Rose Kennedy Greenway

[Equilibria]

Actually, I think buildings that invite the pedestrian in would be quite useful on the Greenway, especially to get warm in the winter or to cool down in the summer. If there are exhibits there to see or places to eat, they'll add.

The key is to make the space transparent and an extension of the public space outside. I can't say I like the design of the New Center; I know the CJP wanted a big-name Jewish architect, but they could certainly have done better.

 

[czsz]

Transparent? Open to the public?

How about something like Paris' Grand Palais:

 

[whighlander]

Exactly!

Though perhaps more in keeping with the general Bulfinch style of the wharf area

A great glass and stainless steel tent with shades for the summer and some solar warmth in the winter

A place for vendors of all kinds {e.g. Haymarket fresh foods, Faneuil Hall Bull Market, prepared foods, etc.} and temporary exhibits and performances by street mimes and musicians

I.E. the missing covered Boston Public Market of Portland, and beyond

In one of the Boston Globe sponsored public events for the planning for the Greenway --our "table" proposed the Thomas Menino "Fleece Market" {TMFM} as a glass and stainless steel Quincy Market shape canopy with a roof and partial sides. It would have been a block long canopy in the middle of the Greenway near Rowe's Wharf {sort where the New center is supposed to go}. The TMFM would have electricity, water and drainage available at a fee for the vendors so that they could have refrigeration and heat as required.

There have been other similar proposals ? for a covered market on the Greenway -- that?s what is needed down there not some Daniel Liebeskind suspended glass box with nebulous purpose.

If they really want the DL box ? stick it on one side of the Greenway in one of the copious surface parking lots that litter the path from one station to the other.


Westy

 

[kz1000ps]

Better yet, put the Libeskind building on the waterfront, next to the ICA. I'm sure those buildings would love eachother's company.

Just keep it away from the Greenway.

 

[Equilibria]

The Parisian building is pretty close in terms of intent, but the scale is way off. Something smaller, that follows the contours and maybe has an arch to echo Rowe's Wharf, or maybe just a break to allow the "gateway" to open onto open space.

Frankly, I wouldn't want the Libeskind building anywhere (don't really like his stuff)...

 

[czsz]

Not even in the MIT architectural theme park?

 

[kennedy]

Just checked out the Libeskind drawings. I like them a lot, but I don't like the whole "I wish I were the PEM, but in the middle of the Greenway" sort of thing.

Keep the exterior design, maybe add some really warm colors. Like instead of stainless, had like brick red on one end, and like ice blue or a really vibrant green on the other. Maybe have yellow and green, I don't know.

On the inside? It should either be more of a performing arts showcase, as it really seems to be almost a awards ceremony-Hollywood style building.

Or, have it be more similar to a long, indoor walkway. With all sorts of little cafes, and street vendors.

 

[czsz]

Or, have it be more similar to a long, indoor walkway. With all sorts of little cafes, and street vendors.

Just a thought...if the Greenway had been built out, they could have built glass arcades to facilitate "connections" to the waterfront...perhaps an axial arcade along the Greenway itself.

One can still dream...

 

[whighlander]

Took a Greenway stroll Sunday

I can see that there will be a lot of opportunity to change things in the next few decades as the Greenway develops

Many spaces adjacent to the Greenway are dominated either by blank walls, small parking lots or random nondescript buildings {particularly near Chinatown} and some in the North End

The owners or future owners will want to change a lot of things -- but it will take some time.

What will soon be apparent is that there is a simple and relatively pleasant way to walk from the North Station area to the South station area with the waterfront on one shoulder and Quincy Market on the other

The major problem is that it is very very exposed and so in the summer it will be brutally hot until the trees grow up and in the winter with the cold wind off the harbor it will even be worse -- it really needs some glass canopies - -even if they are temporary while we wait for the New Center for Liebeskind worship and the other Big schemes to evolve

As an aside the redesign of the gardens around the Federal Reserve for security purposes -- is a major victory in the post 9/11 world -- the gardens design has obviously been with security in mind -- but not only security and so they are very open to pedestrians and very pleasant to stroll through ? although one path seems to peter out rather than to connect through

The failure of the adjacent Garden Under Glass is even more apparent now than ever before as the fences are finally mostly down on large swatches of the Greenway.

At this point its very much a work in progress ? with Chinatown?s park essentially ready and a lot more work on the other park units and then large really unfinished patches with a few trees a walkway and some dead grass where some of the various schemes purport to be sited

Hope to do some additional strolling when the weather is a bit more pleasant and conducive to taking pictures.

 

[statler]

Plan for Armenian park moves ahead
But full genocide memorial might not come to pass

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | September 11, 2007

An Armenian-American group's proposal for a park on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway to recognize the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century is suddenly moving forward.

Despite longstanding opposition to Greenway memorials - by park advocates and by the conservancy that is assuming control of the parks corridor - the Mayor's Central Artery Completion Task Force, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and others are working to clear the way for the Armenian-American group.

It wants to donate and maintain the park, which would be built on a small block near Faneuil Hall Marketplace in downtown Boston.

Yet to be determined is whether the block in question, called Parcel 13, would be a park, a memorial, or some combination.

"We're trying to understand what a memorial is," Rob Tuchmann, cochairman of the task force, said yesterday.

"We're trying to work with the proponents to have words on a plaque which give recognition and appreciation to the donors, as opposed to a message of commemoration or a memorial."

The mayor's task force was scheduled to take up Parcel 13 at a meeting this morning, where it will ask an established North End community group to review the proposal.

That group, the North End Central Artery Advisory Committee, will be charged with setting up guidelines for a park on the half-acre between Commercial Street and Atlantic Avenue, near Christopher Columbus Park.

"We have been asked to participate in a public process, and we look forward to doing so," said James M. Kalustian, president of the Armenian Heritage Foundation, the group that is advancing the park plan.

Armenian-Americans in Watertown recently convinced the national Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group, to acknowledge that the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Turks starting in 1915 amounted to genocide.

The memorial issue is highly charged.

Greenway planners and community members intended the string of parks, created when the old Central Artery was put underground as part of the Big Dig, to be free of memorials - unlike, say, the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

In addition, the Armenian proposal did not go through a "tripartite" process - involving the surrounding community, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, and the City of Boston - as other Greenway proposals did.

Rather, it emanated from special legislation in 2000 that directed the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to try to find a place for a genocide memorial in Boston. The authority has since promoted a park, designed by a team led by Tellalian Associates Architects & Planners LLC of Boston, for the spot.

The state got involved in June when Ian A. Bowles, secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, ruled the Turnpike Authority "did not follow the 'joint development' process outlined for the Greenway open space parcels." He directed the authority to help "frame an appropriate application of that process."

The proposed design of the park won praise from many, including opponents of locating it on the Greenway. It includes a 12-sided sculpture to recall the 12 former provinces of Armenia, a water jet and pool, and a labyrinth of paved stone and grass 60 feet in diameter.

City officials and others have suggested other locations for a full-fledged Armenian genocide memorial park, but the Armenian Heritage Foundation has said it isn't interested in other sites.

City officials have not pressed the issue.

"I think there's a hope everything can be worked out," said Peter Meade, chairman of the Greenway conservancy. His group's opposition to memorials on the Greenway, he said, "has been clear and longstanding and coincides with the spirit of what folks have been talking about for a long time."

Meade declined to say whether the conservancy would oppose a plaque that refers specifically to genocide.

Bernard Cohen, secretary of the Executive Office of Transportation and Public Works and chairman of the Turnpike Authority, said, "The process remains open to all proposals."

Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.

Link

 

[underground]

I saw the fountains being tested again this morning in the southern North End Park. The northern park still looks rough.

 

[ledjes]

The Chinatown Park officially opened today with a lunch-time ceremony. This little "edge" park is nicely done. With 5 years of growth on the trees and plants, it'll be great. There's a significant open plaza area which hopefully will soon get filled with vendors or tables for mah-jhong, etc.

Also, along the Hanover Street edge of one of the North End parks, they just installed a continuous line of brass plaques that highlight little-known historical tidbits from 1620-2004...kinda cool...much more interesting than the standard freedom trail anecdotes.

 

[stellarfun]

The Globe's coverage of the Chinatown park opening.

Park with Chinatown flair is first of three to blossom on Greenway

By Ryan Haggerty, Globe Correspondent | September 13, 2007

A 1-acre parcel at the edge of Chinatown, formerly an offramp from Interstate 93, was reborn yesterday as the first of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway's parks, complete with towering bamboo trees, purple azaleas, Chinese willows, and a wide promenade winding along a lazy, babbling brook.

"It's really nice," said Anna Maria Kesera, 48, of Boston, as she paused next to a small waterfall and looked around the park. "I like that Boston is improving into a city that looks nice, like a European city or Montreal or San Francisco. It's something different."

The $4.5 million park represents a significant change for a part of Boston that was once divided by the Central Artery and was later transformed into a giant construction zone while the highway was buried. Winding from the old Chinatown gate to a new, red modernistic gate at Surface Road and Essex Street, the park incorporates aspects of Chinese culture, artistically represented by the fan-shaped pattern of the paving stones and landscaping with Asian grasses, flowers, and trees.

"This very site was an ugly, unsafe ramp that went to the Expressway and cut right through the heart of Chinatown," said House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, who joined other political officials and community leaders at a ribbon-cutting in the park yesterday. "It was not a great entrance to the neighborhood. This will bring us back to the kind of open space we want to see in this city."

The park is at the south end of the Greenway, a milelong string of shaded sidewalks, open plazas, wide lawns, and multiple parks that begins at North Station. The Greenway was first proposed in the 1970s as a way to reconnect Boston's waterfront with the rest of the city after completion of the Big Dig.

The Greenway's three parks - in Chinatown, the Wharf District, and the North End - had been scheduled to open late last year and early this summer. Now, the plan is to have the parks in the Wharf District and the North End "either opened or partially open by the end of October," said Mac Daniel, spokesman for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which is constructing the parks.

Even then, the Greenway won't be quite finished, said Peter Meade, chairman of the Greenway Conservancy, a private group created in 2004 to manage the parks.

"To have everything open, we're talking sometime next year," Meade said after yesterday's ceremony, adding that work on the project, which has a total pricetag of roughly $100 million, is still needed near some I-93 ramps.

Fund-raising is underway for three buildings that eventually will be located on the Greenway - a YMCA near the North End, a Boston Museum near Quincy Market, and the New Center for Arts and Culture, an exhibition space near Rowes Wharf.

In an interview after the ceremony, DiMasi said he is working on legislation to provide for the Greenway's maintenance after the turnpike's commitment to the project expires in five years.

"I'm keeping a close eye on all of the parks," DiMasi said. "We're going to try to address how to keep these parks as beautiful as they are on the first day they are opened."

Arthur Bolt, 45, said he has been enjoying the Chinatown park since fences surrounding it were removed last week.

"So far, so good," Bolt said, sitting on a stone wall while taking a break from his job in a nearby office tower. "It's something we've been waiting to have open for a long time. . . . I come over here to sit down, listen to the water. It takes the stress away."

I note that Mac Danial seems to have migrated from reporting on traffic for the Globe to becoming a spokesperson for the Turnpike.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/ar...air_is_first_of_three_to_blossom_on_greenway/

 

[ChunkyMonkey]

I'm curious to what it looks like, especially the gate area. I did find some pics on the web. It looks quite nice from what I can tell.

http://bostonchinatowngateway.com/

 

[briv]

This is a well done, fairly modest little neighborhood park. Ive passed through here several times in the past couple of weeks and even before it was officially opened there were people using it -- strolling up and down its path, inspecting the fountain, the bamboo or just sitting on wall enjoying a nice day. Community Crimewatchers are on patrol. It seems the residents of Chinatown -- and, to some extent, the Leather District as well -- have already mentally taken ownership of the place, which is very encouraging. It will help ensure this park remains used, vital and maintained well into the future.

The blank brick wall on the right is where the 120 Kingston St Tower is being proposed:

 

[KentXie]

This is a well done, fairly modest little neighborhood park. Ive passed through here several times in the past couple of weeks and even before it was officially opened there were people using it -- strolling up and down its path, inspecting the fountain, the bamboo or just sitting on the wall enjoying a nice day. Community Crimewatchers are on patrol. It seems the residents of Chinatown -- and, to some extent, the Leather District as well -- have already mentally taken ownership of the place, which is very encouraging. It will help ensure this park remains used, vital and maintained well into the future.

The blank brick wall on the right is where the 120 Kingston St Tower is being proposed:

What I don't like about this park is that whole empty spot right before the waterfall in this picture. It seems like the project was either half done or half planned. It will be great if they made the park more consistent through out the plot or add some shrubbery there.

 

[TheBostonBoy]

This is a well done, fairly modest little neighborhood park. Ive passed through here several times in the past couple of weeks and even before it was officially opened there were people using it -- strolling up and down its path, inspecting the fountain, the bamboo or just sitting on wall enjoying a nice day. Community Crimewatchers are on patrol. It seems the residents of Chinatown -- and, to some extent, the Leather District as well -- have already mentally taken ownership of the place, which is very encouraging. It will help ensure this park remains used, vital and maintained well into the future.

The blank brick wall on the right is where the 120 Kingston St Tower is being proposed:

They should put a few nice large trees in there. Let them grow over time, and root in and they will look nice, put some benches around them....that is my perfect image for that area. Or they should put some sort of fountain there...
What I don't like about this park is that whole empty spot right before the waterfall in this picture. It seems like the project was either half done or half planned. It will be great if they made the park more consistent through out the plot or add some shrubbery there.

 

[kz1000ps]

A few from yesterday afternoon, after the clouds rolled in unfortunately. I was in a rush then so I didn't even get to explore the whole thing

 

[czsz]

I like it...they could have placed/hid the maintenance shack a bit more strategically, though.

 

[JSic]

Its a neat little park, but some of its surroundings are bad. Specifically, the garage across the street has got to go.