Hotel Buckminster

Boston Hotel Buckminster
Boston Hotel Buckminster with Sovereign Bank sign in foreground

Boston Hotel Buckminster (formerly Hotel Buckminster and briefly Hotel St. George) is a historic hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. It is located on the triangular intersection of Beacon Street and Brookline Avenue in Kenmore Square. It is, along with the Hotel Commonwealth one of two hotels located within one block of Fenway Park.

The hotel, built in 1897, was designed for Arnold A. Rand by Boston architects Winslow & Wetherell, architects of many large hotels and office buildings. At the time of its construction, the Hotel Buckminster was one of the first hotels in Boston and the largest building in Kenmore Square.

On September 18, 1919, on a day that the Chicago White Sox defeated the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park 3-2, bookmaker and gambler Joseph "Sport" Sullivan went to the Hotel Buckminster room of Arnold "Chick" Gandil, first baseman for the Chicago White Sox. There they conspired to fix the 1919 World Series, which was to take place thirteen days later, for personal gain. When the "Black Sox Scandal" was revealed it led to eight White Sox players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, being banned from Major League Baseball for life. Also banned was Joe Gedeon, a second baseman for the St. Louis Browns who had placed a bet on the game and later informed to White Sox owner Charles Comiskey in hopes of getting a reward. The 1988 movie Eight Men Out is based on this scandal.

In 1929, pioneer station WNAC Radio moved to new studios inside the Hotel Buckminster, with the entrance on the Brookline Avenue side (21 Brookline Avenue), which would become the station's home for the next four decades. WNAC made history in January 1923 by linking up with New York's WEAF for the first chain broadcast (it lasts for only five minutes), and later formed a new company known as the Yankee Network. A second station (WAAB) was added at the same location (eventually moving to Worcester as today's WVEI). A pioneer FM station was added in the late 1930s. Later, WNAC converted most of its studio space into one of Boston's first television studios and began broadcasting on Channel 7 in June, 1948. For the next twenty years, WNAC operated an AM, FM and television station in the hotel basement. During this time the station went through various facility upgrades and changes in ownership. One of its earliest and most successful radio announcers was Fred Lang (1910-1968), hired c. 1936, who read the news for Yankee network over WNAC through World War II: Lang also did Queen for a Day, the Tell-o-test Quiz Show, and a music show with a laid back flavor leading some to credit him with pioneering the "Easy Listening" style. However, with dwindling affiliates and an aging listening audience, the Yankee Network disbanded in 1967, with the flagship Boston station WNAC changing call letters to WRKO and becoming a Top 40 music station. The television station call letters [[WNAC-TV}} remained, and in 1968 the radio and TV operations moved to 7 Billfinch Place, near Government Center .