Rose Kennedy Greenway

Shepard said:
It's true for bored residents like us, but isn't this what most visitors expect out of Boston? The well-manicured distinctive Old European-style city?

If this city is too defined by its heritage, too timid, too conservative, isn't it partly because of the way we're defined as a city by the millions of Freedom Trail-following image-makers who pass through our hotels every year - not just because of how we define ourselves?
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Isn't it ironic that you've described a city known for its revolutionary history as conservative?

Anyway it's precisely because Boston is known as being fussy and traditional that it shouldn't be putting up with the shit we get for public space. They would not put down a bed of mulch along a highway access ramp and called it a proper park in 1833. In short: the problem with this landscaping isn't that it's traditional, it's that it's not. It's radical - but not radical like the High Line. Radically sloppy.

Someone needs to get a bunch of restaurants and housing into the ramp parcels ASAP.
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The phrases "ramp parcels" and "ASAP" were never meant to meet.
 
I know that I risk being burned at the stake for heresy against modernism, but I think that development in the Faneuil Hall area from Haymarket to State Street and up to the greenway should be full-blown historicist. Not contextual modernism, but full out historical reproductions. So what if it's Disneyesque, that area is our Dinseyland.
 
It's only Disneyesque if it's cheap facades slapped on large boxes. Actual, small scale, true brick & stone buildings would be a welcome addition to the city.
 
Joe_Schmoe said:
...development in the Faneuil Hall area from Haymarket to State Street and up to the greenway should be full-blown historicist. Not contextual modernism, but full out historical reproductions. So what if it's Disneyesque, that area is our Dinseyland.
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Not many vacant lots to apply your prescription. Would you tear down a 100-year old building to substitute a replica of a 200-year old?
 
Any pics regarding the proposed redesign (so soon!) of the Chinatown parcel of the Greenway as reported in the Globe today??
 
Boston Globe - October 21, 2009
[...]the BRA awarded a $50,000 contract last night to Stephen Stimson Associates for the redesign of the Chinatown Gateway Park, adjacent to the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway between Hudson Street and Surface Road. Three public meetings will be held to discuss the design. Construction is expected to begin next summer.
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Watch them respond to the "community" request for more open space by putting in a lawn and some trellises, leaving the old men to wonder where they can play checkers.
 
Do you mean the section of the park that's just a big paved area? That always looked to me unfinished and waiting for additional design.
 
I think so.

But now it will have grass and shrubs. It will be just as desolate and empty, but 'complete'.
 
If I remember correctly, that large plaza was built so the Chinese Community would have a place for large gatherings and celebrations.
 
ablarc said:
Not many vacant lots to apply your prescription. Would you tear down a 100-year old building to substitute a replica of a 200-year old?
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No, basically it amounts to tearing down the Hard Rock parking garage, which ought to be torn down anyway because it faces the greenway and we need something better as an edge. Also the "Parcel 17" or whatever it is called falls into this region.

Does anyone have an overhead map of the area pre-central artery that shows what was on the Hard Rock space?

Edit: here's a pic that gives you a sense of what was in the Hard Rock space before:

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I think I like the looks of everything in that photograph more than the Hard Rock Cafe parking garage structure.
 
Joe_Schmoe said:
I know that I risk being burned at the stake for heresy against modernism, but I think that development in the Faneuil Hall area from Haymarket to State Street and up to the greenway should be full-blown historicist. Not contextual modernism, but full out historical reproductions. So what if it's Disneyesque, that area is our Dinseyland.
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THIS is what iAm seeing her to. BUT> The peeples who are doing the working her shuld bewereing the COLONIALO CLOTHS TOO!!!
 
Edit: here's a pic that gives you a sense of what was in the Hard Rock space before:

When I see photographs like this I can only feel a deep sense of loss. To have had all that beautiful irreplaceable architecture and density be destroyed is beyond tragedy IMO. Someone gave me the book entitled "Lost Boston" and it sits on my bookshelf because I cannot bear to look through it again, it was that painful.
 
Ron Newman said:
Do you mean the section of the park that's just a big paved area? That always looked to me unfinished and waiting for additional design.
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Ron, the park is called Mary Soo Hoo park, directly behind the vent building on Hudson Street. It's a children's playground put in place long before the Greenway and is now infested with rats.

marysoohoo.jpg
 
atlantaden said:
If I remember correctly, that large plaza was built so the Chinese Community would have a place for large gatherings and celebrations.
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But when it's not being used that way, surely it could benefit from a scattering of tables and chairs? Maybe lawn chairs such as are currently in Harvard Yard and Times Square?
 
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