Category: Boston

The Tudor, Boston (1887)

by Dan//Apartment Buildings, Boston, Hotels, Queen Anne

The Tudor Apartments, designed by S.J.F. Thayer and built in 1885-1887, are at 34½ Beacon Street at Joy Street in Boston. Construction of the nine-story building so close to the Massachusetts capitol led to a height restriction law for the area. The Queen Anne-style building combines a variety of architectural styles. The design makes particular advantage of natural light on the Joy Street side of the building. Built as an apartment hotel, for much of the twentieth century the Tudor housed both apartments and offices. In 1999, it was renovated and converted into seventeen exclusive luxury condominiums.

Church of St. John the Evangelist (1831)

by Dan//Boston, Churches, Gothic

The Church of St. John the Evangelist, on Bowdoin Street in Boston, was built in 1831 for the congregation of Rev. Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet Beecher Stowe. The congregation began at a church on Hanover Street, called the Hanover Church, built in 1826. After the church burned in 1830, the congregation built and consecrated the Bowdoin Street Church. Typical of early New England Gothic Revival churches, the design of the building has been attributed to Solomon Willard, architect of the Bunker Hill Monument. In 1831, Lowell Mason, famous composer of hymns, became choirmaster at the church. Rev. Beecher left his church in Boston in 1832, to become the first president of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. The church became the Church of the Advent (from 1863 to 1883) and then the Mission Church of St. John the Evangelist under the auspices of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican monastic order. The church has been a Parish Church in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts since 1985.

African Meeting House, Boston (1806)

by Dan//Boston, Churches, Federal

The African Meeting House on Beacon Hill in Boston was built in 1806 to house the first African Baptist Church of Boston, known as the First Independent Baptist Church. A commemorative inscription above the front door reads, “Cato Gardner, first Promoter of this Building 1806.” Cato Gardner, born in Africa, raised more than $1,500 toward the total $7,700 needed to construct the Meeting House. The building, which was constructed almost entirely with black labor, served as the cultural, educational and political center of Boston’s black community for many decades. In 1808, Primus Hall‘s school relocated from the adjacent carpenter’s shop to the Meeting House, using a schoolroom funded by Abiel Smith. It later moved to the Abiel Smith School next door. William Lloyd Garrison held the founding meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in the Meeting House on January 6, 1832. The building, which has a facade adapted from the design for a townhouse published by Boston architect Asher Benjamin, was remodeled in the 1850s, with the windows being elongated and converted to having arched tops.

The Baptist congregation moved to Boston’s South End in 1898 and the Meeting House became the African Methodist Episcopal Church. By the late nineteenth century, many African Americans had moved to other neighborhoods and new immigrants occupied the neighborhood around the African Meeting House, which was sold in 1904 to the Hassidic Jewish Congregation Anshe Lebawitz. In 1972, the building was acquired by the Museum of African American History. The first phase of restoration work on the Meeting House was completed in 1987 and the building was opened to the public as a museum. The African Meeting House, the oldest surviving black church building in America, is also the last stop on the Black Heritage Trail.

First Harrison Gray Otis House (1796)

by Dan//Boston, Federal, Houses

The first of three houses designed by Charles Bulfinch for Harrison Gray Otis is located on Cambridge Street in Boston. Otis was a Federalist lawyer and politician who became one of the wealthiest men in Boston in the early nineteenth century, developing the area of Beacon Hill. His brick house, with brownstone stringcourses, displays distinctive traits of the Federal style, including the semicircular window and side lights of the entryway on the first floor (added after 1801), the Palladian window on the second floor and the semicircular, or lunette, window on the shorter third floor. The Otis House‘s design was based on a house that Bulfinch saw in Philadelphia in 1789, the William Bingham House, which in turn was based on a house in London. By the 1830s, the Otis House had been subdivided and rented out and later became a boarding house. In 1916, restoration of the house was begun by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (Historic New England), which moved the house about 40 feet from its original location in 1926, to save it from a widening of Cambridge Street. Today the house is attached to additional buildings to the rear and serves as a museum and headquarters of Historic New England. Continue reading “First Harrison Gray Otis House (1796)”

Quincy Market (1826)

by Dan//Boston, Commercial, Greek Revival

Quincy Market, which stretches 365 feet and led to the opening of six new streets when it was built in 1824-1826, was Boston’s first major project after incorporating as a city in 1822. Named for mayor Josiah Quincy, the building greatly expanded on the market space already available to Boston citizens in the adjacent Faneuil Hall. Architect Alexander Parris planned a Greek Revival style structure, with columns and pediments at each end and a central copper dome. It was the first large-scale use of granite and glass with post-and-beam construction and, when originally built, the Market was right on the harbor’s edge. Two additional long warehouse buildings flank the main structure to the north and south. Quincy Market was restored between 1976 and 1978 to become part of the shopping and dining center called Faneuil Hall Marketplace Continue reading “Quincy Market (1826)”

Winthrop Building (1894)

by Dan//Boston, Commercial, Renaissance Revival

The Winthrop Building, originally known as the Carter Building, was Boston’s first steel-frame office building and led the way to later skyscrapers. Designed by Clarence H. Blackall, it was built in 1894 facing Washington Street, with its long curving side following Spring Lane, where a spring provided water to the early English settlers. The building was constructed on the 1644 site of Governor John Winthrop‘s second house in Boston.

Tremont Temple (1896)

by Dan//Boston, Churches, Renaissance Revival, Theaters

The original Tremont Theatre, on Tremont Street in Boston, was designed in the Greek Revival style by architect Isaiah Rogers and opened in 1827. Many famous actors, orators and singers appeared there over the years. In 1843, the building was purchased by the Free Church Baptists, Boston’s first integrated church, who renamed it the Tremont Temple Baptist Church. Thereafter, it was used as a church, although public events were often held there as well. The church burned and was rebuilt several times. The current building on the site was built in 1896, designed by Clarence Blackall. The church has a large sanctuary on the second floor, which was also used for a time as an auditorium. Originally, there were shops on the ground floor and commercial offices on the upper floors. Revenue from rents and auditorium rentals allowed the Church to provide free seats to all worshipers.