Boston & Cambridge - 1950's

The bank replaced a five story apartment building which burned down. It is now the BSO's fundraising office.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Here is another great aerial perspective from the collection, of the Back Bay and South End. The old Massachusetts Ave bus station (between Newbury Street and Bolyston Steet) is on the lower right corner of the photo. The photo is high definition, so one can zoom in to see the details.
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Did buses (and earlier trolleys) cross between Boylston and Newbury inside the station? Half of the old station building remains, with the old openings facing Newbury covered in murals.

Looking at this photo, and others on the site, makes me realize just how much the Pike destroyed the intersection of Mass Ave and Boylston (and for that matter, Beacon Street beyond Kenmore Square).
 
saulblum said:
Did buses (and earlier trolleys) cross between Boylston and Newbury inside the station? Half of the old station building remains, with the old openings facing Newbury covered in murals.
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They did, this was the purpose of this building. There are still some tunnels that lead to the building that are closed off.
 
Here's Washington Street, today. (Wait, is it Hite Radio and TV or White Radio and TV?) Was the store in the same location or did it move? It seems it must have been on a different block, since the buildings next to it, currently, appear to

Well, to answer my own question, it must have been on the other side of the street because it shows a street address of 1695 Washington which is on the "north" side, whereas it is now on the south side.

Oh, also, what's up with the hot-linking on those MIT photos???

hite_washington_street.jpg
 
Sorry. Unclear? In one of the photos from the 1950's, a couple pages back, there is a photo of Washington Street in the South End, with the old Orange Line El going down the center. You can see Hite Radio and TV in the background under the elevated. There is a # on the building, 1695, meaning it was on a different side of the street from where it is, now. Just wondering where it was, before.

And I think some of the photos on those pages were hot-linked, not copied to photobucket or whatever, which is a definite no-no.
 
JohnAKeith said:
Sorry. Unclear? In one of the photos from the 1950's, a couple pages back, there is a photo of Washington Street in the South End, with the old Orange Line El going down the center. You can see Hite Radio and TV in the background under the elevated. There is a # on the building, 1695, meaning it was on a different side of the street from where it is, now. Just wondering where it was, before.

And I think some of the photos on those pages were hot-linked, not copied to photobucket or whatever, which is a definite no-no.
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I think MIT can handle the strains that archboston puts on their bandwidth
 
Not that it matters, but I always hot-link photos rather than copying them.
 
What made you think I was talking about yours? The others were from dome.mit.edu.

[edit]Sorry for the confusion, I'm not being clear in my comments, lots of pressure these days.
 
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I don't agree. I like the square plaza/park. In that photo, the church is surrounded by traffic on all sides.
 
The park is pleasant and I wouldn't necessarily want to lose it today, but the photo really illustrates how Trinity Church was designed to conform to the street pattern. With the square, the diagonal cutaway looks arbitrary and anticlimactic. Maybe the park design should reflect the diagonal axis more prominently.

The tall white building (Lincoln Mutual? Now the "Newbry") also looks more dramatic as a slim white tower at the head of Huntington.
 
What's now called the 'Newbry' was built as the New England Life Insurance Company building. It replaced MIT after that institution moved to Cambridge.
 
czsz said:
The park is pleasant and I wouldn't necessarily want to lose it today, but the photo really illustrates how Trinity Church was designed to conform to the street pattern. With the square, the diagonal cutaway looks arbitrary and anticlimactic. Maybe the park design should reflect the diagonal axis more prominently.

The tall white building (Lincoln Mutual? Now the "Newbry") also looks more dramatic as a slim white tower at the head of Huntington.
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In the book 'Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System' by Cynthia Zaitzevsky (figure 77), there is quick sketch by Olmsted of a square Copley Square.
 
^ Good book! The information on Wood Island Park was particularly valuable for me. Cynthia's a lovely person. She taught in the Radcliffe Seminars Landscape Design program (I was the 'marketing guy' in the Ed Programs office), now part of the Arboretum.
 
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