Beacon Hill Historic Architectual District expansion plan

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statler

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The Herald said:
Ross wants ugly out of Beacon Hill
Councilor pushing bigger historic area
By Jay Fitzgerald | Monday, February 25, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Real Estate

A city councilor wants to make Beacon Hill?s Cambridge Street more historically quaint like nearby Charles Street - while neighborhood activists are trying to keep Charles Street looking like Charles Street.

City Councilor Michael Ross said yesterday he plans to introduce a measure this week that would extend the Beacon Hill Historic Architectual District to the south side of Cambridge Street.

Cambridge Street has a more gritty, hardscrabble appearance than the postcard pretty Charles Street.

Despite a recent reconstruction of sidewalks and installation of a new flower-filled median strip, Cambridge Street still has some ugly commercial signs and other unattractive aspects to it that need sprucing up, Ross said.

A new Subway sandwich shop has a large commercial sign out front that doesn?t fit into the neighborhood, while banks are putting in ATM machines that don?t mesh with attempts to make Cambridge Street more quaint, said Ross.

Putting Cambridge Street into the rest of the neighborhood?s protected historic district might help the area, Ross said.

Some business and property owners were generally positive about Ross? proposal.

?We still have 1970s-kind of neon signage and a mishmash of other things thrown up? on Cambridge Street, said Babak Bina, owner of property on Cambridge Street and former head of the Beacon Hill Business Association.

The manager of the Subway shop could not be reached for comment.

But some business owners and landlords reportedly aren?t as thrilled about separate efforts by activists to possibly restrict the opening of new insurance, real-estate and other office spaces on the ground-floor of buildings along the 19th century Charles Street, considered one of the prettiest streets in America.

Karen Cord Taylor, part-owner of the Beacon Hill Times, said small retail shops are being squeezed out of ground-floor space on Charles Street by insurance, real estate and law firms.

Offices are not as lively and attractive to visitors and residents, said Taylor, who?s working with other activists about possibly pushing for new zoning restrictions on Charles Street.

Taylor said the idea is supported by retail-shop owners - but faces resistance from building owners and firms with offices on Charles Street.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/view.bg?articleid=1075736
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Non-retail uses of ground-floor commercial spaces deaden a street. Taylor is right about this.

Even the 'quaint' North End has ATMs -- I'm not sure what the issue is with them.
 
Cambridge Street has bigger problems than its signage. It's essentially a suburban strip.
 
But that's mostly on the north (MGH) side of the street, which would be outside even the expanded architectural district.
 
Ron Newman said:
But that's mostly on the north (MGH) side of the street, which would be outside even the expanded architectural district.
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The south side is pretty spotty and un-Beacon-Hillesque as well. This is especially true of the eastern stretch beginning around the Saltonsatall Bldg. But even on its eastern stretch you'll find a gas station.

Both sides of Cambridge St. are pretty dumpy. Add to this the highway running between them and you've got, IMO, the crappiest major street in Boston's core.
 
So he wants to bring back "Historic" Cambridge St? I'm for it, just as long as we get Buzzy's too.
 
underground said:
So he wants to bring back "Historic" Cambridge St? I'm for it, just as long as we get Buzzy's too.
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Some of the meat at Buzzy's was pretty historic by the time it got over from Suffolk Downs.
(Do you think they are trying to get more buildings like the Beacon Hill Civic Assn. approved "contextual" Suffolk U. buildings on Cambridge St? Or is this less ambitious, and just aimed at cutting down on the number of tacky signs?)
 
Here we go with Comrade Mike "Putin" Ross again... his power-grabbing tactics really make me wonder about his philosophy on things like democracy, freedom, liberty and property rights. I parked at the Whole Foods lot on Cambridge Street yesterday. The street is not historic. At all. So for what reason might you want to designate it as such? To take control over it's businesses, landowners and residents. To initiate strict codes and force everyone into lock-step about it's development and its future. To direct and force people to adhere to communistic codes where building materials and design are dictated from some state ministry.

Soon, the Beacon Hill Athletic Club's concrete block building will be reclad in red brick and renamed "Ye Olde Beacon Hil Club for Athleticism" and the sign will be a wooden sign painted in gold leaf.

Mike Ross consistently shreds the Constitution to pander to the 10% of community crazies who wield such a large and disproportionate voice in city politics. I wish I was an unenployed trust fund baby or priviledged housewife, so I could have the time to regularely attend meetings and stick my nose in affairs that really aren't my business.

To call Cambridge Street "historic" is to do a disservice to our city's historic streets. It's also a huge step backward in making Boston an active, breathing, living city and not some Disney museum clad in red brick with fake gas lamps everywhere.

Sorry for the longish rant, this just really got me going. Can't somebody just give Mike Ross a real job for once in his life? Can't Deval appoint him to head some meaningless state commission?
 
Huh? Whole Foods is on the north side of the street, and would not be affected in any way by this.
 
But look at the South Side... Sangri-La Chinese food restuarant, the new 100 Cambridge development, the strip-mallish fast food joints, the aforementioned Beacon Hill Athletic Club building, the Venice Diner... it's not a historic street and to call it one is simply a lie. I would love to see those previously mentioned businesses renovated and rebuilt too - but not under the guise of "historic preservation"

And knowing how these people operate it's not a far stretch to see a proposal in ten years "well, the south side of the street is a historic district, so we really need to seize control of the north side of the street too so the whole street can be 'historic'" This is how facism operates - death by a thousand little cuts.

Again, just being there yesterday and walking the street from the T station up to Government Center got me really mad about this.
 
I'm not a Ross fan either, but my criticism would have gone more along the lines of, "glad to see Councilman Ross has found a way to keep busy after fixing all of our other problems."
 
No, the north side would never be declared historic because most of the buildings there are too new. The Old West Church and Otis House are probably already protected, though.
 
pelhamhall said:
Here we go with Comrade Mike "Putin" Ross again... his power-grabbing tactics really make me wonder about his philosophy on things like democracy, freedom, liberty and property rights. I parked at the Whole Foods lot on Cambridge Street yesterday. The street is not historic. At all. So for what reason might you want to designate it as such? To take control over it's businesses, landowners and residents. To initiate strict codes and force everyone into lock-step about it's development and its future. To direct and force people to adhere to communistic codes where building materials and design are dictated from some state ministry.

Soon, the Beacon Hill Athletic Club's concrete block building will be reclad in red brick and renamed "Ye Olde Beacon Hil Club for Athleticism" and the sign will be a wooden sign painted in gold leaf.

Mike Ross consistently shreds the Constitution to pander to the 10% of community crazies who wield such a large and disproportionate voice in city politics. I wish I was an unenployed trust fund baby or priviledged housewife, so I could have the time to regularely attend meetings and stick my nose in affairs that really aren't my business.

To call Cambridge Street "historic" is to do a disservice to our city's historic streets. It's also a huge step backward in making Boston an active, breathing, living city and not some Disney museum clad in red brick with fake gas lamps everywhere.

S
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I couldn't agree more with you on this. This is just silly. To truly make it "historic" councilor Ross would have to bring back the hobos and hookers from the 70's that hung out from the government center T stop down to MGH.

The property owners had to deal with the half ass construction that plagued the median running down this street for the well part of the past decade. This "redistricting" (read: taking) would be yet another slap in the face to the taxpayers.
 
My problem is that when you designate a street as "historic" you should be doing it to preserve history - not for the implicit reason of seizing control from rightful property-owners and businesses. Nowhere does the article mention history worth preserving, it only mentions ugly signage and ugly businesses worth seizing control over.

By using "historic preservation" as his insidious tool, he is actually mocking historic preservation as a useful and necessary tool to preserve history worth preserving.

It's a power grab. A land grab. It's not about historic preservation at all. It's about making a business have to go hat-in-hand to yet another goup of malcontents and beg for the right to use a certain type of glass or to replace a door knob with something that's not a Disney-fied version of a 1880s door knob. It's about the State running design and controling fixtures, finishes and freedom of property owners. I am pro-preservation on some of the city's true historic streets, I don't get it here.

Yikes. This has really touched a nerve with me. I think I'm just fed up with Ross.
 
The Beacon Hill side of Cambridge St. was almost entirely torn down in the 20th C in order to widen the street. The building presently there are not only not historic, but architecturally banal.
 
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