Re: Garden Garage Towers (Basketball City) | 35 Lomasney Way | West End
Just to reiterate, the "last tenement" is without doubt the greatest testament to the dangers of large scale urban renewal that could ever be created. Sitting on a gravel lot in the center of an autopocalypse dead zone completely out of context sends an amazingly clear message about the dangers of grand vision large scale planning efforts.
It may have been an inadvertent monument, but it is the best monument possible for such a mistake. It speaks not just to the destruction of the west end, but also Scollay Square, the NY Streets, huge swaths of Roxbury, and even little losses like Wood Island and Barry's Corner.
If anything I'd love to see that whole triangle repurposed as an informational display as to what renewal efforts in the mid century did. A true memorial, but also a lesson to any future planners who want to wipe the slate clean. Creating "just another park", or infill development around it does nothing for the powerful lessons that this building, in its current context, communicate.
You can read about the disasters urban renewal caused, and get a sense for it by standing in the middle of the Government Center plaza, or the industrial zone of the former NY streets, or in the middle of Melena Cass Blvd, but that single tenement communicates SO much more. It smacks you in the face, you can't look away, and it is equally depressing to just about anyone looking at it. Loosing it would make it far easier to gloss over the mistakes of the past, and repeat them. It is to pre-renewal Boston what the Kaiser Wilhem Church is to the bombing of Berlin.
Just like we need parks here and there to escape from urban density and reconnect with nature, we need reminders like the last tenemant to keep us on the right track. The highest and best use for this site is not what it can economically fetch by building on it, but preserving it as a strong lesson to keep the mistakes it embodies from ever being repeated.
Just to reiterate, the "last tenement" is without doubt the greatest testament to the dangers of large scale urban renewal that could ever be created. Sitting on a gravel lot in the center of an autopocalypse dead zone completely out of context sends an amazingly clear message about the dangers of grand vision large scale planning efforts.
It may have been an inadvertent monument, but it is the best monument possible for such a mistake. It speaks not just to the destruction of the west end, but also Scollay Square, the NY Streets, huge swaths of Roxbury, and even little losses like Wood Island and Barry's Corner.
If anything I'd love to see that whole triangle repurposed as an informational display as to what renewal efforts in the mid century did. A true memorial, but also a lesson to any future planners who want to wipe the slate clean. Creating "just another park", or infill development around it does nothing for the powerful lessons that this building, in its current context, communicate.
You can read about the disasters urban renewal caused, and get a sense for it by standing in the middle of the Government Center plaza, or the industrial zone of the former NY streets, or in the middle of Melena Cass Blvd, but that single tenement communicates SO much more. It smacks you in the face, you can't look away, and it is equally depressing to just about anyone looking at it. Loosing it would make it far easier to gloss over the mistakes of the past, and repeat them. It is to pre-renewal Boston what the Kaiser Wilhem Church is to the bombing of Berlin.
Just like we need parks here and there to escape from urban density and reconnect with nature, we need reminders like the last tenemant to keep us on the right track. The highest and best use for this site is not what it can economically fetch by building on it, but preserving it as a strong lesson to keep the mistakes it embodies from ever being repeated.
