Saving the World of Dainty Dot

By Jane Holtz Kay

In the days since downtown, was everybody's town, and a tribe of name stores carried the flagship of Jordan's or Filene's retail nexus in Boston, towers have come to mark the sense of place and space in the city for some. And, yet, a legion of city dwellers and good-wishers for the handsome garment building and, indeed, for urban life and a walkable city invigorating its citizens, the building and its companion architecture still resonates with those who practiced their trade, and those who have retired from the district.

For me, Dainty Dot was not only the garment district's delight and my aunt and uncle's working post, but the structure that centered the textile industry that no longer exists in all its plentitude, and historic status. Under the name, or calling, of Wholesalers or Jobbers, its workers represented manufacturers selling to the smaller retailers. Posted nearby the giant department stores, the chain of retail links kept the city thriving as Gilchrest's, Filene's, Jordan's and R.H. Stern's drew the crowds to shop. Within the building serving a genial, chatty lot of wholesale merchants, the chatty lot, including my uncle and aunt, dispensed their goods, while, nearby, the sparkling Christmas windows and displays of Filene's, Jordan's, and others drew children (as they say) of all ages to the city's center.

More than nostalgia was involved in maintaining these much-used and now, once again, appreciated structures. Their lineage is carved on the faces of the buildings by major architects and their facades and civil height still draws visitors to the restaurants now experiencing an off and on again revival. Whether post-baseball game visitors or everyday meanderers, the still compact, and extended streets cull crowds and, indeed, could one day enliven the longer facades along Washington Street and reinforce the lingering feelings for this appealing memory lane.

As Shirley Kressel and others have pointed out, the irony of the once-charmed small scale, downtown Chinatown buildings--in danger of falling before such replacements as the planned 300' glass tower destined to loom over its smaller brethren--is distressing to many, and, worse still, likely to ravage the human scale and sense of the walker's pace still experienced there. Under the mane of the Auchmuty Building (1888-89, Winslow and Wetherill, architects), the Dainty Dot building has, at last, earned praise and now seeks a dubious place in current history as one of the Ten Most Endangered Historic Resources List for the Commonwealth by Historic Massachusetts, Inc.

The only justification yet offered by the developer was the justification from a suspect Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) member who told him to build to 300 feet in this 100 zone, as a transition. Transition! A strange word indeed. And as this five by five foot pedestrian reflects, a less than entrancing structure, for the average walker who would travel beneath the would-be edifice. Not only that but, at once, a ludicrous and deceptive addition whose impact would mar the intimacy of the street and threaten those now regenerating the older pedestrian-friendly buildings circling it, as speculators accelerate the pace of rising rents and threatened properties.

At the time I wrote Lost Boston, some 20 years ago, with its reminiscence of bygone buildings, friends would point to said vintage buildings and say "this can't be in your next book." Happily, enough, a sequel was never written, and, indeed, more positively, and, hopefully, it need not be if the citizens who enjoy its intimacy and walkability protect their past and their future by shepherding this piece of the cityscape and its companions to reinforce its historic future.

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