The Union Oyster House, Boston, MA

During the Thanksgiving break, my friends and I had a great dinner at the Union Oyster House in Boston and I got a chance to navigate this restaurant. The Union Oyster House is the oldest restaurant and oyster bar in the United States and the oldest standing brick building in Boston’s Georgian architectural style, which has been open to diners since 1826. It is located at 41-43 Union Street, near Faneuil Market on one of the first lanes laid out by the Puritans in 1636. As a well-known stop on the Freedom Trail, the building was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 2003. I interviewed one of the restaurant managers and learned more about historical background of this place. The manager told me that before this place became a seafood house, the building was a private residence and later housed importer Hopestill Capen’s fancy dress goods business, known colorfully as “At the Sign of the Cornfields.” Because of the perfect location, where the Boston waterfront came up to the back door of the dry goods establishment, the house was convenient for ships to deliver their cloth and goods from Europe. In 1826, Capen closed his dry goods store and transferred the landownership to Atwood and Bacon, who established the oyster house at the very beginning.

The architectural structure of the oyster house is outstanding. The original restaurant is a five-bay, three-and-a-half story gambrel-roofed building in the Georgian style.[1] The form of the building is unusual—the three southern-most bays face Union Street while the two northern-most bays face Marshall Street. The two facades are connected by a vertical joint line in the brick work. Nowadays, the consumers in the Union Oyster House are mostly tourists who are interested in the history and culture of Boston. Because of the restaurant’s popularity and reputation, its consumers and waiters are very diverse, including some immigrants from Europe and Asia. The neighborhood of the Union Oyster House is a busy shopping region, which links to the Freedom Trail and includes a lot of historical places like the Faneuil Hall, the Quincy Market and the Old State House. This is a globalization phenomenon which is mentioned on Global Cities, Local Streets. As the Chapter 1 has stated, “The new globalized habitus is that of a ‘super-diverse’ local shopping street, in which both shopkeepers and consumers come from a wide variety of different backgrounds.”

The Union Oyster House has successfully transformed from a dry goods business shop for import to a traditional landscape restaurant nowadays. No longer a normal local street in Boston, the Union street where the Union Oyster House stands becomes global and is boosted by tourists. The future of the Union Oyster House and the Union Street is bright through its continued strong connection to Boston’s vibrant tourist industry.

Heidy Xie ’18

[1] http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/maritime/oys.htm