A Dilettante's Tour of Boston
Boston has a lot of wonderful buildings, some of which show up in almost any book on American architecture – Richardson’s Trinity Church, for instance, or Bullfinch’s State House (the one with the gold dome). The pictures shown here focus on structures in Boston and Cambridge that are beautiful and often historical, but less well known. Several of these photographs of Boston were part of a 2007 exhibit at the Newton Library, and later discussed on the award winning Commonwealth Journal radio program.

If you want to buy any photographs, or contact me about photography, I can be reached at JXLovett@gmail.com.


View of Franklin Street

Looking east on Franklin Street from Hawley. This is the former site of the Tontine Crescent developed by Bulfinch in 1793 and razed in 1858, according to a Boston Public Library web page.

Female Mannequins

Mannequins in the window of the Express store on Newbury Street, right before it moved.


Male Mannequins

More Express Mannequins.

Male and Female Mannequins

My friend the poet Bob Scardino calls this one "Male and Female Mannequins Marching Into Infinity."


Building on Commonwealth Avenue

I don't know anything about this building. Wish I did.

Liberty Square with Casey and Hayes

The statue honors the Hungarian revolution of 1956. According to some guy I met while I was hanging the show, Boston was the first place in the world to do anything honoring that revolution.


Pledge of Allegiance Building

Built in 1892 by Daniel Ford to house his magazine, The Youth’s Companion, which sponsored the writing and publication of the Pledge of Allegiance.

111 Huntington Avenue Building (and Fritz Lang's Metropolis)

111 Huntington Avenue is part of the Prudential Center complex, and winner of the 2002 bronze Emporis Skyscraper Award (according to Wikipedia). The building has always reminded me of the buildings in the Fritz Lang film Metropolis.


Advertisement at Water and Broad

Advertisement on the building at the corner of Water and Broad Streets, location of Bakey’s restaurant and bar. This location always has a huge ad; this one was for Chambord Martini.

The Winthrop and Ames Buildings

The Winthrop was the first steel framed commercial building in Boston. It was built in 1893 on Washington Street next to Spring Lane, the site of the (now paved over) fresh water spring that drew John Winthrop and his followers to settle in Boston. The Winthrop makes an interesting contrast with the Ames building, another gorgeous structure that’s a block or so away, on Court Street. The Ames is a wall bearing structure built four years before the Winthrop. The walls at the base of the Ames are 9 feet thick, according to Donlyn Lyndon's The City Observed, and it remains the second tallest wall bearing structure in the world.


The Old Post Building

The old Boston Post building, erected at Ben Franklin’s birthplace.

Boston Wharf Company

Building at the Summer Street entrance to Fort Point.


Underside of Longfellow Bridge

The Longfellow Bridge is also known as the Salt and Pepper bridge, for reasons that aren’t obvious here. (It has four towers that kind of look like salt and pepper shakers.) The bridge connects the Beacon Hill area of Boston with the Kendall Square area of Cambridge.

The Stata Center

The Stata Center was designed by Frank Gehry, and it's on the MIT campus, across Longfellow Bridge from Boston.


More Views of the Stata Center

The Stata Center is incredibly controversial, as you can imagine, with opinions ranging from those who love it (like me!) to those who find it appalling, for a long list of reasons (for instance, one lecture room gives some people vertigo, according to Wikipedia). Gehry was recently the subject of a film by Sidney Pollack called Sketches of Frank Gehry (which doesn’t discuss these structures, unfortunately). Wikipedia refers to Gehry as a “Starchitect.”


Teapot at Government Center

The teapot at Government Center has the Center Plaza, U.S. Trust Company, Bank of America, and Sovereign bank buildings in the background. The teapot has a 227 gallon capacity and was originally cast in 1873 for the Oriental Tea Company, according to a variety of Internet sites. Now it hangs outside of a Starbucks.

Crystal at Harvard Museum of Natural History

The museum is at 26 Oxford Street (or 11 Divinity Avenue, depending on your preference) in Cambridge. The building is quite beautiful on the inside, even apart from its exhibits, which include a fantastic rock collection, glass flowers, and a room full of animal skeletons with a whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling.