Bulfinch Triangle Historic District

Set opposite North Station in downtown Boston, this seven-acre district preserves the western half of a triangular street plan drawn up by Charles Bulfinch in 1804. The land was once a tidal cove and mill pond, filled beginning in 1807 with earth taken from nearby hills. Railroad depots near Causeway Street drew hotels, stables and, by the 1870s, a concentration of furniture makers and showrooms. Most of the fifty-nine structures are five- and six-story masonry commercial buildings from the 1870s to 1915. They include the Second Empire Paine Furniture Company Building of 1871 by Gridley J. F. Bryant, the Romanesque Revival Peter Brigham Building, the Lockhart Building of 1887, and Beaux Arts blocks by Stephen Codman. Later transit and highway construction isolated the area and helped protect its character. Losses have mainly been to parking lots, and alterations to surviving buildings are mostly limited to storefronts. The district was listed for its architecture, its furniture-trade history and its Bulfinch street plan.