Sometime in the late '90s/early aughts, I saw one of the greatest Boston bands of all time, the Upper Crust, in a small club not far from Fenway Park:
That club, the Linwood Grill, was located in the Fenway neighborhood, on a street named for a Scottish town: Kilmarnock. I believe I saw other bands at that venue over the years, but the Crust stick out. I also saw some shows at Church, the club that took over when the Linwood closed many years ago. The one I recall from that era was an iteration of the International Pop Overthrow featuring my friend Ray's band, Powderhouse.
Since that time, the doors below have been shuttered.
Music clubs are a tough business. Boston has lost many such venues in recent decades. The Rat in Kenmore Square. The Channel in South Boston. Bunratty's/Local 186/Wonder Bar in Allston. Chet's Last Call near TD Garden. Green Street Station in Jamaica Plain. Western Front in Cambridge. Great Scott in Allston.
So what's to become of the old Linwood/Church space?
Idyl Fenway, that's what. The first phase of this residential redevelopment sits across the street from this address; the second will feature 75 condos at the old music club site. I'm not sure when construction is slated to begin on that (it may have by the time this post goes live).
When last we talked about the Charles River Speedway -- nearly 15 years ago! -- I learned that the historic but long-abandoned buildings at the intersection of Western Avenue and Market Street in Boston's Brighton neighborhood had been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. As well, I reported that the State of Massachusetts had committed $132,000 to do some restoration work at the site. But at that point, there was no master plan for redeveloping the old horse track complex.
I first wrote about the Charles River Speedway a few weeks prior to the post linked above (see September 6, 2010, "UPDATED: Horsing Around At the Old Barracks"). Here's a bit of history: "In the 1890s, the Commonwealth created the Charles River Reservation, transforming a polluted stretch of tidal mudflats into a beautiful riverside promenade, a mile-long harness racecourse, and two-mile long bicycle track. Administration buildings were built to support the Reservation in 1899, providing necessary space for offices, housing, storage, horse stables and a cow barn. Designed in the Shingle and Colonial Revival styles by renowned local architect William D. Austin, the complex looks more like the high-style seaside 'cottages' of Newport than a municipal building. This was likely intentional: Austin’s thoughtful design projected dignity and permanence, while also implying that access to nature and recreation was not an upper-class privilege, but a public right."
That description comes from the web site for The Speedway, the hipster destination that grew from the redevelopment of the the complex in a joint effort by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Architectural Heritage Foundation. The "vibrant and welcoming marketplace, home to a brewery and biergarten, dynamic food and drink purveyors, and small-format shops," as well as an event space called Garage B, opened in 2021.
I've been to The Speedway three times in the last 18 months or so, and I absolutely love it. Walking through the gate from Western Avenue into the open-air patio for the first time, I was transported to a magical world.
Just steps away is the very busy Soldiers Field Road, but sitting at a long wooden table under a bright blue sky, drinking a tasty beer from Notch Brewing and grooving alongside millennial hipsters, I couldn't hear cars or trucks at all.
On that first visit, I went with two friends to see Margaret Garrett, the singer and guitarist from Mr. Airplane Man, play with a different band. All around us people were drinking, eating from the handful of small food shops, playing board games, dancing to the music. I couldn't believe this was the same place I'd driven past for years, wondering, "When the hell is someone gonna fix up that eyesore?!"
I returned more recently with my wife and the same two friends, once again on a wonderful afternoon, to see more live music. And shortly after that, my wife and I returned after hitting a Brighton Bazaar event nearby. When the weather is crappy or cold, Notch has an indoor space for boozing.
Even if you're not into pizza, beer, live music or small-biz shopping, you'll find it worth visiting The Speedway for the restoration work on a fantastic property.
I love the nod the designers have given to the Speedway's history as a race track.
In mid-October my wife and I traveled with our daughter to take a tour of New York University. I had time the morning before our walkabout to check out the neighborhood, camera in hand. I headed south on 4th Avenue in Greenwich Village and within a short time found myself looking up at this amazing sign.
First, I'm happy to report that the clock inside the eighth note on the former Carl Fischer Music Building is accurate, although it appears some sort of renovation of the massive timepiece was going on. I'm also thrilled that when this music publisher's home was converted to condos, the developer kept the eye-grabbing sign. I mean, it's worth it to attract eyeballs and for giving directions, right?!
As for the building: "For over seventy-five years it housed the printery and a retail store for the Carl Fischer Music company," per this Off the Grid blog post from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. "The company’s founder, Carl Fischer, was born in Germany and immigrated to New York in 1872. He opened a musical instrument store on East 4th Street between First and Second Avenues, and soon expanded into sheet music publishing. By 1880 the company expanded to a larger space on Cooper Square, but it wasn’t until 1922 that the building we see today was built."
The company is still in business today, albeit in a different location since 1999: Wall Street in Manhattan's Financial District. The company's "publications span multiple genres, ranging from concert music to jazz, classics, popular and choral works while representing the major instrumental groups, including woodwinds, strings, brass, percussion, voice, keyboard, and fretted instruments," per its web site. "Carl Fischer Music publications are available for purchase at over 2,000 retailers worldwide."
This is the first of several quick-hit posts about some of the things I saw during my brief visit to New York City.
Is there a more beautiful, Spanish Eclectic-style building in Boston than the former St. Gabriel's Monastery?
I first wrote about this place, and the adjacent church, more than six years ago (see September 22, 2018, "Modern-Day Monastery, No Celibacy Required"). At that time, the compound, which opened in 1911 and includes the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine (see November 10, 2018, "Thanks, Nice Lady") had been vacant for more than a dozen years and in somewhat rough shape.
As of that date, the City of Boston had approved a redevelopment plan, and I closed the post by indicating that I would return to document the new apartment complex. Took me longer than I figured it would, but recently I got back to see just how nicely this place cleaned up.
Located between Washington and Warren streets just east of St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton, The Overlook at St. Gabriel's is a fantastic devellopment featuring all mod cons, as The Jam would say, including an infinity pool, a putting green, an electric bike station, two pet spas and a maker hall located in the former church that features "private conference rooms, a giant TV wall, a coffee bar, and a pub under a beautiful cathedral ceiling," per the development's web site. "Complete with both a state-of-the-art fitness center and a separate fitness studio." The renovations on the old buildings look fantastic.
(The former church, now a community space.)
(Details from the church.)
There are four new buildings here in addition to the original two. Below you can see a new one and part of a wonderful veranda on the old monastery.
And here are two more shots of the gorgeous old monastery, which also served as a Boston College dormitory, a convent and a health care facility over the years.
The site also includes a small cemetery, which is overseen by Jesus on the cross.
And the Fatima Shrine is still there, as beautiful as ever.
Near the end of August I drove to New York City with my daughter and one of her friends. They wanted to check out New York University during the day, and go to a concert at night. While they did a self-guided audio tour of the NYU campus near Washington Square Park, I tagged along with my camera. After the tour, we got lunch and then walked around a bit more.
Here's some of what I saw.
I was quite charmed by these buildings on MacDougal Street, which is one of the most well-known addressess in Greenwich Village. On the right is #177, which was built in 1834; I'm assuming the building on the left rose around the same time. They abut 181 MacDougal Street, a 16-unit, full-service condominium that was under construction. That building was designed by Morris Adjmi Architects.
MacDougal Street is where Eleanor Roosevelt moved after the death of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the middle of last century, its cafes attracted artists such as Jackson Pollock, Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, author James Baldwin and musicans including Bob Dylan, according to this article from Untapped New York and this one from Grandlife.
I will cover more of the street's highlights below.
I learned the name of this street during my college years, when I heard Dan Green's 1968 psychedelic song, "MacDougal Street Freak Out," on the radio:
At 126 East 13th Street, I stopped to admire one of the windows, and noticed a plaque mentioning Frank Stella.
The name rang a bell, although I had no clue why. Stella, who died earlier this year at age 87, was an influential and well-known artist known for his minimalist works. "Stella’s works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Gallery in London, among others," according to this Artnet profile.
Stella, who in 2009 was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama, lived and worked in New York City for decades. The Beaux Arts building on East 13th Street, of which I wish I'd taken more photos, dates to 1904 and is "one of the last remaining buildings in New York City built to stage horse auctions," according to this Curbed New York article.
A short distance away, I walked past a place with a dark, yet heroic, history.
I didn't make images of the plaques on the exterior wall listing the 12 members of this firehouse who died on 9/11. I wanted to stop for a moment to reflect, but my daughter and her friend were walking well ahead of me and I didn't want to lag too far behind. This is the station for Ladder Company 3 on East 13th Street. During the horrible terrorist attacks in 2001, the company reported to the North Tower of the World Trade Center. "As the time of the attacks coincided with the morning tour change, both tours remained on duty, and the company arrived at the World Trade Center carrying more men than usual," according to Wikipedia. "Captain Patrick J. Brown and his men were last known to be on the 35th floor of the tower before the North Tower collapsed. Ladder Company 3 received some of the heaviest casualties of any fire company in the FDNY."
Heavy stuff.
At the intersection of East 13th Street and Broadway stands a knockout of a building.
Built in 1893-94, the Roosevelt Building stands out for its architecture, its engineering, its history and its connection to a storied-and-moneyed New York family.
"Prominently situated on the northwest corner of Broadway and East 13th Street, the Roosevelt Building is an outstanding example of the high-rise commercial development that occurred south of Union Square during the late-19th century using innovative new technology such as elevators, electricity, and metal framing," according to a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report from 2019.
"The striking transitional Romanesque Revival/Renaissance Revival-style, iron- and steel-frame building has a tripartite configuration that includes a two-story rusticated stone base with upper sections clad in Roman brick and elaborate terracotta ornamentation," the report continues. "A column topped with a copper cupola anchors the building’s southeast corner....Detailed examination of the building reveals layers of intertwining and overlapping terra cotta ornamentation clustered primarily on the pilaster capitals and in undulate bands along the intermediate cornices that project above the second, sixth, and eighth stories on both designed facades. Though much of the ornamentation is classically-inspired in form, it is enhanced with a multitude of references to ancient mythology – lions, humans wearing lion heads, dragon-like monsters, gods, and half-beings with the body of a beast or human and tails of a sea creature – set within a backdrop of wild, swirling foliage."
Damn - I want to hang off the side of this building on a window-washing scaffold!
As you may have guessed by the building's name, it was developed by the well-to-do Roosevelt clan, which at the time included two uncles of future president Teddy Roosevelt. "Architect Stephen D. Hatch designed the eight-story Roosevelt Building...for James A. Roosevelt and Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, who, together with other members of the Roosevelt family, formed the Broadway Improvement Company to oversee their real estate ventures. [They were] [h]eirs of the wealthy merchant Cornelius V.S. Roosevelt. CVS Roosevelt, as he was known, worked with his father as a hardware importer, and inherited a large sum upon the elder man's death in 1840.
OK, moving on. Along West 8th Street, amid all of the lovely late-19th and early-20th century homes and chic boutiques and restaurants, there is a bit of smut.
The Hustler Hollywood store sells lingerie, sex toys, party gifts and more. The chain operates dozens of outlets in cities ranging from Albuquerque to West Palm Beach.
At 414 6th Avenue, there is an apothecary that's been in business for 186 years.
C.O. Bigelow claims to be the oldest such store in America. And who am I to disagree?! When I saw the old painted sign for the store (seen below), I figured it was a ghost sign for a long-out-of-business store. But no.
"Vermont Physician Dr. Galen Hunter founded C.O. Bigelow, originally called The Village Apothecary Shoppe, located a few steps away from our current location at 102 Sixth Avenue," according to the shop's web site. "Part of our unique legacy has been the passing of ownership from employer to employee," the site continues. "Clarence Otis Bigelow, who worked alongside Dr. Hunter for years, purchased the store and renamed it C.O. Bigelow."
The store's soda fountain, which served famous people including the New York Dolls, John Belushi and the rest of the SNL cast, former mayor Ed Koch, filmmaker John Waters and lawyer William Kunstler, was shuttered in 1984.
The Ginsberg family, which acquired the apothecary in 1939, maintains ownership.
Nearby, at the corner of Greenwich Avenue and West 10th Street, we had a fantastic lunch at Rosemary's, an Italian restaurant that opened in 2012. It is the low, white building in the photo below.
After we ate, I spied another ghost sign along 6th Avenue, but my daughter and her friend were heading the opposite direction, so I made a long-distance shot.
The sign advertised a real estate company at 450 6th Avenue. The best part of the sign, which you unfortunately can't see here, is the old phone number: Algonquin 4-1817.
Heading south-southwest on 6th Avenue, I saw a nice old "time and temp" sign.
I'm guessing this was originally on a bank. I'm not sure whether this space is currently occupied.
I liked the look of the building on 6th Avenue housing Village Bazaar, which offers (offered?) tattoos, piercings and smoking accessories.
At 251 Bleecker Street I saw a great decorative panel that unfortunately has been lightly defaced.
Bert Waggott was "a long-time Greenwich Village resident, graphic designer and professor of graphic design at Pratt Institute," according to this article of appreciation after his passing in July 2015. He was passionate about working on the aforementioned Winston Churchill Square garden.
We eventually wound up back on MacDougal Street, where I spied some nice signs.
In the foreground is Off the Wagon, which calls itself the "busiest, most popular bar in Greenwich Village." Next is Artichoke Basille's Pizza, which opened in 2008; and last, and unfortunately most difficult to see, is Minetta Tavern, which is a new incarnation of a joint that opened in 1937 and was "frequented by various layabouts and hangers-on including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, E. E. Cummings, Dylan Thomas, and Joe Gould, as well as by various writers, poets, and pugilists," per it web site. Honestly, I walked right past this place without even noticing it.
Last but not least is Cafe Wha? This place seemed like a place I should know, although I didn't know why.
A storied club with a chopped-up history, Cafe Wha? was opened in 1959 by Manny Roth, uncle of Van Halen singer David Lee Roth. The building at the corner of Minetta Lane was "a garage that used to be an old horse stable," per the club's web site. "You had to down steep stairs to reach the dark basement, which was bisected by a trough once used as a gutter for horse dung."
Between its opening and closure in 1968, the club hosted folk icon Bob Dylan, a young and unproven Bruce Springsteen, guitar god Jimi Hendrix, and comedians including Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce and Joan Rivers. From 1968 until 1987, the club was owned by Menachem "Manny" Dworman, who ran the place as Cafe Feenjon, per Wikipedia. "In 1987, the club was taken over by [Manny's son] Noam, who changed the room back to a rock music format, and changed the name back to Cafe Wha?
So, it turns out, a little more than a week ago, my daughter was accepted to NYU. I look forward to exploring more of Greenwich Village!
I have written about New York City before. Below are links to those posts:
From the earliest days of this blog, I dreamt of exploring Medfield State Hospital. Scanning various urbex blogs I followed, I saw loads of photos of the former insane asylum, which overlooks the Charles River just north of Route 27 in Medfield, Mass. I assumed that in order to capture my own images, I would need to trespass, which isn't something I typically do.
So when I finally found the opportunity to check it out, I was expecting to make photos from behind fences of buildings that were falling apart after standing for more than 125 years. I was pleasantly surprised to find a rather bucolic site where I could roam freely alongside families and other photographers and couples on intimate strolls.
I've written before about former state mental hospitals located in Waltham, Mass. (see March 20, 2017, "Brigham in Waltham, Part III" and August 23, 2010, "You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Live Here, But It Helps"). I have not written about the infamous Fernald School, which is also located in Waltham. Whenever I would drive by the site, I spied security cars, and just kept going.
Medfield State Hospital was established in 1892 as the Medfield Insane Asylum, and was the first Massachusetts facility built specifically for long-term, high-need chronic patients, according to MACRIS. "The unique college-like campus is considered to be one of the finest works of [architect William Pitt] Wentworth's career," per MACRIS. "The campus was arranged in a quadrangle with an administration building and wards for 'quiet' patients at its head; wards for 'untidy, excited and epilectic (sic) patients' around its perimeter; infirmary and industrial buildings at its corner; and a chapel, laundry, kitchen/dining facility, powerhouse and carpenter's shop at its center."
I was completely charmed by the buildings, the campus, the poetry scattered across buildings, the quad where events take place, the beautiful church surrounded by flowers, and so much more. The Town of Medfield purchased 128 acres of the original 296-acre site in 2014. I will discuss this more below.
As time wore on, the campus grew in both population and number of buildings. Structures added to the original campus included a farm house for a farmer and 15-20 patients; an industrial building for making clothes, ironwork, upholstery and mattresses; a nurse's residence and school; a hospital for tubercular patients; wood-frame cottages for patients and employees alike; and a superintendent's house.
According to Wikipedia, "At its height the complex included 58 buildings, on a property of some 1.4 sq mi., and a capacity of 2,200 patients. It raised its own livestock and produce, and generated its own heat, light and power. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, the property was closed in April 2003 and the buildings shuttered."
(The most modern structure on the site is this water tower.)
There is a large and beautiful mural on the former mechanical building.
Painted by artist Cedric "Vise1" Douglas, the work of art features a girl playing a violin. Douglas said the work was inspired by the former hospital's history of including music as part of its therapy, according to this Wicked Local article.
The art also complements the mission of the Bellforge Arts Center, which presents live music, theater, dance, health and wellness programs and activities for children on the Medfield State campus. After the town purchased the property, there was a four-year period of "extensive public input," according to the arts center's web site. "[A] master plan was completed in 2018, and in 2020 the Bellforge Arts Center secured a 99-year lease with the town on two signature buildings at the core of the campus."
One of those buildings is the former hospital infirmary, which still needs to be renovated; the other, seen below, is the lovely chapel, which looks great but evidently needs work. Eventually, there will be a glass annex connecting the pair.
In addition to the arts and culture spaces, the town's long-term plan for the site is expected to result in 334 new apartments, 25% of which will be affordable, according to the town's web site. Additionally, the town plans to maintain open space on the property and preserve the historic buildings, "netting an estimated $700,000 annually in additional tax revenue for the town."
I'm so happy that my initial expectations about Medfield State Hospital were blown out of the water. Where I thought I'd find dilapidated buildings and barriers to entry, I instead was met with open access and joyful strollers (of course, I imagine that when I first became aware of this place all those years ago, it may very well have been more decrepit and blocked off). I look forward to following the progress as this site becomes a larger part of the Medfield community.
