Ugly Boston

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You would think they would have done a slide show with this....

Boston Globe
The ugly tour

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | February 20, 2009

Ah, the snow is melting. The sun is out. I can feel another glorious New England spring approaching. And what better way to celebrate the anticipated influx of curious tourists than to offer my first annual ugly tour of Boston.

By ugly, I don't mean architecturally controversial. This isn't a debate about the merits of Josep Lluis Sert's work at Harvard or Frank Gehry's leaky Stata Center. Let's not pile onto City Hall, which just last year topped the list of the website VirtualTourist.com's list of the "World's Top 10 Ugliest Buildings and Monuments."

I want my ugly tour to establish new standards. To qualify, a place must be, as my 6-year-old describes it, marked by "trash, broken bricks, and graffiti all over." The fact that these spots have failed to be fixed by neighborhood do-gooders and the-powers-that-be only strengthens their spot on my list. Remember, we've seen how effective our fine city is when it comes to removing chairs from shoveled parking spaces. These ugly spots, though, somehow remain off the grid.

The tour doesn't stick to Boston proper, though plenty of ugly places exist there. (Will the old Filene's Basement ever be done or should we get used to boarded up construction sites in the heart of Downtown Crossing?) Tourists flock to the Lexington Green, site of that legendary battle of 1775. Hence, I started in a place born during the centennial, the former Faces nightclub on Route 2 as you approach Alewife in Cambridge.

It sits in an overgrown parking lot next to a hotel and bowling alley. Faces closed in 1990 yet the building remains. The authorities appear to have done little in 19 years to deal with the splintered wood, broken glass, and hanging electrical fixtures visible from the street. If only this had been the Tasty, that Harvard Square diner unceremoniously closed in 1997 to make way for a generic chain. They'd have knocked that down by lunchtime.

Ronald Martignetti, one of the Faces property's owners, answered when I called his law office in Woburn. He said that after years of delay, it appeared the site could be developed into housing later this year. "It drives me insane that my name is attached to that property," he said, declining to go into details about why he and his partners have not been able to deal with the eyesore. "I am at my wits' end with this thing."

Residential housing can be important architectural markers of a cosmopolitan city. Think of the Dakota on New York City's Upper West Side or the Greek revival houses in our own Louisburg Square. Or the two buildings leading up to the corner of Linden and Cambridge streets in Allston.

A bent, metal fence protects a small patch of dirt. Trash runs along the curb. Somebody spray-painted the phrase "Neo Nazi Era" on a door.

How dirty is this section of Linden? When I arrived there this week, I saw an Art Institute of Boston student photographing a pile of garbage on the sidewalk for a school project.

A tenant, Damon Davison, 24, chatted with me as he headed off to work. "I'm here by circumstances, not choice," he said, adding that he pays just $480 a month to live with four other people.

Turning right, I was quickly on Storrow Drive. Out there, I passed one of our ugly landmarks, the BU Bridge. Isn't it so nice how rowers spray-paint the names of their alma maters on the rusty metal? Wait. Isn't that graffiti? Maybe Detective Bill, the dude who busted artist Shepard Fairey on his way to an Institute of Contemporary Art party this month, can stake out Head of the Charles.

That brings me to Ferdinand's. The five-story, former furniture building is a towering, central presence in Dudley Square, smack on the corner of Warren and Washington streets in Roxbury. So when will somebody finally fix Ferdinand's? That's not clear. Mayor Thomas M. Menino launched a design competition for local architects - how quaint! - and the winner is going to be announced sometime in the spring, according to a Globe article. But who will pay to turn the 30,000 square-foot building into the planned municipal office space?

In the Globe article, city planner Kairos Shen said the city plans to raise $85 million to $100 million for the project. Good luck.

Why do I have a feeling that Ferdinand's, with its peeling paint, boarded-up windows and a banner that states "Phase 1 - Environmental Remediation + Site Preparation" won't be coming off the ugly list anytime soon?

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.
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Were I mayor I would use emminent domain to create a real street grid in that stretch of mass ave as well as the industrial area between broadway in south boston and the convention center and the marine industrial park and would rezone it for mixed use residential retail and office. From an economic and urban planning point of view that land is enormously underutilized.
 
Is this what your kind of getting at?
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or this in my Dorchester nieghborhood?
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this has looked like this for years!
 
^^ Nah, that's temporary stuff.

What about the stuff that looks like crap year-round?
 
Yeah the bottom two. They would look like crap on a beautiful spring day.

Too much of that in the city. :(
 
I hate when businesses roll down those metal shutters when closing for the night (or, I guess on Sunday in your photo). Is there a Main Streets organization in that neighborhood?
 
^ There's about 4 assc. includeing The Codman Sq assc. but bussinesses won't take them down(I don't blame them!) Here's some ugly( I believe the city owns them?) Highland Pk buildings that need attention,like 10 years ago!
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Those would be lovely with some more work. Are they under construction? Is the sign on the first one a historic plaque?
 
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this one is on the yellow one ,the white one is getting some help other than that they're just rotting away!both are historic and have some history to them
 
^ Well, you know these old buildings, they're just determined to die!
 
Aw, damn! I thought somebody was actually conducting an Ugly Tour of Boston. :) I was looking forward to participating.

Hmmmm.... :idea:

Those two homes have been derelict since I grew up there. Amazed they've survived this long, despite recent decades of some repairs.

Those metal commercial shutters are horrible. Surprisingly, given Oakland's rep, there aren't as many of those here compared to what I see on the East Coast.

As for piles of dirtay snow--not really considered, unless the items entombed within are even more offensive than the standard detritus frequently on the streets, and in the gutters (exclusive of me, of course--heheh).
 
Evidence that the ladies who lunch at the Society for the Preservation for New England Antiquities don't seem to care that there's heritage to be saved in Roxbury or Dorchester.

As for the article that leads off this thread, I would rather the old Faces rots to the ground than continue to permit the vinyl siding that blights half the Boston metro. East Cambridge is proof positive that you don't need dirt, trash, or weeds to forge urban ugliness.
 
I mean, one would hope they would help preserve one of the few remaining 17th century houses in Boston. I guess it makes all the 18th and early 19th century ones seem unworthy by comparison, though.
 
recent boston globe article:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/ma..._to_revive_the_greek_revival/?s_campaign=8315
At 10 Linwood St. a "no trespassing" sign hangs above the front door. No light shines from the windows, and white paint peels off the exterior in patches. The unoccupied home, one of a scant few built in Greek Revival style surviving in Roxbury, has scaffolding doing the work of columns whose insides have rotted away.

But the home is not just another blighted urban structure. It is a building with a significant past that one local group is hoping to restore.

"The area has great history," said Chris McCarthy, a member of the Highland Park Neighborhood Association and one of the leaders in the effort to restore the house and nearby park. "But we've not been good stewards of our treasures."

The home came to the group's attention when it started a campaign to restore Alvah Kittredge Park in 2007. The building was constructed in 1836 by Kittredge, a Roxbury businessman, and was named one of the top 10 "Most Endangered Historic Resources" by Preservation Massachusetts in 2004, due to its rapid rate of decay.

"It really is an oppressive presence in the square," said McCarthy, a technical writer and Roxbury resident.

The neighborhood association is working to gain landmark status for the building, owned by the Linwood Street Realty Trust, which would make it impossible for any alterations or construction to occur on the building's exterior without prior approval from the Boston Landmarks Commission.

It is, however, up to the current owner to foot the bill for any costs associated with renovating the building.

"I would love to see a small annexed historical museum," said McCarthy, "But condos are OK. As long as residents are living there, contributing to the community, it could be lovely."

KIMBERLY SANFELIZ
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http://www.historicboston.org/99cb/akhouse.htm
 
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