"Dirty Old Boston"

1985

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Probably around 1971: 100 Federal Street looks complete or completing. Noticed the cars already parked on the GC garage top ramp.
 
Prior to Flynn’s folly (aka the office on top of the GC garage) what did the top of the garage look like? Was it the bare concrete beams seen in that photo?
 
DZH22 said:
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Looks worse than the bombed-out Dresden Germany after WW II. I've often wondered over the years if this scorched-earth wholesale demolition of the Scollay/Haymarket Square and West End districts of Boston in the name of urban renewal wasn't actually inspired, on a subconscious level, by the cities in Europe that were partly wiped out in WW II. You know, let's wipe the slate clean, like the European cities were forced to do, and make a headlong leap into a bright dazzling future. Also, the personal trauma of WW II, which many of the US and local leaders had lived through, probably prompted them to want to erase a painful past and move on to Tomorrowland. Unfortunately, that all translated into destroying the history of large sectors of the city core and replacing them with a car-centric landscape of expressways, wide sweeping highway-like surface streets, empty plazas, and anonymous super blocks. At least burying the Central Artery with the Big Dig went a long way to at least creating a foundation to re-knit the city.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Looks worse than the bombed-out Dresden Germany after WW II. I've often wondered over the years if this scorched-earth wholesale demolition of the Scollay/Haymarket Square and West End districts of Boston in the name of urban renewal wasn't actually inspired, on a subconscious level, by the cities in Europe that were partly wiped out in WW II. You know, let's wipe the slate clean, like the European cities were forced to do, and make a headlong leap into a bright dazzling future. Also, the personal trauma of WW II, which many of the US and local leaders had lived through, probably prompted them to want to erase a painful past and move on to Tomorrowland. Unfortunately, that all translated into destroying the history of large sectors of the city core and replacing them with a car-centric landscape of expressways, wide sweeping highway-like surface streets, empty plazas, and anonymous super blocks. At least burying the Central Artery with the Big Dig went a long way to at least creating a foundation to re-knit the city.
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Yes, and many of the properties came relatively cheap, which means they were largely used by people not highly valued in the scheme of things. OTOH, real estate values in neighborhoods that we'd assume were prestigrious were not all that high during the Depression: my aunt worked as a WAVE nurse head and lively inexpensively in a multi-room flat in a former single family townhouse on a lot on Commonwealth & Clarendon that is now a tot lot.
 
DZH22 said:
This is from 1974. As the Hancock officially opened in 1976, does anybody know when it would have opened if the windows weren't falling out? Also note that floor 58 didn't have the sliding weight yet, so it doesn't have that black strip.

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They used to call this version of the Hancock "The Plywood palace".
 
One of the worst iterations of Copley Square also in that photo.
 
What a cool site! I especially love the photo of the BFD truck with a Fung Wah Bus and the blue Big Dig fencing in the background.

I remember the tours happening but no one in my family (myself included) was interested in them then. In retrospect it would have been cool, though certainly we all saw enough of the tunnels once they opened to traffic. It's odd to think that we're now 20 years past the last elements of the Big Dig opening up.
 
parkave said:
On August 25, 2002, the O'Neill Tunnel was opened to over 600,000 Bostonians for a tour of the Big Dig. Apparently the tunnel started springing leaks after it was actually opened to vehicle traffic. Did any archboston members attend? View attachment 75506View attachment 75505View attachment 75504
from this blog: https://www.vistadome.com/boston_album02/bigdig.html
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My wife and I were there. We also took a bike tour earlier through the tunnel with the guy who I believe was head of publicity for the project. I must have photos someplace...
 
On another day there was a tour of the Zakim Bridge that also drew a huge crowd. After two decades of construction people were excited. I'll tell you that walking up and standing on the middle of the Zakim Bridge is a whole different experience than driving over it
 
RandomWalk said:
Today in I’m Too Damn Old.

There’s something funny about the Big Dig shiny and new getting posted in the Dirty Old Boston thread.
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I don't know if any more infrastructure mega projects will be built in this country, on the scale of the Big Dig. It was budgeted at about $15 billion at the time, as I recall, and ended up more. Inflate that massive cost to today's dollars, and that would be impossible to fund. Also, the political system today lacks any dynamic leaders like Tip O'Neil, who was the force behind obtaining the funding for the Big Dig.
 
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