UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Jane Holtz Kay

An expanded and updated edition of a classic work of architectural history

At once a fascinating narrative and a visual delight, Lost Boston brings the city's past to life. This updated edition includes a new section illustrating the latest gains and losses in the struggle to preserve Boston 's architectural heritage.

With an engaging text and more than 350 seldom-seen photographs and prints, Lost Boston offers a chance to see the city as it once was, revealing architectural gems lost long ago. An eminently readable history of the city's physical development, the book also makes an eloquent appeal for its preservation. Jane Holtz Kay traces the evolution of Boston from the barren, swampy peninsula of colonial times to the booming metropolis of today. In the process, she creates a family album for the city, infusing the text with the flavor and energy that makes Boston
distinct. Amid the grand landmarks she finds the telling details of city life: the neon signs, bygone amusement parks, storefronts, and windows plastered with images of campaigning politicians-sights common in their time but even more meaningful in their absence today.

Kay also brings to life the people who created Boston-architects like Charles Bulfinch and H. H. Richardson, landscape architect and master park-maker Frederick Law Olmsted, and such colorful political figures as Mayors John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald and James Michael Curley.

The new epilogue brings Boston’s story to the end of the twentieth century, showing elements of the city's architecture that were lost in recent years as well as those that were saved and others threatened as the city continues to evolve.

"An elegant architectural history, excellently illustrated."

Washington Post

"Earns a place on the short shelf of indispensable books about the architecture and physical form of Boston ."

Boston Globe

"Not just another historical picture book, this is a remarkable narrative of Boston 's evolution. Kay's lively, well-researched text opens to view the many new environments that Boston assimilated while holding to old ideals. Various attempts at shaping the city by leveling hills, filling tidal estuaries, and widening and straightening crooked streets are displayed in the excellent reproductions of more than 350 rare photographs that supplement the text. . . . The author also documents the development of three centuries of architectural styles, many of which are only preserved through the medium of photographs. Kay vividly describes the Puritans' City upon a Hill of 1630-1680, the Granite in Athens of 1820-1850, and the New Land of 1850-1870, among other equally absorbing themes. Highly recommended."

Library Journal

Jane Holtz Kay is author of Asphalt Nation and Preserving New England and architecture/ planning critic for The Nation .

Architectural History / New England
352 pp., 360 illus.
$24.95t paper, ISBN 978-1-55849-527-2
April 2006

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