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Fire at the Mandarin Oriental on Boylston
By adamg on Mon, 03/10/2008 - 9:17am
Her.Moves lives next door and took some photos.
Four alarms, started before 8 a.m. at the under-construction luxury hotel/condo complex. Anybody get caught in traffic because of it?
Channel 4 reports huge plumes of smoke filling up the sky over downtown Boston.
Boston Business Journal: Fitness center affected; no one injured.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
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Comments
With Boylston closed, Mass
With Boylston closed, Mass Ave is snarled. Comm Ave is moving pretty well, considering.
The Mandarin Oriental
Is not in Downtown, as some of the news organizations seem to think; it is in the Back Bay. Makes one wonder of they phone this stuff in from Des Moines or something...
Back Bay is Downtown
Not to get in a semantics war while there is a fire going on, but Back Bay is downtown.
Downtown Crossing and the Financial District are downtown too, but because they are does not make Back Bay uptown.
I tend to think everything east of Mass Ave, north of the Pike, and south of Storrow is downtown.
Hmm ...
I will admit that, living way out in Roslindale, we sometimes refer to "downtown" as pretty much everywhere that has an offramp from Storrow Drive past Kenmore. However, I realize that to a lot of people, "downtown" really just means the Financial District, the waterfront and Downtown Crossing; that no true Bostonian would ever get caught dead referring to the Pru as being "downtown" and that any media outlet that does so is, in fact, staffed by interns from Des Moines.
Depends on the audience
I guess.
When talking to a fellow Bostonian... we talk in 'hoods, but when talking to friends in the 'burbs, it's sometimes easier to just give it a collective "downtown". I don't really know how big WBZ's audience is, but I assume they broadcast as far north as Nashua, maybe as west as Worcester. Would it have cause mass hysteria if they just said Back Bay? Probably not.
EG.
Suburbanite: Where do you work?
Me: In the South End.
Suburbanite: Oh like Good Will Hunting?
Me: No, downtown.
And I live in the South End...
on the cusp of the Back Bay and Fenway. Nowhere near Downtown. I work Downtown.
Downtown <> downtown
From the original article:
BOSTON (WBZ) ? A fire at a construction site filled the early morning sky with smoke in downtown Boston Monday morning and closed off part of Boylston Street.
You may work in Downtown Crossing. But you also live downtown!
Wind Direction
A fire in the Back Bay could easily fill Downtown Crossing with smoke if the wind was blowing the right direction.
I see that Back Bay from my dining room, but my company is moving downtown (Post Office Square) soon. P.O. Square is too close to Downtown Crossing for it to matter much, but the Back Bay is a mile and more away. In Boston there are such distinctions. The rest of the US tends to see high rise development and think "skyscrapers = downtown".
I do?
I work in Government Center (which is Downtown, but not in Downtown Crossing) and live in the South End (there are views of buildings both in Downtown Boston and the Back Bay from different parts of the neighborhood), which is no more a part of Downtown than Hyde Park is.
wouldn't that make the north
wouldn't that make the north end "uptown"?
Where's Downtown?
The way I've always learned it:
Downtown Boston definitely includes Government Center, the Downtown Crossing shopping area, the financial district, South Station, Leather District (South Street), Chinatown, the Theatre District, and Boston Common (at least the Tremont St side).
It definitely does not include residential Beacon Hill, the North End, the South End, the Back Bay, Copley Square, or the Prudential Center.
It's unclear whether it includes Bay Village, Quincy Market, Haymarket, the Bulfinch Triangle, and North Station. Usually these places are given their own more specific names.
Agreed
If you walk around, you can find some clear "landmarks" separating all those spaces Ron mentions. Clear ones like the Common and Garden marking Beacon Hill and the Back Bay, bridges to Charlestown over the Charles and bridges over the Fort Point Channel, the new Greenway opening the North End, the ornate gate that marks Chinatown, etc. There are also softer cues of separation like the patterns of development changing as you move down Cambridge Street separating the old West End from Beacon Hill.
Government Center - Downtown Crossing - Financial District have some distinct features, but are very close in space and the boundaries really blur.
Downtown
I think what may be confusing to some is that there is no "uptown" in Boston (or in many cities for that matter). Robert Fogelson wrote a dry book about the distinction.
Chinatown and the Theatre District are on the edge (because I think most people would use their neighborhood names rather than saying "I'll meet you at Chow Chow City Downtown), but I wouldn't dissagree if someone characterized them as Downtown. The Back Bay...not downtown.
Whatever happened to
The Midtown Cultural District?
Not to be confused with the Midtown Hotel
which is nowhere near said "cultural district", nor much of a hotel.
The area around Symphony Hall was once called "Uptown". The Uptown Theatre used to be next door to Horticultural Hall on Huntington Ave, and there's still an Uptown parking garage next to Jordan Hall.
I disagree
Back Bay didn't exist before it was filled in. It was H2O. Downtown did (or at least so I gather form the tombstones.)
The Globe often screws up
The Globe often screws up the Boston neighborhoods which bugs me, but I have to admit that it's not really that off-target to call Boylston St downtown. Probably because the Back Bay essentially is downtown as it is. Also Boylston is pretty much all commercial in this part and not residential except for some high rises.
I suppose you could say it's downtown...
But I've never considered it so. Once you traverse the Common and enter the Public Garden you've left downtown and you're heading towards other environs. But then, to complicate matters, I do consider Beacon Hill and the West End part of downtown so what do I know?
Pictures
I live next door, here are some pictures of the action:
flickr.com...2323303639/in/photostream/
The Herald knows where the Hotel is
Herald headline from bostonherald.com:
Firefighters knock down Back Bay blaze
Firefighters?
Alright, who's slipping on the copy desk over there? It should read:
Jakes knock down Back Bay blaze
Jakes
The Herald redeems itself with Bail revoked for jake accused in pot bust.
Jakes are Baked
In Boston that means "the firefighters are stoned".
In the northwest? It means the porta potties have been in the sun too long and it's hot in there.
So does thebostonchannel .com
Though I had to email them to tell them that the Mandarin Oriental is in the Back Bay, rather than Downtown as they first reported, but the story has since changed.
That's like ...
How Channel 4 initially said the Cleary Square Papa Gino's armed hold-up was in Jamaica Plain.
Downtown and the cost of the fire
Well, it didn't take them very long ...
Boston.com says the developer says the damage is estimated at $2 million! That seems like a hell of a lot of money. I bet the majority is from water damage, not from the fire, itself.
On "downtown" versus Back Bay, obviously it's Back Bay ...
Funny coincidence, the Globe yesterday ran a story on foreclosures and broke down the city into different neighborhoods including Allston, Brighton, Charlestown, Dorchester ... but then lumped Kenmore Sq, Back Bay, North End, South End, Chinatown and Financial District / Leather District / Downtown Crossing, and Beacon Hill into "downtown".
boston.com/realestate...foreclosures_by_neighborhood
I guess "we" just don't matter enough to be distinct.
Maybe you're just getting your wish
Just a couple of weeks ago you were pumping the idea that Boston should exile its peripheral neighborhoods. You lumped together the same group of neighborhoods as 'the real Boston' and talked smack about the rest.
Well, congrats. You're "downtown." All you need now is a moat.
not to confuse this issue
not to confuse this issue with further nuance, but I'm 50 years old and grew up in Boston. When we were going 'in town' that meant the Washington Street stop in the Red Line, Downtown Crossing. For ten years, through 2006, I worked in Copley Square. People in my office would routinely say they were going to run in town at lunch for an errand when they had to go to Downtown Crossing.