Government Center

Further up Tremont Street from the Boston Massacre Site [1], the neighborhood around Boston City Hall was once known as Scollay Square, an area synonymous with debauchery for its mix of bars and burlesque clubs that entertained soldiers returning from World War II. All good things come to an end, however, and Scollay Square met its end in the 1960s, when the entire area was razed for a massive urban redevelopment scheme to create a new center of city government.

The result is generally agreed to be a disaster, a windswept plaza of concrete, with the hulking modernist form of Boston City Hall shipwrecked in the center. In recent years, city planners have attempted to improve the area with the addition of a new T station and a covered arcade, but the area is what it is: ugly and depressing.

A considerably more pleasing example of urban renewal is down behind city hall in the bustling center of Quincy Marketplace. Once a derelict collection of old fish warehouses behind the historic Faneuil Hall [2], the area was transformed in the 1970s to become a pedestrian paradise along the lines of London’s Covent Garden. The gamble was wildly successful, and the marketplace is still crowded at all times of the day and night with shoppers poking into the many upscale chains or watching the street performers who juggle and do magic tricks on the flagstone plaza in front of the main market building.

That building is also home to an immense “food corridor” that seems to stretch forever with stalls on either side offering clam chowder, pizza, rotisserie chicken, and anything else your hunger pangs might ask for. Many of the stalls are branches of restaurants elsewhere in the city, making the quality of the offerings better than most food courts.