By Tim Logan Boston Globe Staff
In normal times, South Station would be bustling at 8:15 in the morning, with wave after wave of commuters pouring from the Red Line and commuter rail. Some would hurry over Fort Point Channel to the Seaport, while thousands of others headed for the thicket of office towers downtown.
On Thursday, at about the same time, just a handful of people got off when the Red Line rumbled into the basement of South Station. Upstairs, a commuter rail train from Plymouth, built to carry hundreds of passengers, discharged about 50. Masked and heads-down, they scattered across Dewey Square, past a papered-over coffee shop and the stub of a stalled-out skyscraper that not so long ago hummed with activity.
“It’s all just so weird,” said Walter Downey, an investment advisor who has worked downtown for decades, as he walked to his office on Federal Street. “It’s like you can hear the dogs barking out there.”Get Business Headlines in your inboxThe Globe’s latest business headlines delivered every morning, Monday through Friday.Sign Up
It has been that kind of summer in the heart of Boston: quiet, a little lonely, and kind of weird. There are no throngs of tourists following the Freedom Trail or searching for Fenway Park. The weekday commuters are far fewer; landlords estimate that office towers are maybe 10 percent full. Without those workers to serve, the delis, convenience stores, and dry cleaners that form the fabric of downtown’s streets, are quiet, too. Some remain closed. And the after-work beer gardens and outdoor boot camps that have popped up in recent years didn’t happen this summer.
It’s not like there is no one around. People still trickle in and out of office buildings, though the relatively high percentage who are wearing shorts suggests a more relaxed dress code inside. Tourists still stare at their maps. Construction workers still linger on lunch break. But there is no escaping the depressing reality: The normally bustling center of a city that just months ago brimmed with life, today feels like some lesser place. A place left behind, or suspended in amber.
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