Deserted Places: Massachusetts

Showing posts with label Massachusetts. Show all posts

Monday, October 16, 2017

An abandoned (literally) underground music hall in Boston

Boston's Piano Row is a historic district known for its piano showrooms built in the late 19th century. There, piano dealers M. Steinert & Sons own the building standing at No162 Boylston Street. The six-story building was designed by architects Winslow & Wetherell and it was erected in 1896 by company employee Alexander Steinert.

Four stories below the ground, the building features Steinert Hall, a now abandoned concert auditorium designed in the Adam-style with fluted Corinthian pilasters separating round arches. In the early 20th century, the 'Little Jewel' as Steinart Hall was called, was considered headquarters for the musical and artistic world of cultured Boston. Among those who performed there, 40 feet below ground, were Josef Lhévinne, Josef Hofmann, Harold Bauer, Fritz Kreisler, Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

The last performance was given in 1942 as the hall closed due to new stricter fire code restrictions enforced after the 1942 Cocoanut Grove Nightclub fire and a prohibitive cost of updating the hall.

In 2015, it was reported that the new owners of the building were hoping to restore Steinart Hall and open it again as a concert hall.

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Jessica Rinaldi/bostonglobe.com

greiglamont.blogspot.com

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Sunday, March 22, 2015

The ghost island of Boston

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For the last three decades, Boston's Long Island has been the home of a vibrant community: the city's shelter, housing hundreds of homeless people, addicts and troubled teens. During the recent years, Boston's taxpayers and nonprofit groups have spent millions of dollars to refurbish the island's old buildings where until last October up to 700 people sought shelter and other services every day. The community thrived and its two farms were producing some 25,000 pounds of produce a year. Potatoes, parsnips, cilantro, as well as eggs and honey.

The shelter however fell victim of America's infrastructure crisis. A bridge between the island and the city of Boston was deemed unsafe. To replace the bridge, the city would have to pay an estimated $90 million. An evacuation of the island was ordered instead. With about one-third of Boston's shelter beds for the homeless and about half the city’s detox beds based on the island, the city's social services are now in limbo.

The deserted shelter facilities now complete the scenery of abandonment on Boston's Long Island. With, long-abandoned bunkers that hid gun batteries and Nike missiles, a dusty chapel that hasn’t held services in years, a shuttered morgue, a 150-year-old cemetery, Long Island now looks more like a ghost island.

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SEE ALSO: More abandoned islands around the world // More abandoned places in Massachusetts // More abandoned places in the United States // LIST OF ALL DESERTED PLACES
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Jessica Rinaldi/bostonglobe.com

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Saturday, April 20, 2013

Deserted streets in Boston, as the city goes into lockdown

On Friday 19 April 2013 a manhunt took place in Boston for the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two suspects in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings a week earlier.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick asked residents of Watertown, where the suspect was believed to be hiding, and the adjacent cities and towns (Boston, Belmont, Brookline, Cambridge, Newton, and Waltham) to "shelter in place". The entire public transit network was suspended, as was Amtrak service to and from Boston. Universities, schools, businesses, and other facilities remained closed as thousands of law enforcement personnel participated in a door-to-door manhunt.

At around 6 pm Deval Patrick ended the lockdown after the day-long search failed to locate the suspect. An hour later Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was discovered by a citizen and arrested by police.