Boston Retail History: Bonwit Teller Part Two

March 20, 2013

In response to our post, Local Dailies Disappear Bonwit Teller from Boston’s Retail History, splendid commenter Rick in Duxbury sent this to the hardreading staff:

If memory serves, the thing that really killed Bonwit’s was the boneheaded real estate department employee who forgot to exercise the renewal option in their lease, thus putting the iconic building on the market in the first place.

 

(First, full disclosure: Regarding all things retail, we routinely defer to the Missus who, as it happens, worked for Bonwit Teller as an executive shopping consultant throughout the 1980s.)

So, Rick: We think you’ve confused Bonwit’s with the boneheaded Lord & Taylor employee who forgot to renew the Boylston Street store’s lease in 2002.

The Bonwit Teller story is something else again.

The upscale retailer occupied 234 Berkeley Street (former home of the New England Museum of Natural History) from 1947 to 1987. At which point Louis Boston resided across Boylston Street, where they had a 20-year lease.

But The New England insurance company wanted to raze the block and build what became 500 Boylston Street. Louis said they’d only move if they could have Bonwit’s location.

So Bonwit Teller, conveniently motivated by a sweetheart lease, moved into the New England’s new building across the street.

From the (1988) New York Times:

The new Boston Bonwit’s is on Boylston Street in the city’s affluent Back Bay neighborhood, the location for several big stores and an increasing number of specialty shops and boutiques. It replaces a store shut down in 1987 after 30 years in a distinctive nearby building.

The new store is in a recently opened $150 million, 25-story office building designed by Philip Johnson for the New England, an insurance company. The first two floors house retailers and restaurants. Bonwit’s, which declined to say how much it had spent on the store, has 33,000 square feet of selling space, as against 24,000 in its former site.

 

Regardless, Bonwit Teller soon went out of business, a victim of changing retail times and shaky management.

But that doesn’t mean it should be erased from Boston’s retail history, as the local dailies have done in reporting its latest successor at 234 Berkeley, Restoration Hardware.

Better to restoration Bonwit’s into the record books, yes?

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Why Aren’t The Boston Dailies Asking About the Gardener Guard?

March 20, 2013

Both local dailies on Tuesday featured the blockbuster revelation that the FBI knows who stole 13 works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 23 years ago.

Boston Globe:

paintings-4793FBI says it knows identity of Gardner art thieves

Names not divulged; trail of Gardner masterworks ended with a sale try a decade ago; investigators cite progress, seek help in cracking 1990 case

Federal investigators, in an unprecedented display of confidence that the most infamous art theft in history will soon be solved, said Monday that they know who is behind the Gardner Museum heist 23 years ago and that some of the priceless artwork was offered for sale on Philadelphia’s black market as recently as a decade ago.

In the most extensive account to date of the investigation, Richard DesLauriers, the FBI special agent in charge of the Boston office, would not identify those involved in the heist, saying it would hinder the ongoing investigation. But he said that knowing the identity of the culprits has “been opening other doors” as federal agents continue their search for the missing artwork.

 

Boston Herald:

BI1E6653.JPGFBI: We know who pulled off Gardner art heist

The stunning revelations that the 13 masterworks stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum were shuttled through Connecticut and Philadelphia and peddled for sale in Pennslvania — and most amazingly, the FBI knows who did it — whipped even the most fervent experts of the infamous 1990 heist into frenzy yesterday, stoking optimism that authorities may soon solve the world’s greatest art theft.

Federal authorities, speaking on the 23rd anniversary of Boston’s last great unsolved mystery, said yesterday that members of an East Coast “crime organization” orchestrated the daring theft and then tried selling a share of their $500 million haul in Philadelphia a decade ago.

 

But neither paper seemed to ask the obvious question:

Does this new knowledge have anything to do with the recent re-interviewing of the hippie Gardner guard as reported by the Globe last week?

cavanaugh_17gardner4_metroDecades after the Gardner heist, police focus on guard

Night watchman Richard Abath may have made the most costly mistake in art history shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990. Police found him handcuffed and duct-taped in the basement of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum seven hours after he unwisely opened the thick oak door to two thieves who then stole 13 works of art valued at more than $500 million.

For years, investigators discounted the hapless Abath’s role in the unsolved crime, figuring his excessive drinking and pot smoking contributed to his disastrous decision to let in the robbers, who were dressed as police officers. Even if the duo had been real cops, watchmen weren’t supposed to admit anyone who showed up uninvited at 1:24 a.m.

But, after 23 years of pursuing dead ends, including a disappointing search of an alleged mobster’s home last year, investigators are focusing on intriguing evidence that suggests the former night watchman might have been in on the crime all along — or at least knows more about it than he has admitted.

 

Is it just us, or are the Boston news media not connecting the dots?

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Local Dailies Disappear Bonwit Teller from Boston’s Retail History

March 19, 2013

There’s been lots of hubbub the last two weeks over Restoration Hardware’s botched opening (Worst. Party. Ever.) in its new home at 234 Berkeley Street.

Including yesterday’s Boston Globe front page piece:

hardwareAfter packed debut, store at a standstill

Restoration Hardware has buzz, goods, but no permit

On March 5, Gary Friedman, the silver-haired CEO emeritus of Restoration Hardware, was warned that a party in Boston the next night to celebrate the opening of his enormous store could get seriously overcrowded.

“We can ask for forgiveness [afterward],” he told the group, according to people who were there.

Friedman denies saying that, but 24 hours later, police and fire officials were indeed summoned to the former Louis Boston building at 234 Berkeley St. to block a horde of smartly dressed men and women trying to shoehorn themselves through the store’s gaping steel-and-glass doors.

Now, forgiveness isn’t all Friedman needs. The 40,000-square-foot home goods store selling $279 duvet covers and $895 riveted mesh chandeliers still doesn’t have an occupancy permit. Even after the over-the-top party and a photo-op ribbon-cutting, the lavish store in the heart of the trendy Newbury Street shopping district isn’t open. And it’s not clear when it will be.

 

Further on:

It was nearly two years ago that Restoration Hardware — now branded simply as RH — announced plans to move into the historic Berkeley Street building, the 150-year-old former home of the New England Museum of Natural History and, more recently, the luxury emporium Louis Boston.

 

That’s the keystroke version of “the historic Berkeley Street building,” repeated in the Boston Herald’s coverage:

The party, to celebrate the opening of the new Restoration Hardware, an upscale furniture and fixture boutique in the old Louis Boston building, quickly became the hottest ticket of the year.

 

What both papers have missed are the glory years of the historic Berkeley Street building when it was occupied – beautifully – by Bonwit Teller.

Representative image:

bonwit_teller_1

 

The Louis Boston renovation was an abomination, and the hardreading staff – which was decidedly not invited to the Restoration Hardware meltdown – doubts the latest incarnation is much better.

But, as the historic Berkeley Street building is repeatedly demeaned, let’s at least remember when it was historically honored.

 

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Herald’s Joe Fitz Kisses Phoenix Goodbye

March 18, 2013

From our Late to the (Going Away) Party desk

Last week the Boston Phoenix got its front-page Ave atque Vale from the Boston Globe’s Joseph P. Kahn. (It also got a mournful editorial and this spiffy op-ed by ex-intern Joe Keohane, among other coverage.)

The Boston Herald? A whopping five paragraphs.

Until Saturday, that is. And from the unlikeliest of sources: Columnist Joe Fitzgerald, who notes the anomaly straight off.

DSC_8269.JPGWhen a newspaper dies, we all lose

You can add this column to the list of mourners now grieving the passing of the Boston Phoenix, even though its publisher, Steve Mindich, made no bones about his disdain for this writer.

The feeling was mutual, but that’s not what this is about.

It’s bigger than that.

You may question the objectivity of this observation, considering its biased source, but nothing serves a community the way a newspaper does.

It’s informative, annoying, provocative and vigilant, constantly stirring the pot of civic awareness, constantly poking at apathy, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to do, and the Phoenix did it well.

 

Fitzgerald adds that the Phoenix was also radical, rude, and impertinent, not to mention prone to “push[ing] the boundaries of good taste.”

Of course, leave off the “radical” and you have a pretty good description of the Herald as well. Not to get technical about it.

Regardless, it was good of Fitzgerald to send the Phoenix off.

 

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Herald Columnists Double-Team Gomez

March 15, 2013

GOP Senate wannabe Gabriel Gomez gets tuned up real good in the Boston Herald today. Two columnists – Howie Carr and Michael Graham –  give Gomez a working-over (the kind of pigpile that’s a specialty at our feisty local tabloid) for the letter he sent to Deval Patrick asking to be appointed to the interim U.S. Senate seat.

Start with Carr’s drive-by:

GomezGabriel Gomez is one of Dem guys

Gabriel Gomez is the Eddie Haskell of the Mass. Republican Party.

Only instead of sucking up to Mrs. Cleaver, in January the Republican candidate for the Senate was currying favor with Gov. Deval Patrick, begging for the interim appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by John F. Kerry.

Actually, given Gomez’s obsession with ethnicity, as shown in his obsequious missive, perhaps he should be referred to as the Eduardo Haskell of the state GOP.

In case you haven’t yet read his letter to Gov. Mini-Me, Gomez makes it clear that he is a “Latino.” A Latino of “Latino background,” he elaborates . . .

 

You get the idea.

On the op-ed page, Graham also gets his licks in:

GomezGOP can do better than Gomez

I supported John McCain in 2008.” — Gabriel Gomez, Feb. 28, to Fox 25.

“I supported President Obama in 2008.” – Gomez, in a Jan. 17 letter to Gov. Deval Patrick

Is it asking too much for a Republican candidate in Massachusetts to be, you know … a Republican?

 

And etc., winding up with this: “Do the GOP party bosses really think that what Massachusetts swing voters want is a candidate they can’t trust? A guy who says right up front — ‘hey, I’ll take any position — just give me the job!'”

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, meanwhile, it was GOP women abandoning Gomez.

Republican US Senate candidate Gabriel E. Gomez lost the support of two of the three leaders of his women’s coalition Thursday, a day after releasing a letter that showed him praising Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, and attest ing to his support for President Obama in the 2008 election.

Angela Davis of Foxborough and Rachel Kemp of Boston both left the campaign less than a week after they were named cochairwomen of the Women for Gomez group.

Kemp confirmed her departure but would not comment on her reasoning. Davis also declined to detail her reasoning, but in a message obtained by the Globe, Davis told Gomez campaign aides she was quitting, saying, “The last 24 hours have been a turning point.”

 

Yeah – as in turning against point.

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Pope-a-Scope in the Boston Dailies

March 14, 2013

Boston being the Cathaholic hub that it is, the hardreading staff is not surprised at the hallelujah chorus in today’s local papers.

Start with the Boston Herald, which doesn’t measure its coverage of newly minted Pope Francis I, it weighs it.

Page One of our feisty local tabloid:

Picture 2

 

And then . . .

Picture 4

 

And then . . .

Picture 5

 

And then . . .

Picture 7

 

And then . .

Picture 8

 

And then . . .

Picture 9

 

And then . . . there was no more news coverage.

But wait – there’s this: An editorial (Francis a true first) and this editorial cartoon by Jerry Holbert:

holbert's 03-14 cartoon

 

Okay then.

Crosstown rival Boston Globe also weighed in with some heavy-duty (if ad-laden) coverage:

Page One of our stately local broadsheet:

Picture 15

 

And then . . .

Picture 12

 

And then . . .

Picture 13

 

And then . . .

Picture 14

 

And then there’s this op-ed by James Carroll (no relation):

Picture 16

 

And then . . .

That’s it.

Which paper did a better job?

I’ll leave that up to you.

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Herald Schools Globe on Ed Chief Exit

March 12, 2013

From our Hark! The Herald! desk

This is one story our feisty local tabloid has owned.

Picture 2

 

From Chris Cassidy’s Boston Herald report (the online version):

block1312_1New setback for Deval Patrick: Early ed boss quits

Embattled Sherri Killins resigns after Herald reports

The Patrick administration’s embattled early education chief abruptly stepped down from her $200,000-a-year post last night after a series of Herald reports that raised questions about her moonlighting in a post-doctoral program that trains school superintendents, as well as her residency in New Haven, Conn.

“The questions being raised started to distract from the work she was doing,” Matt Wilder, spokesman for the Executive Office of Education, said of departing Early Education and Care Commissioner Sherri Killins. “So it made sense to offer her resignation and move on.”

 

Here’s when the Boston Globe reported it (note the 4:20 AM):

Picture 1

 

And here’s what our stately local broadsheet reported. Give credit to the Globe – they gave credit to the Herald. Twice:

A top state education official has stepped down from her position amid questions over her enrollment in a program that trains school superintendents.

Sherri Killins, commissioner of the state Department of Early Education and Care, resigned Monday, said Matthew Wilder, a spokesman for the state agency that oversees the department, in an e-mail early Tuesday.

Killins’s abrupt resignation was first reported by the Boston Herald. The newspaper previously reported that Secretary of Education Matthew Malone was investigating her enrollment in the superintendent training program in Ware, which has taken her away from her official duties in her nearly $200,000-per-year state job.

 

Another turnabout in newspaper business as usual: the Globe as lively index to the Herald.

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Herald’s Gelzinis: Cahill a Good Guy. Globe’s Vennochi: Good Law, Bad Case

March 9, 2013

Two different – but not necessarily contradictory – takes in the local dailies about former Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill’s close call with the law over financial shenanigans in the Bay State’s 2010 gubernatorial race.

First up: Joan Vennochi’s column in Thursday’s Boston Globe:

With Cahill, a good law and a weak case

IT’S EASY when it’s cash stuffed between a state senator’s breasts or checks funneled through a law partner directly into the pockets of the speaker of the House.

It’s harder — as it should be — when a case for political corruption consists of a feel-good lottery ad campaign that cost taxpayers $1.5 million but never mentions the name of the state treasurer who ordered it up. Those are the underlying facts in the case that Attorney General Martha Coakley brought against former state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill.

While treasurer, Cahill spent public money to advance a personal political agenda — his failed campaign for governor. A new state law makes it a crime for politicians to do that — if prosecutors can show “fraudulent intent.” But in the case against Cahill, the evidence of fraudulent intent simply wasn’t strong enough.

 

That’s the legal angle. Peter Gelzinis had the human angle in his Friday Boston Herald column:

PQ5W8772.JPGTim Cahill: I’m still here

Tim Cahill tucked himself away at a back table a couple of mornings ago, inside his favorite breakfast haunt, McKay’s in Quincy. The word other customers kept tossing his way was, “Congratulations!”

Cahill thanked them all with the grateful smile of someone who’d just come out of a coma.

“I hesitate to think of these past two years as a near-death experience,” he said, referring to his disastrous gubernatorial bid, followed by Attorney General Martha Coakley’s corruption indictment, the threat of serious jail time, a trial that ended in a hung jury and, finally, a negotiated plea to something called “a perception of wrongdoing.”

 

The piece ends with this, which is bound to warm the hearts of Cahill supporters and make his detractors burning mad:

The experience, he said feels “as if I’ve been to my own wake. For two years, I couldn’t really talk to anyone and yet I’ve had all these friends come by to wish me well and tell me they were praying for me. Then, the weirdest, or perhaps, the nicest thing, is that I’m still here to be with them all.”

 

Instead of in the sneezer, where very few ever thought Cahill should wind up.

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Poll Vault at the Boston Herald

March 7, 2013

Our feisty local tabloid today released a new poll on the U.S. Senate race (which pretty much runs true to form), and gave it that special Herald something.

Start with Page One:

Picture 5

 

Two elements of note: 1) the Cryptkeeper photo of Ed Markey; and 2) the rose-colored subhead.

Inside spread:

Picture 3

 

From Joe Battenfeld’s lead piece:

U.S. Rep. Edward Markey is the clear frontrunner to win the special U.S. Senate election, but his support is so soft he’s failing to break the 50 percent mark even against a field of little-known GOP challengers, a new UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll reveals.

 

Helpful graphic (see full poll here):

Picture 7

 

Meanwhile, crosstown rival Boston Globe has a piggyback piece on the Herald poll with a decidedly more  measured tone.

Markey leads Lynch by wide margin in poll

Representative Edward J. Markey holds a wide lead over his Democratic rival for the Senate, fellow Representative Stephen F. Lynch, and would easily beat all three Republican candidates in a head-to-head matchup, according to a new poll.

Markey leads Lynch by 29.5 percentage points among potential Democratic primary voters, 50 percent to 20.5 percent, with 23 percent undecided about their preference in the April 30 primary, according to the UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll released Wednesday night.

Markey, of Malden, would also beat the Republicans candidates by double-digit margins, although the poll found that the vast majority of voters do not know who those candidates are, suggesting they have room to grow if they can broaden their profiles.

 

Room to grow. That’s putting it mildly.

Not at all the style at the Herald.

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Taylor Gives Cape House the Swift

March 6, 2013

Taylor Swift has made a rapid exit from Cape Cod homeownership, which the local dailies are on like Taylor on . . . whoever.

From the Boston Globe’s Namesniks:

COVER WITH COVERLINESTaylor Swift on serial boyfriends, home buying in Vanity Fair

Singer Taylor Swift tries hard to dispel a few myths — or at least what she’d like you to believe are myths — in the new issue of Vanity Fair.

First, despite many high-profile romances with, among others, John Mayer, Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, and Jake Gyllenhaal, Swift insists she is neither boy crazy nor a serial dater.

 

Yak yak yak . . .

Cut to the real estate portion of the Vanity Fair interview:

“People say . . . that I apparently buy houses near every boy I like — that’s a thing that I apparently do. If I like you I will apparently buy up the real-estate market just to freak you out so you leave me,” she told the magazine. “If there’s a pregnancy rumor, people will find out it’s not true when you wind up not being pregnant, like nine months from now, and if there’s a house rumor, they’ll find out it’s not true when you are actively not ever spotted at that house.”

So did she or didn’t she buy the house? Our sources say she did, and Ethel Kennedy herself called Swift a “neighbor” when we spoke to her last fall. Vanity Fair, likewise, quoting “someone close to the situation,” claims Swift bought the house, but has since sold it.

“It was like a house-flip,” the source told the magazine. “A good short-term investment.”

 

How good? The Boston Herald’s Inside Track, as usual, provides the details:

mirror_no_textA Swift turnaround on Cape property!

From the Rich-Get-Richer File: Taylor Swift, who bought a house adjacent to the Kennedy 
Compound during her summer fling with high school junior Conor Kennedy, just sold it at a sweet $875,000 profit — 
after owning the Hyannisport manse all of three months!

According to the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds, Swift sold the seven-bedroom waterfront estate on Marchant Avenue for something in the neighborhood of $5.6 million. Nice neighborhood! In November, the pop superstar plunked down $4.8 million for the digs, which originally had been listed for $13 million. Such a savvy businesswoman!

 

Not so good at dating, though.

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