Boynton Yards | 99-101 South/808 Windsor | Somerville

[Charlie_mta]

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A quick search -
Roosevelt Towers typifies the so-called New York garden court. Groups of U-shaped apartment houses, each with its own garden court, are arranged with an overlay of streets separated by wide, open lawns. The main block, a ten-story structure with twin wedding cake cupolas, occupies the farthest end of the lot from Cambridge Street. Twin roads separated by a broad green space provide an axial approach to the building. On either side of the central boulevard, two sets of U-shaped blocks stand four stories high. The configurations of all the buildings were intended to maximize the open space and light available to the apartments. Minimal Georgian Revival elements ornament the brick exteriors.

Desmond & Lord Architects Link They are the architect of record. Looks like they were big on projects in Maine, but no mention of Roosevelt Towers. Probably a "bread and butter project" for their firm at the time.

Sad story of troubling times in the early 70s. LINK
A more positive note, Cambridge Housing Authority is in the planning stages for a gut rehab of the mid-rise towers. LINK The four story buildings were rehab'd within the last couple of years.

The architecture is neo-Gregorian according to info I found, but I always thought of it as neo-colonial, especially the ornate wood framing around the outside doorway entrances. I think the cupolas (towers) on the high rise buildings' roofs are a nod to the colonial theme. Jefferson Park in N Cambridge (where I grew up), built about the same time as Roosevelt Towers, had a similar ornate wooden treatment of doorways.

Both Roosevelt Towers and Jefferson Park took the same downward plunge in the late 1960s/70s as CHS allowed them to deteriorate, becoming drug and gang havens. They started out around 1950 primarily as housing for returning WW II vets and their families. One of my uncles and his family lived in Roosevelt Towers after WW II, but soon moved on to live on Cape Cod as he become a construction manager for the Mid-Cape Highway construction. That's basically the story of much of the Cambridge housing projects. They started out great but crashed and burned due to racism, lack of maintenance, and neglect by the City. My family got out in 1966 just as Jefferson Park started to get really bad.

 

[RandomWalk]

That Crimson story from the 1970s dog whistles about the racism (e.g. a “new breed” of tenant). It’s horrible that the CHA basically stopped caring when it wasn’t the white people.