Bill Warner’s Blog

If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll know that I love old maps, and the stories they can tell. In 2000-2004 I funded and built an open-source system called MapJunction, upon which the Boston Atlas is based. Over the years, The City of Boston, the Boston Public Library, my own non-profit called Future Boston, and many others contributed maps to this system. What I love about the system is that we have so many current and historic maps that are all accurately overlaid, that we can figure out what's going on in photo like this one. (Run the system yourself to see the maps below in high resolution by clicking here.) Let's take a look. I found the photo above in a shop at Quincy Market. It shows the Boston Garden area in 1928.

Well, the first question is, where is the Boston Garden on this map? It's not there, since the Garden opened in 1928, and this map was only printed that same year.

Here's the same area in 1938. No mention of the Garden, that sits on top of North Station. I looked at many maps, and they all just seem to ignore that there is a world famous stadium sitting on top of the train station. That's surprising.

I wondered about the the building in the foreground with the awnings. 

This 1928 map shows that it's the Boston City Hospital Relief Station. Built in 1900, it was basically a local emergency room that was needed because of all the industrial injuries that occurred in the area. Read more about it here.

Notice the building to the right of the Garden. It's called the North Station Terminal Building in the 1928 map, but by 1938 it's called the North Station Industrial Building. What's it's story? Looks like its under construction in 1928.

Here's the area in the 1938 map. The building is on the lower left. Notice the brick (red) buildiing to the right of it. This is called Charles River Stores, and the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company. This company eventually became the Sunshine Biscuit Company. Makers of, among other things, Cheez-it crackers.

By overlaying the City of Boston's GIS data, we can see which building are still there. I've set the layer called Boston Building Footprints to be on, a little transparent, and blue.

We can see that the Biscuit building, and the one to the north are still there. (Well, part of northern one.)

And here they are. The nearer one, the Biscuit Company has been hugely renovated and added upon. It is a now a luxury condo building called Strada 234. I'm sure people eat Cheez-It's there every day and have no idea about this story!

This later photo shows the area from the other side. (Looking south). The Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company is hidden by the large brick building to its north. The little white building in front is probably part of the wooden building (shown in yellow on the map.) This photo is from a series of historic aerial photos of Boston taken by the State Department of Transportation

Here's another view of our beautiful North Station Industrial Building.

When the central artery destroyed 1,000 Boston buildings in the 50's, it squeezed in next to the North Station Industrial Building. I remember looking into its grimy windows as I drove on the Central Artery Southbound in the 1970's when I first came to MIT.

Looks like our little Relief Station is still there, right on the Haymarket Circle at the lower right.

Here's the same area in the 1940's, before the Central Artery. You can see that the Boston City Relief Hospital is still there.

And now this aerial from Bing Maps shows the scene today. The Biscuit Building and the large one to the north are visible on the right, just below the Zakim bridge. The Central Artery is gone, and it dives below the city right next to where the old Boston Garden stood, which is now a parking lot. That's because they built the Fleet Center while the Garden operated, and then tore the old Garden down.The grassy area with a "Y" pattern is called Portal Park, and sits atop the beginning the tunnel. What happened to our North Station Industrial Building? 

(Update from original post) I found this image on Google Earth by turning on historic imagery. How about that. This image from 1996 shows that they fit the Fleet Center in and the Industrial Building still stands.  This Google Earth image from 2001 shows the same area, and now we can clearly see that the Industrial Building came down to make way for the Big Dig and the Zakim Bridge. Funny thing though. The original highway squeezed by the building in the 1950's. But then, when the Industrial Building came down, it provided the perfect place for the Big Dig to be constructed while the elevated Central Artery kept carrying traffic.

Here is the same view in the most current aerial photo. The Fleet Center (huge white roof) is now called the TD Bank Garden. To its right is the parking lot where the original Boston Garden stood. Just above the Garden, I-93 dives under Boston, right where the Industrial Building stood. And the building that looks kinda like a cruise ship just up the street? That's Strada 234, luxury condominiums that inhabit and expand what was formerly the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company (Sunshine Biscuits...of Cheez-It fame).

And what of the Boston City Relief Station building? It survived the Central Artery, but not the 1960's Urban Renewal.

This image from the 60's shows construction of Government Center. The City Hospital Relief Station was right in the way of a new street, (I've painted it on in its exact location) and I'll bet that's when the building came down.