from a San Fran newspaper -If you're one of those people who assumes Boston hasn't changed since Fenway Park opened and Faneuil Hall was freshened up, here's a suggestion for the next time you hit town: Check out Louis' new digs.
The ultra-luxe clothing shop spent its first 85 years in the stately Back Bay neighborhood, the last 20 in a classical mansion built for the New England Museum of Natural History. But in April, it moved into a sleek box of corrugated steel and stained wood on the emerging South Boston waterfront, due north of the Institute of Contemporary Art designed by the avant-garde New York architectural firm Diller Scofidio
+ Renfro.
These cultural and architectural shifts are telling in a city whose image remains defined by a palpable sense of the past, soothing and staid. Yet central Boston is more expansive and intriguing than ever, especially when you travel on foot.
Don't get me wrong: The cobbled alleys of Beacon Hill are as alluring as ever. The Public Garden remains the nation's most sublime urban park.
Would-be James Taylors still busk in Harvard Square.
But a waterfront long marked by barren stretches now has a long and lively promenade that puts San Francisco's Embarcadero to shame, scenery aside.
Downtown, the notorious $15 billion Big Dig is finished, leaving us with an underground artery buried beneath a milelong string of plantings and plazas dubbed the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
The greenway isn't a destination, at least not yet, unless you crave a scenic eerie calm. Better to make time for once-struggling districts such as the South End and Fort Point Channel that offer fresh terrain for the quintessential Boston joy: byways to meander and explore.
That ambling sense of discovery is part of the appeal of the Freedom Trail, the 2.5-mile path that links 16 historic sites by way of a red line embedded in the sidewalk - the obligatory starting point for first-time visitors, unless you're taking a cab straight from the airport to Fenway Park.
Yes, it's fun to start at Boston Common and then proceed to such genuine landmarks as the Old South Meeting House from 1729, where Samuel Adams and John Hancock declaimed against British control of the Colonies.
But I'd guess that first-time visitors are equally enthralled by what they see along the way, such as the impossibly narrow alleys of the 17th century Blackstone Block alongside the food stalls of the Haymarket, where vendors hawk produce and meat with the zeal of burlesque barkers.
What smart travelers will sense is that, Revolutionary landmarks aside, the Freedom Trail is just one route among many. The tight fist of Boston's 17th and 18th century street layout reveals itself on foot to be a sieve of curved blocks and alleyways, architectural delights and weird juxtapositions of scale.
For instance? Old South Meeting House marks the beginning of Milk Street.
Across the way is the Boston Post building, built of cast iron after the ruinous 1873 fire and adorned with a bust of Benjamin Franklin, who was born on the site.
The next block reveals the International Trust Co. building at 45 Milk St.
from 1893 with its allegorical carved figures representing Commerce, Industry, Security and Fidelity.
Soon you're at Post Office Square, where a parking garage in the early 1990s made way for immaculately maintained trees and shrubs and seasonal color around a central lawn. Fair trade coffee
If the scene is too idyllic - or you have no need for the free Wi-Fi
- continue three short blocks to the corner of Broad and Milk streets, where a five-story former warehouse from 1863 manages to cap rough granite walls with a stylish mansard roof.
Inside is the local and low-key Flat Back Coffee which, Bay Area visitors will be relieved to know, specializes in "organically grown, fair trade and shade-grown coffees."
You can double back from here to the Freedom Trail in five minutes - or walk one block north to Water Street and take a left for an equally atmospheric show with a different architectural cast.
This cityscape is exotic by American standards, and it's why travelers to Boston for decades have been charmed by such neighborhoods as the Back Bay, Beacon Hill or the North End.
The difference today is what lies beyond, yet close at hand.
The South End neighborhood, for instance, is now an instinctively accessible part of the walking city, a meandering loop you can enter by heading down Columbus Avenue from the Public Garden.
The neighborhood had a burst of growth and glory after the Civil War and then sat moribund for more than a century - eclipsed as a residential address by the Back Bay, sliced by an elevated rail line suspended above the historic main drag of Washington Street (which, historic note, began life in the 1600s as the only route on the thin neck of land connecting the settlement of Boston to the mainland).
While pockets were restored and gentrified as far back as the 1970s, it's only since the removal of the elevated rail in the 1990s that the neighborhood has become a place where outsiders can wander without wondering if they've turned the wrong corner.
The orderly procession of diagonal boulevards, red-brick townhouses and thick-shaded squares bears little resemblance to the cluttered gray delights of the Freedom Trail, but your modus operandi should be the
same:
Follow whims. If a forested crescent like Worcester Square beckons, amble in. Leave the wide arterials for narrower ones, such as Shawmut Avenue and its stoop-lined sidewalks. If a bistro catches your eye on Tremont Street, settle in.
It's still a neighborhood with a mix of incomes and ethnicities: The Cathedral housing project stands across Harrison Avenue from a newish condominium complex where a two-bedroom condo on my visit was offered at $569,000. A former school on the same block is a community arts center.
At least for now, there's a sense of the overlapped city rather than a hermetically sealed enclave.
Another new/old frontier lies south of the Financial District, in the warehouses that once stored wool along Fort Point Channel. The best way to enter is on foot, across the wide dark waterway via the Summer Street Bridge. Once you cross, plunge down quiet Melcher Street. It's a deep chasm of steep masonry: loading blocks and red brick on your left, generous windows and yellow brick on your right.
Another sort of view is available nearby on Farnsworth Street from the spacious concrete porch of Flour Bakery and Cafe. Across the way is Hacin
+ Associates' FP3 - five stories of dark new brick topped by three
+ stories
of copper-clad penthouses, angled and attractively stark. Best of new Boston
This is the best of the new Boston: informed by history but adding to it with intelligent restraint.
At the end of the block the road gives out - more of that incidental footpath charm - and so you pick your way through a clearing to the waterfront through what feels less like a neighborhood than a collection of buildings amid a plateau of parking lots that signal more buildings to come.
Why bother? Because of the payoff: the sumptuous Harborwalk. In areas such as the North End waterfront it is hemmed in by buildings, but from Fort Point Channel south it is inviting and broad. Handsomely paved in cobblestone, some stretches offer formal gardens while others are accented by enjoyably informative plaques that fill in details about the waterfront's ecology and history.
Like the Greenway, it's a work in progress. But the Harborwalk is a lot more fun, especially here. At LouisBoston there's a lawn, an odd beguiling touch. At the Institute of Contemporary Art, the building facade turns into a stepped wooden amphitheater that doubles as the most inviting place to sit along the harbor.
Gone are the days when Boston seemed frozen in time. What hasn't changed is the tactile sense of place - more and more, one that includes an element of surprise. If You Go GETTING THERE
From Logan Airport, the best way to get downtown - and get in the mood for your visit - is by taking a water taxi. Three services are available, with a one-way fare of $10, and you'll likely have the boat to yourself. For more information go to bit.ly/aaHdty. There's also service on the MBTA Blue Line subway. WHERE TO STAY
Lenox Hotel, 61 Exeter St., (617) 536-5300.
www.lenoxhotel.com.
Boston has no shortage of classic hotels and inns, but this one manages to feel stylish and timeless at once.
Club Quarters Boston, 161 Devonshire St., (617) 357-6400.
www.clubquarters.com. Nothing fancy but the prices are relatively good and the location can't be beat: around the corner from Post Office Square.
WHAT TO DO
Boston National Historic Park, 15 State St., (617) 242-5642.
www.nps.gov/bost/. The Freedom Trail starts on Boston Common at Park and Tremont streets; this visitor center has information on all the historic attractions nearby, as well as genuinely helpful rangers.
Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Ave., (617) 478-3100.
www.icaboston.org. The exhibitions can be hit or miss but are worth a visit if only for the design by Diller Scofidio + Renfro - the acclaimed New York firm now at work on the Berkeley Art Museum.
Brattle Book Shop, 9 West St., (617) 542-0210.
www.brattlebookshop.com. If you love used books, don't miss this shop.
With two floors of treasures (history and politics are especially
strong) and a lineage dating back to 1825, it's an only-in-Boston gem.
Made in Fort Point, 12 Farnsworth St., (617) 423-1100. bit.ly/7RxjdP A great shop of arts and crafts by neighborhood artists, the folks who carved out loft space before the condo developers arrived. WHERE TO EAT
Clink, 215 Charles St., (617) 224-4000.
www.libertyhotel.com. Strange but
true: The stone-walled Suffolk County Jail from 1851 is now a boutique hotel. It's worth a visit for the surrealistic transformation, and this bar with food is especially entertaining - you enter through openings that once led into prison cells.
Flour Bakery + Cafe, 1595 Washington St. and 12 Farnsworth St., (617) 267-4300 and (617) 338-4333.
www.flourbakery.com. Berkeley-caliber pastries and good portable sandwiches with locations in both the South End and Fort Point.
Legal Seafoods, various locations,
www.legalseafoods.com. There are now six in Boston, but the familiarity hasn't yet bred contempt: The fish is fresh and the wine list is the best around.
