Category Archives: Flashback Friday

The Boston Custom House was the only “sky scraper” in Boston in 194o.  The tower had been added in 1910 and stands just under 500′ tall. However, you can barely find the Boston Custom House from my photograph taken in the summer of 2012, but you’ll see it off to the right if you look carefully.

In 2009 I had a regular post called “Flashback Friday”, which I would share past images and memories of life in and around Boston.  After perusing Dirty Old Boston on Facebook I was inspired to revive this regular post.  For those not familiar with Boston, thank you for the indulgence.  For those who may have grown up in and around Boston, I hope you enjoy these posts as much as I like putting them together.  Apologies for the older posts which were done in 2009.  When I moved my blog to WordPress the formatting from my Blogspot address left a lot to be desired.

Past Flashback Friday Posts

Boston’s South Station is located at the edge of the financial district (also straddling the leather district, chinatown and fort point channel) on Atlantic Avenue and Summer Street in Dewey Square.  In addition to servicing buses and the local subway (MBTA system), regional bus and train service leaves from this busy station 24/7.  I regularly hop on the Acela for business trips to NYC and always enjoy walking through this beautiful building which has been renovated many, many times (most recently in 2001 and 2005) without compromising its architectural charm.

The train station first opened at the start of 1899 and the exterior still looks much as it did back at the end of the 19th century.

Boston South Station through the years:

Before the Ted Williams and Tip O’Neill Tunnels and before the beautiful Zakim bridge there was a green monster more commonly referred to as Boston’s Central Artery or elevated expressway that sprawled 1.5 miles and dissected the city cutting off entire neighborhoods from each other.

The pictures above are courtesy of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority website. They show the central artery when it first opened in the mid 1950s and handled 75,000 vehicles per day and then again what the overly congested expresssway looked like 30 years later in the mid-1980s when more than 190,000 cars travelled this stretch every day.

I’ve included a second set of photographs (courtesy of Tufts University’s Urban and Environmental Planning Policy website) that show how the city made a strategic (and I think excellent) decision to replace the elevated expressway with a beautiful garden now known as the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The park is still coming into its own but is a huge improvement and a welcome addition.

Considering all the news about firms entering bankruptcy, has given me pause to think of Boston based employers that once upon a time dominated this area, much the way firms like Fidelity Investments, Raytheon, Staples, and EMC do today. Growing up in the Boston area in the 1980s, everyone knew someone who worked at Polaroid, Digital or Wang.

Polaroid, although still technically around, is merely a shadow of itself and no longer associated with Boston the way it once was. Both Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Wang Laboratories have been gone for decades – and the collapses of both these giants was traumatic, leaving tens of thousands of people in the area unemployed.

The graveyard of Boston businesses of past is both long and filled with recognizable names. Bank of Boston and BayBank as well as Lotus all come to mind for me. Which firms that once were considered the darlings of Wall Street, employed tens of thousands and called Boston home do you recall?

In the mid 1950s an unsightly four-story parking garage dominated Post Office Square, and the area was completely devoid of both open and green space.

Some 30 years later, the parking garage was demolished and replaced with a beautiful park (officially named the Norman B Levanthal Park) that is enjoyed by thousands of people (including yours truly) on warm and sunny days. During the week a cafe is open that serves coffee, snacks and lunch. If you would like to learn more about the history of Post Office Square, link here.

Top photo courtesy of Bill Horsman.