Boston pictures

12/28/03

Pictures from around Boston

Welcome! Below are a few pictures of the beautiful city in which we live [map]. Scroll down for a mini-tour. (Thanks to Ian Hsu for a few of these pictures. The rest were taken by Lin or Jo.)

This is a view of downtown Boston looking east from the Prudential building skywalk [map]. The tall building is the John Hancock building; the small green section to left of the Hancock is Copley Square, and the larger green section farther back is the Boston Public Garden and the Boston Common. (All of the aerial pictures were taken from the Prudential building.)

Here's a panoramic of the downtown area with the Charles River on the left (scroll right for more).

A closer picture of the Boston Public Garden and the Boston Common, with the financial district in the background. You can see our church, Park Street--it is the brick church with the white spire about mid-way up the picture slightly right of center. Note also the Commonwealth Ave. mall running west away from the Garden.

Copley Square in the Back Bay. The church is Trinity Church, and the building to the right of it is the Hancock tower. This is also where the finish line is for the Boston Marathon.

This is the section of Boston called the Back Bay, where we live [map]. You can see the house in which we live where the blue arrow is pointing. The Harvard bridge crosses over into Cambridge, on the other side of the Charles River. The Back Bay used to be a big bay/marsh until it was filled in and developed in the 19th century. It is the one of two sections of downtown Boston that is laid out like a grid (the South End is the other section); the rest of Boston is quite random road-wise.

This is the same section of town, just during the winter! The difference is striking.

Fenway Park, home to the not-so-successful Red Sox (this year, baby!).

The State House, the seat of the government of Massachusetts. It sits right on the edge of the Boston Common, which is in the foreground.

Park Street Church, also on the edge of the Boston Common.

The Prudential building (left), the second highest building in Boston, also in the Back Bay.

Boston is a really green city, with lots of parks and water. This is a view of the Swan Pond in the Boston Public Garden.

A statue of George Washington on the edge of the Boston Public Garden, facing east.

The Frog Pond in the Boston Common.

During the winter, the Frog Pond makes a nice skating area.

The Commonwealth Ave. mall, which runs through the Back Bay westward from the Boston Garden [map].

A lot of interesting houses line Commonwealth Avenue.

Marlborough St., just outside our house [map].

A very intriguing five-story high mural by DuBarry in the Back Bay on Newbury St. It has lots of famous historic Bostonians painted in it, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, JFK, Babe Ruth, Bette Davis, Anne Whitney and Isabella Stewart Gardner. The mural's banner (running side-ways down the middle) says "Laissez chaque homme exercer l'art qu'il connait," or "Let every man practice the art he knows."