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- Details, Details
- What's that building to the left of the tower?
- Coal Barges
- Bromo-Seltzer
- Inner harbor
- The Basin
- What a headache!
- Giant stepladder?
- Baldwin 62303
- Baldwin VO-1000
- Cold
- No expense spared
- Tough Guys
- Lost in Toyland
- And without gloves
- If I were a blindfolded time traveler
- Smoke Consumer Also Cooks
- Oh that stove!
- Possibly still there?
- What?!?
- $100 Reward
- Freeze Frame
- Texas Flyer wanted
- Just a Year Too Soon
- WWII -- Replacing men with women at the railroad crossing.
- Yes, Icing
- You kids drive me nuts!
- NOT An Easy Job
- I wonder
- Just add window boxes
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The Hotel Essex: 1906
Boston circa 1906. "Atlantic Avenue elevated at Hotel Essex (Terminal Hotel)." Completed in 1900, now the Plymouth Rock Building. 8x10 glass negative, Detroit Publishing. View full size.
Platform Ads
One of the advertisements I can see on the platform is for Mennen's Toilet Powder. The rest are inscrutable to me.
If only --
So 120 years ago, I could walk to my local train station and arrive at South Station, walk out and up the stairs to wait for the next elevated train to my office at North Station. But today, I have to go below ground and take two overcrowded subway rides to get to the same location. MBTA, please bring back the Atlantic Avenue line!
Fireproof, as featured in
Fireproof Magazine, July 1906. No interior photographs or floorplans, but the architect is identified, Arthur Hunnewell Bowditch. His Wikipedia page doesn't include the Hotel Essex among his notable projects. But, in 1931/32 he designed the Art Deco Paramount Theater, the last of the great movie palaces built in downtown Boston.
Looking at the two 1906 photographs and Street View, I'm certain there was a second-floor entrance to the Hotel Essex, directly from the elevated train platform. A nice perk for guests.
Despite certain neon letters not working properly
... this is the cleanest 1906 photograph I've ever seen.
Gone? Then what is this?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/HeJRkk4dkxWC9dP79
Really echoes the architecture of the Hotel Essex. Is this just a similar building in a close location (next to South Station. I guess if it was industrial, then look alike buildings could be all over I guess?)
[Oh right. Not gone! - Dave]
How could they resist?
I can attest that certain letters -- always the same letters -- were often out in the neon sign on the roof, resulting in HOT SEX. Clearly, this was not due to chance, but creative vandalism.
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