Think you know the Back Bay? Even if you know every store window on Newbury St., you probably don’t know the Back Bay the way Saba Alhadi does – through the eyes of a history buff and the lens of a camera. Each week, dozens of residents and tourists alike follow Alhadi around Boston on a walking tour with a unique spin. Alhadi is the owner and founder of PhotoWalks, which operates five separate walking tours in the city, including one in the Back Bay.
Alhadi was a travel agent for most of her career, but she always had a passion for history and for taking pictures. The self-taught photographer even has had a book published: “Boston in Photographs.” Eight years ago she decided to leave the world of cruises and airline tickets to do something she really loved.
“One day I was walking though Boston Common and I glanced over at the buildings on Beacon Hill,” she says. “That’s when inspiration struck.”
She decided to organize tours that would show people the city’s beautiful sights from a different perspective while educating them about history. PhotoWalks operates tours on Beacon Hill, along the Freedom Trail, in the Public Garden, and along the Waterfront, in addition to through the Back Bay.
“A lot of people who come to Boston overlook the most beautiful sights and really don’t know how to take pictures,” she says.
She welcomes photographers of all skill levels, ages and experience. Alhadi says she’s led tours of serious photographers with expensive equipment and weekend tourists with point and shoot cameras.
She also has led many Boston residents on tours, giving them a new way to look at their own neighborhoods.
“I have a lot of local people on our tours,” she says. “People like being tourists in their own city.”
The Back Bay tour is one of Alhadi’s most popular, and it is offered year round, three days a week. The tour is about an hour and a half long, and it includes stops at the Public Library, the John Hancock Tower, Trinity Church, Copley Square and then the residential area on Commonwealth Ave.
“I launched the Back Bay tour because it has some really fantastic photo opportunities and iconic landmarks,” Alhadi says.
And she enjoys giving the Back Bay tour year round, explaining that although the itinerary is the same, the scenery changes dramatically in the fall with the autumn leaves or in the winter with the twinkle lights on Commonwealth Ave.
Walks can be booked for private tours, small groups or even school outings, but Alhadi says she always keeps the groups small to maximize the learning experience.
Alhadi has garnered so much positive attention for PhotoWalks that she says she has been approached to launch similar tours in other cities, a proposition she is considering. Not that conducting each of current tours herself, seven days a week, leaves her much time to think about expansion plans.
“It’s a lot of work, but I love it,” she says. “What I really enjoy is meeting people from all over. The goal is for people to learn to see things creatively.”

It’s one of the most iconic stores on Newbury Street, a fixture of the neighborhood for over 50 years. But Louis Boston has decided to flee the Back Bay when its lease expires in 2010, citing the erosion of Newbury Street’s eclectic cache.
According to owner Debi Greenberg’s in comments made to the Boston Globe, the store will seek a new location in a different part of Boston, possibly the waterfront. The goal is to find a neighborhood that still has an “edge,” according to Greenberg. Financial considerations did not play into the decision, she said.
In recent years, Newbury Street has taken on a slightly more chain-oriented, suburban character, adding outposts of national chains like H&M, Victoria’s Secret, Borders, and Valentino. This, and not any business problem, is the reason for the move, according to Greenberg. However, there is little doubt that the expiration of the current lease would result in significantly higher rents for the store, leading to speculation amongst some members of the neighborhood association that the move was in fact financially motivated.
Meg Mainzer-Cohen of the Back Bay Association was quick to come to the neighborhood’s defense when asked about the move. “If you look at Newbury Street 20 years ago, and Newbury Street today, it hasn’t missed a beat,” she said. The increase in chains is part of a trend affecting all areas of the economy, not just retail, she said, citing the continued consolidation of banks as an example.
Mainzer-Cohen said it was difficult to imagine what area of the city would be better suited to Louis Boston’s high end merchandise. The Back Bay boasts the kind of demographics that are ideal for the store: individuals and couples with a large amount of discretionary income. She said that demand for space in the Back Bay continues to be high, despite an economic slowdown.
“People with real estate listings in Back Bay have a list of 25 to 30 businesses trying to get into one space,” she said. “We just had Apple open up their largest store in North America here. Retailers in the Back Bay continue to do well.”
Trouble seemed like it might be brewing when Boston Public, the restaurant in the Louis Boston space, abruptly closed its doors recently citing financial problems. Now, with the announcement of Louis’ imminent departure, Newbury Street will have one of its most highly visible, and perhaps highly sough-after vacancies in years.
Mainzer-Cohen said that ideally the space would be used by an anchor business that would use the whole space, perhaps with a restaurant or café attached (as Louis Boston had), rather than divided up and rented out to various tenants. The three story building is one of the Back Bay’s most recognizable, a former museum situated on well-manicured lawns.
Louis Boston was one of the first stores in Boston to cater to the super-high end of the retail market, though today it is one of several large stores (including Neiman Marcus and Sak’s) in the neighborhood where one could find a $5,000 handbag.

PHOTO CAPTIONS: At left, the dining and living area inside a unit at 285 Columbus Lofts. Right: another view of the living area.

The much-talked about 285 Columbus Lofts condo development has opened its doors to residents – delivering on its planned opening date of mid-May – and already the 285-unit building is 60 percent committed. President and CEO of the Boston Residential Group Curtis Kemeny, whose firm transformed this former Red Cross headquarters building into luxury living space, says he anticipates the building being 100 percent committed by the end of the year.
The units range from 750 to 1,600 square feet in size and are priced at $850 per square foot – a price point Kemeny says is more than competitive for the downtown area. And location was a big reason that the Boston Residential Group initially decided the building would be perfect for a residential conversion.
“It’s right on the border of the South End and the Back Bay,” he says. “It’s where the elegance of the Back Bay meets the coolness of the South End.”
Kemeny also saw great potential in the building itself, an eight-floor corner building with three sides of windows and ceilings that are taller than nine feet.
“It had all of the right ingredients for an office building that wants to be converted to higher end residential lofts,” he says.
The Boston Residential Group purchased the building in October of 2006 and worked with the then-tenants – including the Red Cross – to relocate. In 2007, permitting for the building took place, and construction began in July of 2007.
The architect for the project was ADD Inc, the same architecture and interior design firm which created the interior designs at 360 Newbury, another Boston Residential Group property. Cambridge-based ADD Inc. was responsible for the interior and exterior architecture, and also the interior design of the common spaces. Walsh Brothers was the General Contractor on the project, and Kevin Ahearn of Otis & Ahearn is the sales and marketing agent.
Kemeny describes the building as having the feeling of a European hotel, with a quiet and relaxed atmosphere. Walnut is the wood used throughout, and the color palette is browns and taupes.
Each unit has high-quality finishes. The kitchens feature appliances from Wolf, Jenn-Air and Bosch, with walnut cabinets cut in a horizontal grain made by Rosario Cabinets of Dedham. Kemeny himself chose the Italian granite countertops. Four-inch wide walnut floors are throughout the units. And in the bathroom, Kemeny says the focus was on creating a spa-like feel, with floating vanities, glass tile accents, Grohe fixtures and large shower stalls with glass doors and rainfall shower heads.
Residents at 285 Columbus will have access to a roof deck, extra storage space, a bike room and parking. The building will also have a doorman. The Boston Residential Group is also in negotiations to secure an occupant for a 10,000-square foot retail space on the first floor.
“What we’re selling at the end of the day is an urban lifestyle location – and that’s based around location, services and the product,” Kemeny says.
The 285 Columbus Lofts beat rival condo projects in the area to market, including The Clarendon and The Bryant in the South End. Kemeny is confident 285 Columbus will hold up to the competition.
“It really is a great value, and the product is very well priced for what it is,” he says.

It’s supposed to be a day celebrating freedom and brotherhood, but in the Back Bay, Bastille Day has historically caused a bit discord as well.
At issue has been the annual street festival thrown by the French Library and Cultural Center, which most love, but which has rattled some nearby neighbors with its live music and raucous atmosphere. Residential Back Bay, those neighbors have argued in various public forums, is not an appropriate location for such festivities.
As a result of the complaints, increasing restrictions by the city, along with other logistical issues, there will be no Bastille Day festival in the Back Bay this year. Instead, the French Library will hold a smaller event at the Beehive restaurant in the South End.
“It’s not quite going to be the same,” said Sophie Koenig, marketing manager for the library. The street festival will be missed, she said. “It’s supposed to be a day about liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it’s always been something special in the neighborhood.”
Koenig said that the party has simply “outgrown” the area, and that the library hopes to bring the street festival back next year at a different location. This year’s event at the Beehive will be limited to about 200 people on a first come, first serve basis: a muted affair when compared to the 2500 who routinely flock to the street festival.
The final blow for the Bastille Day festival may have been the requirement that live music for the festival end by 9 p.m, handed down by the Mayor’s Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing. “If the music stops at 9 o’clock, it’s not a street dance,” said Koenig.
In previous years, the festival has featured performances by World Music, as well as food and French wines. At a NABB meeting last year, a handful of residents complained not only about the noise from the event, but about the garbage and the mess. Many residents also came to speak in support of the event. At the time, then licensing chairman Tom High said that the licensing committee for NABB would not oppose the festival, but asked that a series of conditions on noise and trash policy be attached to the festival’s license.
Koenig said that more information about the July 14th party at the Beehive will be released in the coming weeks, and residents can check the library’s web site for updates at http://www.frenchlib.org/events/bastille.cfm.

There is not a hint of doubt that the Storrow Drive Tunnel and Bowker Overpass need repairs and that noise will and inconvenience will inevitably be part of the repairs.
This is what contractors told residents at the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) public meeting held Wednesday at the Boston Public Library.
However, DCR and the contractor who will be doing the repairs have promised to closely monitor the noise and inconvenience. Officials told residents at the hearing they will be setting up noise and light barriers as well as a noise hotline.
In addition, officials told residents that to the residents Storrow Drive will be restricted to one lane traffic during construction hours.
The project is expected to start in July and will apparently continue until the end of November. Winter repairs will be minimal. Real construction will begin again in the spring and be completed by April 2009 at a cost of $11.5M.
Most of the construction work will be done at night between the hours of 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. with most of the noisiest parts of the project such as jack hammering to be done during the hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“It is good news for both projects that the DCR has agreed to my request to do the noisiest work in the daytime hours meaning Charlesgate and Beacon Street residents will have quiet in the overnight hours,” said Rep. Marty Walz.
The scope of the project calls for tunnel repairs replacing deteriorated concrete in the roof and wall sections of the tunnel and installing waterproofing membranes in roof joints to prevent water seepage. The storm water collection system will be connected to a groundwater recharge system along Back Street. Presently, the storm water is directly discharged into the Charles River.
“This is very important work that you are doing,” Meg Mainzer-Cohen of the Back Bay Association said. “These pictures are the worst that I have seen and the repairs needed to done quickly. My outrage is that this was not fixed 10 years ago,” she said recalling the incident on the new tunnels of the Big Dig when the roof collapsed and killed a passenger in a car driven by her husband.
Another reconstruction job that will be done simultaneously and which is expected to last 18 months are repairs to the Bowker Overpass, specifically the ramp that connects to the West Bound portion of Storrow Drive.
This work will include replacing the deck and roadway; replacing the street lighting on the roadway and pedestrian lighting under the structure, repairing cement structures and repairing and painting the steel structure. The work is expected to begin during the summer and will be completed in October, 2009.
In addition to lane closures and detours on both Charlesgate East and Commonwealth Avenue, a 10-foot wide floating walkway in the Charles River will be constructed around the construction site on the Esplanade.
“Can you study reducing traffic flow into these areas, primarily doing construction during the day and see what happens?” asked Steve Wintermbier of the Neighborhood Association of Back Bay.
DCR officials said that they would look in to the idea.
The staging areas for both projects will be in the Muddy River area on the parkland near Beacon St. and Charlesgate.
“This is part of the Esplanade and we are very disappointed with the staging area,” said Fran Gershwin of the Muddy River Association. However, DCR officials noted that no tress will be cut down and that the contractor has the obligation to return the staging site in the same condition or better.
The DCR will be hosting on their website at www.massgov/dcr the diagrams and information from the meeting as well as future announcements.
One thing is certain, there will be noise.
Another thing that is for certain is that the neighborhood is better off having the Architectural Team doing the project rather than Mass Highways. Also, DCR is doing the repairs rather than Mass. Highways which after eight years of redoing Cambridge Street, has yet to be finished and there are no tunnels.

After more than seven years, Newbury Street's maternity and baby shop with a conscience closed its doors last weekend. Owner Katie Tagliavia decided to end operations at the brick and mortar boutique in favor of pursuing an online store, maternity consulting and marketing services.
"I'm in my eighth year, so it's been a long time," Tagliavia says. "But I'm really excited with where I'm going, strictly online."
The 9 Months Web site will carry many of the product lines Tagliavia carried in the shop, most of which are made from natural ingredients, such as Baby's Bliss, or benefit a worthy cause, such as Golfini Della Nonna. Tagliavia is looking forward to searching for new products she can showcase online, and she says the Web allows her plenty of space to discuss why she recommends certain products. She will concentrate on carrying only carefully-selected products whose mission she supports instead of creating an enormous online shopping site.
"One of the great things about doing a Web site is it can very much be in my voice," she says.
She will be posting regularly on a blog and encouraging other Boston-area and beyond moms to post their own thoughts. She envisions taking the conversations she would regularly have with moms in the shop to cyberspace.
"I want moms to really have fun in that space," Tagliavia says. "I want to create an intimate space where people can comment back. I love the free flow of information."
She'll also be offering personal consulting services for moms-to-be, offering everything from one-hour consultations that will involve basic advice and making connections with other moms and local resources to more in-depth services.
"I love talking with people so that they can make easier choices and better choices," she says.
Tagliavia is also looking forward to working more in the area of market development, something that has always been a focus at 9 Months. She says that her years in the business have allowed her to make great contacts in the nonprofit sector, and she enjoys matching nonprofit groups with businesses to create partnerships and events such as fashion shows and book signings.
This Saturday, for example, Tagliavia and 9 Months is presenting Emerson Hospital's annual Baby Steps event. The fundraiser will feature a fashion show with the hot London maternity designer Isabella Oliver.
"I'll be exploring the relationships I've made in the maternity marketplace and with people in Boston," she says.
Through her Web site, Tagliavia says she'll still have a connection with her customers in the Back Bay, and she'll also have a physical presence here as well. She will continue to volunteer regularly at The Women's Lunch Place and stop to have lunch with friends. But she says she is ready to move on.
"It's a really fun place for me after eight years," she says. "I'm looking forward to being able to focus on all these things."

Barack Obama’s nomination a seminal moment in history

The nomination of Senator Barack Obama by the Democratic Party proves, once again, that the promise of America is alive and well.
It proves also that the color line and racism is breaking down, although racism continues to be a strong theme in this presidential race.
Where but in the United States of America, could an American black man who was a virtual unknown ten years ago, come to stand at the pinnacle of power and run to be president, the nominee of one of the nation’s great political parties?
It wouldn’t happen in England, nor in France, Spain, Italy or Germany. The color lines and barriers to entry into the highest positions in politics still exist in much of Europe and around the world.
When the first African Americans came to America in the 1600’s, they were slaves.
When the Declaration of Independence was signed 175 years later and the United States came to be, they remained slaves, pieces of chattel.
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, African Americans were still slaves, pawns in the bitter fight between North and South, between allowing slavery to expand or ridding the nation of it so America was no longer a slave keeper democracy like Greece and Rome.
The inequities heaped upon African Americans following the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction, were worse than slavery itself. The Ku Klux Klan came into being. American blacks were frequently lynched. The divide between blacks and whites was immense.
And so it went, through the period of the First World War and the Second World War, when black Americans largely unable to vote or to sip a soda at a drugstore fountain gave their lives bravely on faraway battlefields fighting in segregated units.
Public schools were segregated. Cities were segregated. America was two nations – white and black.
Then came Brown versus the Board of Education which abolished segregation in public schools and even with this new law on the books, the National Guard had to be called out to force state governments like Arkansas to allow black Americans to attend state colleges.
Then came the civil rights movement, the Dr. Martin Luther King and so many others, and an era we can never forget because of the unfairness of it all.
And finally, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act pushed through Congress after John F. Kennedy’s death by President Lyndon Johnson.
And now, only 44 years later, we have a black American presidential nominee about to make the great run for the White House, arguably, the most important house in the world.
This is a seminal moment in our history. It is quite unlike any other. We should all be proud.

Louis leaving Back Bay

There are few retail clothiers in Boston with the long and lasting reputation of Louis. Located in the former Bonwit Teller building, Louis has achieved iconic status as representing about the best there is to offer in high end clothing and accoutrement.
We are sorry to see Louis leave the location. It is, in the strictest sense, a very real loss for the retailing in the neighborhood.
However with every loss, there is the chance for a greater gain replacing it.
Reports are circulating that Gucci may be looking to locate in the Louis site and Louis is looking to relocate in another area but in the neighborhood.
Whether or not Guccis relocates there, it is a guarantee the site will find a fine tenant as this is the best part of the retailing neighborhood and its finest free standing building.
We wish Louis the best.
We hope its replacement can live up to the Louis reputation for quality.