Temple Place Historic District

Temple Place is a one-block street in downtown Boston, just southeast of Boston Common, lined with fourteen small-scale commercial buildings of three to six stories. Greek Revival row houses from the 1830s recall its early years as one of the city's most prestigious residential addresses, home to the merchant Thomas Handasyd Perkins. After the 1860s the street turned to commerce and became known for shops serving women, and Mansard-style granite buildings from 1865 to 1870 reflect that shift. Three of them are rare surviving pre-fire works by architect Nathaniel J. Bradlee. Early twentieth-century buildings add Beaux Arts, Italian Renaissance, Federal Revival and pier-and-spandrel designs. Because the street escaped the Great Fire of 1872 and has seen little new development in the last fifty years, it keeps the scale of a mid-nineteenth-century commercial street. It was recognized for its architecture and its role in the growth of Boston's central business district.