The Boston By Gaslight Series

I grouped this set of images based the period and the landmark. Each remains an iconic part of Boston imagery to this day. Gas lighting seems to give each a special kind of glow that fits nicely with the nostalgic lens our memories and experience of Boston applies to it.

Sepia tone has a similar effect on imagery casting people and scenes we love in an almost overly sentimental light. Ironically, "Boston By Gaslight" is also a turn of the century compendium of the same period that's anything but lachrymose. It's stories are of of the melodramatic Victorian variety and feature gruesome murders, drunken louts, pickpockets, and much of the underside of Boston that doesn't mesh well with our wistful looks back at a simpler time.

"Gas light" is in fact an old verb for manipulating someone's memory into doubting their own recollections. Very few cities in this country retain as much gas lighting as Boston does in its historical neighborhoods of Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Charlestown  and Bay Village. At least, that's how I remember it.

The series, over time, will also include Scollay Square, Court Street, Old North Station and the huge rail shed that housed the locomotives behind South Station