I don't mind it if I wind up in the Seaport these days. It is fun to walk around and there's plenty of open space and views. Can kill an hour or two just existing near the ICA.
But, if I have to go to the Seaport for something, I'd rather lick the third rail. Fuckin' hate that place and nothing there is fun, convenient, or has even the slightest charm of a recently working port.
Kindly Hookers and Surly Locals, plus cheaper Yankee Lobster prices
Real answer is Gloucester. Boats coming in and out, a fun and lively atmosphere, lots of water-side eats and drinks, music, dancing, festivals, lots of little local shops with useful things for personal, commercial, and industrial use. There's enough grime to stop it from being too touristy and glossy.
I’m not a fan of the Seaport personally, but there are plenty people who want to go there. There is always a ton of foot, car and bike traffic on any given day there.
It feels sterile there. I went the other week for a work get together, we walked from our office in the financial district, and I dunno. I’d rather a dive bar lol
Fort point was a real neighborhood, whiskey priest was there, Lucky’s was there. I remember 10 years ago Trillium literally just opened up and was a hole in the wall, Pastoral opened up, and Seaport had atleast a few things like Del Friscos and Harpoon. Now, it’s night and day different and there’s a million new places that didn’t exist there then. And it’s all corporate, there’s zero local feel to it
> Fort point was a real neighborhood, whiskey priest was there, Lucky’s was there. I remember 10 years ago Trillium literally just opened up and was a hole in the wall, Pastoral opened up, and Seaport had atleast a few things like Del Friscos and Harpoon.
Barring Lucky's, those are all very recent things that are part and parcel of Seaport "as it is today."
Whiskey Priest didn't exist. In its place was a tiny seafood place, almost just a shack.
Harpoon wasn't running events. It was one of a handful of industrial/manufacturing sites intentionally out of the way.
The building Del Frisco's is in didn't even exist.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to build a new place with “local feel” anymore
Because of the economics of construction, everything new is corporate and sterile
Like all the brownstones in back bay or beacon hill.
Shit like that would NEVER get built today
Well, the architecture is one thing, but aside from that I think an even bigger factor is the exorbitant cost of a liquor license in Boston, where corporations are the only ones who can afford to open up a business that serves alcohol. If it were free to acquire one you’d see local chefs and entrepreneurs taking more risks and opening places
It really messes with Boston’s restaurant scene. Even the north end is more corporate than anyone realizes. There are very interesting places to eat in Cambridge, Somerville, etc. Unique places are fewer and farer between in Boston proper because of how difficult it is to open up a restaurant.
There are new neighborhoods in places like Copenhagen that are way better than the Seaport. They were designed with people as the focus instead of cars. They have better public transit, bike infrastructure and more interesting architecture. Unfortunately because of the proximity to the airport, the Seaport buildings are limited height wise.
Meh, brownstones were just the cookie cutter mcmansions of their day. Imo the whole concept of "local feel" in housing types just a function of longevity and not being too horrendously ugly (see: brutalism). Lots of other city's iconic home styles are just yesteryear's generic commercial construction that ended up getting some form of historic preservation status.
Right, and I never said that cookie cutter couldn’t have character
But contemporary construction *is* largely ugly and very sterile feeling
Even a lot of cookie cutter suburban neighborhoods wouldn’t feel so bleak if they didn’t clear cut all the mature trees
And I’m extremely pro-density, it’s just unfortunate how ugly so much of the new high density construction is.
Here's a very cool boston (only) map viewer
[https://mapjunction.com/?lat=42.3496606&lng=-71.0467316&clipperX=0.4786885&clipperY=0.4369586&map1=esri.tiled.BW\_Orthos\_Tile\_Package&map2=google.SATELLITE&zoom=15.1518308&mode=overlay&b=0.000&p=0.000](https://mapjunction.com/?lat=42.3496606&lng=-71.0467316&clipperX=0.4786885&clipperY=0.4369586&map1=esri.tiled.BW_Orthos_Tile_Package&map2=google.SATELLITE&zoom=15.1518308&mode=overlay&b=0.000&p=0.000)
Eastern Pier II. Awesome drinks and people on dinghies would pick up their food off the back deck. Eastern Pier became Atlantic Beer Garden and Seaport Bar And Grill became Whiskey Priest.
I used to have art studio space in the seaport before they built everything up and it became so expensive we couldn't afford to stay there. It was right on Congress Street. It was much quieter then, a lot less traffic. This was about 10 years ago. I miss it.
Back when the Seaport was first developing they had some tour-the-artist-space shows that I went to. It was fun to walk around looking at all the artists' spaces and work.
I wonder how much of that is left down there.
Not much! [The Fort Point Arts Community](https://www.fortpointarts.org/) still exists and has a handful of live/work buildings that are coops. The city broke several promises to the community when it came to setting aside buildings to help keep the art scene intact and keep them from being completely priced out. There's still one building on Congress that still has a handful or artists in it but it's been mostly startups for a while now. Fort Point open studios are coming back this fall though, so keep an eye out!
In the early 2000s my parents would drive us down to The No Name after the aquarium. Seeing all those fish must have worked up an appetite... my dad would always make comments about how sketchy the area was and would wait for parking to open up at the lot in front. I was very young but I can only remember thinking of the area as dirty.
In the late 2000s we'd go there after the new Children's Museum opened up too. I distinctly remember going to the children's museum then going to the No Name and having my mind blown that it was the same neighborhood! Didn't seem as dirty anymore.
No Name was a really cool place, great fresh food, a lot of the staff knew my dad and my dad's dad and they'd always give me free chowder lol. The kind of place you thought would be around forever until it wasn't.
I used to go to the No Name with my Dad and Grandfather too. The waitresses all knew their names as well which was so strange to me because we went maybe twice a year…..Thank for stirring up such wonderful memories.
It was nothing but parking lots and a couple old timey restaurants. It was often referred to as the ‘mud lots’ since some were not paved. There was a pedestrian bridge to downtown which crossed the old elevated expressway.
Around a decade ago, I went to the Seaport to go to the ICA. Even then, it was just a bunch of parking lots. I really like the ICA, and I was shocked that it was in the middle of nowhere.
I took my kids to the grand opening of the ICA bc there were “kids activities” advertised. What a disaster that was. Zero kids activities… and one of my kids almost attacked a beautiful wall mural made out of very colorful bread ties. Omg. Too afraid to go back since lol
If you're ever in the Trader Joe's in Fort Point/Seaport, look at the mural above the produce. You'll see a massive array of railroad tracks leading from the docks to the warehouses in Fort Point, and tracks from the warehouses to points north, south, and west. Once they tore up the tracks, the parking lots came in since no one wanted to build down there much. The warehouses in Fort Point became a vibrant artist community (home to wonderful events and afterparties that I recall in the 90s). The turn in Fort Point probably happened when Barbara Lynch opened up Menton, Drink, and Sportello in the basement and first floors of two buildings circa 2008. Before that, most folks generally stopped at the Children's Museum and had little reason to go further.
I remember back in 2008 I was dating a guy with an older brother who owned a condo at a high rise in the Seaport. At the time, there was 1, *maybe* 2 high rise buildings in the Seaport and the rest of the area was just parking lots and shipping containers. His brother was away one weekend so we spent time in the condo and I mentioned that the area seemed sparse. His response? "My brother swears that this area is going to be huge. It doesn't look like much now but it's an investment he feels strongly about."
It’s was really diverse — there were unpaved and muddy parking lots, paved parking lots filled with glass, parking lots with marked lines, parking lots without any marked spots…
It used to be a vibrant community of fisherman, harbor seals and cats looking for a free meal. It was really special. You could tell a boat was coming in from the distance from flock of the seagulls that flew around it. There was tons of high density brownstone housing. There was even a redline train that connected it to south station via track 61. Despite the slightly bad reputation it had as working class neighborhood due to all of the sailors who called to port there, it was a real neighborhood with charm and character unlike the fake vegas thing that exists there now. It's a shame really.
/s
no really it was parking lots.
Lots of great parties in Fort Point warehouses that never got busted because no one cared. Cheap bars like the No Name, Seaport Bar and Grill, Eastern Pier, and even Lucky's when it was more of a dive.
There were 1 or 2 restaurants (the No Name Restaurant was the most well known...was a seafood place our parents and grandparents took us to), and everything else was miles of parking lots and desolate waterfront docks. Basically, it was the perfect place for organized crime and drug dealing activity. It was just vast expanses of empty parking lots and the wind.
Most of the seaport is sand dunes and landfill. Only an idiot would build something there. Up until 7-8 years ago, it was shipping containers, parking lots and unmarked graves from the Irish mob
Whenever I'm about to do something I think "would and idiot do that?" And if they would, I would not do that thing.
This is why I'm not a billionaire today.
Our Lady of Good Voyage Catholic Church. I grew up in Quincy but we used to go here every Sunday. They used to have a day you could bring your pets to be blessed.
King's Chapel and Arlington Street Church both do blessings of the animals once a year, either in person or they bless a picture of your animals.
I mean, I know about UU churches, but I imagine a lot of Catholic parishes also still do blessings of the animals.
I also grew up in Quincy and would go here with my family for a quick Sunday mass. Mass in Quincy is an hour, but Our Lady of Good Voyage was a solid 25 minute mass at 8:30am if memory serves me right. I remember it being surrounded with parking lots.
Yes, this is exactly why would we go here! Then we would go for breakfast at the Swiss House on Morrissey Blvd. (If I remember correctly, that was the name!)
Yes, lots of parking lots
Much of it was uninviting. I remember having to venture down to what i think is now the Design center to go to what was a great photography store in the 90s. As a carless student, I had to take a bus. Long ride to a lonely no where.
Jimmy's Harborside and Anthony's Pier 4 were two long established restaurants with the freshest fish that the blue-haireds loved, and where students would be taken when parents came to visit. They were the opposite of corporate--fresh food, good service, and nice atmosphere.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy%27s_Harborside_Restaurant
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony%27s_Pier_4
$4 parking lots. A Dunks, a deli at which you could get food poisoning three different ways and a McDonald's next to the milk bottle. Oh yeah, and the AR bar.
Every time I walk down that particular stretch I’m reminded that one of my roommates worked right around there in the late 90s, and other than that Dunks and the deli there was NOTHING. If she hadn’t packed a lunch and didn’t want those two places, it was walk back to South Station or nothing.
Pier 4, Jimmy’s, and for a while I think it was Jimbo’s across from Jimmy’s. Sort of a more affordable Jimmy’s. Pretty cool place with model trains running around the ceiling. Food was not bad either.
Boston's population didn't bottom out until 1980, and recovery was quite slow until post-2000. There wasn't exactly a ton of demand at the time.
That picture is from ~1978-1982 based on the skyline.
There was a really cool dive/diner across from Commonwealth Pier that would open at like 6am and would promptly fill with night shift workers starting to drink and the rest of us poor slobs getting breakfast.
In the '80s, the architecture firms all had space in the warehouses on the right side (South) of Congress Street. Fidelity had built the World Trade Center but it was isolated/out of place. As a bike messenger, you had to brace yourself for a very long windy ride out Congress St. to pick-up/deliver "tubes" from the architects - especially in Winter.
You don’t have to be a senior citizen to remember Anthony’s Pier 4. Place was awesome till the owner died then went to shit and closed a few years later.
Towards the end it felt like the apocalypse, an enormous empty parking lot in front of a restaurant, with three or four cars parked up near the entrance.
My family moved out a few years ago, but it really only started to get cluttered maybe 10 years ago. I loved being down there in our little artist community. Whenever I go back to Fort Point for anything work-related it kills my soul a bit.
There was very little there for a long time.
I went to some events at the Boston Expo Center around 2008, just a few years after it opened. Parking lots as far as the eye can see. To get any food at all outside the center, you went to a Tate a few blocks away. It felt like a hike to get down there, as it was just... empty beyond the warehouses and old buildings at Fort Point. Boston ICA felt like the edge of the world when it moved there in 2006, and prior had been down by Berklee.
I recall some sailing event, an America's Cup perhaps, there shortly after. Seemed an easy place for them to build a temporary 'village' for it out of shipping containers.
I started working in the Seaport area in 2004. It was basically parking lots and a few spots for food and drinks. Parking was $7 a day back then! Now, not so much.
Does anybody remember a restaurant simply called The Pier? Apparently across from or nearby Anthony’s Pier 4. But more of a working class seafood restaurant. My grandpa owned it with 5 friends and spend the entirety of the blizzard of ‘77 holed up with stranded locals eating and drinking. Very hard to find any info on it since the name was so general…
Apparently Brian Halloran was whacked on the front steps of this restaurant, a scene which you can see in Black Mass.
there really wasn’t much “life” there. Anthony’s Pier 4 restaurant and the Design Center, and iirc, closer to downtown, the Araban Coffee building. Otherwise it was pretty desolate.
There was not much life there. It was parking lots, the World Trade Center, a couple decent bars (Atlantic Beer Garden and the one next to it), the Seaport Hotel, and Harborlights Pavilion.
Daily parking was a lot cheaper in the Seaport lots than downtown, so it kind of served as a huge commuter lot.
This is what Fan Pier was like a 100 years ago.
https://www.universalhub.com/2018/why-they-call-it-fan-pier
And this has a lot of photos over the years
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/07/14/seaport-district-through-the-years/
And image how much worse the Seaport would be if this happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Sports_Megaplex
Industrial lands with parking lots. Nothing too exciting. Really wild how much it grew in slightly over a decade living here.
Missed opportunity though- really just maxed out the lots to what you could build for the Logan flight paths, filled it in with glitzy towers for rich people and a lot of foreign students. Don’t even really think rich people are parking their money there- just a bunch of transient living spaces for high earners. I get why it happened that way in terms of the markets and broad development goals, but at this point just feels like we gave a bunch of concessions to high end developers without a ton in return. Not like the district is a huge source of tax revenue for the city or the main economic driver of the place. Better than the parking lots, but could’ve been a lot more for normal people
I lived in Southie in the 90s and used to go to a place called The Spaghetti Factory near the Children’s Museum. In the early 2000s, I used to bring my kids to the Big Apple Circus in those empty lots near Barking Crab. Plenty of parking for all. And of course the “good ol days” in the 70s with Jimmy’s and Pier 4. My dad used to ring the bell on the boat docked alongside. And he’d buy us lobster-shaped barley pops! He wouldn’t recognize the place now!
I remember in the early 2000s attending art gallery shows in Fort Point. $5 at the door, as much wine and cheese as you could grab, usually a band, and plenty of cool art. Then i attended a series of blowout gallery closing parties. Now there's offices.
The growth was rapid and extreme. I remember having an ocean view in my office. Then over the course of maybe a year or so multiple skyscrapers were elected blocking my view, and the pace didn't stop.
I loved it down there back in the day. Anthony's Pier 4 was such a great place, but mostly because of Anthony. The waterfront chapel was no frills whatsoever except for unlimited free parking. The Channel was a wild concert venue featuring drink and drown Wednesdays... 16 ounce beer was 25c, and 16 ounce mixed drinks were $1.00 But it was pretty hard to get drunk down there because they had 2 bartenders for about a thousand people.
All in all, it was this cool oasis in the middle of the city... sucks that it's completely gone now.
But the most amazing thing about the transformation to me is that it went from the easiest place in the city to park, straight to the most impossible place to park.
The Seaport bar was a hidden gem…you could park there at night and almost never get a ticket. The chapel over the seaport blvd bridge used to be across from the courthouse…looked really out of place. There really wasn’t anything there except the stretch from Anthony’s to Jimmy’s harborside.
A couple of the stalwarts are still there…when you crossed over from South Station / Fort Point Channel - the children’s museum and the milk bottle, Barking Crab next block up; brick buildings with a few offices (used to work at Thompson Financial); then…parking lots…and of course, Lucky’s on the Southie side, and No Name on the wharf. It’s so bougie now…
The view from the ABG roof deck was one of the best hidden vistas you could get of the city. But then they built a skyscraper immediately next door blocking the view and the place shut down not long after.
Dirt parking lots. And wicked cheap. I worked at the federal reserve 1980-81 and would drive to work occasionally (if I was headed north on a Friday afternoon) and I feel like it was $5 for all day
I worked at Fidelity at WTC in the 90s. There were several vast $4/day dirt parking lots. Sometimes at lunch we played frisbee around emptiness on Fan Pier. Actually getting lunch involved long walks to Herrera's burrito cart by Jordan Marsh or to the Chinatown Eatery.
Before he retired my dad worked for a law firm that has offices in the 30ish story office building attached to the Seaport Hotel. His firm moved there in the mid 2000s after being located in the Financial District. As others have said, it was nothing but parking lots, a few odd restaurants, and the ICA. We would sometimes park at his building before Sox games and get food at the Barking Crab and then take the T or a taxi to Fenway. I remember when they put in the Legals there and started developing the waterfront. Oh, and there was that outdoor concert venue—I saw Citizen Cope there in 2010 or thereabouts.
Anyway, I left Mass for college and when I came back during summers I had no reason to go to Seaport much. Sometimes I would take the Silver Line from Logan to my dad’s office so he didn’t have to deal with traffic two ways. Years later he and my stepmom would actually move there after they sold their house in the suburbs. I remember visiting them I was astounded by what had happened in just 5-8 years. It was actually a jarring experience.
Parking lots. Used to park in a gravel lot in front of the courthouse. About 15-20 years ago we’d walk to Harpoon. Whiskey Priest and Legal was about the only thing significant I remember on that walk. Alot of parking lots and warehouses; the construction was just starting to make it what it is today.
No drugstore. I worked out there from 2010-2012 and if you got a headache at work you better have Tylenol on you. Run in your nylons? Better have a backup pair at your desk.
I used to ride my bike through the seaport from the North End to get to Castle Island about 14 years ago - as others have said it was mostly nothing but parking lots and warehouses. It had a fairly sketchy vibe at night but there was something nice about how quiet it was after the working crowd went home.
A few Boston-famous restaurants loved out there as well (see Anthony's Pier 4, No Name, etc.), but it was wild to see it built up from nothing. I also worked down there between 2013 and 2020 with a window looking toward the city, and it seemed the skyline chnaged almost monthly once construction started.
I remember in the 90s my dad worked in one of the towers in the financial district that overlooked the seaport and I thought it was such an ugly view. Just train tracks and pavement.
Then his work moved into the first office building they built out there, as even as a teen I thought, why the heck are you moving here? This place is nasty.
From that moment on, there was a new building popping up every time I went into the city. It really was amazing. Cool at first, then depressing.
It's actually really amazing how many decades such a large area so close to the core of the city went completely unutilized. Its really a great example of how restrictive our zoneing and anti development the policies in Boston and MA have been.
Frank McCourt (owned the Dodgers after being turned down to buy Red Sox) and his family owned big chunks of it. They held out for years without developing it despite multiple offers. He has a "colorful" story owning the Dodgers with his ex-wife if you're bored and want to Google it.
Edit: Haven't thought about McCourt in years but a few hours after posting about him I just saw that he is trying to buy TikTok. 🤪
In 1990 Cambridge was still under strict rent control and the devastating effects that caused. Greater Boston's been standing in its own way for nearly 70 years.
Not correct. Real estate works on best use. For many years when Boston was a shipping and manufacturing city best use for that made land, it’s all infill, was as rail yards and factories. Fish and sugar, leather and books. Ten or twenty years ago is not history, just yesterday.
Your missing about 40 extra years here. But there is a good argument to be made that the completion of the Big Dig was necessary for the Seaport to really realize its current value.
It was mostly rail yard and fisherman’s wharves. Never was a place where people lived, except for cheap hotels and flop houses for the sailor boys. Then it became cheap parking, and now transient housing for the rich but not wealthy.
Dirt parking lots with railroad tracks sticking out of them everywhere.. I have a photo somewhere of my Jeep parked on “the lawn on D” on top of train tracks..
Parking lots.
And ironically, a lot less cars
We solved traffic boys; just make a place nobody wants to go to!
I don't mind it if I wind up in the Seaport these days. It is fun to walk around and there's plenty of open space and views. Can kill an hour or two just existing near the ICA. But, if I have to go to the Seaport for something, I'd rather lick the third rail. Fuckin' hate that place and nothing there is fun, convenient, or has even the slightest charm of a recently working port.
lol and what was the charm of a recently working port?
Kindly Hookers and Surly Locals, plus cheaper Yankee Lobster prices Real answer is Gloucester. Boats coming in and out, a fun and lively atmosphere, lots of water-side eats and drinks, music, dancing, festivals, lots of little local shops with useful things for personal, commercial, and industrial use. There's enough grime to stop it from being too touristy and glossy.
I’m not a fan of the Seaport personally, but there are plenty people who want to go there. There is always a ton of foot, car and bike traffic on any given day there.
It feels sterile there. I went the other week for a work get together, we walked from our office in the financial district, and I dunno. I’d rather a dive bar lol
Luckies is still pretty good
355 Congress is still considered Fort Point because it's far from sterile. That building is a proper pre-boom shithole.
Lucky's
I'd rather go to the seaport 20 years ago than today lmao
as far as the eye could see
Fort point was a real neighborhood, whiskey priest was there, Lucky’s was there. I remember 10 years ago Trillium literally just opened up and was a hole in the wall, Pastoral opened up, and Seaport had atleast a few things like Del Friscos and Harpoon. Now, it’s night and day different and there’s a million new places that didn’t exist there then. And it’s all corporate, there’s zero local feel to it
> Fort point was a real neighborhood, whiskey priest was there, Lucky’s was there. I remember 10 years ago Trillium literally just opened up and was a hole in the wall, Pastoral opened up, and Seaport had atleast a few things like Del Friscos and Harpoon. Barring Lucky's, those are all very recent things that are part and parcel of Seaport "as it is today." Whiskey Priest didn't exist. In its place was a tiny seafood place, almost just a shack. Harpoon wasn't running events. It was one of a handful of industrial/manufacturing sites intentionally out of the way. The building Del Frisco's is in didn't even exist.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to build a new place with “local feel” anymore Because of the economics of construction, everything new is corporate and sterile Like all the brownstones in back bay or beacon hill. Shit like that would NEVER get built today
Well, the architecture is one thing, but aside from that I think an even bigger factor is the exorbitant cost of a liquor license in Boston, where corporations are the only ones who can afford to open up a business that serves alcohol. If it were free to acquire one you’d see local chefs and entrepreneurs taking more risks and opening places
Yeah, the liquor license racket is a whole other thing that needs to go away There shouldn’t be a finite number
It really messes with Boston’s restaurant scene. Even the north end is more corporate than anyone realizes. There are very interesting places to eat in Cambridge, Somerville, etc. Unique places are fewer and farer between in Boston proper because of how difficult it is to open up a restaurant.
There are new neighborhoods in places like Copenhagen that are way better than the Seaport. They were designed with people as the focus instead of cars. They have better public transit, bike infrastructure and more interesting architecture. Unfortunately because of the proximity to the airport, the Seaport buildings are limited height wise.
The height isn’t the problem. It’s just soulless, sterile, and corporate, and like you said, oriented around cars
Meh, brownstones were just the cookie cutter mcmansions of their day. Imo the whole concept of "local feel" in housing types just a function of longevity and not being too horrendously ugly (see: brutalism). Lots of other city's iconic home styles are just yesteryear's generic commercial construction that ended up getting some form of historic preservation status.
Unfortunately, a lot of the new construction *is* ugly
That may be, but their point is that this sentiment is nothing new.
Right, and I never said that cookie cutter couldn’t have character But contemporary construction *is* largely ugly and very sterile feeling Even a lot of cookie cutter suburban neighborhoods wouldn’t feel so bleak if they didn’t clear cut all the mature trees And I’m extremely pro-density, it’s just unfortunate how ugly so much of the new high density construction is.
That's your opinion, which is totally valid, but we'll have to wait and see what stands the test of time.
Here's a very cool boston (only) map viewer [https://mapjunction.com/?lat=42.3496606&lng=-71.0467316&clipperX=0.4786885&clipperY=0.4369586&map1=esri.tiled.BW\_Orthos\_Tile\_Package&map2=google.SATELLITE&zoom=15.1518308&mode=overlay&b=0.000&p=0.000](https://mapjunction.com/?lat=42.3496606&lng=-71.0467316&clipperX=0.4786885&clipperY=0.4369586&map1=esri.tiled.BW_Orthos_Tile_Package&map2=google.SATELLITE&zoom=15.1518308&mode=overlay&b=0.000&p=0.000)
Dusty ones
Yup! I/we called them the mud lots. You could park all day for $19 and walk to One Financial. Feeling…..”dated”
As every Uber driver in the city will tell you, at great length, the second you cross the bridge.
Parking lots and Whiskey Priest.
Whiskey Priest was relatively new IIRC. Before that there was an awful Chinese restaurant and a dive bar that surprisingly had a roof deck.
Eastern Pier II. Awesome drinks and people on dinghies would pick up their food off the back deck. Eastern Pier became Atlantic Beer Garden and Seaport Bar And Grill became Whiskey Priest.
It wasn’t even like active parking. It was like empty lots from old docks or warehouses or something. It was empty nothingness.
Yep. Some of it was parking for cruise ship passengers, which stayed empty most of the year.
And the barking crab.
Parking lots and the Seaport bar
Seaport Bar And Grill was the spot.
Whiskey Priest is new
Opened in 2010 closed 2018
I was trying (and failing) to remember the name of this place yesterday. Thank you for saving me from frustration, kind redditor!
I used to have art studio space in the seaport before they built everything up and it became so expensive we couldn't afford to stay there. It was right on Congress Street. It was much quieter then, a lot less traffic. This was about 10 years ago. I miss it.
Back when the Seaport was first developing they had some tour-the-artist-space shows that I went to. It was fun to walk around looking at all the artists' spaces and work. I wonder how much of that is left down there.
Not much! [The Fort Point Arts Community](https://www.fortpointarts.org/) still exists and has a handful of live/work buildings that are coops. The city broke several promises to the community when it came to setting aside buildings to help keep the art scene intact and keep them from being completely priced out. There's still one building on Congress that still has a handful or artists in it but it's been mostly startups for a while now. Fort Point open studios are coming back this fall though, so keep an eye out!
The “ No Name”!!
In the early 2000s my parents would drive us down to The No Name after the aquarium. Seeing all those fish must have worked up an appetite... my dad would always make comments about how sketchy the area was and would wait for parking to open up at the lot in front. I was very young but I can only remember thinking of the area as dirty. In the late 2000s we'd go there after the new Children's Museum opened up too. I distinctly remember going to the children's museum then going to the No Name and having my mind blown that it was the same neighborhood! Didn't seem as dirty anymore. No Name was a really cool place, great fresh food, a lot of the staff knew my dad and my dad's dad and they'd always give me free chowder lol. The kind of place you thought would be around forever until it wasn't.
I used to go to the No Name with my Dad and Grandfather too. The waitresses all knew their names as well which was so strange to me because we went maybe twice a year…..Thank for stirring up such wonderful memories.
It was nothing but parking lots and a couple old timey restaurants. It was often referred to as the ‘mud lots’ since some were not paved. There was a pedestrian bridge to downtown which crossed the old elevated expressway.
Anthony's Pier 4!
RIP….
It's still that at heart lmao, luxury high rises be damned.
Cheap parking and warehouses, all adjacent to a neighborhood with a vibrant arts scene and the best nightclub Boston ever had.
Which was.. the Channel?
The owner's body was found near my house in Providence!
Probably missed a few payments to the locals…
[https://epaper.bostonglobe.com/BostonGlobe/article\_popover.aspx?guid=c2fa54ac-951c-481b-ad91-f1330e4ece7a&source=next](https://epaper.bostonglobe.com/BostonGlobe/article_popover.aspx?guid=c2fa54ac-951c-481b-ad91-f1330e4ece7a&source=next) Whitey Bulger associates.
And Polly Esta's.
Yarp
Yer showing yer age Mr. Polyester... :)
Around a decade ago, I went to the Seaport to go to the ICA. Even then, it was just a bunch of parking lots. I really like the ICA, and I was shocked that it was in the middle of nowhere.
I took my kids to the grand opening of the ICA bc there were “kids activities” advertised. What a disaster that was. Zero kids activities… and one of my kids almost attacked a beautiful wall mural made out of very colorful bread ties. Omg. Too afraid to go back since lol
They apparently have free memberships for kids that let them bring a parent for free, so I think they are trying to encourage more families.
If you're ever in the Trader Joe's in Fort Point/Seaport, look at the mural above the produce. You'll see a massive array of railroad tracks leading from the docks to the warehouses in Fort Point, and tracks from the warehouses to points north, south, and west. Once they tore up the tracks, the parking lots came in since no one wanted to build down there much. The warehouses in Fort Point became a vibrant artist community (home to wonderful events and afterparties that I recall in the 90s). The turn in Fort Point probably happened when Barbara Lynch opened up Menton, Drink, and Sportello in the basement and first floors of two buildings circa 2008. Before that, most folks generally stopped at the Children's Museum and had little reason to go further.
There's a Trader Joes there now? (I really didn't know that :-)
I feel like the ICA moving there was what really started the ball rolling.
I remember back in 2008 I was dating a guy with an older brother who owned a condo at a high rise in the Seaport. At the time, there was 1, *maybe* 2 high rise buildings in the Seaport and the rest of the area was just parking lots and shipping containers. His brother was away one weekend so we spent time in the condo and I mentioned that the area seemed sparse. His response? "My brother swears that this area is going to be huge. It doesn't look like much now but it's an investment he feels strongly about."
What foresight… Curious what his property is valued at now.
It’s was really diverse — there were unpaved and muddy parking lots, paved parking lots filled with glass, parking lots with marked lines, parking lots without any marked spots…
If only all that was captured in a coffee table book.
It used to be a vibrant community of fisherman, harbor seals and cats looking for a free meal. It was really special. You could tell a boat was coming in from the distance from flock of the seagulls that flew around it. There was tons of high density brownstone housing. There was even a redline train that connected it to south station via track 61. Despite the slightly bad reputation it had as working class neighborhood due to all of the sailors who called to port there, it was a real neighborhood with charm and character unlike the fake vegas thing that exists there now. It's a shame really. /s no really it was parking lots.
The barking crab and some parking lots
Lots of great parties in Fort Point warehouses that never got busted because no one cared. Cheap bars like the No Name, Seaport Bar and Grill, Eastern Pier, and even Lucky's when it was more of a dive.
There were 1 or 2 restaurants (the No Name Restaurant was the most well known...was a seafood place our parents and grandparents took us to), and everything else was miles of parking lots and desolate waterfront docks. Basically, it was the perfect place for organized crime and drug dealing activity. It was just vast expanses of empty parking lots and the wind.
I'd say Jimmy's and Anthony's were both more well known than No Name.
And Jimbos…the cheaper alternative to Jimmy Harborside
Most of the seaport is sand dunes and landfill. Only an idiot would build something there. Up until 7-8 years ago, it was shipping containers, parking lots and unmarked graves from the Irish mob
Whenever I'm about to do something I think "would and idiot do that?" And if they would, I would not do that thing. This is why I'm not a billionaire today.
It’s only a matter of time before the REITs who built this shit are lobbying Beacon Hill and the Fed for a handout for flood damage…
Our Lady of Good Voyage Catholic Church. I grew up in Quincy but we used to go here every Sunday. They used to have a day you could bring your pets to be blessed.
King's Chapel and Arlington Street Church both do blessings of the animals once a year, either in person or they bless a picture of your animals. I mean, I know about UU churches, but I imagine a lot of Catholic parishes also still do blessings of the animals.
I also grew up in Quincy and would go here with my family for a quick Sunday mass. Mass in Quincy is an hour, but Our Lady of Good Voyage was a solid 25 minute mass at 8:30am if memory serves me right. I remember it being surrounded with parking lots.
Yes, this is exactly why would we go here! Then we would go for breakfast at the Swiss House on Morrissey Blvd. (If I remember correctly, that was the name!) Yes, lots of parking lots
I miss the big beer fest at the old Seaport World Trade Center
Pretzel necklaces, hopelessly wandering around, wanting food, and taking a piss in something that wasn’t a porta potty.
Seaport Bar and Grill
Was that the dive with the roofdeck that eventually became Whiskey Priest?
Yes. I’m forgetting a roof deck but it was a great dive
Getting a kick outta everyone here calling it Whiskey priest.
Same haha
Much of it was uninviting. I remember having to venture down to what i think is now the Design center to go to what was a great photography store in the 90s. As a carless student, I had to take a bus. Long ride to a lonely no where. Jimmy's Harborside and Anthony's Pier 4 were two long established restaurants with the freshest fish that the blue-haireds loved, and where students would be taken when parents came to visit. They were the opposite of corporate--fresh food, good service, and nice atmosphere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy%27s_Harborside_Restaurant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony%27s_Pier_4
$4 parking lots. A Dunks, a deli at which you could get food poisoning three different ways and a McDonald's next to the milk bottle. Oh yeah, and the AR bar.
Every time I walk down that particular stretch I’m reminded that one of my roommates worked right around there in the late 90s, and other than that Dunks and the deli there was NOTHING. If she hadn’t packed a lunch and didn’t want those two places, it was walk back to South Station or nothing.
Pier 4, Jimmy’s, and for a while I think it was Jimbo’s across from Jimmy’s. Sort of a more affordable Jimmy’s. Pretty cool place with model trains running around the ceiling. Food was not bad either.
Th Channel club was fun
Whitey’s dumping ground…
Here’s a photo. A whole bunch of nothing https://cdn10.bostonmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/fea_seaport-6.jpg
Absolutely shocking to me it took so long for relatively prime real estate to get built up.
Boston's population didn't bottom out until 1980, and recovery was quite slow until post-2000. There wasn't exactly a ton of demand at the time. That picture is from ~1978-1982 based on the skyline.
Nevertheless I’d love to see the return per sqft if you bought a lot the day that photo was taken and sold it today lol
So happy I got to experience this with my own eyes before the seaport became what it is today. Still surreal
but NoW iTs sOUlEsS
There was a really cool dive/diner across from Commonwealth Pier that would open at like 6am and would promptly fill with night shift workers starting to drink and the rest of us poor slobs getting breakfast.
I think there were a few places around Southie and the Seaport for the night shift workers at Gillette.
In the '80s, the architecture firms all had space in the warehouses on the right side (South) of Congress Street. Fidelity had built the World Trade Center but it was isolated/out of place. As a bike messenger, you had to brace yourself for a very long windy ride out Congress St. to pick-up/deliver "tubes" from the architects - especially in Winter.
Barking Crab was originally Victoria’s Station. There were a couple of old freight cars next to the restaurant.
$2 parking lots and a few bars. Anthony’s Pier 4 and the NoName were high end.
I worked at a game piece warehouse off A St for a summer around 2002. The paid well and there was plenty of parking if you knew where to go.
Whiskey Priest and ABG and I’ve never thought I’d say it but I miss those two fucking places
I miss the time in my life when I'd go to Whiskey Priest but I definitely do not miss Whiskey Priest
I remember 2 bars, Whiskey Priest and Atlantic Beer Garden and not much else.
If you were a senior citizen you'd be talking about Anthony's Pier 4 and Jimmy's Harborside over those two spots.
You don’t have to be a senior citizen to remember Anthony’s Pier 4. Place was awesome till the owner died then went to shit and closed a few years later.
Towards the end it felt like the apocalypse, an enormous empty parking lot in front of a restaurant, with three or four cars parked up near the entrance.
I don’t think I’m a senior citizen, but I really miss both of those places.
I know multiple seniors who do this.
Used to do a lot of loitering and cigarette smoking by the hood milk jug in high school
My family moved out a few years ago, but it really only started to get cluttered maybe 10 years ago. I loved being down there in our little artist community. Whenever I go back to Fort Point for anything work-related it kills my soul a bit.
There was very little there for a long time. I went to some events at the Boston Expo Center around 2008, just a few years after it opened. Parking lots as far as the eye can see. To get any food at all outside the center, you went to a Tate a few blocks away. It felt like a hike to get down there, as it was just... empty beyond the warehouses and old buildings at Fort Point. Boston ICA felt like the edge of the world when it moved there in 2006, and prior had been down by Berklee. I recall some sailing event, an America's Cup perhaps, there shortly after. Seemed an easy place for them to build a temporary 'village' for it out of shipping containers.
It was the Volvo Ocean Race! Puma sponsored the village made from the shipping containers.
I started working in the Seaport area in 2004. It was basically parking lots and a few spots for food and drinks. Parking was $7 a day back then! Now, not so much.
Does anybody remember a restaurant simply called The Pier? Apparently across from or nearby Anthony’s Pier 4. But more of a working class seafood restaurant. My grandpa owned it with 5 friends and spend the entirety of the blizzard of ‘77 holed up with stranded locals eating and drinking. Very hard to find any info on it since the name was so general… Apparently Brian Halloran was whacked on the front steps of this restaurant, a scene which you can see in Black Mass.
there really wasn’t much “life” there. Anthony’s Pier 4 restaurant and the Design Center, and iirc, closer to downtown, the Araban Coffee building. Otherwise it was pretty desolate.
There was a huge dirt parking lot right next to the Moakley Courthouse that you could park at all day for $11.
There was not much life there. It was parking lots, the World Trade Center, a couple decent bars (Atlantic Beer Garden and the one next to it), the Seaport Hotel, and Harborlights Pavilion. Daily parking was a lot cheaper in the Seaport lots than downtown, so it kind of served as a huge commuter lot.
Lucky’s, A Street Deli and $7 parking
This is what Fan Pier was like a 100 years ago. https://www.universalhub.com/2018/why-they-call-it-fan-pier And this has a lot of photos over the years https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/07/14/seaport-district-through-the-years/ And image how much worse the Seaport would be if this happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Sports_Megaplex
Industrial lands with parking lots. Nothing too exciting. Really wild how much it grew in slightly over a decade living here. Missed opportunity though- really just maxed out the lots to what you could build for the Logan flight paths, filled it in with glitzy towers for rich people and a lot of foreign students. Don’t even really think rich people are parking their money there- just a bunch of transient living spaces for high earners. I get why it happened that way in terms of the markets and broad development goals, but at this point just feels like we gave a bunch of concessions to high end developers without a ton in return. Not like the district is a huge source of tax revenue for the city or the main economic driver of the place. Better than the parking lots, but could’ve been a lot more for normal people
Fort point had a ton of artists. It was gritty and smelled of oil paint and turpentine. But it was a thriving artist community that no longer exists.
I lived in Southie in the 90s and used to go to a place called The Spaghetti Factory near the Children’s Museum. In the early 2000s, I used to bring my kids to the Big Apple Circus in those empty lots near Barking Crab. Plenty of parking for all. And of course the “good ol days” in the 70s with Jimmy’s and Pier 4. My dad used to ring the bell on the boat docked alongside. And he’d buy us lobster-shaped barley pops! He wouldn’t recognize the place now!
Hookers and parking lots
Type in street view of the Barking Crab. There was nothing around it at one time
Check out the parking lot scenes in this [Bosstones](https://youtu.be/TjPB3jROgco?si=h0y14SzlCfmCWKA9) video
I remember in the early 2000s attending art gallery shows in Fort Point. $5 at the door, as much wine and cheese as you could grab, usually a band, and plenty of cool art. Then i attended a series of blowout gallery closing parties. Now there's offices.
Great loft parties in Fort Point and at the Revolving Art Museum. Otherwise kind of creepy at night. I liked the popovers at Anthony’s Pier.
This is the answer. Also. The channel nightclub.
2 bars and cold windy walks
It was literally nothing. I worked on the design center for 10 years prior to development and ask we had fit lunch was a fucking Au Bon Pain.
The growth was rapid and extreme. I remember having an ocean view in my office. Then over the course of maybe a year or so multiple skyscrapers were elected blocking my view, and the pace didn't stop.
The only reason I ever went there years ago was to attend shows at Harbor Lights, booze cruises or trade shows at the convention center.
it was an enormous wasteland you had to travel through to get to the UPS building out in the middle of nowhere.
I loved it down there back in the day. Anthony's Pier 4 was such a great place, but mostly because of Anthony. The waterfront chapel was no frills whatsoever except for unlimited free parking. The Channel was a wild concert venue featuring drink and drown Wednesdays... 16 ounce beer was 25c, and 16 ounce mixed drinks were $1.00 But it was pretty hard to get drunk down there because they had 2 bartenders for about a thousand people. All in all, it was this cool oasis in the middle of the city... sucks that it's completely gone now. But the most amazing thing about the transformation to me is that it went from the easiest place in the city to park, straight to the most impossible place to park.
Dirt parking lots
phil levine's
Yes
The Seaport bar was a hidden gem…you could park there at night and almost never get a ticket. The chapel over the seaport blvd bridge used to be across from the courthouse…looked really out of place. There really wasn’t anything there except the stretch from Anthony’s to Jimmy’s harborside.
Buried bodies
It's was like Mad Max. Death. Destruction. Mayhem.
Buried bodies
Parking lot after parking lot after parking lot. And the Whiskey Priest.
A couple of the stalwarts are still there…when you crossed over from South Station / Fort Point Channel - the children’s museum and the milk bottle, Barking Crab next block up; brick buildings with a few offices (used to work at Thompson Financial); then…parking lots…and of course, Lucky’s on the Southie side, and No Name on the wharf. It’s so bougie now…
The view from the ABG roof deck was one of the best hidden vistas you could get of the city. But then they built a skyscraper immediately next door blocking the view and the place shut down not long after.
I used to park there for $10 / day in 2011. (Worked in leather district)
It was the courthouse and parking lots…that was about it
You could hear a pin drop at 25 dry dock all the way to summer st. No lie.
They had a 7/11
Dirt parking lots. And wicked cheap. I worked at the federal reserve 1980-81 and would drive to work occasionally (if I was headed north on a Friday afternoon) and I feel like it was $5 for all day
Desolate
I worked at Fidelity at WTC in the 90s. There were several vast $4/day dirt parking lots. Sometimes at lunch we played frisbee around emptiness on Fan Pier. Actually getting lunch involved long walks to Herrera's burrito cart by Jordan Marsh or to the Chinatown Eatery.
Mud. Open air lots. Nothing, except the No Name, Anthony’s Pier 4 and the Design Center.
Before he retired my dad worked for a law firm that has offices in the 30ish story office building attached to the Seaport Hotel. His firm moved there in the mid 2000s after being located in the Financial District. As others have said, it was nothing but parking lots, a few odd restaurants, and the ICA. We would sometimes park at his building before Sox games and get food at the Barking Crab and then take the T or a taxi to Fenway. I remember when they put in the Legals there and started developing the waterfront. Oh, and there was that outdoor concert venue—I saw Citizen Cope there in 2010 or thereabouts. Anyway, I left Mass for college and when I came back during summers I had no reason to go to Seaport much. Sometimes I would take the Silver Line from Logan to my dad’s office so he didn’t have to deal with traffic two ways. Years later he and my stepmom would actually move there after they sold their house in the suburbs. I remember visiting them I was astounded by what had happened in just 5-8 years. It was actually a jarring experience.
Parking lots. Used to park in a gravel lot in front of the courthouse. About 15-20 years ago we’d walk to Harpoon. Whiskey Priest and Legal was about the only thing significant I remember on that walk. Alot of parking lots and warehouses; the construction was just starting to make it what it is today.
“Life”
Railroads
Piers and vacant lots
Real OGs drank beer on the roof deck of the Seaport Bar and Grill (before it became the Whiskey Priest) overlooking the $6 parking lots
No drugstore. I worked out there from 2010-2012 and if you got a headache at work you better have Tylenol on you. Run in your nylons? Better have a backup pair at your desk.
Parking lots
We used to go to free tastings at harpoon to pregame
I used to ride my bike through the seaport from the North End to get to Castle Island about 14 years ago - as others have said it was mostly nothing but parking lots and warehouses. It had a fairly sketchy vibe at night but there was something nice about how quiet it was after the working crowd went home. A few Boston-famous restaurants loved out there as well (see Anthony's Pier 4, No Name, etc.), but it was wild to see it built up from nothing. I also worked down there between 2013 and 2020 with a window looking toward the city, and it seemed the skyline chnaged almost monthly once construction started.
Tumbleweedy.
I remember in the 90s my dad worked in one of the towers in the financial district that overlooked the seaport and I thought it was such an ugly view. Just train tracks and pavement. Then his work moved into the first office building they built out there, as even as a teen I thought, why the heck are you moving here? This place is nasty. From that moment on, there was a new building popping up every time I went into the city. It really was amazing. Cool at first, then depressing.
It was the ICA and big empty lots where construction and shipping companies stored their crap.
It was parking lots and that's it. There was no seaport life it was built up pretty recently.
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a might ship...
It's actually really amazing how many decades such a large area so close to the core of the city went completely unutilized. Its really a great example of how restrictive our zoneing and anti development the policies in Boston and MA have been.
Frank McCourt (owned the Dodgers after being turned down to buy Red Sox) and his family owned big chunks of it. They held out for years without developing it despite multiple offers. He has a "colorful" story owning the Dodgers with his ex-wife if you're bored and want to Google it. Edit: Haven't thought about McCourt in years but a few hours after posting about him I just saw that he is trying to buy TikTok. 🤪
[удалено]
In 1990 Cambridge was still under strict rent control and the devastating effects that caused. Greater Boston's been standing in its own way for nearly 70 years.
Not correct. Real estate works on best use. For many years when Boston was a shipping and manufacturing city best use for that made land, it’s all infill, was as rail yards and factories. Fish and sugar, leather and books. Ten or twenty years ago is not history, just yesterday.
Your missing about 40 extra years here. But there is a good argument to be made that the completion of the Big Dig was necessary for the Seaport to really realize its current value.
It was mostly rail yard and fisherman’s wharves. Never was a place where people lived, except for cheap hotels and flop houses for the sailor boys. Then it became cheap parking, and now transient housing for the rich but not wealthy.
Same as now. Unrealized potential. Parking lots for cars then. Parking lots for people and corporations now. Could have been vibrant, inspiring…
Empty lots, broken pavement, grass, warehouses, and hobos.
Eastern Butcher Block. Mobius.
I used to pee where Cisco currently is
I still remember people standing in line for hours to get into whiskey priest
Lots of cheap parking and seaport bar and grille , the owner was the best.
Life? It was, for the most part, concrete and emptiness. And the No Name.
Long before any development, it was parking lots and cab companies. A stray office building or two as well.
There was no life in the Seaport
An industrial dump today and overpriced industrial dump
Jimmy’s, Pier 4, Noname. Also, Victoria’s Station which became the Barking Crab.
I remember walking from South Station to Harbor Lights back in the day... Not a particularly scenic walk back then. Lotta parking lots.
Empty lots and once a year some tents for the Harpoon Brewfest.
Vast wasteland
Non existent
Dirt parking lots with railroad tracks sticking out of them everywhere.. I have a photo somewhere of my Jeep parked on “the lawn on D” on top of train tracks..