In the late 18th century, Charles Bulfinch, the architect responsible for much of the original U.S. Capitol, Boston Common, and Massachusetts State House, designed and built a planned housing area in the southern reaches of downtown Boston. From the marker:
"There were shrubs and flowers in the Franklin Place front-yards or borders; Commerce is just putting his granite foot upon them.
"In The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1857), Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes mourns the change in Franklin Place, with a fine residential block developed by Charles Bulfinch in 1793. The fashionable area - houses, gardens and all - was torn down in 1857-58, and renamed Franklin Street when commercial buildings were built here. Only the width and crescent shape of the street remain from the original design."
The marker also has a photo, captioned: "A photograph before 1857 of Franklin Place, with the Tontine Crescent to the right."