Commonwealth Avenue Improvement Project

[cden4]

The bike lanes were most definitely an afterthought. The original plan did not have them, but it seems like they came up with a new restriping plan once construction was underway. Unfortunately, the MBTA did not coordinate with Boston early on (since Kenmore Square is an MBTA project) to make an effort early in the design to put bike lanes in their plan, especially since Boston wants very much to put bike lanes along the entire length of Comm Ave. I'll take what we got over nothing, but I'm hoping future projects take bike lanes into account from the get-go.

 

[kz1000ps]

First time coming through Kenmore in a while, and I gotta say it's coming together nicely:

^ The last shot didn't capture it that well, but the new bus canopy seemed to be one and the same with the Hancock.

 

[czsz]

I would say Kenmore's Back Bay-ification is now complete, but it seems to look even more bourgeois than Boylston or Newbury these days

 

[Ron Newman]

Historically, this was part of the Back Bay, the last part of it to be developed. A number of what are now BU or other dormitory buildings were once nice hotels.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Kenmore Sq really is the entrance to the Back Bay. Poor urban design leaves it seemingly half finished and disconnected from the rest of the city.

 

[bbfen]

Kenmore Sq really is the entrance to the Back Bay. Poor urban design leaves it seemingly half finished and disconnected from the rest of the city.

Every time I walk under the overpass, I lament this very thing. Olmstead's original vision had a promenade down to the river, right? What a shame, though of course impossible to fix now.

 

[Ron Newman]

Part of it could be easily fixed. There is no need for the section of the overpass that bridges over Comm. Ave. and Beacon Street. This traffic can just use Charlesgate East and West instead on the way to Storrow Drive.

 

[jass]

I dont mind the overpass, but theres more than enough space under it for a couple of large restaurants with indoor and outdoor seating.

 

[czsz]

Even if the traffic used the surface streets, Back Bay would feel removed from Kenmore - the traffic and the median effect of the Muddy River would still create a considerable mental barrier.

As it should be. I preferred Kenmore when it had an independent personality, even if I never witnessed its truly ragtag days.

 

[Lurker]

Fenway/Kenmore was part of the Back Bay, hence the Back Bay Fens, and was administered as such until the former become highly undesirable compared to the later. The affluent couldn't stand their neighborhood including such outliers and thus severed the political designations. The bastardized Fenway/Kenmore designation was born of this snobbery, thus leaving two distinctly different, three if you compare east vs. west Fenway, neighborhoods lumped together. If Kenmore Square becomes highly desirable in the future, expect the area to be split politically from Fenway and reincorporated with Back Bay proper.

 

[Ron Newman]

This was the last section of Back Bay to be developed, and somehow the development sputtered and stopped, leaving a number of empty lots along Bay State Road, some of which eventually were filled by BU expansion. I don't know the whole economic story here, but I'd like to.

 

[kz1000ps]

Fenway/Kenmore had the unfortunate fate of coming on line just as streetcars were making today's inner suburbs an option to those working in the city. The ability to build a house with an actual grassy yard (a revolutionary idea at the time) away from the ills of the modern industrial metropolis proved to be much more attractive than the typical narrow city lot with next to no grass and windows on only two or three sides of your home.

Suddenly, the middle class could now have a little of both the city and country -- once something only the wealthy could afford. The modern suburb was born.

As a result, the majority of housing stock eventually put up in the emerging Fenway-Kenmore neighbordhoods were enormous low- to medium-income tenements (e.g. all of Fenway), while the few areas left for the dying townhome breed (such as Bay State Rd.) developed nowhere near the pace they did for the blocks east of Mass Ave.

Commonwealth Ave. in the BU area was originally to be lined with lavish townhomes just like the established section (the Jewish community even built a temple there in anticipation of a residential neighborhood), but obviously that never panned out, and in their place sprang up Boston's first "auto mile" along with the university.

 

[Ron Newman]

That temple being today's Morse Auditorium at BU (originally Temple Israel). I never knew that this part of Comm. Ave. was intended to be townhouses, though. I wonder how the split between Boston on the north side and Brookline on the south affected its development.

I also remember BU taking over the big Cadillac-Olds dealership building on the Brookline side of Comm. Ave., where the BU Bridge intersects Comm. Ave.

 

[jass]

I also remember BU taking over the big Cadillac-Olds dealership building on the Brookline side of Comm. Ave., where the BU Bridge intersects Comm. Ave.

\\

I think that building is now part of BUs art program.

 

[PaulC]

Kenmore Sq really is the entrance to the Back Bay. Poor urban design leaves it seemingly half finished and disconnected from the rest of the city.

Are you talking about the original design or the current changes? What specifically do you think is wrong.

 

[bbfen]

Fenway/Kenmore had the unfortunate fate of coming on line just as streetcars were making today's inner suburbs an option to those working in the city. The ability to build a house with an actual grassy yard (a revolutionary idea at the time) away from the ills of the modern industrial metropolis proved to be much more attractive than the typical narrow city lot with next to no grass and windows on only two or three sides of your home.

Suddenly, the middle class could now have a little of both the city and country -- once something only the wealthy could afford. The modern suburb was born.

As a result, the majority of housing stock eventually put up in the emerging Fenway-Kenmore neighbordhoods were enormous low- to medium-income tenements (e.g. all of Fenway), while the few areas left for the dying townhome breed (such as Bay State Rd.) developed nowhere near the pace they did for the blocks east of Mass Ave.

Commonwealth Ave. in the BU area was originally to be lined with lavish townhomes just like the established section (the Jewish community even built a temple there in anticipation of a residential neighborhood), but obviously that never panned out, and in their place sprang up Boston's first "auto mile" along with the university.

Also, the economic bust-boom cycle of the two wars played a big role in how this final stretch was developed. The booms pushed middle class out to the suburbs, while the recession/depressions hit those same people (who were suddenly poorer, compared to their peers of a few years earlier) in such a way to have them in the tenement-style buildings generally west of Mass Ave.

Ironically, even the "slum" housing stock has much, much better bones than anything being built today.

 

[Ron Newman]

One of the curious features of this neighborhood is the presence of old buildings with Bay State Road addresses west of Granby Street, even though the actual road doesn't go that far. I'd be interested to see the original plans for that area before BU came in. Did Soldiers Field Road once connect into Bay State Road before Storrow Drive was built?

I'd also like to learn whether the large parking lots across from the Kenmore post office have always been vacant ever since landfill. And what was formerly on the site of the Howard Johnson's motel (now a BU dorm)?

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Did Soldiers Field Road once connect into Bay State Road before Storrow Drive was built?

From the drawings I've seen in Inventing the Charles River and Gaining Ground, yes.

Are you talking about the original design or the current changes? What specifically do you think is wrong.

If you stand in the middle of Kenmore Sq and look east you see a well defined urban space but if you look west there are parking lots and the highway.

 

[kz1000ps]

Ron, these maps seem to show the parking lot as never having a building, and the HoJo as being the first thing developed on that site.

All maps come from the BRA - http://www.mapjunction.com/bra/

1902. Note the abundance of townhome-sized plots:

1908:

1928:

1938:

1938 map showing Bay State turning into Soldiers Field Road:

1955 Aerials. Still many undeveloped lots:

 

[PaulC]

At least those are fixable probelms. As I stated on another post, I'd love to see BU build a performacing arts center on here.