Newbury Street

 Newbury Street is located in the Back Bay area of Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. It runs roughly east–west, from the Boston Public Garden to Brookline Avenue. The road crosses many major arteries along its path, with an entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike westbound at Massachusetts Avenue. Newbury Street is a destination known for its many retail shops and restaurants.

East of Massachusetts Avenue, Newbury Street is a mile-long street lined with historic 19th-century brownstones that contain hundreds of shops and restaurants, making it a popular destination for tourists and locals. Most of the "high-end boutiques" are located near the Boston Public Garden end of Newbury Street. As the address numbers climb, the shops become slightly less expensive and more bohemian up to Massachusetts Avenue. West of Massachusetts Avenue, the street borders the Massachusetts Turnpike on its unbuilt southern side, while the northern side is reserved mainly for parking and rear service entrances for buildings on Commonwealth Avenue. Newbury Street is interrupted by the Muddy River and Charlesgate Park. It then continues to border the Massachusetts Turnpike on its southern side until it meets Brookline Avenue. The shopping center might be able to expand as a result of a significant project that is being considered for decking over the Massachusetts Turnpike to the west of Massachusetts Avenue.

Newbury Street has a mix of shops and eateries. Its renovated brownstone buildings feature coffee shops, cafes, and restaurants, with stores at all retail levels. However, due to the concentration of up-scale stores at its lower end, it's known as one of the most expensive streets in the world.

Donlyn Lyndon, the Eva Li Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley, writes that west of Clarendon Street,

Newbury Street develops its own very distinctive and appealing character and becomes one of the nicest shopping streets in Boston, or anywhere. Renovated town houses with large glass bays on the ground floor produce a delightful urban landscape.... Owners and tenants... have further animated the street by using the 25-foot (7.6 m) space between the building and the sidewalk for various purposes. Some areas are paved and used for displays or sidewalk sales. Others have thick planting... Some lots have stairs up and down to shops and galleries; others have show windows and display cases for flowers or fashions or other items for sale. But each contributes something extra, and together they make these blocks of Newbury Street genuinely attractive.

Newbury Street's name celebrates the victory of the Puritans in the 1643 Battle of Newbury in the English Civil War. Newbury Street was one of the earliest roads in Boston, its portion was renamed Washington Street by the end of the 18th century. The current road was created during the filling in of Back Bay in the mid-19th century.

The 1893 edition of Baedeker's United States catalogs Boston's "finest residence streets" as Commonwealth Avenue, Beacon Street, Marlborough Street, Newbury Street, and Mt. Vernon Street. William J. Geddis, however, notes that it was "the least fashionable Street in Back Bay."

Owen Wister's novel, Philosophy 4, set in the 1870s, mentions Newbury Street:

When you saw seated in a car bound for Park Square, you knew he was going into Boston, where he would read manuscript essays on Botticelli or Pico della Mirandola, or manuscript translations of Armenian folksongs; read these to ecstatic, dim-eyed ladies in Newbury Street, who would pour him cups of tea when it was over, and speak of his earnestness after he was gone. It did not do the ladies any harm; but I am not sure that it was the best thing for Oscar.

The first commercial establishments opened around 1905. By the late 1920s, lower Newbury Street had begun to establish itself as a destination for well-heeled society. With the establishment of Boston's Junior League in 1907, formal dances became very fashionable, and elegant apparel shops prospered. By 1911, 24 Newbury St. featured a salon for lessons in "social and aesthetic dance. As more retailers moved in, many lower floor shops began to feature wide glass windows to exhibit luxury goods. In the late 1950s, fashionable boutiques included Darée, Charles Sumner, Miss Harvey (at #32), furriers and Joseph Antell. One of Newbury's oldest and most established retailers is the Brooks Brothers department store which occupies its original quarters at the corner of Berkeley St.

Here is a local Business that supports the community 

 

Google Map- 

 

361 Newbury St., Floor 4, Boston, MA 02115

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