Lost Boston
At once a visual delight and a fascinating history, Lost Boston brings the city’s past to life. This updated edition includes a new section illustrating the latest gains and losses in the struggle to preserve the Boston’s architectural heritage.
With an engaging text and more than 350 seldom-seen photographs and prints, Lost Boston offers a chance to see the city as it once was, revealing architectural gems that were lost long ago. An eminently readable history of the city’s physical development, Lost Boston also makes as eloquent appeal for its preservation. Jane Holtz Kay traces the evolution of Boston from the barren, swampy peninsula of colonial times to the booming metropolis of today. In the process she creates the city’s family album, infused with the flavor and energy that make Boston unique. Portrayed alongside the grand landmarks are the little details of city life that are so telling: neon signs and storefronts that were common in their time but are even more meaningful in their absence.
Kay also brings to life the people who literally created Boston – architects like Charles Bulfinch and H. H. Richardson, landscape designer and master park creator Frederick Law Olmsted, and even such colorful political figures as Mayors John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and James Michael Curley. The new epilogue brings the story up to the present, showing elements of the city’s architecture that were lost in recent years as well as those that were saved and those that are threatened as the city continues to evolve.