Hotel Touraine

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: 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] and Henry Bradford Endicott.[14] Events included an exhibition in the 1960s of the Boston Negro Artists Association,[15] and performances by the "Theater Company of Boston."[16] The hotel closed in 1966 and became an apartment building.[17][18]

Images
  • Detail of 1890s map of Boston, showing Hotel Touraine
    Detail of 1890s map of Boston, showing Hotel Touraine
  • The hotel's fleet of chauffeured cars, 1906
    The hotel's fleet of chauffeured cars, 1906
  • Hotel library, ca.1910
    Hotel library, ca.1910
  • Hotel Touraine (at right), Masonic Temple (at left), 1903
    Hotel Touraine (at right), Masonic Temple (at left), 1903
  • Former Hotel Touraine (at right), Masonic Temple (at left), 2010
    Former Hotel Touraine (at right), Masonic Temple (at left), 2010

References
  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. "Shoe and Leather Reporter". 137. Shoe and Leather Reporter Company. 1920: 50–52. Retrieved April 27, 2015. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  15. Boston Negro Artists Association later became the "Boston Afro-American Artists." Boston Globe, 24 July 1988
  16. Boston Globe, 18 Apr 1980
  17. "Ask the Globe." Boston Globe, 27 Mar 1988
  18. Boston Redevelopment Authority. (1990), Hinge Block Plan, OL 23303435M
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