Boston's Clark or North Square was once the site of some of the city's most progressive architectural efforts, especially the long-destroyed Foster-Hutchinson house (1690–1692), the earliest classically ornamented urban mansion, and the Clarke-Franklin House (1711–1712), one of several early Georgian buildings erected after Boston's 1711 fire attracted a new generation of immigrant craftsmen. A 1676 fire here destroyed forty-five buildings around North Square, including the Old North Meetinghouse and the home of its minister, Increase Mather. Most of the buildings currently surrounding North Square reflect the waves of immigrants who flooded into the North End beginning in the 1840s. Brick tenements and Italian restaurants provide the vital context for a few surviving early buildings. Looming over the town end of North Square at Quincy Street, the brick ventilator tower for the Sumner Tunnel (1934) symbolizes the connection of this historic neighborhood to the metropolis.
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