Books about Boston development, architecture, and urbanism

FK4

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This thread might not get much use but I was thinking that it might be nice to have a place to list good books people have read and would
Recommend to other readers about all things urban in Boston. Since it's a small subject, I would also include books about the history and culture of the city as well.

Building the New Boston by Thomas O'Connor is a great book about the fifties and sixties and how bad a shape the city was in before urban renewal. It has gotten some criticism that it doesn't chronicle the stories of those displaced enough, but overall it gives a very readable history of this period and puts into perspective how the city could end up destroying itself - and how the urban renewal projects spurred growth.


Streetcar Suburbs by Sam Warner is mentioned on this site sometimes - it chronicles the development of the inner suburbs like Roxbury and Dorchester by the extension of streetcar lines. It's a little repetitive and somewhat disjointed (skips around neighborhoods and time frames) but it was a lot of interesting maps and photographs of housing (many of which have since been demolished). The author also really does a good job, I am assuming accurately, of describing the subtle differences in socioeconomic classes and their reflections in the various architectural styles of different neighborhoods.
 
Outstanding book for anyone interested in the development history of Boston:

Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston; Nancy Seasholes, MIT Press, 2003.

Very complete history of all the landfill projects and their impact on the city.
 
Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston
By Mark Pasnik, Chris Grimley, and Michael Kubo
The Monacelli Press, 2015

Rites of Way: The Politics of Transportation in Boston and the U.S. City
By Alan Lupo
1971 (Out of Print)

Building A New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal, 1950-1970
By Thomas H. O'Connor
Northeastern University Press, 1995

A People's History of the New Boston
By Jim Vrabel
University of Massachusetts Press, 2014

Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape
By Elihu Rubin
Yale University Press, 2012
 
Mapping Boston
edited by Alex Krieger and Daid Cobb
The MIT Press, 2001

Planning the City Upon a Hill - Boston since 1630
by Lawrence W. Kennedy
The MIT Press 1992

AIA Guide to Boston
By Susan and Micheal Southworth
The Globe Pequot Press 1st edition 1984, 2nd edition 1992, and 3rd edition 2008 (I only have the 2nd edition, but would like to pick up the other two just to compare how they discuss some of the interesting or controversial buildings)
 
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Inventing the Charles River
by Karl Haglund
The MIT Press, 2002

Jeff, agreed re: Seasholes' book on all counts
 
I read this 1972 Histroy of the Subway, Change at Park Street Under, for lack of anything better.

Somewhere I heard there was/is a book that describes the Belmont brothers, one building the Boston Subway and the other, August Belmont, Jr building NYCs.

Can anyone recommend a better subway book?

Meanwhile, though it has nothing to do with Boston, you still have to read Robert Caro's The Power Broker because it has everything to do with the 20th Century remaking of cities to accommodate the automobile.
 
This is great - some of these others I have, some I've heard of, but most I have not. Look forward to checking up on these. Inventing the Charles River has been next on my list for a while.

This link is a review to O'Connor's Building a New Boston and includes references to many other related works, including a few contemporary studies on the West End that I keep meaning to check out.

I would throw in three cultural books as well -
Proper Bostonians by Cleveland Amory is fascinating and hilarious, really eye opening on just how interconnected and small the power structure was back in 1940s.

About Boston by David McCord - short essays - about 5 pages each - on various tidbits concerning the city. This one is a must have for anyone who loves this city.

Of course, Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas about busing, which I'll get around to reading some day...


***
And of course again, The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch which includes Boston as one of the three cities examined for its imageability.
 
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A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900
By Stephen Puleo

A Decent Place To Live: From Columbia Point to Harbor Point-A Community History
By Jane Roessner

The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions
By Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon

Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s
By Ronald Formisano
 
If you want great reads about Federal housing and urban development policy:

From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America
Edited by John F Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Sylvan

The Federal Government and Urban Housing
By R. Allen Hayes
 
The best book I've ever read on Boston architecture/history:

Boston: A Topographical History
by Walter Muir Whitehill

It only covers up through the late 1960's, but it's fantastic. The third edition has a 1975 addendum. I also recommend Lawrence Kennedy's book, mentioned by Randomgear above.
 
Arlington, I think you might be talking about The Race Underground, written by Doug Most.

Also I have to second "A City So Grand", I really enjoyed that one.

Edit: I would also add "The Boston Irish: A Political History" by Thomas O'Connor
 
Perhaps someone already mentioned it, or perhaps it intentionally went unmentioned b/c it's like bringing up Ferris Beuller's Day Off when trying to remember 80s movies; that is, it's so obvious it should really go w/out saying. But just in case:

Lost Boston by JANE HOLTZ KAY
http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/lost-boston

A must read.
 
Perhaps someone already mentioned it, or perhaps it intentionally went unmentioned b/c it's like bringing up Ferris Beuller's Day Off when trying to remember 80s movies; that is, it's so obvious it should really go w/out saying. But just in case:

Lost Boston by JANE HOLTZ KAY
http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/lost-boston

A must read.

My son got that for me for Christmas. A++
 
Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston
Michael Rawson
Harvard University Press, 2010

From an academic press but meant for general public, too. Very interesting so far, I'm about halfway through.

It describes the social / cultural / political processes that underlay the huge growth spurt of the nineteenth century (with some background from before that and some discussion of what's still in place today).

Aside from intro/conclusion, it has five chapters (titles are in "...") that deep dive into:

- "Enclosing the Common" - conversion of the Common from a true Common in the old English sense (commonly held rights held by a specific list of citizens for cow-grazing, gravel mining, rug cleaning, etc) into a park for recreation and aesthetic beauty (and no more cattle-grazing rights, for sure).
- "Constructing Water" - creation of the first water supply system and the battle over whether that would be a pure profit-oriented enterprise (with no supply to those too poor to afford it - they'd continue schlepping from wells) or a publicly built entity that would treat water supply as an inherent right to some extent (while nonetheless charging fees for the service).
- "Inventing the Suburbs" - creation of the first suburbs (as we now understand that word) in the nineteenth century; with a case study look at how/why Brookline succeeded so well at the new ideal and therefore managed to stay independent, whereas Roxbury was so much less successful and got annexed. (Ironic key: a suburb needs to provide decent "urban" amenities - street lights, drinking water, cops, etc, to fend off becoming swallowed by the true urban core; if it tries to stay too "rural" it'll get swamped by newcomers anyways and need to cave in to annexation for the services.)
- "Making the Harbor" - I haven't reached this chapter yet, so aside from the obvious story of infill and land creation, I don't know the slant.
- "Recreating the Wilderness" - first large exurban park preservation, with focus on Middlesex Falls and Blue Hills (well, they were exurban back then). Again, I'm not far enough along to give the gist of the argument.

The book was a finalist in the Pulitzer Prize for history.
 
I can't read Lost Boston. I've tried but it is too depressing.
Despite my cheerleading of new developments in these forums I am, at heart, a pretty hardcore preservationist. Even seeing mediocre pre-war buildings get razed makes me sad. But a whole book of great buildings? Ugh.
 
The Big Dig
Boston's Big Dig: the largest urban construction project in the history of the modern world.


by Dan McNichol
Photographs by Andy Ryan

Silver Lining Books, 2000

ISBN: 0760723079

A great coffee table book covering the entire project and putting the whole thing in historical context. It has some great historical photos and graphics, and some amazing "behind the scenes" shots of the construction itself. It goes into a manageable level of detail around some the unique construction/excavation techniques too.

I've included a few crude snaps here to give you taste.

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