Background
Kay, Jane Holtz was born on July 7, 1938 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
(At once a fascinating narrative and a visual delight, Los...)
At once a fascinating narrative and a visual delight, Lost Boston brings the city's past to life. This updated edition includes a new section illustrating the latest gains and losses in the struggle to preserve Boston 's architectural heritage. With an engaging text and more than 350 seldom-seen photographs and prints, Lost Boston offers a chance to see the city as it once was, revealing architectural gems lost long ago. An eminently readable history of the city's physical development, the book also makes an eloquent appeal for its preservation. Jane Holtz Kay traces the evolution of Boston from the barren, swampy peninsula of colonial times to the booming metropolis of today. In the process, she creates a family album for the city, infusing the text with the flavor and energy that makes Boston distinct. Amid the grand landmarks she finds the telling details of city life: the neon signs, bygone amusement parks, storefronts, and windows plastered with images of campaigning politicians-sights common in their time but even more meaningful in their absence today. Kay also brings to life the people who created Boston-architects like Charles Bulfinch and H. H. Richardson, landscape architect and master park-maker Frederick Law Olmsted, and such colorful political figures as Mayors John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald and James Michael Curley. The new epilogue brings Boston's story to the end of the twentieth century, showing elements of the city's architecture that were lost in recent years as well as those that were saved and others threatened as the city continues to evolve.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558495274/?tag=2022091-20
Kay, Jane Holtz was born on July 7, 1938 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
After graduating from Buckingham School, she studied at Radcliffe College, majoring in American history.
A columnist for The Nation, The Boston Globe and The New York Times, she authored three books on the conservation of natural and urban environments, most notably Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take lieutenant Back. In 1960, she wrote her senior thesis on the historian and urban critic Lewis Mumford. His writings became a big influence on hers, and she visited him several times in the following decades.
Kay began her career in journalism as a reporter for The Patriot Ledger, based in Quincy, Massachusetts, but later worked primarily as a freelance writer and author
Kay wrote columns for The Nation and The Boston Globe, and contributed several articles to the The New York Times "design notebook" column. Her first book, Lost Boston, was published in 1980.
lieutenant portrays buildings in Boston which had been demolished to build malls, roads or parking spaces. lieutenant was followed by Preserving New England (1986), which she had written with Pauline Chase Harrell.
Her most influential book, however, is Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take lieutenant Back, a critique of the car"s dominance on American culture published in 1997.
In 1991, Kay had sold her car and moved to the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. Jane Holtz Kay died November 4, 2012 at the Springhouse Senior Community in Jamaica Plain, aged 74, from Alzheimer"s disease.
(At once a fascinating narrative and a visual delight, Los...)
Former town meeting member, Brookline, Massachusetts. Member of National & International Writers Union.