Time was, you could put up a Boston building with any material you liked, as long as it was brick or wood

somewhere near Atlantic Ave. about 1899

According to Historic New England, it's Atlantic Ave. between Oliver St. and Cotton Place

...behind the buildings in the foreground. Looks like sign above the "E. Hobart, Carpenter" sign indicates that the entrance is on Court Street. So, I'm guessing this scene is long gone, in the area around Government Center.

Atlantic Ave closer to financial district vs north end.

The street sign mounted on the wooden building at far right reads "Atlantic Ave."

The signs are clearly advertising for theatres in other parts of the city. The theatres mentioned on the signs weren't anywhere near each other, so these have to be ads.

Two of the theatre ads refer to Monday, November 2, which would place the year as 1891 or 1896. The next possible year after that would have been 1903, but by then the Atlantic Avenue Elevated had been built, so this photo was before that.

I don't see any overhead wires for the trolley tracks so I'll go with 1891. By 1896 virtually the entire transit system had been electrified, save for a few streets in the Back Bay and Brattle Street in Cambridge.

(There are at least three, possibly four, tracks in the street; some of those would have been for the Union Freight Rail Road, which was never electrified, but some of them would have been for the transit system, at that time known as the West End Street Railway Co.)

Here's the view today, courtesy Google Street View: https://goo.gl/maps/KjwT5944m2q

Those brick buildings in the Google image appear to have been built between 1891 and 1902.

Herald and Washington Streets, Boston, MA