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Newbury Street (Boston)
Encyclopedia
Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts
Back Bay is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts famous for its rows of Victorian brownstone homes, which are considered one of the best-preserved examples of 19th-century urban design in the United States, as well as numerous architecturally significant individual...
area of Boston, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It runs roughly east-to-west, from the Boston Public Garden to Massachusetts Ave. The road crosses many major arteries along its path, with an entrance to the Mass Pike westbound at Mass Ave. East of Mass Ave, it is lined with historic 19th-century brownstone
Brownstone
Brownstone is a brown Triassic or Jurassic sandstone which was once a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States to refer to a terraced house clad in this material.-Types:-Apostle Island brownstone:...
s that contain hundreds of shops and restaurants, making it a popular destination for tourists and locals. The most expensive boutiques are located near the Boston Public Garden end of Newbury Street. The shops gradually become slightly less expensive and more bohemian toward Massachusetts Avenue
Massachusetts Avenue (Boston)
Massachusetts Avenue, known to locals as Mass Ave, is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts, and several cities and towns northwest of Boston...
. West of Mass Ave the street abuts the Mass Pike on its southern side, with no buildings to speak of; the northern side is mainly loading docks and garages of buildings fronted on Commonwealth Ave. A proposed, major decking project over the Pike in the area would reestablish the southern side of the road and expand the shopping district to Brookline Ave.
Newbury Street is an eclectic mix of shops in renovated brownstone
Brownstone
Brownstone is a brown Triassic or Jurassic sandstone which was once a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States to refer to a terraced house clad in this material.-Types:-Apostle Island brownstone:...
buildings, with stores at all levels, -- physically (basement, street level, and above), stylistically (elegant to shabby), and financially (affordable to upscale). It is touted as one the most expensive streets in the world. High-end stores include Ralph Lauren
Polo Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren Corporation is a luxury clothing and goods company of the American fashion designer Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren specializes in high-end casual/semi-formal wear for men and women, as well as accessories, fragrances, home and housewares...
, Chanel
Chanel
Chanel S.A. is a French fashion house founded by the couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, well established in haute couture, specializing in luxury goods . She gained the name "Coco" while maintaining a career as a singer at a café in France...
, Armani
Giorgio Armani
Giorgio Armani is an Italian fashion designer, particularly noted for his menswear. He is known today for his clean, tailored lines. He formed his company, Armani, in 1975, and by 2001 was acclaimed as the most successful designer to come out of Italy, with an annual turnover of $1.6 billion and a...
, Nanette Lepore
Nanette Lepore
Nanette Lepore is a well known fashion designer based in New York City. New York magazine has said that she is "Known for her feminine style and fine detailing, Nanette Lepore makes ultra-chic clothes that are at the same time easy to wear."-Biography:Lepore's father, James, was a professor of art...
, Ted Baker
Ted Baker
Ted Baker is a British clothing retail company, known for applying twists to its products, and has become a UK designer label through word of mouth rather than advertising.-History:...
, Ben Sherman
Ben Sherman
Ben Sherman is a British based clothing company, designing shirts, suits, shoes, accessories and other items that are, in common with many British brands, now made overseas, largely in the Far East. Their designs sometimes feature the Royal Air Force roundel which is often called the mod target...
, Donna Karan
DKNY
DKNY is a label of fashion designer Donna Karan. It is also the name of a clothing store in New York City featuring Donna Karan's associated line.-History:...
, Burberry
Burberry
Burberry Group plc is a British luxury fashion house, manufacturing clothing, fragrance, and fashion accessories. Its distinctive tartan pattern has become one of its most widely copied trademarks. Burberry is most famous for its iconic trench coat, which was invented by founder Thomas Burberry...
, Cartier
Cartier SA
Cartier S.A., commonly known as Cartier , is a French luxury jeweler and watch manufacturer. The corporation carries the name of the Cartier family of jewellers whose control ended in 1964 and who were known for numerous pieces including the "Bestiary" , the diamond necklace created for Bhupinder...
, Loro Piana
Loro Piana
Loro Piana is an Italian clothing company specialising in high-end, luxury cashmere and wool products.-History:Originally from Trivero , the Loro Piana family started as merchants of wool fabrics at the beginning of the nineteenth century...
, Kate Spade
Kate Spade
Kate Brosnahan Spade is the co-founder and namesake of the designer brand, Kate Spade New York .- Early life and beginnings :...
, Bang & Olufsen
Bang & Olufsen
Bang & Olufsen is a Danish company that designs and manufactures audio products, television sets and telephones. It was founded in 1925 by Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, whose first significant product was a radio that worked with alternating current, when most radios were run from batteries...
, Valentino
Valentino SpA
Valentino SpA is a clothing company founded in 1959 by Valentino Garavani. Nowadays it is a part of Valentino Fashion Group. New creative directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli will take Alessandra Facchinetti's seat as creative designer...
, Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for Marc Jacobs, as well as Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line, with more than 200 retail stores in 60 countries. He has been the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton since 1997...
and Ermenegildo Zegna
Ermenegildo Zegna
Ermenegildo Zegna is a leading Italian fashion house, specialing in men's clothing. Founded in 1910, it is now managed by the fourth generation of the Zegna family and remains in family ownership. As well as producing suits for its own labels, it manufactures suits for labels such as Gucci, Yves...
, as well as many more.
Donlyn Lyndon writes that west of Clarendon Street,
- "Newbury Street develops its own very distinctive and appealing character and becomes one of the nicest shopping streets in Boston, or anywhere. Renovated town houses with large glass bays on the ground floor produce a delightful urban landscape.... Owners and tenants... have further animated the street by using the 25 feet (7.6 m) space between the building and the sidewalk for various purposes. Some areas are paved and used for displays or sidewalk sales. Others have thick planting... Some lots have stairs up and down to shops and galleries; others have show windows and display cases for flowers or fashions or other items for sale. But each contributes something extra, and together they make these blocks of Newbury Street genuinely attractive."
History
Newbury Street's nameStreet name
A street name or odonym is an identifying name given to a street. The street name usually forms part of the address...
celebrates the victory of the Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s in the 1643 Battle of Newbury
First Battle of Newbury
The First Battle of Newbury was a battle of the First English Civil War that was fought on 20 September 1643 between a Royalist army, under the personal command of King Charles, and a Parliamentarian force led by the Earl of Essex...
in the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
.
The first building completed in Back Bay after it was filled in 1860 was Emmanuel Church at 15 Newbury Street. Today, Emmanuel Church is an influential Episcopal church that also plays a significant role in the musical life of the city.
In the 19th century, Newbury Street was residential. The 1893 edition of Baedeker's United States catalogs Boston's "finest residence streets" as Commonwealth Avenue, Beacon Street, Marlborough Street, Newbury Street, and Mt. Vernon Street. William J. Geddis, however, notes that it was "the least fashionable Street in Back Bay."
Owen Wister
Owen Wister
Owen Wister was an American writer and "father" of western fiction.-Early life:Owen Wister was born on July 14, 1860, in Germantown, a well-known neighborhood in the northwestern part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Owen Jones Wister, was a wealthy physician, one of a long line of...
's novel, Philosophy 4, set in the 1870s, mentions Newbury Street:
A notable building designed by William G. Preston in the classical French Academic style was built as the Museum of Natural History in 1864. It is prominently sited between Newbury and Boylston Streets fronting at Berkeley Street, and currently houses fashionable clothier Louis, Boston. Lyndon describes it as "a remarkably serene Classical building with none of the latent boosterism of its near contemporary, Old City Hall."
Newbury Street was the original location of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, in another Preston building adjacent to the Museum. MIT moved across the river in 1916; the edifice has since been replaced by a life insurance building.
The first retail shop on Newbury Street opened in 1905 at 73 Newbury, now the location of a haute couture salon. A list of former Newbury Street boutiques would be long indeed. The shops included "Daree" at 12 Newbury, Joseph Antell and Frederick Freed. One of Newbury's oldest and most established retailers is the tony Brooks Brothers, at the corner of Berkeley across from the Louis, Boston edifice.
From 1970 until the late 1990s, lower Newbury Street was lined with posh up-and-coming art galleries. Newbury Street mavens and hipsters spent Saturday afternoons gallery hopping and enjoying the ubiquitous "wine and cheese" art openings. The Newbury Street gallery scene was a veritable mini-Soho for perhaps a decade.
The famous Ritz-Carlton
Ritz-Carlton
The Ritz-Carlton is a brand of luxury hotels and resorts with 75 properties located in major cities and resorts in 24 countries worldwide...
hotel (now The Taj), built in 1927, fronts on Arlington but once described itself as "a Boston landmark on fashionable Newbury Street." But Newbury Street was not always considered the hotel's fashionable side. Sports journalist Heywood Hale Broun
Heywood Hale Broun
Heywood Hale Broun was an American an author, sportswriter, commentator and actor. He was born and raised in New York City, the son of writer and activist Ruth Hale and columnist Heywood Broun. He was educated at private schools and Swarthmore College....
told the story of proudly mentioning that his publisher had gotten him a room at "the Ritz," an honor accorded only to stars. His friend Lil Darvas had replied, "Which side, darling, the Newbury street side or the Public Garden?" "Sure enough," said Broun, "when I arrived, I found myself on the Newbury street side. 'Darling,' she had told me, 'if you're not on the Public Garden, you've got a long way to go.'"
On the corner of Exeter and Newbury Street—the address is given both as 181 Newbury Street and as 26 Exeter Street—is a striking building designed by Boston architects Hartwell and Richardson
Hartwell and Richardson
Hartwell and Richardson was a Boston, Massachusetts architectural practice established in 1881, by Henry Walker Hartwell and William Cummings Richardson ....
in the Romanesque Revival
Romanesque Revival architecture
Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture...
style. It was originally built in 1885 as the First Spiritual Temple, a Spiritualist
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
church. In 1914 it became a movie theater, the Exeter Street Theatre. The movie theatre was notable both for its ambiance ("You felt like you were in some kind of Tudor manor or English country church") and programming ("It was a theater where people did not call to see what movie was playing, but called only to determine if the movie had changed)." Beginning in the mid-1970s, the theatre's midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the 1975 film adaptation of the British rock musical stageplay, The Rocky Horror Show, written by Richard O'Brien. The film is a parody of B-movie, science fiction and horror films of the late 1940s through early 1970s. Director Jim Sharman collaborated on the...
gave the movie a popular cult following, often attracting patrons dressed up in costumes based on characters in the film.
Sadly, after a remarkable 70-year run, the Exeter Street Theatre quietly closed in 1984, due to declining box-office revenues caused by the growing home-video market. Its illustrious interior was dismantled and rather ruthlessly transformed into a trendy Conran's furniture store. After the failure of Conran's, it became a popular Waterstone's
Waterstone's
Waterstone's is a British book specialist established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone that employs around 4,500 staff throughout the United Kingdom and Europe....
bookstore, whose extensive inventory was ruined by massive flooding caused by sprinklers set off by a fire in the T.G.I. Friday's
T.G.I. Friday's
T.G.I. Friday's is an American restaurant chain focusing on casual dining. The company is a unit of the Carlson Companies. Its name is taken from the expression TGIF...
restaurant next door. (Ironically, the fire itself was very minor.) Later, it briefly housed an ill-fated dot-com named Idealab
Idealab
Idealab is a business incubator based in Pasadena, California.-History:Idealab was founded by Bill Gross in March 1996...
. Since 2005 the Kingsley Montessori Elementary School has occupied the building.
(Note: It has been rumoured that the Spiritual Temple's original ghosts had haunted the Exeter Theatre and were perhaps quite unhinged by its 1984 demise. Whether or not one believes in ghosts, the fact that the building and its ensuing tenants have met with a string of disastrous blows since the demolition of the old hall, cannot be disputed.)
Beginnings of a shopping district
Newbury Comics
Newbury Comics is a New England-based music retailer. Newbury Comics began as a comic book vendor on Newbury Street in Boston. The company was founded in 1978 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students John Brusger and Mike Dreese. Over the next few years, the focus of the company changed...
. Now a chain of over 20 stores whose business (despite the name) is primarily the sale of CDs, "Comix" was founded by two MIT students in 1976, where it still stands today. Aimee Mann of 'Til Tuesday fame was a cashier at the flagship store through 1982. Directly across the Street was the famed Newbury Sound, where Boston bands such as the Cars recorded early hits. Musicians such as Peter Wolf and Ric Ocasek were street regulars of this bygone era. The adjacent organic food store Erewhon was another bohemian magnet; TMax, the publisher of the seminal Boston Music Fanzine "The Noise" was a popular "produce clerk" there for many years. And with the bustling Johnson's Paints selling fine art supplies on its second floor, the last block of Newbury Street became notorious for its arty stream of shoppers and swarm of talented gadabouts.
The legendary music instrument retailer "E.U. Wurlitzer Music and Sound" was a part of the greater Boston music scene since 1890, and the store had been located at 360 Newbury Street (on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue) after moving from its LaGrange Street address in the mid 1960s. The building was a plain yellow-brick building by the time the company went out of business in the mid 1980s. In 1989, it was renovated under the direction of architect Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
and won the Parker Award as the most beautiful new building in Boston. According to architecture columnist Robert Campbell, Gehry "took a blandly forgettable building and transformed it into a monument... It's the first significant example in Boston of a movement known as deconstruction. Deconstructionist buildings are designed to look as if their parts are either colliding or exploding, usually at crazy angles."
"The Slab" is a large flat rectangle of concrete between the JP Licks ice cream parlor and the Hynes subway station at Massachusetts Avenue
Massachusetts Avenue (Boston)
Massachusetts Avenue, known to locals as Mass Ave, is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts, and several cities and towns northwest of Boston...
. It is often occupied by spare-changings punks, bored suburbanites, the homeless, and folks busking
Busking
Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...
for money. An attempt was made to fence it off in the early 2000s but failed.
Once famous for a wealth of bookstores, Boston, like its neighbor Cambridge, has suffered a steady decline in the number and quality of independent booksellers. The beloved 150,000-volume Avenue Victor Hugo
Avenue Victor-Hugo (Paris)
Avenue Victor-Hugo is an avenue in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. It begins at place Charles de Gaulle and ends at place Tattegrain . It is one of the twelve avenues beginning at the Étoile, and the second longest of the twelve, after the avenue des Champs-Élysées...
Bookshop on Newbury Street, one of the last holdouts, closed in 2002. (It did, however, outlast the comparably short-lived Waterstone's, the British chain whose giant, well-regarded store just off Newbury Street was a source of pressure on the independents. When Waterstone's closed, a Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
staffer opined that "the Athens of America feels a bit more like Elmira.") Today, the youthful Trident Booksellers and Café on Newbury Street is amongst a small band of independent bookstore
Independent bookstore
An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned.-Literary and countercultural history:Author events at independent bookstores sometimes take the role of literary salons. The bookstores themselves, "have historically supported and cultivated the work of independent...
s still remaining in Boston.
Close to Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...
, Tower Records
Tower Records
Tower Records was a retail music chain that was based in Sacramento, California. It currently exists as an international franchise and an online music store....
at 360 Newbury Street was a favorite spot among music lovers for over a decade. A 1991 Boston Globe article says that "Tower Records stomped into Boston with the nation's largest music store three years ago," while another says that "When Tower Records opened its astonishing store on Newbury Street, it altered the Boston compact disk market forever, and remade Newbury Street's commercial scene." Long the largest record and CD outlet in the Boston area, its closing in 2002 marked the end of an era (though the space was soon occupied by another equally huge music store, Virgin Megastore) (Now also closed; a Best Buy store occupies that space).
On April 27, 2006, The Boston Globe reported: "Virgin Megastore is moving out of its Newbury Street digs to make room for a new high-end retailer at the landmark Frank Gehry building where luxury condominiums are opening this fall. Electronics retailer Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
signed a ten-year lease and opened a store in late July 2007 on 41500 square feet (3,855.5 m²) of space in three above-ground floors and a basement that is used for storage.
Jake Spade recently opened in a 200 square feet (18.6 m²) spot underneath the Kate Spade
Kate Spade
Kate Brosnahan Spade is the co-founder and namesake of the designer brand, Kate Spade New York .- Early life and beginnings :...
boutique, and is the second store of its kind in the world.
New additions to the upscale shopping destination include True Religion
True Religion
True Religion Brand Jeans is an American premium clothing line, established in December of 2002 by Jeffrey Lubell and co-founder Kym Gold.In the winter of 2002, True Religion debuted its denim products from its Los Angeles base...
(1,984 sq ft.) and Zara
Zara (clothing)
Zara is a Spanish clothing and accessories retailer based in Arteixo, Galicia, and founded in 1975 by Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Mera. It is the flagship chain store of the Inditex group; the fashion group also owns brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Oysho, Uterqüe, Stradivarius and...
(24,000 sq ft.).
Two shops opened on April 1, 2010 of note. Raven Used Books at 263 Newbury street and shopCotelac at 168 Newbury St.. Raven Used Books, which also has a shop in Harvard Square in Cambridge, specializes in literature and the arts as well as stocking sections such as history, philosophy, children, cookbooks and much more, is a welcome addition. shopCotelac is a French womens' wear designer which brings something a little different to Newbury st with its feminine look that's marginal, and a little bohemian.
An end of an era may have been marked in 2008 when Louis Boston, an upscale retailer, announced that it would leave the area when its lease expires in 2010. Occupying the former home of the once indomitably chic Bonwit Teller store, the Louis edifice is an elegant and iconic 1864 building that once housed the Boston Museum of Natural History. The Boston Globe reported that the "Louis' move will mark the departure of one of the signature retailers from a street that has migrated away from its eclectic, locally-owned boutique roots to a mall-like scene dominated by chain stores." A spokesperson for the Neighborhood Association of Back Bay acknowledged that "There is a changing character from the funky shops to something more generic. And we regret that."