Downtown neighborhood is climbing the social Ladder
by Beth Teitell

Thursday, October 25, 2001

I've done things I'm not proud of. I've used the word ``impact'' as a verb, as in ``how will this impact me?'' I've talked on my cell phone on the Swan Boats. I've worn running shoes with a suit.

But even I draw the line somewhere. And it's at the ``Ladder District.''

I won't be bullied into dropping a perfectly good neighborhood name - Downtown Crossing - just to jack up a couple of trendy restaurants and the new Ritz-Carlton by saying they're in the ``Ladder District.'' Not even if they do occupy the rung-like blocks that run between Tremont and Washington streets.

Earlier this year, references to this so-called ``Ladder District'' started multiplying faster than CVSes. As Jan Brady would put it, ``Ladder District, Ladder District, Ladder District.''

The first mention came in the Jan. 15, 2001, edition of Nation's Restaurant News, in a blurb about the opening of the Indian-French fusion restaurant Mantra, which the publication located in the city's ``emerging Ladder District neighborhood.''

Like edamame, the soybean appetizer served at Japanese restaurants, and now available in your grocer's freezer section, the Ladder District seemed to come from nowhere. But as we know, nothing - except maybe the prom pimple and backup Patriots quarterback Tom Brady - truly springs out of nowhere. Naturally, I sensed the hand of a press agent.

Was I wrong? Rosanne Mercer, the publicist for Limbo, a new restaurant and jazz club on Temple Place, in the heart of the Ladder District, explained that despite what everyone thinks, it was actually City Hall itself, or, more precisely, an old-timer who works there, who came up with the name.

The details of what went down some 14 months ago have been lost to the mists of time, but here's the story as Mercer tells it: Limbo's owners went to the building department and innocently stated they needed a permit for a project in Downtown Crossing.

``No,'' the old-timer reportedly replied, perhaps chewing a cigar and talking about Scollay Square, ``that building's in the Ladder District.''

Talk about a gift from above. The recollection provided the upscale businesses precisely the kind of cover they needed. An out-and-out secession from Downtown Crossing would look bad, but heck, if they were just restoring the area's historically correct name, who could complain?

Perhaps a little group called the Downtown Crossing Association, whose members could probably benefit from some glamorous neighbors.

``Do you think they're trying to distance themselves from you?'' I asked the association's president, Anne Meyers.

Meyers was too diplomatic to say anything overtly negative, but I thought I detected an edge. ``I had known them as the Ladder blocks,'' she said, ``but I'd never heard of it as the Ladder District, until recently.''

And, she added, ``I'm not sure there is enough there to make it a separate neighborhood.''

But Limbo's Mercer has no doubts. After whispering into the phone that Limbo ``has the best crab cakes in the world - it's a signature piece,'' she extolled the area, which runs from Winter Street to Avery Street.

``It is so exciting,'' she said. ``People are running all over the streets. They're going to the Ritz for tea and into Mantra for cocktails and to Limbo for appetizers and entertainment and then they're running back to Mantra for after-dinner drinks.''

After hearing about even more running, I mentioned that some people consider the area dangerous, and asked Mercer if perhaps people were perhaps running away from muggers. Running because they were scared.

She assured me that wasn't the case. ``It's because they don't want to miss a minute,'' she said.

Afraid to miss out on the fun? Isn't that just so Ladder District?