Fall River, MA-- The rebirth of a mill town

[SC Truth]

Battleship Cove with the Bounty on the Fall river waterfront.

Battleship Cove now!

 

[SC Truth]

New Durfee High School-Fall River

 

[SC Truth]

 

[SC Truth]

1886 Building B.M.C. Durfee High School Fall River, MA. Cost over 1 Million in 1886.

 

[palindrome]

Wow beautiful

 

[itchy]

I'm lost. Are they:
1) preserving the historic building, and adding to it?,
2) demolishing the historic building, and building something fully new that vaguely looks like the old?, or
3) building another Durfee HS elsewhere in the city, leaving the historic building as-is for some other purpose?

 

[Java King]

I'm lost. Are they:
1) preserving the historic building, and adding to it?,
2) demolishing the historic building, and building something fully new that vaguely looks like the old?, or
3) building another Durfee HS elsewhere in the city, leaving the historic building as-is for some other purpose?

I'm equally confused. I hope it's number three.

 

[RandomWalk]

Based on the text in the first slide, the old building is on Rock Street, and the new building is on Elsbree St.

 

[Stlin]

I'm confused also ... but in a different way. Why are we looking at the renders when this is Complete and Open, as of Sept 2021?

https://www.heraldnews.com/story/ne...ee-high-prepares-welcome-students/5620253001/

(Scroll through the gallery; I really like how they did the interior spaces. I wish my High school was this nice - Hell, this looks nicer than literally every new build building on the UMass Amherst campus as of my time there 4 years ago)

For reference: The above imaged 1891 Durfee School on Rock St. has been preserved since the 1990s as the Fall River Probate and Family Courthouse; this new school didn't touch it in the slightest; it just drew inspiration from. This new building was a replacement for the crumbling brutalist circa 1978 Durfee School which also stood on the Elsbree St site (I believe its demolition has wrapped up but I could be wrong).

 

[SC Truth]

Creation of an 'urban boulevard'
That $112 million “urban boulevard” project, which is expected to be completed before the end of 2025, will physically lower both sides of Route 79 and will incorporate new sidewalks, traffic signals and bike paths.

The idea, according to the state’s Department of Transportation, is to spur business and residential growth near the Taunton River waterfront. The creation of the urban boulevard will open up 19 acres of land for future business development.


“You’ll be able to stand here and see the river,” Fedosik said, as he stood on the edge of the parking lot of the circa 1900 building with its six loading docks.

He also notes that the new commuter rail line linking Fall River to Boston — with a train depot located a couple blocks away just behind Davol Street — was another driving factor in deciding to invest in his mixed-use project.

The South Coast Rail project is scheduled to be operational by the end of next year.

 

[stick n move]

I was reading about Taunton last night and came across a picture of the old city hall.

Which was replaced with this

I had never seen what was there before, what a loss! Another piece of history lost to urban renewal. The amount of great historical buildings lost to time in the US is mindblowing. The old north station also comes to mind. Imagine if we had not bulldozed half of our great buildings in the 50-70s what the country would be like today. I think like Germany we should really consider rebuilding some of these lost treasures. Rebuilding is ok in my eyes vs trying to create something from scratch with an artificial historical facade. Its truely sad how many great buildings were lost to time and many forgotten.

 

[Lrfox]

I was reading about Taunton last night and came across a picture of the old city hall.

Which was replaced with this

I had never seen what was there before, what a loss! Another piece of history lost to urban renewal. The amount of great historical buildings lost to time in the US is mindblowing. The old north station also comes to mind. Imagine if we had not bulldozed half of our great buildings in the 50-70s what the country would be like today. I think like Germany we should really consider rebuilding some of these lost treasures. Rebuilding is ok in my eyes vs trying to create something from scratch with an artificial historical facade. Its truely sad how many great buildings were lost to time and many forgotten.

Yeah this is pretty grotesque. Almost as bad as the architectural loss itself is that they split downtown Fall River in half with when they build 195 and the two halves still feel disconnected from one another. To make matters worse, the streets around city hall have essentially been converted to a series of multi-lane (most one-way) speedways which add to the feeling of the entire area being a pedestrian nightmare. On top of that, you have the mess of ramps connecting 195 to downtown, 138, and 79 which further isolated the two halves of downtown from the waterfront. They've done some reconfiguring to improve the connectivity, but it's still a pedestrian nightmare. I have a lot of nostalgia for the area, but I don't have a lot of hope that there will ever be a good way to undo what was done here.

 

[SC Truth]

News about the Waterfront today!

Multi-million dollar MassDOT project on Route 79 underway (heraldnews.com)