Rose Kennedy Greenway

[nico]

If you were to close your eyes and randomly place the greenway anywhere in Boston proper it would, due to its sheer size, have to come in contact with various neighborhoods/places. This doesn't mean that this is a logical way to connect these places or that the places are noteworthy enough to warrant an open space to connect them in the first place; and the connections in this case are dubious at best. To say that something connects one place to another because it touches each is a stretch. The greenway may come in contact with the North End and Chinatown, but it's no way to go between the two unless you don't know where you're going. Furthermore, if you think the greenway connects neighborhoods/places, keep in mind that these places would otherwise be connected seamlessly if it were not for the expressway, that the footprint of this greenway is a constant reminder of.
There was no thought behind where to locate open space, or even its dimensions...it didn't necessarily make sense to create open space here, it just came available. The author is just asking that in the future we actually plan constructive open spaces.

 

[dbhstockton]

"it's" = it + is

"It's" is a contraction of the two words "it" and "is." The apostrophe, in this case, indicates that letters and space have been taken out of the expression.

"Its" would be the possessive form.

While I'm at it: It's the same for "You're" (You + are as opposed to "your," which is the possessive form) and "They're" (they + are as opposed to "their," which is the possessive form).

I'm not crazy, nor am I a grammar expert. I just learned these damn rules as a kid and they've stuck with me while so many seem to be entirely ignorant of the very simple concept involved. It sticks in my craw every time I come across it. And I come across it A LOT.

Just venting. You may proceed.

Oh, and everyone knows Comm. Ave predates the City Beautiful era by at least a generation, right?...

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

I'm not sure I'd call Chinatown, South Station, Long Wharf, Quincy Market, Haymarket, and the North End "nowhere" or places of no "significance".

It isn't "nowhere", these are somewhere. What she means is that it doesn't connect "places" as defined by a landmark of some type. South Station/Dewey Sq is a "place" and the Greenway does start/stop there but the Greenway then doesn't connect to another "place", visually or physically. It goes by many "places" like the Aquarium, Rowes Wharf, Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market, North Station, but these cannot be seen when you stand at one end (think The Mall in Washington, DC with the Capitol at one end, the Washington Monument in the middle, and the Lincoln Memorial at the end. These are "places".)

What would help is if there were more gateways from Greenway to Neighborhood X. Chinatown and Quincy Market both have literal gateways but Long Wharf and the North End need them. The North End Parks are supposed to be designed as such but I don't know if the scale will ruin it.

Bah, there are so many little problems here! Why can't we just be thankful that there isn't a highway there anymore. Even if they ain't perfect they still beat what was there.

Oh, and everyone knows Comm. Ave predates the City Beautiful era by at least a generation, right?...

I feel a new thread coming on....

 

[nico]

dbhstockton, which incorrect use of it's/its are you referring to?

 

[statler]

Bah, there are so many little problems here! Why can't we just be thankful that there isn't a highway there anymore. Even if they ain't perfect they still beat what was there.

Because it is too big of a slice of land in too prominent a location to brush it off with a 'eh, better than a parking lot' attitude. The area has so much promise and the city as a whole has a basic need for good land use here.
To allow this opportunity to be wasted because it is better than what was there before (and some might argue even that point) is not only a shame but a frighting indication of how much we really care about our city.*

Oh and welcome dbhstockton! Thanks for the grammar lesson (although there are bigger fish to fry on this board, lol). Here's hoping your second post will have some actual substance.



*Said the man furiously typing at a keyboard.

 

[Padre Mike]

If I am correct, the width of the RKG has been determined by the width of the tunnel below. As a result, no significant building can be built over the tunnel, thus mending the various street pattern of the city into a more cohesive whole. Personally, I wanted many smal buildings to be built on the greenway, creating narrow lanes and accommodating shops and restaurants and even office space and residences, but the aforementioned tunnel issue has prevented that (not to mention where the plumbing and sewer pipes would be placed!).

That said, I wonder if it is necessary for the greenway to connect anything end to end. Instead, I see it as a kind of "vestibule" to a series of neighborhoods and sections of the city on both sides of the greenway: Bulfinch Triangle/North Station/Boston Garden, North End waterfront/Charlestown, Hanover St./North St., Waterfront Park/Harbor Walk/Long Wharf, the Aquarium, Quincy Market, Broad St., Rowes Wharf/International place, South Boston seaport district, financial district/South Station/Convention Center, Chinatown/Leather District....am I missing any?

Commonwealth Ave. Mall was a deliberate attempt to create a "front yard" and promenade for upper class Bostonians who built and lived in the Back Bay. Comm. Ave. started at the Public Garden and connected to.... nowhere. It was several decades before the Muddy River area was redeveloped and became the terminus for the pleasant promenade aspect of Comm. Ave. Mall. The Mall was also originally fenced in, block by block, (you can see the evidence in the granite curb stones lining the Mall), so that one would have to use the cross streets to enter each grassy block. The promenade aspect of the street gained in popularity when monuments and memorials began to be installed, along with benches, thus making the shady Mall a destination in itself as well as convenient place to walk with one's beau or for nannies to take their charges on foot or in baby carriage (pre-jogging days!).

Many of the contributors to this blog will still be alive to see the RKG evolve (I unfortunately, may not, for this process with take at least another 40 years!). It cannot be compared with the Comm. Ave. Mall. It is "like unto itself", unique, and therefore generating a lot of controversy and confusion as to what it should be. In time the people who enjoy downtown Boston will speak by their actions as to what is needed on the RKG and how it should be altered.

In addition, we can always rely on capitalism to generate evolution. Practically everything that lines the RKG was once derelict or semi-industrial and now is of service-oriented businesses catering to people with lots of spare cash and to tourists.

 

[statler]

If I am correct, the width of the RKG has been determined by the width of the tunnel below. As a result, no significant building can be built over the tunnel, thus mending the various street pattern of the city into a more cohesive whole

This has been debunked. If you can build over water (bridges) and open space (i.e. MassPike) you can build over a tunnel. You just need to build trusses across the span.
Yes, it's more expensive, but there is no engineering barrier.
Just financial and political barriers.

That said, I wonder if it is necessary for the greenway to connect anything end to end. Instead, I see it as a kind of "vestibule" to a series of neighborhoods and sections of the city on both sides of the greenway: Bulfinch Triangle/North Station/Boston Garden, North End waterfront/Charlestown, Hanover St./North St., Waterfront Park/Harbor Walk/Long Wharf, the Aquarium, Quincy Market, Broad St., Rowes Wharf/International place, South Boston seaport district, financial district/South Station/Convention Center, Chinatown/Leather District....am I missing any?

I guess I would question if these ares really need a 'vestibule' and if they were really urban in nature.
I'd say they are actually quite suburban and thus bad for the city.
Cities, especially Boston, are all about connections. Those connections are what carry the life blood of the city.
Right now, the waterfront is flopping around hemorrhaging, disconnected from the city.

 

[Padre Mike]

This has been debunked. If you can build over water (bridges) and open space (i.e. MassPike) you can build over a tunnel. You just need to build trusses across the span.
Yes, it's more expensive, but there is no engineering barrier.
Just financial and political barriers.

There's the rub....as I wrote, the potential for profit, unfortunately, is the only thing that will generate the capital to overcome these problems. Taxation and government grants just won't cut it.

 

[Padre Mike]

^^^Sorry for the formatting error....I can't quite figure it all out...

 

[statler]

There's the rub....as I wrote, the potential for profit, unfortunately, is the only thing that will generate the capital to overcome these problems. Taxation and government grants just won't cut it.

The city & state need to provide the proper zoning and infrastructure for capital to do its thing. Right now it has neither.

 

[ledjes]

Padre, you hit the nail on the head with your somber but accurate point:

Many of the contributors to this blog will still be alive to see the RKG evolve (I unfortunately, may not, for this process with take at least another 40 years!).

We're all critical of the Greenway in its current unfinished state, complaining that it lacks this and that; but only 2 1/2 years ago we were still looking at remnants of the expressway. The point: the parks may be almost complete, but the completion [assuming a city can ever be considered "complete"] of the Greenway will take many more years. Including the Aquarium parking garage, there are a number of parcels on the edges that can accommodate bona fide buildings. Also, let's not forget that there will be arts and cultural institutions on a number of parcels on the Greenway which should provide the destinations/end points to the parks - best case timing: we won't see the first of these completed until 2012.

Patience, people; Rome wasn't built in a day...in the meantime, I'm enjoying the much improved view.

 

[czsz]

Rome wasn't built in a day

Menino should bring back that sign...

 

[statler]

While it is true the Greenway will change (and hopefully improve) over time, that does not grant the right to do it wrong the first time.

The standard to which I hold the Greenway is Millennium Park in Chicago. No one in Chicago is asking people to give that park more time. While it is not perfect and it too will change and adapt over time, it was done right the first time. It has also provided a solid starting point for the future.
I'm not sure we can say the say thing about the Greenway.

 

[Padre Mike]

While it is true the Greenway will change (and hopefully improve) over time, that does not grant the right to do it wrong the first time.

The standard to which I hold the Greenway is Millennium Park in Chicago. No one in Chicago is asking people to give that park more time. While it is not perfect and it too will change and adapt over time, it was done right the first time. It has also provided a solid starting point for the future.
I'm not sure we can say the say thing about the Greenway.

I agree in great part to what you say. Having visited Millennium Park in Chicago, however, I have to add the following qualifications:
1. MP is an irregularly shaped, distinct area along the side of a major downtown highway, rather than a median area between two sections of town. I think it replaced rail yards, and so is more analogous to the Prudential Center than to the RKG in Boston;
2. MP, while divided into "rooms" that are very different from each other, each providing very different experiences, they are clustered together, enabling people to wander from one section to another and yet stay within a fixed acreage, rather than spread along a mile's length;
3. MP is far more "architectural" than the RKG, with the equivalent of our Hatch Shell and esplanade as its centerpiece;
4. MP was built to become a destination in itself, whereas it is too early to tell which parts of the RKG will become destinations and which parts will be merely "linkage" parkland;
5. MP is in Chicago, where the Mayor Daley has mandated "green" building codes and where bold architecture is the norm.

 

[statler]

I agree in great part to what you say. Having visited Millennium Park in Chicago, however, I have to add the following qualifications:
1. MP is an irregularly shaped, distinct area along the side of a major downtown highway, rather than a median area between two sections of town. I think it replaced rail yards, and so is more analogous to the Prudential Center than to the RKG in Boston;

I was thinking of comparison in terms of quality rather than structure. Obviously the two will (and should) be very different structurally.

2. MP, while divided into "rooms" that are very different from each other, each providing very different experiences, they are clustered together, enabling people to wander from one section to another and yet stay within a fixed acreage, rather than spread along a mile's length;

One of the major problems from the get go on this project is that everone saw the Greenway as a defined space with hard edges. There was a city there before. There is no reason there can cannot be a fully integrated city there again. Just lay the old street pattern back down, sell off the land and let it grow.
The rooms would be analogous to the 'blocks' of the old street pattern. No reason it can't be done.

3. MP is far more "architectural" than the RKG, with the equivalent of our Hatch Shell and esplanade as its centerpiece;

I see no reason this area can't be a 'architectural' as MP

4. MP was built to become a destination in itself, whereas it is too early to tell which parts of the RKG will become destinations and which parts will be merely "linkage" parkland;

Again, more quality than structurally.

5. MP is in Chicago, where the Mayor Daley has mandated "green" building codes and where bold architecture is the norm.

I believe Menino has made a similar pronouncement. (Of course Daley will actually follow through). And again, there is no real reason Boston can't be as architecturally bold as Chicago is. (It always used to be..don't know why we stopped)

BTW. I'm enjoying the conversation, thanks...

 

[stellarfun]

According to Wiki, Millennium Park cost $500 million. I think Boston could have built three Hort pavilions for that.

 

[Padre Mike]

Thank you Stellarfun and Statler for the conversation too. Your points are very well taken. Unfortunately, when the money for the Big Dig was put on the table via federal funding, there was a rush to get the grand engineering done. The "big picture" for the greenway was left vague in the hope that someone would see reason and the need for truly professional envisioning of the details. The "someone" never materialized and we have the present plan that is being executed piecemeal. The same has been true of the City Hall Plaza initiatives and the Winthrop Sq. tower "competition" that resulted in only one proposal. I think that the state should have come up with the lion's share of funding for the RKG, inasmuch as the state was responsible for tearing down the original fabric of Boston along the route of the expressway, and the building of the artery. Yet, hasn't the Commonwealth been playing fast and furious with the reports of our phantom tax surplus (thank you Mitt).

It is clear that the city can't (won't) come up with even a fifth of the cost of Millennium Park to enhance the RKG. (We have to grant here that Boston proper is a tiny city compared with Chicago, which I imagine has a much larger tax base and has always had a blustery will to be the "First City" of the Midwest). Since the 1960's, Boston, out of a misplaced sense of desperation for the development "crumbs" thrown its way, has given away the store over and over again, if not with tax loopholes, then with allowing mediocre architecture and design.

Politics and grossly poor taste, has governed much of Boston's development in the past 40 years (e.g.: the crazy idea that the Hort. Society should be given acres on which to build, when they had been forced, for financial reasons, to sell their headquarters on Mass. Ave.; the continuing saga regarding the Armenian genocide memorial garden; and formerly: the ugly statue of Columbus so prominent in the Harbor Park; the truly hideous display on Wash. St. memorializing the Irish famine (thank you Mr. Flatley); the fact that Kevin White himself had the right to choose the facade material and color of One Financial Place in Dewey Sq.; the delightful "Darth Vader" building in the Back Bay; the first redo of Copley Bunker ( er...Square); practically all of Philip Johnson's (R.I.P.)architectural designs in Boston; etc. ad nauseum).

 

[xec]

Some pics taken early Saturday morning.

 

[atlantaden]

Great pics, xec, thanks! Just curious, did you see any sort of park benches around? I don't see any in any of the pictures. I know at the North End parks they have some...and others are scattered about but I sure hope there's more seating than just the granite borders around the shrub beds.

 

[shiz02130]

I think the parks look better in pictures than in real life. I bike by these every day on my pedicab and I'm always struck by how much bare pavement there is. Taken together with the overly wide sidewalks on the other side on "Surface Road," there's going to be a lot of empty, undefined-feeling space. I get no sense for how these park are designed to be used...

Brick pavement + 3 lanes of asphalt + overly wide sidewalk + rough and lifeless party wall = not a great environment over a long stretch of one side of the "greenway."