China Trade Center

In the 1790s the famous China trade established Boston's economic base for the nineteenth century. Boston capitalists built textile mills in the early nineteenth century, but later in the century Boston declined economically relative to New York City. Carl Fehmer's 1887 Boylston Building in Chinatown on the border of the Theatre District is a transitional masonry and iron frame structure that preceded the advent of steel frame skyscrapers in Boston. It replaced Charles Bulfinch's Boylston Market on this site. The building has been rehabilitated and renamed the China Trade Center. A number of companies in the clothing industry relocated to this area following the Great Fire of 1872.