Dorm Tower @ Emerson College | 1-3 Boylston Place | Downtown

odurandina said:
Try to stay calm. This property is located in the Ladder District. The stronghold of the Friends of the Public Garden. This deed of horror is pushing 210' by god.
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the Ladder District? Isn't that the West st./Temple Place area?
 
BosDevelop said:
the Ladder District? Isn't that the West st./Temple Place area?
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Yes, technically Ladder District referrers to the streets between Tremont and Washington from Boylston to School Street. It is also a made up PR term by some real estate PR person.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Yes, technically Ladder District referrers to the streets between Tremont and Washington from Boylston to School Street. It is also a made up PR term by some real estate PR person.
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Undeniably a "made-up PR term"--but sometimes they end up being "sticky" because they're undeniably compelling. In this case, no matter how cynical/base its origins might have been, "Ladder District" really works in that it keys people in to an interesting geographic suboddity within greater Downtown Crossing--that actual "H"-alignment of all those streets.

Think of explaining to a little kid while pointing to a map, "and that's the Ladder District. See? Because the streets form a Ladder." "Neat!"

Everything in this world was invented at some point--authenticity is always contested terrain. In the marketplace of ideas, I think "Ladder District" has succeeded for all the right reasons, whereas coinages that are truly grotesque--"SoBo"--continue to be laughable, and for good reason.
 
DBM said:
Undeniably a "made-up PR term"--but sometimes they end up being "sticky" because they're undeniably compelling. In this case, no matter how cynical/base its origins might have been, "Ladder District" really works in that it keys people in to an interesting geographic suboddity within greater Downtown Crossing--that actual "H"-alignment of all those streets.

Think of explaining to a little kid while pointing to a map, "and that's the Ladder District. See? Because the streets form a Ladder." "Neat!"

Everything in this world was invented at some point--authenticity is always contested terrain. In the marketplace of ideas, I think "Ladder District" has succeeded for all the right reasons, whereas coinages that are truly grotesque--"SoBo"--continue to be laughable, and for good reason.
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I did a little digging and discovered that the term was not made up by the real estate crowd, as had I suspected, but rather by the PR team for Mantra Restaurant, the (then) avant garde French-Indian fusion restaurant that opened on Temple Place in 2001. It seem that only 15 years ago you would not think of opening an avant garde restaurant in Downtown Crossing, so you needed a new term for the "area".

My how times have changed! (Thank you Millennium partners!)

I also do like the term, and it is descriptive, so it seems to have stuck as you suggested.
 
Downtown Crossing is a made up term coined in the 1980's to help revitalize the dying retail district.
 
TomOfBoston said:
Downtown Crossing is a made up term coined in the 1980's to help revitalize the dying retail district.
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You're off by a few years--the Downtown Crossing pedestrian zone came into existence in 1978, as is exhaustively documented--but otherwise of course you're right, someone had to invent the name to attach to the new pedestrian zone that had been carved out. Oddly though, no sources I've seen definitively state who came up with the name.

Also: what did the MBTA call the Orange/Red Line stop at DTC prior to 1978? Seems puzzling there's no photos of signage in the subway cars, at the stop, showing the name before then and then after, when "Downtown Crossing" went up on everything.
 
To me, the idea of "We [public entity] want to rename this public space to help redefine this area for public use." is more authentic than "We [private entity] want to rename this public space in order to help us sell more of our stuff."

But that's just me.
 
^^To that end, DTX, Ladder District and Innovation District have served us well.

With the big housing project that will be going up off the Greenway at Kneeland St coming up, will 'they' sell it as 'the big Chinatown development' or will the 'Leather District's' star be rising (after a hiatus)??
 
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BostonUrbEx said:
Don't worry, you nailed it.
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Did he? It seems like only more confusion has been created. On the one hand, I appreciate the quick fact-check that founded that the DTC stops were renamed as such in 1987.

Yet still the fact remains: the pedestrian zone now named the Downtown Crossing Pedestrian Zone was carved out in 1978... so why did the T wait 9 years to rename the stops "Downtown Crossing"? I'm intrigued by that lag, given that the City/BRA had christened the area "Downtown Crossing" so many years prior...
 
DBM said:
Did he? It seems like only more confusion has been created. On the one hand, I appreciate the quick fact-check that founded that the DTC stops were renamed as such in 1987.

Yet still the fact remains: the pedestrian zone now named the Downtown Crossing Pedestrian Zone was carved out in 1978... so why did the T wait 9 years to rename the stops "Downtown Crossing"? I'm intrigued by that lag, given that the City/BRA had christened the area "Downtown Crossing" so many years prior...
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It cost a lot of money to rename a station. All the maps and signage throughout the system need to be updated.
 
DBM said:
Yet still the fact remains: the pedestrian zone now named the Downtown Crossing Pedestrian Zone was carved out in 1978... so why did the T wait 9 years to rename the stops "Downtown Crossing"? I'm intrigued by that lag, given that the City/BRA had christened the area "Downtown Crossing" so many years prior...
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Maybe the MBTA is hesitant to spend money to align itself with cutesy names that may or may not change in a few years.
 
TomOfBoston said:
Maybe the MBTA is hesitant to spend money to align itself with cutesy names that may or may not change in a few years.
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Tom -- just guessing -- but I think the renaming of Washington was done in connection of the Orange Line tunnel extending under the Pike as the El came down and new stations were created for Southwest Corridor Trench to sort of replace the old ones of the El

So we had before the SW Corridor opened:
  • Washington [after the previous renaming]
  • Essex [after previous renaming]
  • Dover
  • Northampton
  • Dudley Square
  • Egleston
  • Green Street
  • Forest Hills

and after the El ended and the Southwest Corridor Opened
  • Downtown Crossing
  • Chinatown
  • New England Medical Center -- Now Tufts Medical Center
  • Back Bay
  • Mass Ave
  • Ruggles
  • Roxbury Crossing
  • Jackson Square
  • Stony Brook
  • Green Street
  • Forest Hills
 
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