If you scan assiduously the foundations of ancient buildings in the Blackstone Block, you may happen upon the Boston Stone. Placed early in the 1700's, this pockmarked granite sphere marked Ground Zero in the City of that century --the marker to which Boston's every distance was measured from Elsewhere.
By the middle of the Twentieth Century, Boston?s epicenter had migrated down Washington Street. If you asked any group of Bostonians for the provenance of their city?s dead center, they?d chorus loud and clear: Washington Street at Winter/Summer. It served as the geographic, spiritual, cultural and commercial pivot of the Hub, and it had no peer.
Here --in the presence of no fewer than six major department stores, dozens of jewelers, antiquarians and coin dealers, numerous five-and-tens, vasty cafeterias, teeming sidewalks, a perpetual and frequently ear-splitting traffic jam, shoppers from every corner of the city and the far-flung suburbs, uniformed sailors from British, French, American and even Russian dreadnaughts, mounted police on horses made skittish by the roiling crowds, vendors of flowers and roasters of chestnuts and newsboys hawking --here, anyone could see, throbbed vitally the heartbeat of a great city.
Here the Harvard-Ashmont Line screeched to its orthogonal subterranean rendezvous with a heavy-rail cousin that linked Everett to Forest Hills. With its boisterous, shop-lined pedestrian tunnel to Park Street, Washington station made it amply clear: you were in the big city, boy.
When you emerged, you could push your way through the teeming masses into Filene?s Basement, Gilchrist?s or Kennedy?s, or you could brave the crowds gaping into ancient Jordan?s nearly endless display windows all the way down to Raymond?s, where --if you could stand it-- you?d catch a serving of cornball redneckery. Or you could peel off into the eerie silence of Hawley Street and buy a button or a feather: a button to match every coat, a feather for every hat.
And there was not a parking lot to be seen. The land was far too valuable for such vapid uses; you could tell that by the vertical signs jostling for every shopper?s glance up and down that splendid, narrow, meandering, streetwalled canyon named for the eminent general and president.
After Raymond?s, Washington Street grew a little seedy, and the crowds tended more to sailors, ladies in scanty dresses, young folks and African-Americans. Shops full of pointy-toed boots --recently reptiles-- jostled with purveyors of surplus pea jackets and arcades full of pinball, while second-story diners could survey the Rabelaisian goings-on from table-cloth?d perches set right up against glass walls held steady by gothic tracery.
And punctuating all this was the syncopated, marqueed drumbeat of Ben Sack?s exclusive collection of first-run movie palaces, some vast and some subdivided. These were the only places in Metropolitan Boston where you could see a first-run movie. Ben had a stranglehold on first runs; he believed the city deserved to monopolize them; and the moviegoers rolled in from Roxbury on the Elevated and Newton in their cars. This was when Boston really had a theater district!
If you ventured even further south, Asian faces appeared along with ladies in even scantier dresses, the marquees now featured triple xxx?s, rooms could be let by the hour, magazines were carried in opaque brown bags, and rhythmic jazz wafted out of bar doors manned by the burly. Inside, on the bars themselves, you could find more ladies, but these were clad not at all.
Beyond Kneeland Street lay the wilds.
* * *
Tell us about the pleasures of life in Downtown Crossing.
By the middle of the Twentieth Century, Boston?s epicenter had migrated down Washington Street. If you asked any group of Bostonians for the provenance of their city?s dead center, they?d chorus loud and clear: Washington Street at Winter/Summer. It served as the geographic, spiritual, cultural and commercial pivot of the Hub, and it had no peer.
Here --in the presence of no fewer than six major department stores, dozens of jewelers, antiquarians and coin dealers, numerous five-and-tens, vasty cafeterias, teeming sidewalks, a perpetual and frequently ear-splitting traffic jam, shoppers from every corner of the city and the far-flung suburbs, uniformed sailors from British, French, American and even Russian dreadnaughts, mounted police on horses made skittish by the roiling crowds, vendors of flowers and roasters of chestnuts and newsboys hawking --here, anyone could see, throbbed vitally the heartbeat of a great city.
Here the Harvard-Ashmont Line screeched to its orthogonal subterranean rendezvous with a heavy-rail cousin that linked Everett to Forest Hills. With its boisterous, shop-lined pedestrian tunnel to Park Street, Washington station made it amply clear: you were in the big city, boy.
When you emerged, you could push your way through the teeming masses into Filene?s Basement, Gilchrist?s or Kennedy?s, or you could brave the crowds gaping into ancient Jordan?s nearly endless display windows all the way down to Raymond?s, where --if you could stand it-- you?d catch a serving of cornball redneckery. Or you could peel off into the eerie silence of Hawley Street and buy a button or a feather: a button to match every coat, a feather for every hat.
And there was not a parking lot to be seen. The land was far too valuable for such vapid uses; you could tell that by the vertical signs jostling for every shopper?s glance up and down that splendid, narrow, meandering, streetwalled canyon named for the eminent general and president.
After Raymond?s, Washington Street grew a little seedy, and the crowds tended more to sailors, ladies in scanty dresses, young folks and African-Americans. Shops full of pointy-toed boots --recently reptiles-- jostled with purveyors of surplus pea jackets and arcades full of pinball, while second-story diners could survey the Rabelaisian goings-on from table-cloth?d perches set right up against glass walls held steady by gothic tracery.
And punctuating all this was the syncopated, marqueed drumbeat of Ben Sack?s exclusive collection of first-run movie palaces, some vast and some subdivided. These were the only places in Metropolitan Boston where you could see a first-run movie. Ben had a stranglehold on first runs; he believed the city deserved to monopolize them; and the moviegoers rolled in from Roxbury on the Elevated and Newton in their cars. This was when Boston really had a theater district!
If you ventured even further south, Asian faces appeared along with ladies in even scantier dresses, the marquees now featured triple xxx?s, rooms could be let by the hour, magazines were carried in opaque brown bags, and rhythmic jazz wafted out of bar doors manned by the burly. Inside, on the bars themselves, you could find more ladies, but these were clad not at all.
Beyond Kneeland Street lay the wilds.
* * *
Tell us about the pleasures of life in Downtown Crossing.
