Adams Square

Much less renown than its nearby neighbor, Adams Square was nonetheless a vibrant, commercial business district. 

Adams Square was located near Dock Square and Faneuil Hall.  

One of the reasons Adams Square thrived was its proximity to Faneuil Hall, the Quincy marketplace, and the North End, as we see in this brilliant 1920s era photo.

After the Second World War the elevated central artery (seen down the street in this mid-1950s era photo) was supposed to revitalize the decaying city by bringing in much needed shoppers to downtown. Instead, drives in their shiny new cars simply went through the city, leaving it to crumble further. We can see Washington Street, which now stops at State Street, once ran all the way from downtown to Hanover Street. 

 John Munsey, our intrepid photographer from Delray who gave us those great pictures of the Old Howard, also made his way to Adams Square and took this shot down Elm towards Faneuil Hall.  

The Leopold and Morse building, which anchored Adams Square for decades, can be seen across the street from the venerable Globe Cafe in this (dare we saw, quaint?) B.R.A. photo.

  We love hearing personal memories of long-gone places, like this email from a reader named Robert: Dave – I visited the Union Hat Company with college roommates just before the demolition of Scollay Square. The Company was having a going-out-of-business sale, so we went to take a look.  It was a second floor shop, up old wooden stairs, and it was unlighted.  Full of hats and merchandise that were marked down (including those famous black broad-brimmed hats the Navaho favored) but  I could only afford a Sweet-Orr men’s jacket.

We found a picture of the store, and by the crane hovering ominously nearby it must have been just before the building was demolished.

Taken in 1972 by photographer Peter Luft (who snuck into the circled area to explore the old Scollay to Adams subway tunnel) we see Adams Square was buried under the new City Hall.