ON A waterfront chockablock with luxury hotels, office towers, and champagne bars, James Hook & Co. clung tenaciously to its place on Northern Avenue. And like the lobsters it sold by the thousands to restaurants, supermarkets, and walk-in customers, the Hook family learned to adapt, even surviving massive disruption from the Big Dig. But the building was no match for yesterday's seven-alarm blaze.
To say the 83-year-old business is a Boston landmark is to say too little. "Let's meet at Hook's," had become a common rallying cry for people planning a night on the town. What will future Bostonians have to say? "Let's meet at some anonymous, 30-story, mixed residential and commercial building on Atlantic Avenue?" It doesn't ring.
Hook Lobster is a genuine link to the city's maritime past and key to the survival of a working port. The wooden and corrugated metal structure perched atop creosote-caked pilings spoke more deeply of Boston than 1,000 waterfront cafes ever could. Hook's workers and owners were constantly busy with wholesale orders and retail customers, but they always seemed to find time to greet tour groups led by the Boston Harbor Association or pluck a jumbo out of a cooling tank to bedazzle a customer's kid.
"You pay $25 to go the Aquarium," said 52-year-old foreman John Mazurkiewicz, who went to work at Hook at age 16. "This is a better show."
Co-owner Ed Hook vows to rebuild. The authenticity of the Fort Point Channel area depends on it. But the pressures on the family from developers were considerable before the fire and will be greater now, despite environmental restrictions on waterfront construction. Real places like Hook Lobster are endangered. For proof, look no closer than the adjacent Northern Avenue bridge, a historic structure that barely survived a hare-brained plan in 1999 to knock it down and create a shopping mall.
Places like Hook Lobster aren't throwbacks. They are the real stuff of the city.
