Lost Boston (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Kay's 1980 volume is a history of the great city through its architecture, which is being lost to time. This edition has been updated to include Boston's massive undertaking of the construction of an underground roadway as well as efforts made by many to preserve its historic edifices before the city's face is altered permanently. The text is buttressed with 350 monochrome images from ancient to modern.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Earns a place on the short shelf of indispensable books about the architecture and physical form of Boston." -- Boston Globe

"Earns a place on the short shelf of indispensable books about the architecture and physical form of Boston." -- Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Exp Upd Su edition (November 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395966108
• ISBN-13: 978-0395966105
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,315,700 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Stunner, March 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Lost Boston (Paperback)

What a handsome book this is! I can't decide whether I liked the photos more or the text. The history is elegantly written and fascinating. How many people realize that Boston was literally created from the marshlands, spoonful by spoonful. The cast of characters who lived in this so-called Athens of America had an equally splendid selection of architects and places to live. The photos are a real treasure. I keep turning back to so many. The first edition was a classic, my mother told me. And this updated one has not only the older traditional rownhouses and state house and the pictures of the monumental construction of such attractions as the PUblic Garden and Common but a new cast. There are images of neon lights and amusement parks and the author (whose last book Asphalt Nation was a stunner with a polemic cast) has added photos of saved and threatened buildings to tell the 2lst century story. I couldn't recommend this more.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The history and future of the Hub of the Universe, June 17, 2002

By	Matthew O. Nugent "chaglang" (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Boston has a reputation for being something of a Puritanical stick-in-the-mud. It is surprising, then, that it has experimented so vigorously and persistently with its urban design. Some of those experiments - the Back Bay and the Emerald Necklace - we recognize as glittering successes, while others - the creation of Government Center and the Fitzgerald Expressway - are festering failures that the city is only beginning to address today. Of the numerous histories and narratives that this tremendously fertile subject has produced (many of which I've read), the most wide-ranging, elegantly written and well illustrated that I have found is Jane Holtz Kay's Lost Boston. It works equally well as a coffee table book and a curl-up-on-the-couch book.

The creation and evolution of Boston is arranged here chronologically, starting with the first settlements in 1630 and concluding with an epilogue on urban renewal and it's ramifications at the close of the 20th century. Even though it is an accurate history, it tells a great story without becoming dry or academic. The language is descriptive and accessible, introducing major players in the Boston scene, from Charles Bulfinch to James Michael Curley. You also get a wonderful feel not just for the power brokers, but the neighborhoods, people and places that made the city a vibrant place. There is a warmth to Kay's writing, without delving into sentimentality. Because the background history - the day-to-day development that made Boston the Hub of the Universe - is so readable, it helped me understand the context of major events in the city's history: filling of Back Bay, the Great Fire of November 1872 and the razing of the West End in the 1960's. Instead of examining these as isolated events, they are knit together to show the city as a living, evolving organism. It was fascinating to see how Boston reinvented itself after the Fire, to see the creation of Frederick Law Olmstead's Emerald Necklace, only to lose its way, lured by the siren song of renewal.

And throughout are some of the best photographs and period illustrations of old Boston you're likely to ever see. There are the bustling wharfs on Atlantic Avenue, the original Museum of Fine Arts (where the Hancock Tower now stands), and the graceful mansions of Roxbury. There are dozens of examples of the Boston Granite style that dominated the city's architecture before the Great Fire. For me, the most moving photographs were the ones of Adams and Scollay Square and the West End, all of which fell victim to the wrecking ball to make way for Government Center and urban renewal. They themselves serve as simple, eloquent statements for common sense and reason when it comes to grand urban experiments.

And yet, it's an unfinished history. The Big Dig - the largest public works project in American history - is nearing completion, which will bring down the despised Fitzgerald Expressway. The land cleared for that highway will yet again be developed into inhabitable space and add another major chapter in the history of the city's evolution. So as history loops back on itself in Boston, it does so in new and unforeseen ways. In that, Lost Boston serves us well as a history and a speculation on the future of the city.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A peak at the past...and present, August 17, 2001

By	Eleanor Applegate (Boston) - See all my reviews

What a treat to have this updated version of the author's classic history of Boston. The photos still resonate with the sadness of their loss and the beauty of their existence. But this isn't just a coffee table book. It remains the best history of this fascinating old, and new, city. I especially liked the supplement telling what had been saved, what was threatened and what was lost. I bought the first version 20 years ago and have bought the second to give to the next generation in my household to say how cities grow and should grow. A splendid book!