Boston Under Cover

Every once a while I am taken in by an architecture feature. I am always intrigued by landmarks and history from around the globe. They are sort of like hidden treasures. This post is exactly that - a hidden treasure.

Underneath Steinert & Sons piano store on Boylston St. in Boston, lies a forgotten 120 year old concert hall. Shuttered now for over 70 years, it was once known as "the headquarters for the musical and artistic world of cultured Boston." It seats 650 and was built underground to bypass the hustle and bustle of the noisy streets upstairs. World-renowned pianists and opera singers graced its stage on a lovely Italian Renaissance music box. It was locked and sealed after the infamous Cocoanut Grove fires of 1942 where almost 500 wealthy patrons died from a lack of fire escapes. Thus followed a new era of safety codes that made a subterranean mecca like this a guaranteed death zone with no possible alternative. 

Decades later after flooding and water leakage it now exists merely as urban legend and a dumping ground for salvage pianos and their parts. If these walls could only speak.