Charles River Esplanade

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS It was the age of parading. Cities Throbbed with new parks, boulevards, boardwalks, promenades, and esplanades. The last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th were a time when people wanted to get out and strut their stuff in public. The Impressionist painters captured the era in their outdoor boating and picnicking scenes. So did the anonymous photographer who caught, around 1920, this unforgettable image of three Boston women strolling the Charles River Promenade. The river was a fetid salt marsh until 191 0, when a dam transformed it into the freshwater Charles .River Basin of today. A banker, James Storrow, then donated money to embank the river and create the Promenade. Later on, in 1931, Storrow's widow added another gift, widening the narrow Promenade into the broad, romantic Esplanade of islands and lagoons we see in the new photo. In 1951 an automobile parkway, Storrow Drive, was cut through the Esplanade. The age of strolling had given way to the age of motoring. In the new view, we're looking downstream from a bridge near the end of Exeter Street. Although one could wish the new high-rises in the background were less aggressively ugly> the Esplanade remains a great civic courtesy, a gift Bostonians once made to themselves and to posterity. -Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Charles River Esplanade", Boston Globe, 16 May 1993