Our monthly series of articles investigating the sites and activities of Boston, the site of the 2011 ICA Conference, began in the December issue of the ICA Newsletter with the South Boston Waterfront. While that neighborhood is the actual location of the Conference and has an exciting new environment of its own, one of its key aspects is its easy access to other intriguing areas of the city. This month, we move across the Fort Point Channel to the Back Bay-Boston's most fashionable shopping district, a garden spot for Victorian architecture, and home of the most prominent skyscrapers on the city skyline.

Until the 1850s, the Back Bay was literally that-a tidal bay extending from the Charles River behind the original city of Boston. But the tidal flats in the area had by then become stagnant and polluted, a millstone around the city's neck. That, combined with the need and desire for more land, prompted a massive land reclamation project, creating habitable space via gravel and dirt landfill. Completed in 1882, Back Bay was the center of an ambitious urban design project to create a new and (then) thoroughly modern section of the city. Today, that same design is still in place-and undergirds what is now the most valuable real estate in the northeastern region of the United States known as New England.

Copley Square
The oldest section of contemporary Back Bay is the area in and around Copley Square, a large public plaza built in 1858. In its early days, Copley Square was the heart of a great academic center: Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School, Boston University, Northeastern University, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences all had buildings located on or near the square, as did the Museum of Fine Arts, the New England Museum of Natural History, and the Boston Public Library.

Today, of these educational institutions, only the classical Public Library still survives on the square. (The others still exist, but have moved elsewhere.) It is one of three standing National Historical Landmarks there. The Old South Church, built in 1873, is a Gothic revival church-next door to the library-known for its tall bell tower and elaborate organ; the Church houses one of the oldest religious congregations in the country. (Its previous building, now demolished, served as the rallying point for participants in the Boston Tea Party in 1773.) Across Copley Square is the Neo-Romanesque Trinity Church, built in 1877, celebrated at the time as one of the finest buildings in the United States and today as an American architectural masterpiece. Though each of the buildings is an imposing historic icon, the most imposing is a sleek ultra-modern structure: the John Hancock Tower, Boston's tallest building (790 feet/241 m), is a slim blue glass skyscraper in the shape of a parallelogram that looms over Trinity Church. Thus Copley Square is not only a center for Boston's greatest architecture, but a tremendous amalgam of styles.

The hub of activity here, though, is the square itself. Beginning just before conference time, Copley Square hosts a large farmer's market that occupies three sides of the square. Local farmers food producers sell their own vegetables, fruits, baked goods, cheese, meats, and flowers. This is a well-attended event every Tuesday through Friday, and offers a huge variety that the above list only hints at.

Commonwealth Avenue & Newbury Street
Much of the remainder of Back Bay is marked by its unique civic design-in particular, its vast, tree-lined streets, such as Beacon, Boylston, and Marlborough Streets. Two such streets are particularly prominent.

Photo: Ivan Herman

The first of these is Commonwealth Avenue, which Bostonians frequently shorten to "Comm Av." Designed in the 1850s, at the same time that Paris was receiving a high-profile modernization, Comm Av follows the example of the Parisian boulevards with a broad crosstown thoroughfare, three lanes in each direction, separated by a wide pedestrian greenway known as the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. The mall itself is lined with statuary memorials to Bostonian and American luminaries such as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, and former mayor Patrick Collins. The outside of Commonwealth Avenue, in its Back Bay section, is flanked by opulent brownstone houses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The other prominent Back Bay street is Newbury Street-the major shopping corridor of New England. Running parallel to Comm Av (from the Boston Public Garden on the east to Massachusetts Avenue on the west), Newbury Street is likewise lined with trees and brownstones; however, the brownstones in this case are occupied by hundreds of boutiques, restaurants, and other retailers. As a result, Newbury is one of the densest pedestrian streets in town.

Interestingly, however, the makeup of the pedestrian crowds changes from one end to the other. The western end of Newbury Street (where lies the subway ("T") station, Hynes) is occupied by low-end chain retailers (such as Best Buy) and outlets targeted towards young adults (such as Urban Outfitters, American Apparel, and Forever 21), along with salons, coffee shops, used bookstores, and Newbury Comics, the largest CD retailer in Massachusetts. Accordingly, this side of the street is likely to be filled with college students, teenagers, and bohemian types. As one approaches the Public Gardens, however, the shops become increasingly more upscale, with such well-known names as Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Armani, Donna Karan, and Bang & Olufsen making appearances.

Buildings of Note
Back Bay's real renown comes from its architecture: a beautifully preserved slice of the United States during the Victorian era. Aside from the buildings in Copley Square, among the most noteworthy are the Arlington Street Church - a Unitarian Universalist congregation that was the first church built on the newly created land, and the model for many other UU churches in the country; First Church of Christ Scientist, the mother cathedral of the Christian Science Church, built in 1894 but with a massive domed extension added in 1906; and Gibson House, an 1859 brownstone that has achieving museum status by maintaining the interior design and decor as well as the original facade.

That said, there's no shortage of important modern structures, either. The Hancock Building, again in Copley Square, is obviously the cream of the crop; nearby, however, are the 111 Huntington Avenue building, so futuristic in design that it's sometimes called "The R2-D2 building" after the Star Wars robot, and the Prudential Tower, the tallest building in Boston before the Hancock and a symbol of Boston's progress at the time of its construction.

The Back Bay neighborhood is one of Boston's busiest and most famous-and, lest we forget, a short train or water-taxi ride from the ICA Conference at the South Boston Waterfront. Don't miss out on the interesting sites and fun to be had there.