CultureNOW - Boylston Street at Arlington Street: Peter Vanderwarker

Boylston Street at Arlington Street

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ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
Any city is full of ghosts. In Boston, one is an old trolley ramp that still exists, in part, under Boylston Street near the corner of Arlington, in the Back Bay.

Arborway trolley cars came downtown along Boylston Street and then dove underground here. The tunnel opened in 1914 and closed in 1941, when the subway was extended out to what today are the Symphony and Prudential stops. But the remains of the tunnel entrance and ramp persist to this day, buried between the inbound and outbound subway tracks near Arlington Station. Besides the lost tunnel, not much seems to have changed in these two photographs, which were made from the same spot in 1934 and in 1990. But in fact almost everything is new. On the left in both photos is the Public Garden. On the right in 1934 were buildings of the early 20th century catering largely to the music industry. The buildings in 1990 exhibit a similar pleasing size and scale, yet virtually all were built as recently as the 1980s.

That scale is no accident. In the early 1970s this stretch of Boylston, from the corner of Arlington to the corner of Charles Street, was designated as the site of a· vast redevelopment proposal called Park Plaza. Strongly backed by the city, Park Plaza was to be a gargantuan array of six towers, each of about 40 stories - roughly the height of the Bank of Boston tower, visible in the background of the new photo. Park Plaza was killed by a fierce alliance of citizens' and preservation groups. The result was the far more modest redevelopment seen here, consisting of The Heritage, in the foreground, and Four Seasons beyond. The Heritage, designed by The Architects Collaborative of Cambridge, is a handsome mix of shops, offices, and condominiums. The less elegant Four Seasons is a hotel. Both buildings obey rules about height, materials, and kinds of use. These rules were negotiated by the citizens and the city after the demise of Park Plaza.

The Park Plaza crisis opened a new chapter in the history of planning and redevelopment in Boston, an era in which neighborhood associations, preservation lobbies, and other citizens' groups have a lot to say about what can and can't happen. So there really are two ghosts in the new photo. There is a forgotten ramp beneath the ground, and there is an unbuilt megalopolis above. There's even a third ghost. This is Church Street, a small thoroughfare that in 1934 entered Boylston halfway down the block. Church Street is still there, but at some point it was renamed Hadassah Way - one of those gentle ironies that make a city so delightful.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Now You See It," Boston Globe, 24 March 1991

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Location

Boylston St & Arlington St
Boston, MA 02116
United States

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