The Backside of America

It’s Really Big, Sometimes Beautiful and Always Worth a Second Look

Saturday, July 18, 2026

Scrambling Through Boston's Egleston Square

From Dave Brigham:

I've danced around Boston's Egleston Square quite a bit over the years I've been publishing this blog. I've roamed Jackson Square, the Fort Hill Tower area, Franklin Park and parts of the nearby Jamaica Plain neighborhood (see the bottom of this post for links to those articles). Recently, I finally checked out the Egleston area, using as motivation my hope that there was an old sign still hanging outside the final Skippy White's Records store to close.

My jaunt through the square was part of a one-day whirlwind tour including Jamaica Plain (to make photos, once again, of Boston's old breweries), the outskirts of Nubian Square and the gritty streets of Newmarket Square (where I've also been before).

I recently decided that I want to make photos of as many Boston-area record stores as I can. I included Skippy White's on the list, even though the store in Egleston Square had closed in January 2020. I noticed on Google Street View that as of October 2022, there were signs promoting "CD's - Videos - DVDs" above the windows at 1971 Columbus Avenue. Alas, when I arrived in early spring of this year, those signs were gone. The good news is that another small business now fills the space -- I forget what sort of outfit it is, and a Google search did not provide an answer.

I never had the pleasure of going to any Skippy White's store. Founded in 1960 in Boston's South End as Mass Records, the chain grew to include shops in other Boston neighborhoods, as well as Cambridge, Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, as well as New Orleans (!), according to this Bay State Banner article.

"For more than six decades, White sold gospel, R&B and soul music to Boston’s African American community and other lovers of Black music," the article indicates. I encourage you to read that Bay State Banner article.

The Skippy White signs were gone, but there were other things that caught my eye in Egleston Square, which straddles Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.

Right across Columbus Avenue from the old record store is the circular residential tower known as the Doris Bunte Apartments. Completed in 1970 for the Boston Housing Authority, the cylindrical building was originally known as Walnut Park. The architecture firm of Richmond & Goldberg designed the project. The firm, which was in business from 1946 to 1973, also designed the Egleston Square branch of the Boston Public Library; a number of temples in Brookline; and many other municipal and religious structures.

The building reminds me of Chicago's Marina City, a mixed-use residential and commercial complex along the Chicago River. I mentioned those towers in a post about the Windy City several years ago (see May 18, 2018, "Rollin' On the River").

The Bunte building is slated for renovation.

The tower was renamed for Doris Bunte, who was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1973 to 1984, and administrator of the Boston Housing Authority from 1984 to 1992. She was the first African-American woman to hold either position, according to Wikipedia.

I've taken a liking to storefronts of late, be they old or new.

On the corner of Weld and Columbus avenues stands Violeta Appliance, a store that I believe is relatively new. I really love the bold colors in the lettering and background.

Around the corner on Washington Street is Egleston Liquors. I like that the sign tells potential customers in both English and Spanish what type of store it is.

On the corner of School and Washington streets, I found a beautiful doorway.

Erected in 1905, the Queen Anne / Richardsonian Romanesque commercial/apartment block was built for D.F. and W.S. Littlefield, brothers who owned a fruit market. Currently the ground-floor retail space is occupied by a market and a barber shop.

At the corner of Washington Street and Chilcott Place stands Pika Pollo, a Jamaican fried chicken joint. On the side there is a fantastic mural.

Painted by Philadelphia-based artist Betsy Casañas, the work is a vibrant addition to the neighborhood.

The furthest west I went on this jaunt was the former Franklin Brewery building, which towers over Washington Street. If you enlarge the image below, you can see the beer brewer's name chiseled into the stone rectangle in the middle of the entryway.

I wrote about (and shared images of) this place in the blog post linked above about Boston's old breweries. In part, I wrote: "Built in 1894, this Queen Anne fortress was a brewery until...1918," shortly before Prohibition kicked in. "In 1900, 'the Franklin Brewery became a branch of the Massachusetts Brewery Co., a consortium which included the American Brewery at 249 Heath Street, the Alley Brewery at 123 Heath Street, H. and J. Pfaff Co. at 1276 Columbus, and the Robinson Brewery at 55-71 Amory,' per MACRIS."

"'The brewery was named for nearby Franklin Park....Around 1918, the Franklin Brewery building was vacant and a year later was owned by the Union Wool Co. and used for storage. By the 1920's, 3179 Washington had become the home of the D.W.. Dunn Storage Company,'" MACRIS continued.

Today, this beauty is home to Extra Space Storage.

At this point, I headed north-northeast to Columbus Avenue. Standing at the corner of Washington and Atherton streets, I had to rub my eyes as I looked across Columbus. "Is that part of the old elevated railway?" I said out loud, to nobody but myself.

No, the 14,000-square foot Egleston Center isn't a relic from Boston's transit days gone by. But is an homage. Located on the site of the former Egleston Station stop on the Washington Street elevated rail line, the commercial development was built in the mid-1990s by Urban Edge, a community developer founded in 1974.

Pretty cool!

Check out this image of the old elevated station, from Digital Commonwealth.

Heading north on Columbus Avenue, I passed #1945, a large triangular property that was once a used car lot.

(The former sales office for Columbus Auto Sales and, more recently, Roxbury Motors.)

Looking at Google Street View, I saw that the last business to occupy this lot was Roxbury Motors. For years prior, it was home to Columbus Auto Sales. Sometime between August 2019 and October 2022, Roxbury Motors vacated the lot. The site has been owned by Larosa Development Corporation of Norwood, Mass., since early 2019. I haven't been able to determine what, if any, plans there are for the property.

At the corner of West Walnut Park and Columbus Avenue sits my favorite site of that day.

I love the layers of history here. In reverse order: El Cruce Market, which replaced Salcedo Market within the last three years; Columbus Market, which, judging from the plastic sign, dated back at least a few decades; and the name carved into the building, C.J. Spenceley Block, and the date "1888."

Of late, I've focused my lens on storefronts such as this one. I love the bold colors, the variety of food and other products catering to local ethnic groups, the sense of community they engender. As painter Debbie Shirley writes to describe an exhibit of hers showcasing immigrant-owned convenience stores, "Each piece celebrates the cultures, communities, and everyday encounters that give these storefronts their stories."

So, who was C.J. Spenceley?

"Christopher Jackson Spenceley was born in Wicasset, Maine on August 16, 1840," according to this Jamaica Plain Historical Society article. "He...came to Boston at the age of 17 [where] he learned to be a carpenter and by 1863 had started his own business. He became engaged in the building and selling of structures in the South End and Roxbury."

Spenceley served three consecutive terms on the Boston Common Council, a precursor to the Boston City Council. He also served a Trustee for the Boston City Hospital (now known as Boston Medical Center) for several years. He married Rebecca Staples (from Truro, Nova Scotia) on August 16, 1863 and they had three children: Joseph Winfred, Fred and Mineola, the article continues.

The family lived at 367 Walnut Ave, just a few blocks from the C.J. Spenceley Block. He died on August 12, 1903 and is buried at Fox Hill Cemetery in Billerica.

My final Egleston Square image is of a simple yet effective and eye-catching sign, in front of IAO Auto Repair, at Columbus Avenue and Bancroft Street.