Youth's Companion Building
- Architect
- Hartwell and Richardson
- Year
- 1892
- Style
- Romanesque Revival
- City
- Boston, MA
Daniel Ford built this five-story headquarters at 209 Columbus Avenue in 1892 for The Youth's Companion, the magazine he owned and edited. Its lasting nickname, the Pledge of Allegiance Building, comes from the fact that the Pledge of Allegiance was written and published here, before the magazine relocated near the current Boston University site in 1915.
the building
Sandstone built like a bank. Hartwell and Richardson's five-story design is faced in brown sandstone matched with brick, round-arched and squat-columned in the Romanesque idiom, with great arched windows and heavy detailing meant to look as solid as a bank while still admitting natural light through windows and skylights for the publishing business inside.
the style
Romanesque Revival, worked here as masonry-exalting bulk — round arches and squat columns giving a commercial publishing building the gravity of a financial institution.
More on Romanesque Revivalthe architect
Hartwell and Richardson, the architects of record, designed the building in their characteristic round-arched Romanesque manner.
significance
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Its Pledge of Allegiance connection, tied to Daniel Ford's ownership of the magazine, is the source of the building's popular nickname.
nearby
- John Hancock Tower
- Armory of 1st Corps Cadets (interior)
- Paine Furniture Building
- Berkeley Building
- 500 Boylston Street
- Trinity Church