What I hate about Boston

If I can ask you to cross the street with me to the opposite corner of Arch and Summer, I'd like to show you this loathsome little toadstool:

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This is what used to be there:

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The 7-11 was once a bank -- I think Union Warren Savings Bank. I'm curious if this was the result of a fire? There's no way a landlord could make as much money from the new building as from the one that was there before.
 
I feel for the architecture firm that rents the second floor. It is a nice central location, and I'll bet the rent is a good deal, but what unfortunate product placement!


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As you can see from this shot looking up Summer toward Washington, the original turned the corner more gracefully. On the other side of the street, you can see what preceded that brick barge they call Macy's. That too had more grace.
 
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I must be in a hateful mood today. Look at this before and after on another edge of the "Four Corners of Hell":

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^My sister used to work there in the '80's when it was something like The Bank of New England or New England Bank. My father and I would pick her up and we would eat steamed hamburgers at Joe and Nemo's. Not hotdogs but little burgers steamed with mustard onions and relish for 50 cents.
 
It's "Charlestown Savings Bank"...and it looks like its new-for-1962 facade is eating that poor Richardsonian Romanesque structure.
 
Oh! Charlestown Savings is the bank where I had my first-ever checking account, as a student. They got eaten up in a series of mergers culminating in Citizens Bank. Their original headquarters building is a landmark in Thompson Square.

I still have and use one of their totebags, with a "that's my bank!" logo on it.

Bank of New England was a different bank, originally called New England Merchants National Bank. BoNE went spectacularly bust in 1991, and the FDIC brought Fleet Bank (then from Providence, RI) in to rescue them. Fleet then proceeded to eat up most of the rest of our local banks.

Surprisingly, another unrelated bank in New Hampshire has now renamed itself "Bank of New England".
 
czsz said:
It's "Charlestown Savings Bank"...and it looks like its new-for-1962 facade is eating that poor Richardsonian Romanesque structure.
Click to expand...

That's brilliant! I thought it looked like the magician dropped his wand half way through the metamorphasis, but yours is better!

Scott, where was Joe and Nemo's? I remember dining at the one on Bowdoin St., (and at the White Castle on Stuart in the ante-Harold and Kumar epoch.)
 
these last couple of pictures are extremely depressing.

i've read about 'general sentiment' of the era and all that stuff, and yet am still unable to understand how the replacements ever seemed like a good idea, even back then.

Sure, some of these buildings were destroyed by accidents, but some obviously weren't...

mind boggling, absolutely mind boggling.
 
Toby,

I believe it was Summer and Kingston, where the original moved after the destruction of Scollay Square
 
Yup, pretty much. My assistant claims to be a dominatrix, too.
 
Chauncey Street improvements.

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The "Lincoln Memorial Shoeshine"... please send it to the scrapyard where it belongs.

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Thats actually pretty funny that still exits! :D


Anyways, I hate college move in/move out season when tristate area people flood the streets.
 
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