Hotel Touraine Explained

Hotel Touraine (1897-1966) in Boston, Massachusetts, was a residential hotel on the corner of Tremont Street and Boylston Street, near the Boston Common. The architecture firm of Winslow and Wetherell designed the 11-story building in the Jacobethan style, constructed of "brick and limestone;"^[1] its "baronial" appearance was "patterned inside and out after a 16th-century chateau of the dukes of Touraine."^[2] It had dining rooms and a circulating library.^{[3] [4]} Owners included Joseph Reed Whipple and George A. Turain.^{[5] [6]}

Directly across the street were the clandestine district headquarters of the Boston Communist Party mentioned in Herbert Philbrick's 1952 book "I Led 3 Lives".

Among the guests: explorer Ernest Shackleton, boxer Max Baer, actor Stanley Bell,^[7] Diamond Jim Brady,^[8] George Gershwin,^[9] Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow,^[10] Pietro Mascagni,^[11] Mitch Miller,^[12] Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,^[13] railroad builder and operator Sir William Cornelius Van Horne,^[14] and Henry Bradford Endicott.^[15] Events included an exhibition in the 1960s of the Boston Negro Artists Association,^[16] and performances by the "Theater Company of Boston."^[17] The hotel closed in 1966 and became an apartment building.^[18]

External links

• Bostonian Society:
  • Photo of construction projects at the corner of Boylston and Tremont Streets, 1896
  • Photo of construction of Hotel Touraine, Tremont and Boylston Streets, 1897
• Boston Public Library. Max Baer looks thoughtful in his room at the Hotel Touraine, photo, 1935

42.3523°N -71.0644°W

Notes and References

1. U.S. Dept. of the Interior. National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form: Boston Theatre Multiple Resource Area. 1980.
2. Kenney, Michael. "The secret city." Boston Globe, 24 Jan 1998
3. Manuel D. Lopez. "Books and Beds: Libraries in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Hotels." Journal of Library History (1974-1987), Vol. 9, No. 3 (Jul., 1974)
4. Joseph Winfred Spenceley. A descriptive checklist of the etched & engraved book-plates. Boston: Troutsdale Press, 1905
5. https://books.google.com/books?id=GDIwAAAAYAAJ About the farm
6. Boston Globe, 16 May 1987
7. Boston Globe, 03 Aug 2003
8. "Ask the Globe." Boston Globe, 11 Sep 1996
9. Boston Globe, 16 June 1996
10. Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow. American Art News, Vol. 20, No. 8 (Dec. 3, 1921), p. 6
11. Advertisement for Simplex Piano Player in: Success (magazine), v.6, no.104, 1903
12. Dyer, Richard. "Why it's still fun to sing along with Mitch Miller." Boston Globe, 16 June 1996
13. Letter to Harold J. Laski, June 14, 1922
14. Walter Vaughan, The Life and Work of Sir William Van Horne (New York: The Century Co., 1920), p. 273.
15. Shoe and Leather Reporter. 50–52. 137 . Shoe and Leather Reporter Company. 1920 . April 27, 2015.
16. Boston Negro Artists Association later became the "Boston Afro-American Artists." Boston Globe, 24 July 1988
17. Boston Globe, 18 Apr 1980
18. "Ask the Globe." Boston Globe, 27 Mar 1988