Old Port District

Author's Comments

The brick here is the thing. Not any single building but the accumulation of them, block after block, the warm red of nineteenth century commercial facades catching the first light off the harbor before the city is properly awake. Commercial Street faces roughly south and east, and on a clear morning in October the sun comes in low across the water and lights the upper stories while the cobblestones below are still in shadow. That contrast is the photograph. The granite lintels, the iron shutters, the painted signs that have faded and been repainted and faded again. I like to start near the working wharves where the fishing boats are still tied up and the day's first activity is unloading rather than tourism. The architecture there is honest. These buildings were built to do a job and they are still doing it, more or less, and the photographs that come out of the Old Port at six in the morning have a different weight than the ones made at noon when the restaurants have opened and the streets have filled. Winter is underrated here. The brick reads warmer against snow, and the harbor steams in the cold, and you will have the cobblestones largely to yourself. Bring a lens that handles tight quarters. The streets are narrow and the buildings are taller than they look, and the compositions that work best are the ones that let the architecture lean in.

Gallery