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Historical Materials: Boston Locales, Businesses, & Buildings

Historical Materials  »  Boston Locales, Businesses, & Buildings  »  Tremont Temple

Tremont Temple

Tremont Temple and Tremont Row were a center of artistic activity in Boston including lectures, exhibitions, the location of artists's studios, and site of commercial operations such as artists' supplies. The Tremont Temple was built in 1839 and burned in 1852. It was replaced by a stone building with arched windows by July 1853. Gleason’s Publishing Hall was three buildings to the west of Tremont Temple. Frame shop "Wm. Y. Balch” sat between the two. In his research on the Tremont Temple, Ron Polito has established a list of artists who had their studios there, in the rooms #11–16. Lane established his studio there in 1843 in room #16 where he was joined by his partner John. W. Scott in this room on the "upper floor" until 1850. Many of the other artists were portrait painters.

Related tables: Balch, William Y. »  //  Lane & Scott's, Lith. – Boston »  //  Residences »

map
1837 plan of the City of Boston
Charles Stimpson
1837
9 x 14 in.
Cape Ann Museum Library & Archive

Showing Lane's neighborhood while working in Boston. Lane had studios at the intersection of Washington and State Streets, Summer, Tremont and School Streets.

map
1847 plan of the City of Boston
S.N. Dickinson, Printer
1847
Map insert to Boston Almanac and Directory
Cape Ann Museum Library & Archive

Also filed under: Boston City Views »   //  Maps »   //  Residences »

publication
1848 street plan of Boston showing location of Tremont Temple
S. N. Dickinson
1848
Printed map inside Boston Almanac
Published by B. B. Mussey & Co. and Thomas Groom, Boston
Cape Ann Museum Library & Archive (R910.45 B65 1848)

Map at front of almanac with Tremont Temple highlighted.

Also filed under: Boston City Views »   //  Boston Harbor »   //  Maps »

map
1852 Map of the City of Boston and immediate neighborhood: detail showing Tremont Temple
Henry McIntyre
1852
Boston
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at Boston Public Library
Call Number: G3764.B6 1852.M35

Lane's studio was in the vicinity of the Tremont Temple

Also filed under: Residences »

PDF
view ]
letter
Joseph L. Stevens, Jr. to Samuel Mansfield, 10.17.1903
Joseph L. Stevens, Jr.
1903
Four-page letter
Collection of the Cape Ann Museum Library & Archive, Gloucester, Mass.

"[The painting] is offered you for $150 on as long time and in as many notes at 3% interest as you choose. . . I believe this to be the only important painting of Gloucester Harbor that Lane never duplicated. . . .Returning from a Gloucester visit while I was still under the roof there, father brought a print of Lane's first Gloucester view, bought of the artist at his Tremont Temple studio in Boston. An extra dollar had been paid for coloring it. For a few years it was a home delight.. . .I had been a few years in Gloucester when Lane began to come, for part of the time a while, if I remember rightly. He painted in his brother's house, "up in town" it then was. I recall visits there to see his pictures. But it was long after, that I could claim more than a simple speaking acquaintance. The Stacys were very kind, aiding him as time went on in selling paintings by lot. I invested in a view of Gloucester from Rocky Neck, thus put on sale at the old reading room, irreverently called "Wisdom Hall." And they bought direct of him to some extent, before other residents. Lane was much my senior and yet we gradually drifted together. Our earliest approach to friendship was after his abode began in Elm Street as an occupant of the old Prentiss [sic-corrected Stacy] house, moved there from Pleasant. I was a frequenter of this studio to a considerable extent, yet little compared with my intimacy at the next and last in the new stone house on the hill. Lane's art books and magazines were always at my service and a great inspiration and delight—notably the London Art Journal to which he long subscribed. I have here a little story to tell you. A Castine man came to Gloucester on business that brought the passing of $60 through my hands at 2 1/2 % commission. I bought with the $1.50 thus earned Ruskin's Modern Painters, my first purchase of an artbook. I dare say no other copy was then owned in town. . . .Lane was frequently in Boston, his sales agent being Balch who was at the head of his guild in those days. So in my Boston visits – I was led to Balch's fairly often – the resort of many artists and the depot of their works. Thus through, Lane in various ways I was long in touch with the art world, not only of New England but of New York and Philadelphia. I knew of most picture exhibits and saw many. The coming of the Dusseldorf Gallery to Boston was an event to fix itself in one's memory for all time. What talks of all these things Lane and I had in his studio and by my fireside!

For a long series of years I knew nearly every painting he made. I was with him on several trips to the Maine coast where he did much sketching, and sometimes was was [sic] his chooser of spots and bearer of materials when he sketched in the home neighborhood. Thus there are many paintings whose growth I saw both from brush and pencil. For his physical infirmity prevented his becoming an out-door colorist."

publication
Sixty Years' Memories of Art and Artists
Benjamin Champney
See p. 78.

Champney wrote that he "took a studio in Tremont Temple where artists then mostly congregated . . . The artists were all very friendly."

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Citation: "Boston Locales, Businesses, & Buildings." Fitz Henry Lane Online. Cape Ann Museum. http://fitzhenrylaneonline.org/historical_material/index.php?type=Boston+Locales%2C+Businesses%2C+%26+Buildings§ion=Tremont+Temple (accessed December 11, 2024).
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