On Bromfield Street lives the past, present, and future of downtown Boston
Bromfield can be seen as a barometer of the central business district’s post-COVID recovery — slow and surely there, but discouraging all the same.
In a sea of baseballs cards, Jayson Tatum posters, and dollar bills from foreign lands, Andy Papertsian stands as a reminder of the Bromfield Street long gone.
He bought Bay State Coin Co. in 1983 among a strip of niche hobby businesses downtown, the place to go to buy fountain pens, mend watches, or acquire rare currency. Today, customers meander into his crowded corner shop to examine $7 military medals and touch fading Boston Pride pins, 50 cents apiece. Business is steady, but not robust, and a handful of people come in just to reminisce about childhood visits, the Globe’s Diti Kohli reports.
“If I had a nickel for every time someone told me they came here as a kid,” Papertsian said. “You know how it goes.”
But the spirit of Bromfield — its heart — is gone, many say.
What was once a quintessential Boston thoroughfare has fallen victim to “the devolution of business,” as Papertsian called it, accelerated by a pandemic that slowed foot traffic in downtown Boston to a trickle for months. The west side of Bromfield, closer to Boston Common, is now a wasteland of empty storefronts, just plywood and Home Depot buckets of debris visible through the windows. Posted on a dim mid-rise is a notice from Eversource about an unpaid electric bill for $1,127. One whole block lays silent in anticipation of a proposed 22-story office tower, now undergoing city review.
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