into the ground floor of the hotel – a sign, no doubt, that the hotel is losing status.

The hotel can’t have lasted much longer. In the new photo a simple six-story loft building stands in its place. The new building could be handsome – its details are surprisingly subtle – but it isn’t, because its original windows are gone, replaced by ugly fake stone at street level and metal-and-glass curtain wall above.

The old cobbled street, with its flat granite crosswalks and street-railway tracks, has given way to the characterless asphalt and choked traffic of today. Of course, old Boston wasn’t really this free of traffic. The photographer probably chose a Sunday. The Chinese signs in the newer photo are present-day evidence of a change that started decades ago. Even by 1900, there were 500 Chinese in this part of Boston.

The land in these pictures is fill, like so much of Boston; it was created by the filling of the South Cove in the 1830s. The Boston and Worcester Railroad, wishing both to speculate and to gain space for a new terminal and yards, filled 55 acres and created three miles of new streets, including most of today’s Chinatown and leather district. The landfill was completed in 1839; the buildings of the Boston Hotel appear to date from just about then."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - As the corner turns: Elegance gets lost on the street of progress," Boston Globe, 7 June 1987

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Location

Beach Street & Tyler Street
Boston, MA 02111
United States

Nearby Items

Beach Street at Oxford Street		58 feet
Chinese Chess Plaza		132 feet
South Cove Community Health Center Tobacco Control Mural Health Project		319 feet
Chinatown Gate at Beach Street		329 feet
Foo Dogs: Chinatown		347 feet
China Town Park		451 feet
The Great World Transformed		685 feet