Millenium Park no longer in West Roxbury
By markk - 10/18/10 - 6:41 pm
... at least according to today's Metro.
http://www.metro.us/boston/local/article/665142--millennium-park-hits-10th-year
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North Roxbury?
Anybody got a map showing the boundaries of this?
North Roxbury is due south of ...
Newstead Montegrade.
The north part of Roxbury was
The north part of Roxbury was lower Roxbury, at the Neck. That's south of the South End.
except it is the South End
-at least now. The neck was where Washington Street is today, its narrowest point being about where the Cathedral of the Holy Cross is today. Chinatown was the Old South End and all of the Back Bay was Roxbury, that is until infill began and Roxbury's border was moved from the water border that was about where Arlington St is today, to the area where Stony Brook and Ruggles St met, about where Ruggles Station and Melnea Cass Blvd are today.
Actually, Boston Neck
Actually, Boston Neck extended south quite a way from what is now Arlington street. Most of the Neck was in Boston, not Roxbury.
Agreed
Just to clarify though, most of the neck was in Boston, but there was a water border in what was then the actual water filled Back Bay between Boston and Roxbury, this border ran along the north side of the neck and then went north-westbound approximately parallel to Arlington St. Sometime around the time Back Bay was filled in, that border was moved to the Ruggles St area. On a related note: I highy recommend Walter Muir Whitehill's "Boston, A Topigraphical History" to those who haven't read it yet. It is a fascinating look into how Boston expanded through filling and annexation over the years.
blame Menino
His office is always giving out bad info on city geography— this hapless Metro reporter probably knows the city's geography better than half of Menino's staff at the moment.
Not just the Mayor's office
It's not just the Mayor's office. Sunday morning while walking my dog, I came across a guy lying asleep on the sidewalk. At least, I sincerely hoped he was asleep, but I couldn't see any breath movements (I was staying pretty far off, because of the dog). So we went home expeditiously and I called 911 (I rarely take my cell phone with me when walking the dog.)
When the 911 operator put me through to the ambulance dispatcher, I gave him the address:
Me - "Gardner Street in Allston."
Dispatcher - "Brighton."
Me - "No, it's Allston."
Dispatcher - "There's a Gardner Street in Brighton. It's not in Allston."
Me - "Suit yourself. It's in Allston, and I hope the ambulance can find its way there even though you don't know where it is."
And this isn't a part of Allston anywhere close to the nebulous border between Allston and Brighton.
That's definitely Allston,
That's definitely Allston, although google is more interested in taking me to West Roxbury. The problem you describe comes from over reliance on a database without enough common sense to view the result with any skepticism.
What if...
Boston just had all its addresses be "Boston" like most normal places, instead of using the neighborhood name as the postal address city (and stop with this monkey business of having "official neighborhoods" like "Dorchester" along with semi-official ones used only by the post office but never called that by normal people like "Dorchester Center 02124, most of which is nowhere near the center of Dorchester" and non-official ones like "Hyde Square")?
More than once, I've had the mayor's hotline ask me "what city is that in?" then I say "Boston" and they either tell me that street name doesn't exist in Boston but there's one in Dorchester and one in Hyde Park or whatever, or, one time, she actually said "which city of Boston?"
POTTERSVILLE?!
You would have to change the names of many many streets
in order to implement your proposal. We have many Washington, Harvard, Park, Tremont, Mount Vernon, Boylston, Lagrange, etc. streets within the city limits, which means lots of street addresses that are not unique unless you include the neighborhood name. You've undoubtedly encountered this problem yourself when using Google Maps.
Boston even has two separate and busy Cambridge Streets that both lead to major bridges across the Charles River.
Zip codes solve the problem for postal delivery, but not for everyday use such as talking to a police dispatcher or taxi driver.
Not necessarily
There are already a few duplicate street names within neighborhoods, but only a few I can think of in one ZIP code, and none of those have duplicate numbers AFAIK. Not nearly as many as duplicates in the entire city, but still.
Besides, you already need the ZIP code, because it's already correct to say "Warren Street Boston" for several streets, but each has a different ZIP code.
Queens!
Queens does the same neighborhood address thing as Boston, and they have oddities like 101st Street intersecting with 101st Avenue.
Ditto Chicago
> they have oddities like 101st Street intersecting with 101st Avenue.
You find the same thing on the lower southwest side of Chicago.
How nebulous?
I know some people (this 911 operator included probably) who view everything north of the Pike as "Allston" and everything south of the Pike as "Brighton".
all righty then
Given that the admittedly nebulous border between Allston and Brighton is largely an east/west divide, that's a particularly odd metric.
There used to be two phone lines in this house (in Allston, nowhere near Brighton), and our friends' long-distance bills would say they were calling Brighton if they called the downstairs number, or Allston if they were calling the upstairs number.
Who cares?
Who cares?