Newbury Street
| Newbury Street | |
|---|---|
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| Different architectural styles stand side by side along Newbury Street | |
| Basic data | |
| place | Boston |
| District | Back Bay |
| Created | 19th century |
| Connecting roads | Route 2 , Massachusetts Avenue , Massachusetts Turnpike |
| Cross streets | Route 28 |
| Buildings | Hynes Convention Center , Church of the Covenant , Emmanuel Episcopal Church |
| Technical specifications | |
| Street length | 1.1 mi (1.8 km ) |
The Newbury Street is a one-way street in the Boston District Back Bay in the state of Massachusetts of the United States . It runs as a parallel street to Commonwealth Avenue and Boylston Street in the direction of travel northeast to southwest from the Boston Public Garden to Massachusetts Avenue . From there it continues west for a short distance until it turns north and merges into Charlesgate East .
Character of the street
The approximately 1 mi (1.6 km) of part of the road to the east of Massachusetts Avenue is mainly of historic brownstones lined from the 19th century, where a large variety of shops and restaurants have settled. The street is therefore very popular with both tourists and locals. The most exclusive boutiques are located near the Boston Public Garden , while the shops with ascending house numbers towards the southwest are steadily losing their exclusivity and are increasingly gaining a bohemian character. To the west of Massachusetts Avenue , the street is undeveloped on its southern side and is directly adjacent to the Massachusetts Turnpike , while on its northern side it mainly provides parking and supplier access to buildings on Commonwealth Avenue .
The mix of shops extends across all physical levels (in the basement, ground floor or even upper floor), styles (casual to elegant) and pricing (inexpensive to exclusive). The restaurants and cafes also offer a great variety in culinary terms. The Newbury Street is one with shops of brands Ralph Lauren , Chanel , Armani , Nanette Lepore , Ted Baker , Ben Sherman , Donna Karan , Burberry , Cartier , Loro Piana , Kate Spade , Bang & Olufsen , Valentino , Marc Jacobs and Ermenegildo Zegna to most exclusive streets in the world. The varied design of the open spaces between the buildings and the inclusion of the sidewalks also contribute significantly to the atmosphere in the street.
history
Origin of the street name
The name Newbury Street dates back to a Puritan victory in the first Battle of Newbury during the English Civil War in 1643.
19th century
The area on which the district Back Bay stands today, was only in the mid-19th century by landfill made cultivable. The first building to be built was the Emmanuel Episcopal Church in 1860 , which is still at 15 Newbury Street today. The Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts congregation is very influential and plays a key role in shaping the city's musical life.
In the beginning, Newbury Street was almost entirely residential. The Baedeker travel guide from 1893 lists them next to Commonwealth Avenue , Beacon Street , Marlborough Street and Mt. Vernon Street as “Boston's finest residence streets”, so the “finest residential addresses in Boston”. The street is also mentioned in the 1870s story Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister , in which he had a student read essays by Botticelli or Pico della Mirandola "ecstatic, short-sighted ladies on Newbury Street" who then bought him tea and spoke of his seriousness.
In 1864 the Museum of Natural History was built, designed by William G. Preston in the classic style of Beaux Arts architecture . It stands in a prominent position between Newbury and Boylston Streets at 234 Berkeley Street . From 1947 to 1989 there was a Bonwit Teller branch in the building , and from 1990 to 2010 the men's outfitter Louis was the tenant. In March 2013, the fully renovated building reopened its doors as the flagship store of Restoration Hardware .
From 1865 to 1916, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was also located on Newbury Street .
20th and 21st centuries
The first stores opened in the mid-1900s. At this time, formal dances also became fashionable, so that many merchants of elegant clothing settled there. In 1911 there was a parlor at 24 Newbury Street , where classes were given in ballroom dancing, among other things . Many of the shops located on the ground floor began to present luxury goods in particular in large shop windows . One of the oldest traders on Newbury Street is Brooks Brothers , whose store is still in its original location on the corner of Berkeley Street .
Lower Newbury Street was home to many art galleries for emerging artists from the 1970s to the late 1990s . At that time, the residents of the street liked to spend their evenings at exhibition openings, so that for this period the street formed a lively district comparable to the New York district of SoHo .
At the corner of Newbury and Exeter Streets is a striking building designed by Boston architects Hartwell and Richardson in the neo-Romanesque style. After its completion in 1885, initially served as a sacred building for the spiritualist church First Spiritual Temple and in 1914 for Cinema Exeter Street Theater rebuilt. In the mid-1970s, the midnight screenings of the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show created a great cult, which was expressed, among other things, in the fact that viewers costumed after the model of characters from the film. However, the cinema had to close in 1984 due to the growing home theater market as it could no longer be operated profitably.
The building was taken over by Conran’s as the legal predecessor of today's Habitat chain and converted into a furniture store. However, the business was not profitable and gave way to a Waterstone’s bookstore, whose extensive inventory fell victim to massive water damage caused by the bookstore 's sprinkler system activated by a fire in the neighboring TGI Friday’s restaurant . The Kingsley Montessori Elementary School has had its premises in the building since 2005 .
Development to a shopping street
The transformation process into a trendy shopping street for young people began with the opening of the first Newbury Comics store in 1976. The chain, which now has more than 20 branches - which, contrary to its name suggests, generates its main revenue from the sale of phonograms - was founded by two MIT students in the building that still houses the flagship store today. Until 1982, Aimee Mann was the cashier of the Boston new wave band 'Til Tuesday . Directly across the street was the Newbury Sound recording studio , where Boston bands such as The Cars recorded their first hits. Musicians like Peter Wolf and Ric Ocasek were regular visitors to the street. Another magnet for the bohemians was a neighboring, at the time still exotic organic grocery store , where the future editor of the Boston music magazine The Noise worked for years.
EU Wurlitzer Music and Sound has been an integral part of the Boston music scene since 1890, with musical instrument sales in a building at 360 Newbury Street . In the mid-1980s, however, the branch was closed and the building was renovated in 1989 by Frank Gehry , who received the Parker Award for having "turned it into a monument".
For more than a decade, Tower Records' branch at 360 Newbury Street , near Berklee College of Music, has been a popular hangout for music lovers. The press praised the "nationwide largest music store" which "forever changed the Boston compact disc market" and "renewed the business scene on Newbury Street". Closing the business in 2002 marked the end of an era, even though a Virgin Megastore occupied the retail space until 2007 . Today there is a Best Buy branch there .
Once famous for its wealth of booksellers, Boston, like neighboring Cambridge, has seen a steady decline in the number and quality of independent booksellers. So had the after the eponymous Parisian named street Avenue Victor-Hugo in 2002 after the closure of the branch of Waterstone's , another bookseller at the Newbury Street give up its backlog included last 150,000 copies. Trident Booksellers and Café is still down the street today as one of the few remaining independent booksellers in Boston.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Donlyn Lyndon, Alice Wingwall: The city-observed, Boston . a guide to the architecture of the hub. Random House, New York 1982, ISBN 978-0-394-50475-9 .
- ↑ Karl Baedeker (ed.): North America: the United States plus a trip to Mexico . Handbook for travelers (= Baedeker's travel guides ). Baedeker, Leipzig 1893, OCLC 3496365 .
- ↑ Owen Wister : Philosophy 4 . Kessinger Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-1-169-19102-0 .
- ^ Jenn Abelson: Fantasy and furniture in new Back Bay store. In: The Boston Globe . March 6, 2013, accessed April 3, 2013 .
- ↑ Dancing . Miss Alice B. Diaz. In: The Tech . tape XXXI , no. 42 . Boston November 14, 1911, p. 4 ( online [PDF; accessed April 4, 2013]).
- ^ The Original First Spiritual Temple. First Spiritual Temple, accessed April 4, 2013 .
- ^ Robert Campbell: 360 Newbury: A bold beauty. In: The Boston Globe . December 6, 1991, p. 59 , accessed April 4, 2013 (English, paid article).
- ^ Paul Hemp: When Music Giants Collide. Can two superstores survive in Harvard Square? In: The Boston Globe . November 7, 1991, accessed April 5, 2013 (English, paid article).
- ^ Mark Muro: Waterstone makes Boston debut today. In: The Boston Globe . October 5, 1991, accessed April 5, 2013 (English, paid article).
Web links
Coordinates: 42 ° 20 ′ 57 ″ N , 71 ° 5 ′ 3 ″ W.
