The Alcott (née Garden Garage Towers) | 35 Lomasney Way | West End

I was a teen during the 60's, the city was basically a pit hole. A wreak! What was Boston famous for during the 60's? The Boston Strangler!! Thank God things started to change in the mid 60's, The Pru, Quincy Market, the Harbor was opening up, things really started to really look up. And it's not pointless to compare Boston back then to today's Boston. There are many cities that remained stagnant, never changed. And others, it's only recently that change has begun. Boston had some great leaders, visionaries, that dragged the city into the future, we owe them the great city we have today! Sure, major mistakes were made early on, the razing of the West End, the bulldozing so much of downtown for the elevated highway are two, but people learned from those mistakes. Boston's become a beautiful, very livable city, one of the best in the country. ps, darn you Blackbird, I was typing, you were posting. I was so proud of my Strangler comment, you beat me to it. LOL
 
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KMP's original comment was about the last 10 years, not the 1960's. She was comparing 2020 to 2010. We have come a very long way in 10 years, and IMO it's been a breath of fresh air after the anti-development Flynn and Menino administrations. The city felt extremely stagnant in 2010. There was a general stirring, and some good additions like Atlantic Wharf (and...??? - Clarendon, 45 Province, W Hotel... decent but not "major city" skyline buildings) but none of the serious visual impact towers got going until Millennium Tower broke the plateau in late 2015.
 
Blackbird said:
I, too, remember how gorgeous the West End used to be before the new construction. :cry:

Back when the Tip O’Neil Building could shine brightly as a true work of art, before it became surrounded by this modern garbage with its “food halls” and its “housing”.

Remember the parking lot in front of the Garden? Remember how practical it was? 😭
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So the standard for the North Station area schlock is that at least it’s better than a parking lot and the O’Neill? Thanks for making my point.
 
kmp1284 said:
So the standard for the North Station area schlock is that at least it’s better than a parking lot and the O’Neill? Thanks for making my point.
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Your point was (and I quote): "Boston has become such an ugly city over the last ten years."

If you wanted to amend it and say "Boston has remained an ugly city for the last ten years", then maybe I could get on board.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Comparing Boston of the 1960's to today is pointless, because the culture, the economy, and just about everything else has changed so completely; it's comparing apples and oranges. There were a lot of things about 1960's Boston that were better IMO: the vibrant downtown shopping district, lack of homeless people, the MTA/MBTA in better condition overall, more civility in people generally, the communities were safer, housing affordable, family wage jobs very much available, etc. Today things are cleaner and shinier, and there are a lot more pedestrian and biking facilities than back then. So, to me it's a mix. Me, I liked it better back in the 60's, but obviously a lot of nostalgia in the mix on that one.
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The Boston of the 1960's is something I have to explain and apologize for all the time to people from outside New England. It was an embarrassing parochial backwater. The black children who had rocks thrown at them through the windows of their busses don't seem to so fondly remember the "more civility in people generally" of which you speak. The large swath of the city that was run by Whitey Bulger, Louise Day Hicks and Dapper O'Neil did not seem so charming to thousands.

Today's Boston is still trying to shake off the stink. Thank God it is doing a remarkably good job of it.
 
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shmessy said:
The black children who had rocks thrown at them through the windows of their busses don't seem to so fondly remember the "more civility in people generally" of which you speak. The large swath of the city that was run by Whitey Bulger did not seem so charming to thousands.
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Those things didn’t really happen until the 70s. In the 60s the schools were still segregated and Bulger was still small-time. Again, I think the serial rapist/murder was the scariest part of the 60s in the city.
 
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Blackbird said:
Those things didn’t really happen until the 70s. In the 60s the schools were still segregated and Bulger was still small-time. Again, I think the serial rapist/murder was the scariest part of the 60s in the city.
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I heat ya. Rant over. I was just set off by the good ol' days, "more civility" in 1960's Boston comment. Sorry for the thread sidetrack.
 
Blackbird said:
Ah, yes. I'm sure the 5-10 years between the arrest of the Strangler and the rise of Bulger must've been really nice. Sarcasm aside, though, wasn't the Combat Zone in full swing by the 60s? I've never thought of it as a particularly safe or civil decade in the city.
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The Combat Zone was edgy, but it was a confined area, a sacrificial zone for the prurient, if you will, and during the day I could walk through it totally safe. In the metro area overall, crime was lower than today and homelessness was nonexistent. Income disparity was nothing like it is today. Where I grew up, Cambridge, was absolutely affordable to working class people, Now it's one of the most expensive places in the country, along with Boston and most of the metro area., Today Boston is shiny and pretty, which is great, but the bigger picture including social justice and the overall quality of life for the working class is quite a bit worse than it was 50 or 60 years ago.
 
Charlie_mta said:
The Combat Zone was edgy, but it was a confined area, a sacrificial zone for the prurient, if you will, and during the day I could walk through it totally safe. In the metro area overall, crime was lower than today and homelessness was nonexistent. Income disparity was nothing like it is today. Where I grew up, Cambridge, was absolutely affordable to working class people, Now it's one of the most expensive places in the country, along with Boston and most of the metro area., Today Boston is shiny and pretty, which is great, but the bigger picture including social justice and the overall quality of life for the working class is quite a bit worse than it was 50 or 60 years ago.
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I said before I didn't want to continue the sidetracking this thread, but jeebus, that last sentence (particularly about "social justice" of Boston 50 or 60 years ago) begs to reel me back in. Are you freaking kidding me about 'social justice in Boston 50 or 60 years ago'????????????????? Did the Meathead and Gloria drop Edith's pot roast tonight?
 
shmessy said:
I said before I didn't want to continue the sidetracking this thread, but jeebus, that last sentence (particularly about "social justice" of Boston 50 or 60 years ago) begs to reel me back in. Are you freaking kidding me about 'social justice in Boston 50 or 60 years ago?!
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I'm not convinced about the metro-level safety bit either. Like, didn't people use to call Somerville "Slummerville" because of how decrepit and crime-ridden it was? My aunts and uncles, who grew up in Natick, still talk about how bad downtown Framingham used to be. If Framingham was bad, I can only imagine what life was like in the area's bigger cities like Lowell, Salem, Brockton, etc. Heck, I've heard that even Newburyport was a dump in the 60s.
 
I'm looking at the 1960's and 70's from a Cambridge perspective at the time. I did work in the business section of downton Boston (High Street) in the mid to late 60's while I was still in high school,, through a great program that Cabot Corporation had for hiring low income teenagers, but I was not wrapped up in the doings of Boston proper. Cambridge was/is it's own little town and didn't have the racial harassment, segregation and backwardness described here. Apparently I was lucky to grow up where I did. That being said, I would still take Cambridge, Boston and the US in the 1960's and 70's over what is happening today locally and nationally.
 
kmp1284 said:
So the standard for the North Station area schlock is that at least it’s better than a parking lot and the O’Neill? Thanks for making my point.
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"Schlock" is an outstanding description of the two towers at the Hib on Causeway.
 
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