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Description
Pier 4, since the death of industry in Boston, has been a quiet and tranquil place, a sort of cemetary for the memories of the city's past. It was left nearly deserted, with its original inhabitants, the many gauges of railroad track once making up a thriving grid of industrial steam power, and the rusting but structually sound hulls of old ships and barges that once used to make up a colorful shipping trade, left standing to watch over their once grand waterfront. Furthermore, because of the lack of business here, cars were up until 2013 seldom ever seen here. In the middle of Boston, one could seek solace and the lapping of waves among a beautiful industrial setting. Quite a rare experience, one that, if Boston itself, the city of bad form and ugly people, had anything to say about it, had to go.

2013 marked a terrible spur in large corporate developer interest in the pier 4 and waterfront area, one that is now set to ruin the only piece of boston left that is truly worth while. In a clear move showing once again how Boston despises it's own living history, the waterfront is now set to have every square inch of itself coated in hideous glass-box minimalist architecture and concrete decking to cover up the beautiful sand lots full of railroad tracks. Even the old wooden pilings along the dockside will be pulled up. This city continues to find way to keep people like me appalled.

What is even worse than that is that in this madness, Boston lost a historical icon this year. Anthony's pier 4 resturant, a sublime and beautiful place, with ties to the old Italian mafia, that has been feeding the ungrateful, horrid mouths of the city's residents for sixty years, has fallen victim to the development craze. The resturant inhabits a beautiful building jammed up against the end of the fourth pier, once inhabited by an industrial gas company and it's own 2 foot 6 inch gauge railway system. The resturant even, up until last year, owned and cared for the last remaining steam locomotive of this system, BAP Gas Co. No. L7, later known as 25. The pier also once cared for a single-stacked steamship, "Peter Stuyyesant" tugster.files.wordpress.com/20… Who due to lack of general care, sank at her moorings with the blizzard of 1973. static.panoramio.com/photos/la…

Anthony himself was a collector and enthusiast after my own heart. Not only did the resturant play host to two steam traction engines and the steam locomotive mentioned before, but it was a haven to all cast off marine machinery, anything from binnacles to engine telegraphs to the world's finest mariner's lanterns, and even eclectic and far off things such as British Railways tail-lamps and Germany semaphore lanterns could be found here in great numbers. Anthony had an excellent eye for Apparatus which we apparently both keenly shared, until his untimely recent death.

Because of this, even after industry faded from the city of boston, there has never been a time on pier four without the presence of the old machinery, the presence of steam engines, the formidable yet inspiring forms of windlasses and great gears upon iron shafting, the subtle and sublime glow of kerosene behind colored fresnel glass, or the ring of engine telegraph. until now.

For the first time since it's pilings were driven, the fourth pier of Boston will be devoid of life and echo of these golden machinery-times, and be utterly obscured under the idiotic unwavering hand of what some call progress. Gone forever will be its shipping heritage, no more will the hoot and hiss of steam be heard, and the warm glow of kerosene will be replaced by the cold hospital haze of LED and flourescent tube. Boston will continue to fade into modern metropolitan mediocrity, and leave people such as I in absolute disgust.

So, we decided, to mark this horrible occasion, to light the last lamps on pier four. We sidled down past the abominable Institute of Contemporary Art and its leering visitors and staff to the ghostly empty form of Anthony's, and lit up my largest kerosene lamp, a Dutch Masthead fixture, bringing warmth and life one last time to this beautiful old vanishing pier.

I am posting these photos as an essay of dissapearing Boston. THis year marks a tragic year in Boston's history, in which the city has quite truly and utterly lost it's fucking mind. This year will be the year we lose Scollay Square station, the year we lose Pier 4, and the entire quiet industrial southern waterfront.

Description
Pier 4, since the death of industry in Boston, has been a quiet and tranquil place, a sort of cemetary for the memories of the city's past. It was left nearly deserted, with its original inhabitants, the many gauges of railroad track once making up a thriving grid of industrial steam power, and the rusting but structually sound hulls of old ships and barges that once used to make up a colorful shipping trade, left standing to watch over their once grand waterfront. Furthermore, because of the lack of business here, cars were up until 2013 seldom ever seen here. In the middle of Boston, one could seek solace and the lapping of waves among a beautiful industrial setting. Quite a rare experience, one that, if Boston itself, the city of bad form and ugly people, had anything to say about it, had to go.

2013 marked a terrible spur in large corporate developer interest in the pier 4 and waterfront area, one that is now set to ruin the only piece of boston left that is truly worth while. In a clear move showing once again how Boston despises it's own living history, the waterfront is now set to have every square inch of itself coated in hideous glass-box minimalist architecture and concrete decking to cover up the beautiful sand lots full of railroad tracks. Even the old wooden pilings along the dockside will be pulled up. This city continues to find way to keep people like me appalled.

What is even worse than that is that in this madness, Boston lost a historical icon this year. Anthony's pier 4 resturant, a sublime and beautiful place, with ties to the old Italian mafia, that has been feeding the ungrateful, horrid mouths of the city's residents for sixty years, has fallen victim to the development craze. The resturant inhabits a beautiful building jammed up against the end of the fourth pier, once inhabited by an industrial gas company and it's own 2 foot 6 inch gauge railway system. The resturant even, up until last year, owned and cared for the last remaining steam locomotive of this system, BAP Gas Co. No. L7, later known as 25. The pier also once cared for a single-stacked steamship, "Peter Stuyyesant" tugster.files.wordpress.com/20… Who due to lack of general care, sank at her moorings with the blizzard of 1973. static.panoramio.com/photos/la…

Anthony himself was a collector and enthusiast after my own heart. Not only did the resturant play host to two steam traction engines and the steam locomotive mentioned before, but it was a haven to all cast off marine machinery, anything from binnacles to engine telegraphs to the world's finest mariner's lanterns, and even eclectic and far off things such as British Railways tail-lamps and Germany semaphore lanterns could be found here in great numbers. Anthony had an excellent eye for Apparatus which we apparently both keenly shared, until his untimely recent death.

Because of this, even after industry faded from the city of boston, there has never been a time on pier four without the presence of the old machinery, the presence of steam engines, the formidable yet inspiring forms of windlasses and great gears upon iron shafting, the subtle and sublime glow of kerosene behind colored fresnel glass, or the ring of engine telegraph. until now.

For the first time since it's pilings were driven, the fourth pier of Boston will be devoid of life and echo of these golden machinery-times, and be utterly obscured under the idiotic unwavering hand of what some call progress. Gone forever will be its shipping heritage, no more will the hoot and hiss of steam be heard, and the warm glow of kerosene will be replaced by the cold hospital haze of LED and flourescent tube. Boston will continue to fade into modern metropolitan mediocrity, and leave people such as I in absolute disgust.

So, we decided, to mark this horrible occasion, to light the last lamps on pier four. We sidled down past the abominable Institute of Contemporary Art and its leering visitors and staff to the ghostly empty form of Anthony's, and lit up my largest kerosene lamp, a Dutch Masthead fixture, bringing warmth and life one last time to this beautiful old vanishing pier.

I am posting these photos as an essay of dissapearing Boston. THis year marks a tragic year in Boston's history, in which the city has quite truly and utterly lost it's fucking mind. This year will be the year we lose Scollay Square station, the year we lose Pier 4, and the entire quiet industrial southern waterfront.