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Hotel Touraine

Coordinates: 42°21′8.44″N 71°3′51.91″W / 42.3523444°N 71.0644194°W / 42.3523444; -71.0644194
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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][19]

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References

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  1. ^ U.S. Dept. of the Interior. National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form: Boston Theatre Multiple Resource Area. 1980. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000273_text
  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. ^ About the farm: an illustrated description of the New Boston Dairy and other industries at Valley View, Muzzey, and Hutchinson farms, which are a part of the supply department of Young's Hotel, Parker House, and Hotel Touraine. Boston: Printed for J. R. Whipple Company, 1910
  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". 137. Shoe and Leather Reporter Company. 1920: 50–52. Retrieved April 27, 2015. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  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
  19. ^ Boston Redevelopment Authority. (1990), Hinge Block Plan, OL 23303435M
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42°21′8.44″N 71°3′51.91″W / 42.3523444°N 71.0644194°W / 42.3523444; -71.0644194