Serene night along the East Boston waterfront

By adamg on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 10:41am

A ferry sits along a snow-covered East Boston waterfront in 1911.

Of course, back in the day, before the Sumner and Callahan, East Boston had more than one ferry slip - there was the North Ferry and the South Ferry.

By the time of the photo, you could also take a streetcar downtown via the East Boston Tunnel, which opened in 1904, connecting East Boston and points north with downtown via Maverick Square - seen here in 1912:

First postcard via Retro Librarian, who pointed us to this collection of Boston historical images at the Internet Archive.

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Comments

Opened when now?

By Ari O on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 10:52am.

There were some tunnels to Eastie which opened in 2004(ish) but:

"via the East Boston Tunnel, which opened in 2004"

I think you're off by a century or so.

Oops

By adamg on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 11:23am.

Yep, the tunnel opened in 1904.

Great Pics!

By Tobster on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 2:48pm.

Thanks for the postcards Adam. In addition to the great subject matter. they take me back to a time when people (gasp!) actually wrote postcards, put stamps on them and mailed them!
A few weeks ago I wanted to send come vacation postcards to friends. I walked into a convenience store in Orlando and asked to buy postage stamps and what I got was a puzzled look. And the clerk asking me what they were used for.
And don't get me started on asking for maps...

I ran into an online

By Robin on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 5:07pm.

I ran into an online discussion on what the phrase 'balance a checkbook' meant!

Tooth powder

By Charles Bahne on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 3:29pm.

The building under the Tooth Powder billboard is still there today:

https://goo.gl/maps/2WKB6nb5Uc1wt5c59

Historic buildings

By John-W on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 8:19pm.

Item to note in the second postcard:
To the left you can see two little brickfront buildings on Maverick Street. Those two buildings were still there just a few years ago with active businesses in them, when a developer bought them along with the property on the corner (the yellowish building on the left which was then a parking lot to a former funeral home). Over the resistance of local residents and the City (not the BPDA, they were totally down with the idea) the asshole developer insisted on evicting the businesses and tearing the historic buildings down and replacing them with Eastie's own version of Downtown Crossing's Filene's Pit. It's been years and the spot still sits as an empty eye sore.

Here's hoping the developer and all associated with that misbegotten decision are suffering with horribly painful herpes.