While walking through Boston this past week on a research visit, I walked past 24 School Street, a building constructed around 1925 — just the kind of place my protagonist Petra Wood might have darted into as she trailed a suspect.
The building’s clean lines, geometric motifs, and carved stone details were classic Art Deco, echoing the optimism and ambition of the interwar years (I’ve included some additional photos below).
The grandeur of that era still lingers in the architecture a century later, even as the city has changed around it. The building reminded me of why I set my book series in this period: the tension between elegance and upheaval, surface glamour and what lies beneath.
History does not just whisper from a page in a book — it rises from the sidewalk if you know where to look.
