Melnea Cass Boulevard, like the Southwest Corridor, is one of the after-effects of the massive demolition in the 1960s to make way for a planned highway connector through Boston. The highway plan was stopped in the early 1970s, largely because of intense citizen resistance-but the destruction was already wrought, leaving swaths of vacant land where homes and businesses once stood.
The wide boulevard, built in 1981, filled in one of the bulldozed paths. Running from Tremont Street near Ruggles Station to the Mass Turnpike Connector at Mass. Ave., Melnea Cass Boulevard is widely seen as highway-like, with fast-moving traffic, dangerous street crossings and little room for bicycles. The street’s width and location serves to separate Roxbury’s Dudley Square area from the South End and Lower Roxbury, creating a psychological, if not actual, barrier to movement between the areas for shopping, strolling or dining.