Project Assignment #2:
Changes over Time
(from Mapquest) |
(from mappingboston.com) |
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(Charles Street) A woman cleans the exterior of a prosperous antique shop on Charles Street as she opens up for the day. She does not live in the neighborhood, but then, neither do many of her customers, tourists wandering the area or simply Bostonians from other parts of the city. Fairly unfamiliar with the neighborhood and its past, she does not know what occupied this corner before her store, but she imagines it was a similar commercial establishment. 
Facade Providing Character for Starbucks Coffee |
Today, Charles Street is lined with fancy restaurants and shopping. Perhaps the most upscale of Boston's commercial districts, it meshes architecturally with the houses filling the rest of the hill, but at the same time it seems very separate. The stores fill a niche in Boston as a whole, but not in a specific neighborhood; after all, it is difficult to picture people heading down the street to stores like A Room With a Vieux in search of regular necessities. At one time, this would not have been the case. Originally on the riverfront, as indicated by its name, Charles has probably always been a main street in the neighborhood, but as the first map, from the 1885 Sanbourn atlas, shows, it used to be primarily residential. The later, 1929 Sanbourn map, however, has nearly all of the buildings on Charles Street labelled with an 'S' for store. In the earlier half of the century, these stores and restaurants most likely would have appealed more to the average person in the neighborhood. Over time, however, they gradually became an attraction primarily for window-shopping tourists and, in most cases wealthy collectors or foodies.
(detail from 1867 Sanbourn fire insurance atlas) bigger (Note the lack of stores on Charles Street) 
(detail from 1929 Sanbourn fire insurance atlas) bigger (Note the number of stores -- marked with an 'S' -- on Charles Street) |
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(historical landmark) A man steps off the uneven brick sidewalk on Pinckney Street and opens his freshly painted black door. He takes great pride in maintaining his houseUs historic character, especially now that his neighborhood has been placed on the national registry as a historic landmark. 
(Photo of marker declaring Beacon Hill a registered historical landmark) |
One of the most striking aspects of streets like Pinckney and Mount Vernon in the modern era is that once they were fully developed, their appearances stopped changing. In many neighborhoods, houses stand for hundreds of years, but most experience and display the gradual wear and tear that accompanies the progression of time. Beacon Hill's residents, however, seem to work hard to maintain the character of the neighborhood, in part because its status as a historic landmark has prevented drastic changes since 1963 but probably also because its charm helps increase property values and prevents a disaster similar to the urban renewal of the West End. Even so, the neighborhood has evolved in some ways over the last fifty years or so, most notably in how the residences are used. When they were first built, all of the houses were single-family dwellings, but, as the 1946 Sanbourn map shows, a fair number on Mt. Vernon and Pinckney are labelled as Apts. or with an 'F', indicating flats. The stores on Charles Street probably have apartments on the other three floors as well. As time moves on, more and more of the houses in the neighborhood, particularly the larger ones on Mt. Vernon Street, will almost certainly be converted into apartments as property values rise even further and demand to live in the neighborhood and in Boston increases.
(detail from the 1946 Sanbourn fire insurance atlas) bigger (Note the buildings labelled with an 'F' or 'Apts') |
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(interesting places) Schoolboys from all over the neighborhood trudge into the Sharpe School, the first interracial high school in Boston. On this beautiful spring day, however, they would probably rather be playing in nearby Boston Common or even the green of Louisburg Square. 
Beacon Hill circa 1850 (photo of the Sharpe School as it stands today) |
(detail from 1929 Sanbourn fire insurance atlas) bigger (Note the various building uses in the lower right) Much like any old neighborhood, Beacon Hill has its share of historically significant places, most of which are still or have been converted to private residences. Placards on buildings indicate that many Massachusetts writers called the neighborhood home, especially Louisa May Alcott and her family, who lived on Pinckney Street and Louisburg Square. In addition to the school on Pinckney Street, which has gone by many names since its inception including the Phillips School and the Carnegie Institute School, other significant buildings include the Baptist and, later, African Methodist Church on the corner of Charles and Mt. Vernon, indicating a strong African-American presence on or near my site, the Boston University School of Theology, later the New England School of Pharmacy, on Mt. Vernon, and St. Margaret's Convent on Louisburg Square. The school, condominiums today, is pictured. The map, from 1929, shows the growing presence of smaller scale organizations and services at the top of the hill, such as tailors, a boarding house, and a theological library. During this time period, a number of houses were not primarily used as residences, particularly at the top of the hill; this could be because the original owners were dying or moving away and the larger homes were more attractive or affordable to certain types of offices or societies than to families. In modern times, however, just about all the houses function as residences again. |
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(all built up) A builder lays the foundation for a large brownstone mansion, replacing the original brick townhouses torn down last year. It probably will not fit with the surrounding homes, but he is not concerned. Prosperous families are demanding showier residences, and after all, that's how Beacon Hill developed in the first place.
detail from 1867 Sanbourn fire insurance atlas bigger (Note that the entire site is now built up) |
By the mid-19th century, Beacon Hill was entirely built up. The map, from the 1867 Sanbourn atlas, the earliest available, shows the bottoms of Pinckney and Mt. Vernon Streets as well as Charles Street completely lined with houses. Actually, by that time they would have been built up for a few decades, which means that any new construction on the area would have had to replace old buildings, as in the cases of the brownstones.
After all, in the 1800's, Beacon Hill did not carry the historic weight it does today. and certainly residents were not nearly so concerned with maintaining a consistent character as they were with making sure they appeared prominent compared to their neighbors. This need certainly propelled the few anomalous brownstones, but it also motivated the neighborhood's development as a whole. Kenneth Jackson explains that many notable suburbs and neighborhoods -- Brooklyn, for instance -- developed as havens for the elite, near choice property and separate from the rest of the city. Beacon Hill without question fits this category. Especially on Mount Vernon Street, it is clear that the wealthy originally tried to outdo each other by building mansions, and then the less wealthy built their own, smaller houses to join the neighborhood. Soon the neighborhood became completely built up, but the growing prosperity of the time period would have led people to try to outdo their neighbors and replace smaller houses with showier ones. |
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(building patterns) A wealthy woman in a carriage pulls up to her sister's new mansion on Beacon Hill. Impressed by the green surroundings and the beautiful view of the river as well as the architecture of the house, she resolves to ask her husband's thoughts about building in the area.  Property Map from 1814 bigger (my site is in the upper left corner) |
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the front slope of Beacon Hill was mostly open space, pastures bordering on Boston Common. This property map from 1814 shows the boundaries of my site in place, although Mt. Vernon Street is called Olive Street and Joy Street is called Elknap Street. It also clearly shows that Beacon Hill originally developed from the top of the hill downward. This pattern probably occured both because the slope was much steeper before it was cut away and because the most desirable property would have been at the top, with a view of both the river and the common.
The building patterns on Mt. Vernon and Pinckney Streets back up this assumption. For one thing, the crest of Mt. Vernon Street is home to a few old mansions. Furthermore, at the top of Pinckney street, beyond number 40 or so, the houses change from rows of similar brick buildings to smaller carriage houses or garages of different shapes or sizes. At first I actually thought these houses were built later, but a more reasonable explanation is that they would have been built sooner, accompanying the mansions on the adjacent street. Later Bromley atlases, identifying some of these homes as owned by the same people as owned the adjacent, larger homes on Mt. Vernon Street, also back up this theory. As demand grew for land on the hill and the status that would have come with it, other mansions would have sprung up, followed by the more efficient, closely packed brick row houses. The rest of Pinckney appears to have been built up before Mt. Vernon Street, along with the rest of the back slope, which appears to have smaller, denser houses and then, as now, was probably less prime real estate. It, too, was built top to bottom, as general patterns, such as the more consistent facades of houses further down the hill, seem to indicate. By the time builders would have reached the bottom few blocks, they would have been accustomed to constructing the most space efficient houses and demand for mansions would have decreased somewhat. The elitist attitude of the wealthy also provides evidence for this assumption since they would have wanted to build their houses separate and isolated from the rest of the city, a need the steep Beacon Hill would have definitely provided. |
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(ancient history) A soldier stands guard in the watch house on the Common. Part of the trimountain along with Fox Hill and West Hill, Beacon Hill is among the highest points in Boston proper and therefore is an excellent place to look out on the town developing around a bustling harbor. The soldier may live to see the beginnings of revolutionary activity in what will soon become a political hotbed, but for now all is calm. 
Very early map of Beacon Hill (mappingboston.com) |
Beacon Hill in 1775 (from the Library of Congress Map Collection Maps from the 1700's show that Beacon Hill, despite its historical pedigree, is hardly Boston's oldest neighborhood. In the map on the left, from 1722 and one of the earliest available, my site, or at least the general vicinity, appears to be home to a few estates, the makings of a few streets here and there, and one lonesome tree, in addition to the watch and powder houses. By 1775, in the map above, a few streets cross the hill; although this map does not show buildings, there are probably a few larger houses on the front slope at this point. By the end of the century, the Hancock family, after which Hancock Street is named, will have acquired much of the land on the hill, and the front slope will remain divided into a small number of estates until the early 1800's. Thus Beacon Hill is relatively young compared to the other neighborhoods which comprised early Boston proper; it remained either part of the Common or part of landed property for decades after the the rest of the peninsula had been urbanized. |
