HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Where two history buffs go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.

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Matthew Dickey: Saving History with the Boston Preservation Alliance (episode 205)


Vote for us as the “Fan Favorite” at this year’s Boston Preservation Awards!

This week, Jake sits down with Matthew Dickey, the Communications and Operations Manager at the Boston Preservation Alliance to discuss the organization’s important work in saving the historic nature of Boston’s many diverse neighborhoods. They fight to preserve individual buildings of historic importance, but they also work to keep the cohesion of historic neighborhoods and raise awareness with the public through efforts like the Boston Preservation Awards. Stay tuned to the end to learn how you can attend this year’s virtual awards ceremony, where HUB History will be one of the nine honorees.

Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/205/

And support the show on Patreon.

Boston Preservation Alliance
  • Learn more about the Boston Preservation Alliance
  • Attend the virtual Boston Preservation Awards, hosted by Katie Couric
  • Follow the Boston Preservation Alliance on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram
  • Follow Matthew at @_madickey_ for architectural photos of Boston

(Our header image this week is the Ticonderoga, NY Historical Society. The building is an exact reproduction of John Hancock’s Beacon Hill mansion, the demolition of which helped inspire the modern preservation movement.)

Boston Book Club

Though she is better known for the book Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, Brookline native and Boston Globe architecture critic Jane Holtz Kay’s first book was all about the history of Boston’s architecture and what has been lost. Originally published in 1980 and updated in 1999, the bluntly titled Lost Boston sticks with the theme of preservation, blending prose with historic photos and maps to uncover some of the grand public buildings, cozy backstreets, and iconic details like neon signs and storefronts that have fallen in the name of the greater good.

A 1980 review by Henry B Leonard of Kent State gave the book high marks, saying

For enthusiasts of the Hub’s built landscape, Lost Boston is a book which will both delight and inform. A longtime resident of the city and student of Boston’s art and architecture and presently architecture critic for The Nation, Jane Holtz Kay has scoured the collections of numerous institutions to assemble a fascinating collection of photographs which bring back to life both the buildings and, more important, the broad visual aspects of the city which have been vandalized in the name of “progress .” This is no dry architectural survey. Rather, Ms. Kay attempts, with great success, to recreate Boston as a work of collective art, as the joint product of its diverse and active citizenry, from the city’s seventeenth century foundations to the 1930s. She effectively brackets lively essays, which describe the historical, architectural and environmental developments of the city, with photographic portfolios which are organized around particular themes… As the book’s title suggests, virtually all of the photographs are of buildings and prospects now gone. For anyone who knows today’s Boston, Ms. Kay’s comparison of the past with the present is startling and, unfortunately, depressing as well.

You may also want to check out this CSpan video of an illustrated talk Jane Holtz Kay gave at the BPL in the year 2000. Drawing on the research she did for Lost Boston, you’ll see many of the images that were used in the book, and you’ll get a more unvarnished take on Boston’s so-called progress, unmoderated by the influence of her editors at Houghton Mifflin.

Upcoming Event

Attend the virtual Boston Preservation Awards, on October 15 at 6pm, and be sure to vote for us as the “Fan Favorite!”


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 October 5, 2020  43m