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(Photograph by Stephen Jerome)
The Hotel Alexandra is a good example of the neighborhood's fashionable residential hotels or French flats. A rare surviving full-blown example of Ruskinian Gothic in the South End, the Alexandra is distinctive in its use of colored stone rather than the more common, and less expensive, way to create a polychrome exterior with colored and tarred (black) brick and limestone trim. With its lush use of materials, stylish stone cloak, large scale, and prominent site, the Alexandra epitomized the 1870s aspirations of the South End. Cast-iron–fronted commercial shops occupied the ground floor. Abandoned since the 1970s, plans for redevelopment finally moved forward in 2022. The historic five-story facade will be restored and a thirteen-story condominium building erected behind it.