Moderator note:
(Dan) 17 October 2009: Images now hosted in the Cyburbia Gallery. See http://www.cyburbia.org/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/6513
JAMAICA PLAIN: A Streetcar Suburb
photos by Herodotus and LMJCobalt
Residential Boston’s rowhouses are familiar to visitors. Further out, in the streetcar suburbs, the building type of choice is the three-decker:
These function today much as they always have: one unit per floor (“deck”
Three-deckers are usually densely packed with only enough space between to accommodate windows for light and air. Your view out the side is of a window like your own. Twelve families occupy acreage that might be thought crowded for four in today's suburbs. Three-deckers, being all wood, are potential fire-traps.
Units typically sport stacked porches, sometimes in the front…
…occasionally at the side…
…and often at the rear as well:
The resultant streetscape is sometimes a little relentless:
Siamese twins produce six-unit buildings with the economy of shared lobbies and stairwells, and a lot of togetherness on the balconies. These are for people with a little more money to invest:
At center, a particularly attractive six-unit example with Queen Anne massing to disguise the building’s symmetry: dome on the near side, bracketed pediment on the far side:
The nearly self-same design reproduced from stock plans, and endowed with fish-scale shingles:
A modern take on the three-decker. Very handsome, and still a bit of a fire-trap:
Jamaica Plain is by no means all three-deckers. Apartment buildings can also be Siamese-twinned:
Manorial houses linger from colonial times, when Jamaica Plain was already an established village (first mentioned in 1683). Here an ancient veteran teams with somewhat more recent partners to form a scene that may remind some of Nantucket:
Varied Victorian streetscapes abound from the streetcar era:
And rowhouses make their mandatory appearance. As elsewhere, many function as apartment buildings:
Single and multi family mix amicably by sharing a common bulk:
Some houses can fairly be regarded as mansions:
(Couldn’t resist slipping this one in, from Hopperland)
Two amazingly intact Second Empire beauties from Jamaica Plain, the just out-of-town town, like London’s Hampstead--just before the streetcar arrived, hauled by a horse:
Approaching Centre Street, commercial zoning arrives with a bump (and the mandatory mural):
Some commercial buildings contain upstairs offices or apartments. Streetcar tracks linger in Centre Street, awaiting much-debated restoration of Green Line service, temporarily and comic-operatically suspended a quarter-century ago, until tracks could be re-engineered for the articulated streetcars that no one thought to test on these tracks until they had replaced the more maneuverable PCCs. These you can find today cheerfully running in San Francisco:
An example of the offending streetcars, here functioning as Boston’s last El, far from Jamaica Plain, atop the North Station viaduct:
The buses that replaced the streetcars are a poor substitute. Because they don’t run into the subway, Jamaica Plain no longer enjoys a one-seat ride downtown. You could say it drifted slightly out of town again, like the village of yore:
Some of the recently-arrived yuppies mind, and others like it this way. The same is true of the working class folk who make Jamaica Plain’s population a heady brew of Hispanics, Asians, Caribbeans, Rastafarians, African-Americans and Europeans. Jostling the surviving mom-and-pops, CVS, hip shops and trendy restaurants have also arrived, making Jamaica Plain an entrepreneurial incubator:
Photos cobbled together from posts by two terrific urban photographers, Herodotus and LMJCobalt. More of their Jamaica Plain photos can be found at:
http://www.skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=37767&highlight=jamaica+plain
http://www.skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=36011&highlight=jamaica+plain
http://www.skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=35639&highlight=jamaica+plain
http://www.skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=35348&highlight=jamaica+plain
http://www.skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=34746&highlight=jamaica+plain
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