30 North Margin Street - North End

Caravaggiste, there was nothing wrong with it 20 years ago.
 
The North End has been Boston's safest neighborhood for many, many decades.
 
Took this back on 1/19 and I didn't know where to put it. It's a little project at roughly 56 Salem Street (the BRA website has nothing). Windows' Birds Eye imagery shows a duo of one- or two-story buildings were here before.

location of this and 30 North Margin:

sdfgan2.jpg


and the shot from 1/19:

img0616fx1.jpg
 
The Salem Street site is, or was, owned by La Famiglia Giorgio (yes, the restaurant folks). One of the Giorgios burned down the building in order to kill his brother, or at least that's what he was charged with:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1043581
Federal prosecutors are charging a North End restaurateur with helping to set a fire on his property that killed his brother, who was allegedly his partner in a plan to bilk an insurance company for the building?s loss.

Albert L. Giorgio, 54, of Revere is charged with arson resulting in death, arson conspiracy, mail fraud and use of fire to commit mail fraud for the March 2002 two-alarm blaze that destroyed his Salem Street building and claimed his brother Steven Giorgio?s life.
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Thanks for the photos, kz. Why is it that Google Earth still shows a fully functional Central Artery? I think maybe it's time to update those photos.
 
Regarding the Salem Street construction:

I might be wrong but when I lived in the N. End in the mid 1990's, I think this parcel contained a Dunkin Donuts (yes a Dunkin Donuts on Salem Street!) and an adjacent low rise building that was a very cluttered antique/junk shop. The guy who ran the antique shop was a local character (maybe with a last name zarilli?) and had an old 70's style station wagon with a large bull horn on top. He would always run for a slot on the city council and would cruise up and down the streets of the N. End broadcasting his political message from the loudspeaker. The junk shop caught on fire and I think destroyed the adjacent Dunkin Donuts. I always thought it was the proprieter of the junk shop that died in the fire.
 
The sign on the antique/junk shop said something like "Il Bongustilo" but it wasn't the old timer from the shop who died.
 
Giorgio owned dunkin donuts, that's how the one and only chain made it to the North End. He was also Boston's premier arsonist.
 
Meanwhile, when Dunkin Donuts tried to open a new location at the far north end of Hanover Street, they ran into a firestorm of local opposition. Even though the city eventually approved it, it never opened.

At the same time, Boston Beanstock Coffee opened on Salem Street with no opposition whatever. It's quite popular, and not a chain (though it may have ambitions of becoming one).

The North End has a small number of other chain stores -- a CVS, a 7-Eleven, and a White Hen Pantry. That's about it, I think.
 
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Ron Newman said:
At the same time, Boston Beanstock Coffee opened on Salem Street with no opposition whatever. It's quite popular, and not a chain (though it may have ambitions of becoming one).
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You are so right. It is simply, yummy. I suggest everyone go when they get a chance. It's a little cheaper than starbucks too - maybe five cents?
 
Are they unrelated to the one on High Street in the Financial District? I didn't see a reference to it on their website.
 
Hey, Ron Newman, I have the answer to your query: "I'm curious how this came to be a parking lot, and how long ago that happened."
This open lot was the location of St. Mary Grammar School run by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). It was next to my Aunt Mary and Uncle Jimmy's tiny apartment on Stillman St.; her kitchen window used to look out on the back of the school. After the church was closed, the school became defunct and was torn down. There was great rejoicing in my aunt's building that day. For the first time, she had daylight coming into her cramped, four room apartment that shared a toilet with their neighbors (conveniently here sister's family). There was no shower or bathtub in the building; the ladies took sponge baths in the kitchen and Uncle Jimmy went to the nearby public bath house. In the 1970's they took a small hallway and closet and converted it into the tiniest bathroom/shower in existence. Their's was one of the surviving tenements in the North End. Four rooms all opening into each other, no closet space to speak of, a dank stairway, and a light well in the center of the building that provided some light and ventilation into the hallways (and a convenient way for residents to yell for each other, rather than use the party-line phone.) The rent was dirt cheap for years and years.

About 10 years ago, there was a terrible fire in this building. The owner was storing flammable tanks or some such in the former retail area on the first floor and the whole building went up (Duh!!). No one was hurt, but Uncle Jimmy lost everything and had to move out. The building's been rehabbed, but I don't know what the interior now looks like. Now those kitchen windows are going to lose the light of day once more!
 
^ A tale of everyday life in the old North End. This is also how it also was in the now-gone West End that we so lionize (only maybe even a bit worse).

With the application of money for gut-jobs and plumbing, however, you can turn any such place into urban heaven for yuppies.
 
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