Tag Archives: history

The Filene’s block

I’m sitting in the sun at a corporate event on Summer Street. Newspaper people often get invited to occasions like this. Millennium Partners are the hosts. They redeveloped the Filene’s block, restoring the 1912 Daniel Burnham Building, named after its architect, and adding the new residential tower built on the hole in the ground that Vornado Realty Trust left when they demolished the 1950s addition to Filene’s. Millennium is rededicating a bronze tablet commemorating the nearby site of the first and second Trinity churches.

About 100 people are here. I’m prepared to be satisfyingly bored. Speeches take place in four versions of Boston accents. The ground shivers as a subway train passes underneath. A police whistle blows. Birds flitter past. Planes climb overhead. Then a vicar says a final prayer. Two children run up to hug one of the speakers, obviously their grandfather, because they are so proud of watching him give a speech. He must be important.

I think I might cry. This is the way things should be. Children delighted with a grandfather. The hubbub of a city street contrasted with a program designed by a buttoned-up corporation. Unlike what might be held by Wells Fargo or United Airlines or America’s other corporate criminals, this program features a vicar from one of Boston’s wealthiest churches praying for justice, fairness and sharing with those who need a hand. I trust his words because Trinity puts its money where the reverend’s mouth is through the Trinity Boston Foundation. I’m proud of these fellow Bostonians and want the world to change so that generosity like Trinity’s is America’s norm, not the cruel, punitive meanness of the US House of Representatives.

This columnist could write many despairing words over the sorrowful plight of our country due to Washington, but you probably think too much about that already.

Instead I’ll treat you to the story of the historic block bordered by Summer, Washington, Franklin and Hawley streets that is being celebrated in this event. You can refresh your sense of history by studying some artifacts Millennium has placed around its perimeter.

Before you start your perambulation, remember that in the first half of the 19th century Summer Street was lined with fashionable houses. By mid-century, commercial encroachment had begun. When the entire block and more was destroyed in Boston’s devastating 1872 fire, the burned-out smaller businesses and remaining residences were replaced by some of the city’s most beautifully decorated commercial buildings. This and the surrounding blocks were dubbed “the Commercial Palace district.”

That fire burned Trinity Church, whose rector decided it was time to move to the Back Bay, the up and coming neighborhood that replaced the stinking mud flats along the Charles River.

Start at the Trinity Church plaque, mounted behind a narrow window near the entrance at 10 Summer Street. The plaque is a bit odd, since it celebrates the founding of Trinity in 1734 with the 1829 Gothic Revival stone building. But the first building was a wood-framed structure. Oh well.

Nip into 10 Summer Street’s lobby to find brackets from the now-demolished 1905 building at 33 Franklin, which eventually became part of Filene’s store. You’ll also find decorative brickwork in a historic motif on the lobby’s back and side walls.

As you head toward Washington Street, you’ll come upon a window that commemorates the pottery firm of Jones, McDuffee & Stratton, founded in 1810. They worked with the Wedgwood and other fine ceramics manufacturers to turn out dinner services, calendar tiles and commemorative plates. The calendar tiles now sell on ebay for between $13 and $75 each, depending on the subject.

As you turn onto Washington Street look up at the old Filene’s building. A restored glass and iron canopy lies beneath green Deer Isle granite. Above is the decorative façade, including the dark green middle part that looks like iron and is as complex as a cathedral. All is made of terra cotta. You’ll now realize that other buildings in the neighborhood are clad in the same material.

As you walk along Washington Street, you’ll see into Primark through the windows. Burnham designed them in that open fashion, which died out in retailing during the 20th century. Roche Bros. market along Summer Street is now also on display through the windows.

At the corner of Washington Street and Franklin, named after Benjamin by Charles Bulfinch, you’ll find a subway entrance, a small amphitheater and the 1905 clock from now-demolished 33 Franklin Street.

Looking up, you’ll know you’re next to the 60-story Millennium Tower, finished last year. But a few old artifacts hang around. A short way down Franklin Street, near the tower’s driveway, you’ll find pieces of 33 Franklin repurposed as benches or space dividers. Around the corner, Hawley Street, originally called Bishop’s Alley, reportedly had on it a tavern frequented by Captain Kidd. Now it is lined with delivery bays.

It’s satisfying to live in a city old enough to have pieces to save.

Summer reading. With plots.

Have you kept up with contemporary authors? They get praise from reviewers, but some are challenging. Their books are admired for convoluted structure and no plot line. You search for the good writing the reviewers say they demonstrate, but you find it hard to determine what certain sentences mean. The authors can seem self-absorbed, forgetting they have readers. (I’ll not name those books. If you come upon them, you’ll know.)

I’m here to save summer reading. You can depend on the following books, written by Boston-area authors, for good story-telling. One is about a well-to-do Jewish-Yankee-ish family in Rhode Island, another written from the point of view of a child of Italian immigrants in the North End. The third is about a Jewish family in Boston’s suburbs. I guess that almost covers New England’s waterfront.

Let’s start with Eden, written by Beacon Hill resident Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg.

The action centers around Becca, now 72, who expects to lose the coastal summer house her father built in the 1920s because her late husband, a doctor, left her with debt. But debt is only part of the story, which involves four generations of family members, a local ice-cream seller, an institution in Kansas City and the after-effects of decisions made long ago.

There are many stories about New Englanders’ summer houses in jeopardy. But this story engages the reader through events in the year 2000 explained by events in the first half of the 20th century. The story is satisfyingly long, while broken up into digestible segments. Becca’s character is gratifyingly complex. Themes deal with efforts to gain control over events and other people, tradition played out against new attitudes and progress, tribalism and its breakdown, class, status and wealth.

A few characters are left by the wayside. I wanted to know more about the doctor who caused the debt. That’s hard to do with a high income and a modicum of attention. Did he have a gambling addiction? Something else?

But this complaint is small. The tale is original and well told.

The Saturday Evening Girls Club by Jane Healey takes place in Boston’s North End in the early 1900s. The club actually existed, but the characters are Healey’s creation. While the story of women trying to escape from conventional expectations is familiar, this book has a richer take on that theme. Not only must these women deal with the general society’s expectations, but they have the added burden of the “old” country’s culture that their immigrant parents can’t discard.

The story is told by Caprice, a member of a Sicilian family. She is a talented hat designer and dreams of opening a millinery shop. The decisions she and her friends make as they navigate jobs, boyfriends and their own friendship show the contradictions they struggle with and the slim perch on which their prospects rest. They help out in the club’s pottery studio and retail shop, named the Paul Revere Pottery, whose output is collectable today. There’s a cameo appearance by Isabella Stewart Gardner and a more sustained role for Helen Storrow, who financed club activities, and the North End librarian, Edith Guerrier, who started the book club out of which the more comprehensive group grew.

This is a sweet story of friendship and change. It reminds us that America’s history is and has always been filled with adult immigrants who can’t let go of old ways even as their children assimilate into the American mainstream.

Stuart Nadler’s third novel, The Inseparables, must have been called that because the story follows members of a Jewish family who have a hard time getting rid of something. Oona, a hard-hitting orthopedic surgeon, wants to get rid of her husband, Spencer, who suffers from an addiction to weed and a lack of ambition. Spencer doesn’t want to get rid of either of these afflictions.

Their high school daughter, Lydia, wants to get rid of the Internet photos of her naked body posted by a predatory boy whom she naively trusted. Oona’s mother, Henrietta, wants to get rid of the slutty reputation she acquired from a book she wrote long ago as well as the grief caused by the death of her beloved, but imprudent husband, a chef.

The men don’t come off well in this novel. In addition to the stoned Spencer, there is the scumbag boy and Henrietta’s husband, who turns out to have spent all their money in a futile, foolish attempt to save his dying restaurant.

Downtown Boston readers may have the same reaction I did in reading this book about a suburban family—they spend so much time driving.

Read all three of these books this summer. Novels usually tell you more about a culture than non-fiction does. Each of these books gives bits of insight into New England and its people.

A month in the country

For the first time since I was 18 years old, I have spent a month in the country.

And what a beautiful country it is. Fifty shades of green complimented by the bluest sky ever. Puffy clouds ranging from gray to bright white. Dozens of goldfinches, which my father-in-law called “cornfield canaries,” soar around with their undulating flight.

Grass won’t grow beneath the dense hemlocks, but their gray-green needles are still intact. The ash tree sprawls over the perennial beds, shading them, but not too much. Acorns fall on your head as you walk through an oak forest, but it is not yet clear that it will be a mast year. The maples are at least 100 years old, gnarled, rutted and pitted, their trunks sometimes looking like old faces. No one taps them for syrup, but a farmer down the road has lined his woods with bright blue plastic tubes that deliver sap from hundreds of trees. The pines tower over everything.

The town beach is Scobie Pond, sometimes called Haunted Lake. The water looks like tea and tastes like leaves when you swim in it. Sometimes minnows or snakes glide by, giving everyone a thrill.

This is not Disney World, a mall or anything that reeks of corporate, homogenized America. It’s called the simple life, but there is nothing simple about it. Continue reading →