It must be time for … Torn Down Tuesday! Today’s feature is a two-story garage that once stood at 71 Amherst Street.
Completed in 1909 for Fred Smith, the utilitarian structure was built of poured-in-place reinforced concrete. The design included a long span for the upper floor combined with a low-pitched roof carried by metal trusses. The building was set at an oblique angle to the street, and the second floor was reached by a concrete ramp leading up to a door large enough to admit automobiles and trucks.
The building was later occupied by the Daggett Chocolate Company, which commissioned an addition in 1947. When this addition was demolished in 1981, much of the original design was again visible. The building was purchased from the Daggett Trust by MIT in 1961 and renamed Building E20. In 1972-73 the first floor was reconfigured by the architect Bernard Awtry to accommodate the institute’s newly established Department of Psychology. By that time the industrial sash bays had been largely filled in by concrete block panels pierced by small punched windows.
The Frederick Smith Garage at 71 Amherst Street was of a typical, but relatively minor, use in the newly developed Cambridge riverfront lands. As the automobile became popular in the first decade of the 20th century, residents of the densely settled areas of Boston’s Beacon Hill and Back Bay needed storage and service facilities that could not be provided in their neighborhoods. Just as Bostonian’s stored their household goods at the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse on Massachusetts Avenue, so they brought their automobiles to be serviced in the Cambridge garages of Mr. Smith and others.
This building and 79 Amherst Street (Building E10) were demolished in 2000 and replaced by an addition to the neighboring MIT Media Lab.
Sources:
CHC demolition memo, cases D-811 and D-812
MIT report: Proposed Demolition of Buildings E10 and E20