Page 88 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Boston

86  BOST ON AREA B Y AREA

6 Massachusetts
State Transportation
Building
8–10 Park Plaza, Stuart & Charles Sts.
Map 4 E2.  Boylston. Atrium
restaurants: Open 11am–8pm Mon–
Fri, noon–6pm Sat. 7
The main feature of the
Massachusetts State
Transportation Building,
con structed in 1983, is its }
seven-story-high, skylit City
Place atrium, which is directly
acces sible to the public.
Covering most of a sizeable city
block, this red-brick and glass
cantilevered building has won
several prestigious design
awards. It incorporates offices
and public-service facilities,
maintained by the state’s
transportation administrators,
around a central mall of wide- The City Place atrium in the Massachusetts State Transportation Building
ranging shops and restaurants.
Lunchtime concerts, pop interior, on the other hand, 8 Chinatown
or light-classical music, are is an impressively opulent Bounded by Kingston, Kneeland,
frequently scheduled in the show piece by H.B. Pennell: his Washington & Essex Sts.
central mall, while gallery Rococo lobby boasts gilded Map 4 E2.  Chinatown.
showings are often held on the trim, chandeliers, and lofty
upper levels overlooking the arched ceilings. The 1,658- Although smaller than those
atrium. Other facilities in the seat auditorium is decorated in San Fransisco and New York,
building include a bank, with allegorical figures, this area remains one of the
newsstand, and several frescoes, and friezes. largest Chinatowns in the U.S.
fast-food eateries. The theater opened on It covers blocks of filled land
December 20, 1900 with a that had been the South Cove
suitably extravagant perfor- tidal backwater until the early
mance of the melodrama 19th century. Pagoda-topped
Ben Hur, featuring a cast of telephone booths, as well as a
350 and an on-stage chariot three-story gateway guarded
race involving a dozen by four marble lions, set the
horses pulling Roman neighborhood’s Asian tone.
chariots on treadmills. The first 200 Chinese to settle
It was also the venue in New England came by ship
for productions by from San Francisco in 1870.
Gilt ornamentation from the lavishly decorated direc tors such as Mostly unskilled, they were
interior of the Colonial Theatre Irving Berlin, Sigmund recruited to break a labor
Romberg, and Rodgers strike at a shoe factory in
7 Colonial Theatre and Hammerstein, and is where Massachusetts, but were jobless
Ziegfeld premi ered his Follies by 1874. At this time, some
106 Boylston St. Map 4 E2.
Tel (617) 426-9366.  Boylston. (see p89). The theater is now drifted to Boston, at first
Open phone to check. 7 owned by Emerson College. pitching their tents on Oliver
∑ artsemerson.org
Clarence H. Blackall designed
14 Boston theaters during his
architectural career, among
them the Colonial, which is
the city’s oldest theater to
have been in continuous
operation under the same
name. A two-story loggia sits
atop Blackall’s structure, which
is otherwise quite plain. The Colorful, contemporary street mural in Chinatown

086-087_EW_Boston.indd 86 09/01/17 12:14 pm
Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Catalogue template “UK” LAYER
(Source v2.7)
Date 1st October 2013
Size 125mm x 217mm