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Leather District

Field	Value
name	Leather District
nrhp_type	hd
nocat	yes
image	Leather District.JPG
caption	Corner of South Street & Beach Street
location	Boston, MA
built	1883
architect	Multiple
architecture	Classical Revival, Romanesque
added	December 21, 1983
refnum	83004098

The Leather District is a neighborhood of Boston near South Street, between the Financial District and Chinatown. The Leather District (occasionally referred to as the "LD") is a tightly defined area bounded by Kneeland Street to the south, Essex Street to the north, Atlantic Avenue to the east and Lincoln Street to the west. It is so named due to the dominance of the leather industry in the late 19th century.

History

The district did not exist until Boston's land-making expansions filled in the former South Cove during the 1830s, making way for the development of this area as well as Chinatown. It was at first developed as a residential area, but became the center of the city's leather industry after the Great Boston Fire of 1872, which devastated the city's business district and led to the introduction of stringent commercial fire codes. The buildings constructed in this district between the 1880s and 1920 reflect these constraints, and the needs of the leather manufacturers to efficiently use their spaces. Ground floors were designed to showcase merchandise, and the second floors housed offices. Upper floors were used for storage, the top floors being reserved for the slowest-moving merchandise.

Many of the buildings were designed by architects, notably including Peabody and Stearns and Willard T. Sears, with a significant influence of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. The district is the most homogeneous 19th-century commercial district in the city, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

References

{{NRISref. 2007a
"NRHP nomination for Leather District". Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

neighborhoods-in-boston national-register-of-historic-places-in-boston historic-districts-in-suffolk-county,-massachusetts historic-districts-on-the-national-register-of-historic-places-in-massachusetts leather-industry

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