Nearly 40 years ago I went on what was essentially the first Backside of American expedition. A senior at New Hampshire's Keene State College, I walked around the downtown one night with two friends, singing, playing music, bantering, emgaging with strangers, checking out the back lots of the town (see October 6, 2019, "Remembering a Foundational Moment").
Since that time, I've had a fascination with the hidden parts of small towns and big cities, the places where the rats and riff-raff go. For quite a few years, I've wanted to explore the public alleys of Boston. Last fall, I did my first proper adventure in the city's Back Bay neighborhood (see February 1, 2025, "Sneakin' Sally Through Boston's Alleys"). Earlier this year, I returned to the Back Bay for another foray.
I started at the eastern end of Public Alley 421, which is off Arlington Street, directly across from the Public Garden. It runs between Marlborough and Beacon streets. As I mentioned in the first alley dispatch, the Back Bay is a fairly posh area. Even the parking spaces are architecturally wonderful.
I crossed Berkeley Street and into Public Alley 420. Where that alley meets Clarendon Street, I was inspired by a steam release.
The exhaust was coming from Hale House, a residential home for senior citizens located in a building named for Edwart Everett Hale, a Boston author, historian and minister. "Hale House was once the home of the historian and writer Henry Adams, grandson of President John Quincy Adams," per the Hale House web site. "In 1896, the Massachusetts Audubon Society was founded by Bostonians Harriet Lawrence Hemenway and her cousin Minna B. Hall, in the parlor of the house."
Continuing along, I was in Public Alley 419 when I spied the rear of 237 Beacon Street. Something about the hand-written house number just looked good to me.
I was also quite taken by the tall, skinny building facing onto Marlborough Street.
In Alley #418, I found a nice little scene asking for neighborly etiquette.
I hear Emily Post was big into the whole No Dumping movement.
I don't traverse back alleys looking for great architecture, although sometimes I do find some. What I tend to look for is little scenes that you wouldn't necessarily expect to find in a neighborhood like the Back Bay.
Obviously there is renovation afoot. But that white "X" on a red background essentially cautions first responders it's not safe to enter. I see that sign all over the place, usually on long-abandoned properties.
Why is there a lawnmower?
In Alley #417, I saw the first of two basketball hoops. This one is pretty sweet.
Great architecture, no. But cool details - yes.
And more etiquette lessons.
OK, great architecture, too.
I love this little building. I believe it was brought into the world in 1919, whereas the main buliding it sits behind rose in 1888. It's a tiny house for the post-World War I generation.
The scene below could be the cover for Urban Slacker Design weekly.
The photo below makes me wonder whether some tenant along this public alley descends the fire escape ladder to illegally dispose of rubbish.
Eventually I crossed Massachusetts Avenue and into Public Alley #908. I'm not sure why the system goes from #414 to #908. I saw another basketball hoop.
And then the back entrance to 531 Beacon Street.
The apartment building features studios, 1- and 2-bedroom units, with rents starting at $2,300 a month.
At this point, the alley makes a sharp curve to the south and toward Marlborough Street. I found the mix of buildings at this point quite pleasant.
I walked east on Marlborough Street for a minute before ducking into Public Alley #905. There, I saw a scene reminiscent of the old-timey days....and of the second photo in this post.
And then an odd little door.
At first I assumed this was another old coal-delivery entry point. But then I realized that this door used to be bigger before it was partially bricked up. I crossed back over Mass. Ave. and into Public Alley #429. I don't remember which alley I was in when I saw the industrial yellow locker featured below. This was the second set of lockers I've seen on my back-alley wanderings.
Whereas the locker was neat and secure, the barrels below look gross and dangerous. Perfect for a back alley!
I continued on through Public Alleys 428-423, enjoying seeing other folks using the alleys, and appreciating the relative peace and quiet. Not much caught my eye until the gorgeous fire escape seen below.
The congregation traces its history to 1839. The building dates to 1959.
My final shot was of a lovely old brick and sandstone home directly across the alley from the church.
Known as the Samuel Hooper House, this Commonwealth Avenue residence rose in 1861, from a design by Arthur Gilman and Gridley J.F. Bryant. "The house itself is one of the most elegant examples of the Second Empire style in Boston, with octagonal bays projecting up into the mansard roof," according to this Society of Architectural Historians write-up.
Gilman "advocated filling in the Back Bay district, urging this plan for years before his views were carried out by the state," according to Wikipedia. "Here Gridley James Fox Bryant was his colleague. Commonwealth Avenue, now one of the finest streets in the world, is due almost entirely to his persistent efforts, along with Frederick Law Olmsted. Gilman designed the H. H. Hunnewell house (1851) in Wellesley (then West Needham) and, with Bryant, the Old City Hall in Boston (1862–65).
That's a wrap on public alleys for now. I will explore more later this year for sure.
Wouldn't it be funny if neighborhood boundaries, and city and town borders, existed in the three-dimensional world, rather than just on maps and in people's minds? Imagine walking on the Massachusetts Avenue bridge from Boston to Cambridge, across the Charles River, and half-way along you have to duck under a rope or pass through a door or step over a raised line of bricks to gain entry to the People's Republic.
Sometimes I feel this type of marker would be helpful when I'm out exploring. But what, ultimately, does it matter whether I'm making photos in Boston's South End neighborhood, or its Lower Roxbury area? I faced this same issue many years ago when walking along the Somerville/Cambridge line (see March 16, 2019, "Where Am I? Somertown? Charlesville?").
After walking through Boston's Nubian Square (see March 4, 2025, "Nubian Square: New Name, Old Buildings"), I continued north into more of Roxbury and then the South End. After checking out the murals honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, featured at the end of the Nubian Square post, I continued past Ramsay Park.
On the side of Pizza Talia, I saw a great mural painted by artist Alex Cook in 2009.
Called "She Sees More Than The World Will Show Her," the mural features a woman standing in a kitchen, staring out a window at a galaxy of stars. Cook has painted hundreds of murals all over the world. I've featured him a few times on the blog: September 21, 2024, "Franklin Park is Ruin-ed" and August 10, 2021, "A Lovely Walk Through Roslindale Village."
A few doors down is the Roxbury Men's Club, which the Internet tells me is permanently closed.
I bet this was a fun place to hang out back in the day.
Next door is the Shawmut Community Church of God.
On the opposite side of Shawmut Avenue, across from the Eritrean Community Center, is a storefront church.
Iglesias de Dios Pentecostal is located in the J.B. Prescod Building. Regular readers of the blog know I have an interest in these types of houses of worship. While I'm not religious, I respect this type of effort to carve out places for congregation.
I continued on for a short time, enjoying the brownstone apartment buildings and street-level activity of the neighborhood. At the corner of Worcester and Washington streets, I spied a classic old sign.
Andy's Cleaners was located in this beautiful brick building for many years. I made a photo of the sign because I'm guessing it won't be around much longer. The cleaning business was located in what's known as the Pope Block, which was "built by James E. Potter in 1884 from designs provided by Frederick A. Pope for George A. Pope," per MACRIS. "A member of the family for whom the Pope's Hill area of Dorchester is named, Boston Directories indicate that Frederick A. Pope was active as an architect from the early 1870s until the mid 1890s....Frederick A. Pope designed numerous residences in the Back Bay, including" many on Newbury Street and Marlborough Street.
I headed southwest along Washington Street, where I was inspired to make a photo of the gorgeous Smith Block.
"The Smith Block is a rare surviving Boston example of a mansard-roofed commercial block," according to MACRIS. "Numerous examples of this building type were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire o 1872...After this fire, the mansard roof was less widely utilized in residential as well as commercial construction. Over time, examples of this building type have disappeared as the result of demolition and neglect. The Smith Block ranks among Washington Street's most architecturally significant properties by virtue of its prominent siting and intact form and
elements, if not its original brownstone facing. After many years of precarious existence as a vacant building, the Smith Block [was] adapted for reuse as an antiques cooperative."
Built in 1866 for Stephen Smith, a leading Boston dealer of office furniture, this block "was evidently intended as a satellite store of a business whose main office was located at 51 and 53 Cornhill, Boston," per MACRIS. Today it is occupied by Yunnan Kitchen, as well as several condos.
I knew that Mike's City Diner was in this area, but I wasn't inspired to make a photo.
Not far away stands one of the most photographed buildings in the South End, a former beauty that has sat unloved and neglected for many years.
I refer to this High Victorian slab as Tom Cruise's Place. Located on the corner of Washington Street and Massachusetts Avenue, the former Hotel Alexandra was built in 1875 and for a time several years ago was owned by the Church of Scientology (see April 8, 2018, "Tom Cruise Slept Here...Well, Maybe"). The cult hoped to make this historic property its New England headquarters.
"That project proved expensive, and ultimately the Scientologists put the property back on the market for sale in late 2014," per this Boston Globe article from April 2025. "It spent nearly five years on the market, and at least one sale agreement fell through before [developer Tom] Calus and [business partner Jas] Bhogal spent $11 million to buy the site in 2019."
That Globe article indicates that Calus and Bhogal in April filed a revised redevelopment plan with the city "that calls for restoring the historic Alexandra and building a five-story expansion on the vacant lot next door. The 68-room hotel would include retail or restaurant on the ground floor."
Here's wishing them all the luck in the world.
Next to Tom Cruise's Place, heading southwest on Washington Street, back in the direction of Nubian Square, is the very handsome Chester Block.
Built in 1857, this Italianate building mixes residential and retail uses. Completing a loop, I ended up admiring the gorgeous Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin on Lenox Street, just around the corner from the Shawmut Community Church of God mentioned above.
The combined congregations trace their respective histories to the late 19th century. "What is now the Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin began as two different missions of the Society of St. John the Evangelist," per the church's web site. "St. Martin’s Mission had its beginnings in the home of Sarah Jackson at 17 Westminster Street in the South End in 1899. The congregation soon outgrew Mrs. Jackson’s living room and moved first to a storefront on Camden Street and then to a small chapel on Lenox Street. In the West End, Church of St. Augustine was formally organized. In 1886 a building was purchased on Anderson Street and 1892 a new church was built on Phillips Street."
The web site continues: "In 1908 the Society of St. John the Evangelist purchased the land next to St. Martin’s Chapel on Lenox Street and began construction of the present building. Later that year St. Augustine’s Church in the West End was closed and many of its furnishing were incorporated into the new building. Father Field was the first pastor of the combined community. On St. Martin’s Day, November 11, 1908 the Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin was formally opened with a ten-day preaching mission led by a black priest, The Rev. John A. Williams, Rector of St. Phillips Church in Omaha, Nebraska."
A long fly ball away from the beautiful house of worship with the bright red doors is Jim Rice Field at Ramsay Park. The field was being upgraded back in January when I happened by.
The baseball field is named for Jim Rice, the Hall of Fame left-fielder who played for the Red Sox for 16 seasons in the 1970s and 1980s. The field was named in his honor due to his involvement with Major League Baseball's Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, per Wikipedia.
Jim Rice Field was the last stop on this journey. But in May 2024 I had done some exploring nearby, with the intention of one day adding more material for a post. So below are several spots I checked out on the adventure.
On Whittier Street, which sits across Tremont Street from the Boston Police headquarters, and which dead-ends at Madison Park High School's football field, sits a relic from times gone by.
The old Health Unit of the George Robert White Fund is likely to be redeveloped before too long, much like its neighbor properties across Whittier Street, which include several new apartment buildings. The GRW Fund was established in 1922 to fund "works of public utility for residents of Boston, to hold and manage the facilities constructed by the Fund and oversee its investments," according to the City of Boston web site. Its namesake was a pharmaceutical executive who lived most of his life in Boston.
White is also the namesake of the stadium in Boston's Franklin Park that has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy as it undergoes a massive redevelopment. I wrote about the stadium in May 2024.
The Health Fund building sits just south of a lot labeled on Google Maps as "Embrace Center Project Site." Embrace Boston is the organization behind the The Embrace, a memorial on Boston Common to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King. The group plans to develop the project site with a 31,000-square-foot community center offering performance, gallery and work spaces.
Heading east-northeast on Tremont Street, I passed many great old buildings. The one that caught my eye the most was at #1023.
This Classical Revival beauty, which is located in the Lower Roxbury Historic District, dates to 1894, and features decorative friezes and cornices covered with pressed metal, per MACRIS.
At Tremont and Cabot streets is an interesting mix of four buildings cheek by jowl.
Separated from Tremont Street by a small cobblestone parking lot and street, these buildings read this way to me, left to right: either new construction or completely renovated apartment building; a probably late-19th century Mansard building with a barber shop that may or may not be endorsed by Major League Baseball; a 19th-century apartment building that may have been a firehouse at one point, judging by the large opening in the middle of the ground floor; and another great residential structure that may have been the inspiration for the newer building.
Steps away is a legendary joint.
In business since 1935, Slade's Bar & Grill calls itself the "Soul of Boston." Here's the bullet list for this restaurant/nightclub's history:
Original owner Renner Slade may have been a bootlegger.
Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell once owned this place.
Malcolm X was a server.
It was listed in "The Negro Motorist Green Book."
Famous patrons over the years include Martin Luther King, Jr., Ted Kennedy and Muhammad Ali.
I'd heard of this place, and would have made a photo for sure, even if I wasn't in a musical outfit called the Slade Wiggins Band.
I considered turning around at this point, but I looked up ahead and saw a massive mural that I had to capture.
Located at the corner of Camden and Tremont streets, "Breathe Life" is a fantastic work by Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs, who I also featured in my Nubian Square post. Gibbs grew up in Roxbury and is a co-founder of Artists for Humanity, an arts non-profit that hires and teaches creative skills to youth.
Directly across Tremont Street from "Breathe Life" is, well, perfection.
The Chickering and Sons Piano Factory (aka the Spencer Repeating Rifle Co. building) is a five-story brick behemoth that fills nearly a full city block between Northampton and Camden streets. Built in 1853, this Italianate stunner was a year later called the second-largest building in the country following the U.S. Capitol.
At the time of the factory's opening, the Chickering company was the largest piano manufacturer in the United States, according to Wikipedia. From 1860 to 1868, the Spencer Rifle outfit was also located here, making weaponry for the U.S. Army and sportsmen, Wikipedia indicates.
In 1972, the building was converted to artist studios. Today known as the Piano Craft Guild, the building has been modernized with amenities including an indoor pool and a fitness center. I'm unclear on whether there are still artist spaces here.
I meandered the side streets between Tremont Street and Columbus Avenue for a while. There are loads of great buildings here, but the light was tough. For some reason -- well, I know the reason and I'll explain below -- I made a photo of the Stanhope Garage at 277 Northampton Street.
Built in 1916, according to the Boston assessor's office, it located a two-minute walk from the apartment building where Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King first lived after their 1953 wedding.
So what was the reason I made that photo above?
I was a fan of the TV show "Taxi," which aired for five seasons in the late '70s and early '80s. Whenever I see a garage like the one above, I think of the garage where the show mostly took place, and imagine that Louie DePalma is in there yelling at his drivers.
The last thing I saw on this journey was the most surprising. It required some detective work to figure out just what I was looking at.
This is the rear of 8 Coventry St / 1035-1039 Tremont Street. Using my photo editing software to manipulate the contrast and light, I was able to read the words "THE WORLD'S BREAKFAST" at the top. Doing a quick online search of that phrase, I discovered that the American Cereal Company used that slogan beginning in 1902 for its Quaker Oats cereal. Once I learned that, I looked at the image again and was able to make out the outline of the Quaker Oats "mascot" underneath.
I travel often from Connecticut to Pennsylvania to visit family and friends. I take Route 84 west to New York on most trips to avoid going through NYC. I have to cross the Newburgh Bridge in New York as I make my way down. I stopped in the town of Newburgh on one trip to get some gas, which sparked my interest in the town. I made a plan to stop there on a recent visit to see my father on Good Friday and I’m glad I stopped through.
I did a bit of research beforehand to get a lay of the land. I spotted a factory along the Hudson River so I figured it would be a good spot to start. The factory was once the site of The Newburgh Steam Mills on North Water St. The building was built in the mid 1800’s and brought a lot of business and employment to the area. The factory, which processed cotton, employed over 300 employees. As this was my first time in the area, I only took a few shots of the building from the street side, but I found out later that I could have walked behind the building also. (Next time!)
The building was bought and transformed into a lawnmower factory in the late 1800’s after the decline of cotton manufacturing. The Chadborn & Coldwell Manufacturing Company of Newburgh operated into the 1940’s before eventually merging with Toro brand lawnmowers. The building was once again sold and transformed into the Regal Bag Company. The company ran the business from the property for almost 73 years and sold it in 2024.
The building now contains businesses on the 5th and 6th floors. On the 6th floor, there is a company that makes backdrops for Broadway shows. The fifth floor has many spaces for artists and artist studios. Fun fact - the building is listed in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! as the only building that has its main entrance on the 6th floor.
After taking a few shots, I ventured closer to the marina to check out some sites along the Hudson River. There were other brick buildings that also looked to be former factories/businesses. Most of the buildings have been transformed into restaurants. The weather was nice for an early spring day, which brought a pretty good amount of people to the area. I’m sure that the area will be much busier with the weather getting warmer. I’ll have to go back later in the spring or summer to see.
My curiosity for something more “Backside” drew me even closer to the water. To my delight, I spotted a few old vessels docked along the shore. I don’t know what these vessels were used for or how long they were left there, but it lets us know there was some shipping activity along this part of the Hudson River.
Being so close to the shore gave me a great view of the town of Beacon across the river. The Newburgh-Beacon ferry can be taken from the marina back and forth across the Hudson River connecting Newburgh and Beacon, N.Y. The ferries only run on weekdays as a rush-hour service for commuters to NYC. Ferries are timed to connect at Beacon with Metro-North trains to and from Grand Central.
I will definitely be back to take more shots in this interesting town. My research of the town led me to the fact that Newburgh is in the top 10 of cities in the U.S. in violent crime. I will have to be careful when taking a trip further into the town. The town is in the process of revitalizing the area as it is reported that there is much blight like a lot of towns in the U.S. I’m anxious to view some of the old architecture and layout of downtown Newburgh. I will keep you all posted. Wish me luck!
