File:Old Park street and its vicinity (1922) (14762329704).jpg

Identifier: oldparkstreetits22lawr (find matches)
Title: Old Park street and its vicinity
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Lawrence, Robert Means, 1847-1935
Subjects: Streets Historic buildings
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin company
Contributing Library: Boston College Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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d Century Street, and theexact time of the adoption of the name Park Streetis uncertain. This name, however, appears on Carle-tons Plan of the Town, attached to the first BostonDirectory in 1789. And in 1800 Park Street wasshown as extending from the Granary at the foot ofCommon Street to the Almshouse on Beacon Street.At that period, we are told, the appearance of thenow thriving thoroughfare was unattractive, with itsrow of old, dingy public buildings and dilapidatedfences. In 1803 or thereabout this highway was laidout anew by Bulfinch, and was then called ParkPlace. But its present name soon after came intogeneral use. All this region was for some eighty yearsa part of the Common. In 1813 Park Street was men-tioned as leading from the head of Tremont StreetMall to the State House. Park Street Mall dates from1826, and the iron fence surrounding the Commonwas built ten years later. On Bonners Map of 1722 more than a dozen housesare shown within the irregular quadrilateral bounded 24
Text Appearing After Image:
^ c O ** « a Q ^ x PARK STREET by Tremont, Park, and Beacon Streets. Yet on Wil-liam Burgisss map, of about the year 1728, but threehouses appear on this same territory; and these wereon the site of the present Tremont Building.1 Before its improvement by Bulfinch, as alreadymentioned, Park Street appears to have received littleattention. It was described as a narrow, vagrantlane, ill-defined and tortuous, which had not beenaccepted by the Town. Indeed, the locality was said to have been hardlyrespectable before the appearance of Mr. GeorgeTicknor, and the building of his fine mansion-house,which was to dignify and illumine the region at thehead of the street. And it is a happy circumstancethat this former mansion-house, although long sinceenlarged and given over to business uses, yet standsas a reminder of its old-time supremacy as a pioneerof respectability for the neighborhood. The site formerly occupied by the Granary andAlmshouse, wrote Shubael Bell in 1817, is calledPark Place,

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