I set out last week from North Station, taking the commuter rail with legions of downtown office-workers headed home to the suburbs like Don Draper. But wasn’t headed for scotch and family, I was taking my first car-free trip to the DeCordova museum for the opening of three new shows.
When I arrived at the museum an hour later, I found myself looking at where I started, fifty years ago.
That’s North Station in the ’40s, photographed by Jules Aarons, part of an exhibition at DeCordova called “In the Jewish Neighborhoods” consisting of pictures of Boston’s North and West ends as well as Paris and New York in the 1940s. The green line trolley is just about the only thing recognizable in this picture now, even though the tracks have been sunk underground and North Station has been subsumed (literally) in the TD BankNorth Garden.
Nifty photo! We were just talking about the new North Station after my dad dropped my mother to take a train and got briefly lost driving away the other day. It’s shameful – simply a mess of a place for pedestrians or drivers. Growing up we took the train into North Station all the time and it was a beautiful station. Boston should be ashamed of what it’s become. I can’t figure out who to blame and harangue – the mayor, the governor, the Federal government. And I have to say I preferred the overhead tracks to the area’s current incarnation.
Liz
Looking back, I can see that the DeCordova has moved the image and the entire web page for the exhibition to an undisclosed location. That’s disappointing, it was a good show. You can see more of Jules Aarons work at Gallery Kayafas, http://gallerykayafas.com/