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Boston’s Financial District
The walk
From the Parthenon through Palladio to the Paris of Napoleon III and Beyond. Meander through the narrow and crooked streets of Boston’s downtown, in search of Greek temples, Egyptian gateways, French Second Empire commercial palaces, and Art Deco towers. We will view the site of Bulfinch’s Tontine Crescent, as well as a building modeled on the Tontine’s center pavilion. Among 20 featured stops will be the Stock Exchange Building, Custom House, New England Telephone Headquarters Building, the Old South Meeting House, and Old City Hall.
1 Old State House – Erected 1712-1713 by builder
Orientation The tour starts at the Old State House at Congress and State Streets.
William Payne; rebuilt 1738; Alterations by Isaiah Rogers in 1830; Restoration: George A. Clough, 1881-1882; Renovation: Goody, Clancy & Associates, 1991. Anglo Dutch design influence. Political and commercial center of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
2 Stock Exchange Building and Exchange Place – 53 State Street, 1889-1891, Peabody & Stearns architects. Facade of Stock Exchange saved during the early 1980s. Building located on the site of the Colonial era Bunch of Grapes Tavern.
3 75 State Street – 1988, Graham Gund architects. Lavish use of brass, marble and wood in lobby. Mid-1980s Post Modernism at its most opulent. 4 Richards Building – Mid-nineteenth century,
in the 1980s to memorialize the Hungarian Revolution. The Appleton Building was built in 1926 from designs by Coolidge and Shattuck. Powerful, austere Classical Revival edifice exhibits memorable curved Liberty Square facade.
bk Hotel Meridien – 1922, Pearl at Franklin Street, Designed by R. Clipston. Renaissance Revival bank transformed into 330-room hotel in 1981 by Jung, Brannen Associates.
bl Post Office Square Park – Congress, Franklin, Pearl and Milk streets, landscape design by The Halvorson Company, Inc., 1991; park structures and underground garage by Ellenzweig Associates. Highly successful green space with seven levels of underground parking than can accommodate 1,400 cars.
114 State Street; cast iron facade fabricated in Italy.
bm New England Telephone Headquarters Building –
5 Custom House – 1837-1847, State Street at India
1947, Cram and Ferguson architects. Late example of Art Deco. Lobby noteworthy for recreation of inventor Alexander Graham Bell’s garret as well as Dean Cornwell’s colorful mural called Telephone Men and Women at Work (1951).
Street, Ami Burnham Young, architect. Tower addition, 1913-1915 by Peabody & Stearns. Interesting marriage of a Greek Revival temple and a 30-story tower. When installed in 1916, the 4-sided marble and bronze clock was the largest in the U.S.
bn Site of Bulfinch’s Tontine Crescent – Franklin Street.
Street, attributed to Charles Bulfinch. Only eight of the original 54 buildings survive. Originally extended beyond the expressway to the wharf where the Aquarium now stands.
Built in 1793-1794, this sophisticated residential development was inspired by the crescents and circuses of Bath, England. The Tontine featured a center pavilion flanked on either side by eight row houses. Across the street were double town houses, while the oval park in the middle of Franklin Street set a precedent for Louisburg Square (1834-1848) and the squares of the South End (1850s). The Tontine was demolished during the late 1850s.
8 Grain and Flour Exchange Building – 1891-1893,
bo Wigglesworth Building – 1873, 89-93 Franklin
177 Milk Street, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, architects. Constructed of Milford granite by Henry Hobson Richardson’s successor firm.
Street at Winthrop Square. One of approximately one dozen buildings in the Franklin/Winthrop Square area that were built right after the Great Fire of 1872.
9 Liberty Square/Appleton Building – Intersection of Milk and Batterymarch, named Liberty Square at the end of the 18th century when a 60-foot liberty pole was set up to commemorate the Stamp Act riots that took place here in 1765. The 18-foot figural sculpture in the square created by Gyuri Hollosy was installed
bp Boston Transcript Building/Boston Post Building – Transcript Building built in 1873, 322-328 Washington Street, Gridley J. Fox Bryant, architect. Boston Post Building, 17 Milk Street, Peabody & Stearns architects. Post-Great Fire of 1872 buildings housed newspaper publishers.
6 State Street Block – 1858, 1 McKinley Square, Gridley J. Fox Bryant, architect. Fine, robust example of Boston Granite architecture.
7 Central Wharf Buildings –1816-1817, 146-176 Milk
bq Old South Meeting House – 1729, Washington Street at Milk Street, Joshua Blanchard, builder. Influenced by the London ecclesiastical architecture of Christopher Wren, Old South replaced a 1670 meeting house that had been located on this site. On a cold December night in 1773, more than 500 gathered at Old South to protest against the hated tea tax. Samuel Adams delivered a fiery speech to the irate Bostonians, triggering the Boston Tea Party. br Old Corner Book Store – Formerly the Thomas Crease House, c.1710s, 285 Washington Street; renovation and rear addition, 1828; Restoration by Francis N. Cummings in 1960-1961. Originally the site of the house of the “religious heretic” Anne Hutchinson, this venerable brick building was built for apothecary Thomas Crease after a fire destroyed Hutchinson’s home in 1711. During the mid-19th century, this building housed Ticknor and Fields publishing company and the offices of The Atlantic Monthly Magazine. bs Winthrop Building – 1893, 276-278 Washington Street, Clarence Blackall, Architect. First steel frame “skyscraper” in Boston.
bt Old City Hall [WalkBoston office] – Early 1860s, 45 School Street, Gridley J. Fox Bryant and Arthur Gilman, architects. Adapted for reuse by Anderson, Notter Associates, 1969-1970. Fine example of French Second Empire public building. Note Richard S. Greenough’s Statue of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Ball’s statue of Boston Mayor Josiah Quincy.
ck Kirstein Business Branch – 1930, 20 City Hall Avenue, Putnam & Cox, architects. Federal Revival facade copies Bulfinch’s center pavilion of the Tontine Crescent. Currently houses a library specializing in business and financial references.
Map: Ken Dumas | Text: Ed Gordon | Design: Nina Garfinkle