Parking Garage under the Common

393b40

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Does anyone have pictures of the construction of the parking garage under the common? When was that thing built? Did the basically dig up a good chunk of the common to build it?
 
According to the always factually accurate Wikipedia, 1961, same year as the Callahan.

It was substantially renovated c. 1995...just before I got to town...I think at that time it got both new entrance vestibules (which were clearly new in 1996), and I think they even re-waterproofed the top of the structure (which involved excavating the common to expose the roof, fixing the concrete, waterproofing and re-burying it.) When I got to Boston in July 1996, the re-worked grass & dirt were still clearly different from the rest of the Common.

Aha! Here's a Globe article from July 4 1995 with fair use extracts:
...Boston Common Garage opened to the public after 2 1/2 years of reconstruction.
...The garage, deemed unsafe in November 1992, has been closed since March 1993, after chunks of concrete began falling.
...All of the garage's 1,400 slots will be back in use by the end of the week
...Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which owns the garage and just spent more than $30 million renovating it.
...new floors and ceilings, lighting and ventilation systems, bright pedestrian entranceways with new elevators, and emergency call buttons on every other concrete column.
...The floor has a rubbery coating. "What killed this garage, and any other garage in the Northeast, was the salt from your car,"
...Parking in the garage will cost $18 for a 24-hour day, $6 more than when it closed in November 1992. And there was a 3 1/2-year waiting list for spaces at monthly rates. Authority controller Alan D. Reid said more of those will be available now, at $210 a month, or $75 for nights only.

Original Construction looks torn from the pages of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (link below says the construction was from 1959 to 1964, delayed by litigation and plagued by corruption. Plus ca change, ....

http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/sluria/underworld_garage.html

common2.jpg
mikes-shovel.jpg

(that's the common, on the left)
 
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I hope they had a few archeologists on hand at the time.
 
The excavation was not without controversy. Many felt it heresy (?) to desecrate the Boston Common in such a manner, even though the garage would be out of sight, once built.

Back when the Back Bay was a bay, boys would bury coins at the edge of the Common and then return to find them, as in a scavenger hunt.

Whether any remained a hundred years later, who knows?
 
I watched it being built as a kid. My mom would take me to the Frog Pond to swim. I believe that there was a referendum that approved the garage. That was the era of "progress".

OMG, my childhood is archived!!
 

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