CultureNOW - Beacon Street at Exeter Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Beacon Street at Exeter Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
It's called the Back Bay because that's what it used to be. Twice each day, the tide flowed up the Charles River and flooded the area, then receded, leaving behind a stinking mud flat. Filling that flat, and transforming it into a great residential neighborhood, was an achievement that still boggles the mind. At the height of the filling of the Back Bay, in the 1860s and '70s, a train of 35 railroad cars, filled with gravel from Needham, arrived every 45 minutes around the dock. The superb street plan, centered on the Parisian-style boulevard of Commonwealth Avenue, was designed before the f.tlling began. It was primarily the work of an architect named Arthur Gilman, who also co-designed Boston's Old City Hall.

The old photograph dates from about 1880. In both views, we're looking downtown along Beacon Street, with the comer of Exeter in the foreground. Most of the original 'houses on the left, although built for the ages, were destined to exist for only a generation or two before being replaced by apartments. This was valuable real estate. "The water side of Beacon," it used to be called, because from the rear windows there is a spectacular view across the Charles River basin. Note the proliferation of bay windows. The zoning rules for the original Back Bay were subtler than the ones we write today. Houses were required to be set back from the sidewalk, but bay windows
were specifically exempted and allowed to project forward into the setback space. The bay was a free extra, so to speak. Thus the bay-windowed streetscape of the Back Bay was pre-imagined. We see it at its best in the old photograph: Individually, all the houses are bold American assertions of private wealth and initiative, yet together - beying the zoning rules - they gather into an image of community.

The apartment blocks arrived between 1927 and 1956. Those were decades when the old families were losing control of Boston to newer ethnic groups. The invention of the automobile helped them flee their Back Bay mansions for the suburbs: The surviving houses, too, were mostly sliced into apartments, often seedy ones. By the late '60s, almost no Back Bay dwellings were owner-occupied. Then came an astonishing reversal, in which the ever-changing Back Bay became what it is today: a high-priced enclave of condominiums and chic shops, its character protected by the vigilant and
powerful Back Bay Architectural Commission.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Beacon Street," Boston Globe, 1995

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Location

Exeter St & Beacon St
Boston, MA 02116
United States

Nearby Items

220-224 Marlborough Street		444 feet
191 Marlborough Street		472 feet
233 Marlborough Street		516 feet
191 Commonwealth Avenue		924 feet
195 Commonwealth Avenue		937 feet
Back Bay at Beacon Street		0.2 miles
176-178 Commonwealth Avenue		0.2 miles