Bostonians have always complained about the streets, and John Hales was particularly well suited to comment on the state of streets in Boston. Hales is best known for his 1814 Map of Boston, which has been reproduced in many places, as well as the more difficult to find large format drawings of individual streets created from his own surveys, which led to the compilation of the book below. While Hales was a surveyor by trade, he was not above making some editorial comments about the state of building in Boston.
From A Survey of Boston and Its Vicinity by John G. Hales, Boston, 1821
“Uniformity of system in building seems but in a few instances to have been observed (and those of latter years) every one hath a notion of his own, so much that in even the principal streets you see one house towering above another, some advanced as though to attract attention, others set back seemingly to avoid gaze of notice, some with bow windows and arched doors, others straight and square; roofs and walls equally discordant; the side walks are interrupted by steps, cellar doors, &c. which not only annoys, but at night even hazards the passenger, and in fact the streets may said to be uniformly irregular and crooked, and at this time it is believed the whole town cannot present a precise straight and parallel street, though some of those latterly built approximate very near and are intended to be such; but there seems a propensity amongst some of the landholders, particularly when they erect buildings, to encroach on the street, so that the original lines as laid out are seldom attended to; and this evil, however much it is regretted, cannot be remedied until some capable person is appointed by the town to superintend and lay out the precise line against the streets, over which no building shall be erected nor obstruction formed.”
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Looks like that plan never made its way to implementation...
Posted by: Peter | 24 November 2004 at 11:38