Community Lens for Oct. 5

Bill Kahler of Smyrna took this photo of a chilly, misty night in Boston’s Copley Square. Named for painter John Singleton Copley, it’s a public square in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, bounded by Boylston Street, Clarendon Street, St. James Avenue and Dartmouth Street. It was previously known as Art Square until 1883, due to the number of cultural institutions located there at the time, some of which remain today. The square has many important architectural works that have been built there, many of them now designated as official landmarks. Prominent structures still standing include: Old South Church (1873), by Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears in the Venetian Gothic Revival style; Trinity Church (1877, Romanesque Revival), considered H. H. Richardson’s tour de force;Boston Public Library (1895), by Charles Follen McKim in a revival of Italian Renaissance style; The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel (1912) by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in the Beaux-Arts style (on the site of the original Museum of Fine Arts); The John Hancock Tower (1976, late Modernist) by Henry N. Cobb, at 790 feetNew England’s tallest building; The Bostix Kiosk (1992, Postmodernist), at the corner of Dartmouth and Boylston streets, by Graham Gund with inspiration from Parisian park pavilions.