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When developers name projects after the things they tear down
By adamg on Wed, 09/10/2014 - 8:12am
Anthony Flint ponders the names of things as neighborhoods go upscale, such as the new Ink Block luxo-complex in the South End named for the Boston Herald plant it replaces and a South Boston bistro called Local 149:
The number refers to the street address, but it’s clearly also a play on the dominant union presence in this part of town. The Ironworkers Local 7 headquarters is a few blocks away. I’m just not sure anybody in a hardhat is coming in to order the flash-seared yellowtail Hamachi.
Neighborhoods:
Ad:
Comments
The Globe site is...
for sale and bids accepted one week from today. Any thoughts on branding? (Morrissey Marketplace is taken)
Mine: Broadsheet Bungalows, Taylor's Townhouses, The Prairie at Patten's Cove, Marshland Meadows, Columbia Point Crossing...
Another Suggestion
Those are all good. Here's another - The Condominiums at Just Beyond Where The Boulevard Periodically Floods.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
"Occasional Waterfront
"Occasional Waterfront Property"
Some of the most hard blue
Some of the most hard blue collar folks I know are hobbyist Gordon Ramseys in their spare time. I don't doubt some will go there for some of the more exotic dishes.
why not?
why can't a union member enjoy Hamachi also?
Glad others found that claim
Glad others found that claim silly. All this us v them nonsense is just that. Good food is good food.
Well paid jobs
Especially if they are well paid jobs that allow them to splurge a bit.
See also:
Every street in New England (Elm, Walnut, xyz Farm...)
See also:
Every residential subdivision, everywhere. Alan Watts pointed this out fifty years ago.
Ayup, but ...
As Flint notes, this used to be reserved for rural areas turning into suburbs (my personal favorite: All the streets and subdivisions in Stow named after the apple orchards they replaced); the phenomenon of doing it for hulking old industrial structures is something new.
New?
"Assembly Square", anyone?
Note too that
the kind of industrial chic that fills the Restoration Hardware catalog--factory style lighting, metal lockers,wooden shoe racks, zinc-topped tables--all reflect a certain aesthetic that comes from these old buildings and the workspaces that once filled them. Not so different from the patchwork quilts, baskets, rusted farm tools and duck decoys that dominated a certain kind of farmhouse nostalgia 1970s decor.
Just visited the Brimfield Antique Show
last weekend. Quits, baskets, and rusted farm tools seem to be still popular, along with duck decoys.
My favorite:
Burlington Woods Office Park. My brother always thought it should have been called Burlington Asphalt Office Park. Strangely enough, it didn't really replace woods, it replaced old farm pastures.
I wasn't around ;)
And haven't lived anywhere but here- assumed it was more a NE trend. Thanks for the background!
Well...
Most Elm Streets actually used to have Elms on them. :-(
Right...
And Walnut trees on Walnut Streets. That was my point, going along with the headline. They tear down the trees to make way for the houses, & the old farms to make room for more houses, & then they name the streets in some sort of sick tribute.
Elms
didn't get cut down mostly--they were a hugely popular shade/street tree up until Dutch Elm disease hit in the 1930s-70s. I still remember a lot of beautiful elm-shaded streets that are now bare or planted with newer disease-resistant elms.
Chestnuts--another similar story, used to be one of the most common trees in North America until they got hit with a blight. Maples...well, the maples are still here.
Anyway, I digress but I do love trees.
I'm sure you're familiar with the ACF?
http://www.acf.org/Chapters.php
My mom's done work with them, IIRC.
I am! So cool.
Just a little bit but I love what they're doing. A few years back we discovered that we had an American chestnut growing on a piece of land we own in NH that had actually produced chestnuts--the forestry guy we were working with said that this was pretty uncommon though unfortunately it was already showing signs of blight. Still...it's still there. I'm holding out hope that it's some resistant strain.
The roots yet live.
And exist as shrubs. They just die back when they reach a point where blight sets in.
Chestnut Hill in Newton has a large nature preserve cluster next to the mall and I was made aware of the place name origin by the abundance of new leaves everywhere when I was there in spring.
I think the author
of this very good pondering, is saying that there is a fine line between being too cute and trivializing the working lives of those who say belonged to a union (ah, the good old days) and/or worked in a factory for, what was then, a job with a livable wage and good benefits.
Why even go there unless you somehow want to whitewash (i.e. make all tidy) what may be seen, by some, as the undesirability of a factory building housing a new now up scale eatery or lux condo complex? If you wish to preserve a bit of history and dare I say honor those and their lives that came before, by all means go for it. Where I have a problem is doing the cute without any context for the past then becomes as banal as paying $30 for piece of fish, flash-seared or not.
Farm Street Syndrome
I think about this every time I pass a subdivision of McMansions with a cul-de-sac labeled "Farm Street" or ""Farmer's" Farm Road" and such.
There is some long and complicated Navajo word for this ... destroying something, and then naming it after what you destroy. I saw it in one of those "make your own Chevy Tahoe Ad" submissions that was tendered ironically.
the last thing it replaced
Ink block is named for the Herald that got torn down; but not for the "new york streets" brownstone housing area that was torn down for the Herald (back when the BRA was bulldozing most of the city).
Back when the BRA was bulldozing most of the city
You mean yesterday?
Troy
Yes, it is. But, the NY Street remembrance shows up in some of the other projects. The Troy is under construction. See also the Dover Lofts for ironically named throwbacks.
Local
There's nothing local about Local 149. Another case of fooling the Yups into thinking they need to be eating duck legs and waffles.
wrong
yuppies run SoBo. so the fact that Local 149 is in South Boston ....makes it LOCAL!
- The Original SoBo Yuppie
Nobody calls it SoBo
Not even the Yuppies. So stop making a fool of yourself and all the real Yuppies who are trying to be nice neighbors.
A lot of Yuppies don't care
A lot of Yuppies don't care about being nice neighbors at all. They are merely living in the city for a few years, then it's back to the suburbs.
a "local" is slang for one's neighborhood pub
in the UK and Ireland
Cobble Hill in Somerville
was leveled over a century ago after McLean Asylum (which was atop the hill) moved to Belmont. Still, its name lives on at the Cobble Hill senior housing development and the (soon-to-be-demolished?) Cobble Hill Center stripmall.
Someone wants to open a restaurant called Cobble Hill at the corner of Park and Beacon streets in Somerville -- but that's nowhere near the actual former hill.
Just like the hardhats saw bands in Allston
when they patronized Local 186 (ex-Bunratty's) in the 90s.