Things Past

Next week the Boston Redevelopment Authority will begin demolition of an historic row of bookshops along Cornhill in downtown Boston. The Oldest extant book store in America, browsing ground of Emerson, the elder Homes, and Whittier, will yield to a new Government Center. And while a few citizens struggle to maintain some evidences of the past, the rest of Boston stands idly by.

Again, after a fire this summer, the neglected Howard Athenaeum in Scollay Square fell before the encroachments of the same Government Center. Known to its loyal Harvard patrons as the Old Howard, the theater was closed in 1953 for unpaid back taxes. The Howard stage, largest in Boston, had seen the graces of Gypsy Rose Lee, "Buffalo Bill" Cody, and John Wilkes Booth. During more than a century, it was used for religious revivals, legitimate theater, vaudeville, burlesque--even as a factory. When the end of the Howard was too close to be averted, the Howard National Theater and Museum Committee sprang up to preserve it. The Committee said the Howard could be renovated, and, converted into a museum and restaurant, made self-sustaining.

The Howard is gone and the book shop row will go.

These losses should serve as propaedeutic. To let such precious landmarks slip away unheeded would seem a sad mistake; Boston, proud of her past, might look again before she shoves what remains of it into seeling night.