‘Small-creature’s temperature’

The Old State House, a museum on the Freedom Trail near the site of the Boston Massacre

— Photo by Mobilus In Mobili 

"Boston is not a small New York, as they say a child is not a small adult but is, rather, a specially organized small creature with its small-creature's temperature, balance, and distribution of fat. In Boston there is an utter absence of that wild electric beauty of New York, of the marvelous, excited rush of people in taxicabs at twilight, of the great Avenues and Streets, the restaurants, theatres, bars, hotels, delicatessens, shops. In Boston the night comes down with an incredibly heavy, small-town finality. The cows come home; the chickens go to roost; the meadow is dark. Nearly every Bostonian is in his house or in someone else's house, dining at the home board, enjoying domestic and social privacy.''

— Elizabeth Hardwick, in the December 1959 Harper’s Magazine.

Actually, in the two decades before COVID-19 struck, Boston became a lot more like New York. But the pandemic has made it more like Hardwick’s description.

The Old Corner Bookstore building in downtown Boston, built in 1718 as a residence and apothecary shop. It first became a bookstore in 1828.