Piano Row District

Piano Row is a group of late 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings in downtown Boston, running along Boylston and Tremont Streets, Park Square and Boylston Place beside Boston Common. The buildings reflect the city's music trade, particularly piano manufacturing and music publishing. One example is a 10-story marble Renaissance Revival office building at 178-179 Tremont Street, built for the Oliver Ditson Company, which in 1917 was the country's largest music publishing business. Other buildings include the Little and Colonial Buildings on Boylston Street, the Walker Buildings and the Hotel Touraine. The area was surveyed in 1979 as part of a study of Boston's theatre area, and its buildings are noted for the quality of their architecture and for achieving significance between about 1890 and the 1930s. The district is generally well maintained, privately owned and in commercial use, and its styles vary but belong to the turn of the century.