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Back in the day, folks knew to cross at the green, not in between
By adamg on Thu, 09/12/2013 - 12:31pm
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this photo in time and location. See it larger.
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Comments
WOW
Kids walking home from school and Blue Hill Ave being a safe family orientated area. Well we'll never see that again!
And now...
...the place is sterilized. What better way to create a dead zone than surround it with parking lots, parks (yes parks), and gas stations. A perfect setting for a car user, not so much for a pedestrian.
Odds of improvement: low
:(
I think you've got it backwards.
No one destroyed a thriving pedestrian business block to create a park (or a vacant lot). Lots happened in this area between 1948 and the current day.
So what was the purpose of tearing down the business block?
if it wasn't to create a park or a parking lot?
where's
the bike lanes? Even back then when more people commuted by bicycles, they didn't need bike lanes. We've become a bunch of wimps.
Those ARE bike lanes.
Back then there weren't so many cars, so using the entire street as a bicycle path was much safer and easier.
No their not
I don't see one bike in this picture, so as for bike being the prevalent mode of transportation you're wrong.
Fewer people needed to bike
If you could afford a car, there wasn't much traffic.
Otherwise, you could take quick and efficient public transit to and from just about everywhere and anywhere.
Now, if you aren't walking distance to a station, forget it. Buses suck, the T is unreliable, biking it is!
Don't like bikes everywhere? Tough it or START REBUILDING EXTENSIVE PUBLIC TRANSIT like Europe is doing.
Blue Hill Ave. & Quincy Street
I have the advantage of already having seen this photo in the city archives a couple years ago and being blown away by the difference from today. Yes, I know that the "Welfare riot" and years of arson and decay made Blue Hill Ave into a long stretch of vacant lots. But it's still stunning.
The view today... https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m8!1m3...
What an incredible
What an incredible difference.
Wow, that corner is much
Wow, that corner is much worse than most of Blue Hill Avenue -- two vacant lots and a gas station. Only one corner isn't wasted, and it has a school that was built recently.
What the heck happened to the beautiful human-scaled buildings which used to be there, and still line the rest of the avenue?
Well, one of the "vacant
Well, one of the "vacant lots" (the lot at the NE corner) has a major development under construction right now, and the other is the (admittedly poorly-maintained) Jermaine Goffigan Park. Ease up.
And how do you reckon a gas station is "wasted"? There isn't another in the area and provides jobs in an area with few.
Do you want to work in a gas
Do you want to work in a gas station when you grow up?
I'd rather work in a pharmacy.
The history in 5 sentences
First they take away pedestrians' rights to the streets. Then they take away the streetcar and the trolley wires. Then they widen the roadway to "ease traffic." Then they destroy the buildings to "clear slums" and create parking. Then they blame the resulting destruction and decay on racial minorities and flee the city.
We are left with a desolate corridor of vacant lots bisected by a nasty, highway-like road.
Sound about right?
They Put in the Redline
That's what caused it. Not your weird fantasy land where pedestrians act like tased cattle.
Nope - doesn't sound right
That isn't what happened.
http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1934-196...
It had to do with the banks deciding to not loan in the community, which drove out families there for generations, which left blight and empty buildings, which were then burned for the insurance money.
That was sentence 5
Admittedly a bit much to stuff into one tiny sentence :)
Consequences, not causes
What you listed were consequences, not causes of the blight.
The blight began when lenders would not lend in the neighborhood. Then the middle class left, then the tranportation links were cut.
The banks refusing to lend money had absolutely nothing to do with your list, other than to result in further disinvestment in infrastructure.
*cough* rent control *cough*
*cough* rent control *cough*
Dry in here, isn't it?
*cough* redlining *cough* fearmongering about blacks *cough* the Vault *cough*
People left that
neighborhood because of the uptick in crime, mostly from Black walking up from Mattapan. I just had this conversation with my grandfather who was a detective for the BPD during the time. Its not fear-mongering its a factual statement.
Your facts are wrong, Blacks
Your facts are wrong, Blacks didn't live in Mattapan then. Mattapan was a Jewish community.
*cough* risky loans *cough*
*cough* risky loans *cough* bad business *cough*
(No subject)
perception versus reality
The disinvestment had nothing to do with any such reality - it was pure perception that loans to people of color were risky. There was no statistical basis upon which this was decided. Pure racism, over and out.
We're outta here..
The locals voted with their feet, en masse. The riots of the sixties were very bad times there.
I think anon is referring to people leaving because of crime
Not people not getting loans. I don't know what's perception and what's reality but I feel like there are a lot of stories and some lingering bitterness that boils down to Aunt Sadie's purse getting snatched or cousin Ike's getting mugged one too many times "and then we moved to Sharon." My impression is that it was a scrappy but strivery mostly Jewish neighborhood that collapsed for a complex set of reasons, including an influx of street crime and the perception, valid or no, that cities across the country were going up in flames.
Swirly
You know what ruined our schools and our communities! Outside Liberals like yourself, who thought then knew what was best for Boston.
Really?
History says that it was locals running the schools who were far more interested in their political careers and screwing the schools to keep taxes low. They deliberately defunded schools in poorer neighborhoods with less clout to create the illusion of adequate schools in their political base areas, and pitted neighborhood against neighborhood for votes.
Face it: Your treasured Louise Day Hicks and friends fucked you all over for their own political ends. It was not "magic liberal evile outside forces" but your own political waste products working an inside job. Punked! They could have properly realigned the districts and leveled the funding like those "liberals with their ideas" in Cambridge managed to do, but hate blinded them and they never had any interest in education, anyway.
Since we're on the topic...
Judge Arthur Garrity did as much damage in a few short years as Hicks et al did over forty-plus. Destroying the village in order to save the village is still destroying the village.
Swirly, the redlining may
Swirly, the redlining may have hastened the white flight, but as noted in Death of an American Jewish Community and Urban Exodus(and the population studies they reference), the Jewish community had started to move to other neighborhoods, most of which were outside of Boston, long before the redlining began. The redlining certainly didn't help keep the Jewish community in Mattapan, but it didn't create the issue of Jewish people moving out of Mattapan in the first place, as that had been happening for decades.
Earnest question alter: What
Earnest question alter: What do you mean by "The Vault?"
There is a package store on
There is a package store on Blue Hill ave. that was once a credit union, and the vault is still there. They use it for storage.
The Vault is/was a business group that made development plans.
Non governmental organization that had clout and influence.
The real story, in detail....
One of the best books I ever read about the town that I grew up in:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/844597.Death_of...
On my to-read list
Fascinating stuff. Note the Feinsilver Pharmacy in the background. My mother told us about how they'd go here to go to all of the good Jewish delis.
One of the things I've heard
One of the things I've heard about the Jewish community in Mattapan and Dorchester was that it was very short-lived. If you look at the census data, the community started to move away almost as soon as it attained a significant population number--a rise and fall within a generation or two at the most.
You could save a lot of writing (and time!)
by just saying
"cars and driving are evil"
But soon everyone will be cycling and packed like cattle on the MBTA, it'll be just like Communist China before they got any money.
Cattle
"But soon everyone will be cycling and packed like cattle on the MBTA"
You mean we're not already packed like cattle on the MBTA? The Red Line even has cattle cars with no seats.
21st century
Are we going backwards? Bikes are so 19th century.
Ok, that's a theory. But in
Ok, that's a theory.
But in this neighborhood, Blue Hill Avenue wasn't widened, there are no urban-renewal-era parking lots, and except for this one intersection, the traditional urban buildings weren't torn down.
Very Very Sad
The difference between then and now is horrible. We look at places like the West End and New York Streets and bemoan how bad the results were, but this makes them look great.
Perhaps someday it will be restored to its former glory. Who knows? At one time it was farmland I suppose.
Traffic lights are little changed!
Amazing how some technology races forward while something ubiquitous like traffic lights has changed so little over 50 years or more on our streets.
For example, Toto has toilet technology that is far more advanced than what exists in traffic signals. We even commonly see toilets with two flush settings for #1 and #2. How about pedestrian walk signals with different time lengths to cross. Hit the button once for the longest crossing time. Hit it more often for less crossing time to reflect the impatience of the button presser! If the opposite button only gets hit once, default to long crossing time. Alternatively, have two walk buttons shorter time for normal walkers and bike riders, longer time for slow walkers.
I swear....
the way your mind works is God's own private mystery.
Drugs
Drugs are bad mmmk
Welfare riot? This is new Boston?
I lived at Columbia Point before it became Harbor Point.
I remember my mother being able to shop on West Broadway.
I remember Bayside Shopping(Merchandise Mart/Flower Show/MacWorld some time ago) and the retailer Almy's
What Welfare riot?
Take a lot of what is said here lightly.
It full of liberals from the sticks who think they now Boston better than the families who have been here for almost 100 years.
No--it's full of chickensh*t Anons from who cares where.
You might want to brush up on your Boston history if you really claim to be born and bred here. Those Liberals you loathe so much have been running things around here for a good long time. Signed, 4th generation Bostonian liberal moonbat.
Just a guess
Looks like the street sign says "Blue Hill Ave"
Blue Hill Ave @ Quincy St.,
Blue Hill Ave @ Quincy St., about 1948 after the trackless trolleys had replaced the streetcars, but the streetcar tracks were still in the street.
Absolutely wrong
its definitely 1947.
It's gonna come back!
The BRA has been doing a huge planning study that will likely affect the entire length of Blue Hill Avenue (first around the Morton Street Intersection, Geneva Ave, Intersection and Talbot Avenue Intersection)
http://www.fairmountindigoplanning.org/
give it ten years and given the rising cost of rents and ownership around Boston I see the BHA corridor gentrifrying!
Keep
your fingers crossed!
Except
That the section of Blue Hill Avenue to which you refer is maybe 4 miles from where the picture was taken.
The Milton line up to Grove Hall looks good compared to the area in the photograph today. I'm sure even that area has seen better days, and it could be safer, but still, largely intact.
Right around the time Beacon Hill switched to all Democrat
Photo appears to be taken right around the time Beacon Hill switched to a Democrat majority in both houses and Boston City Hall had already switched. Great job, libs!
My work was done and look at
My work was done and look at the half century of rotten fruit it birthed.
Wait, what?
It was upstanding big-money Republican bankers who did the red lining.
But a good conspiracy theorist like yourself never lets reality of history get in your way.
Keep on hating - and thank God you are off the streets with your incessant hatemongering bullshit.
Thanks for playing everyone!
Thanks for playing everyone! This is the intersection of Blue Hill Ave and Quincy St on September 21, 1948.
If not for the street sign
I'd swear it was Washington and Market St/Chestnut Hill Ave in Brighton.
Drake's Cakes
No one so far has mentioned the Drake's Cakes bakery. Part of their sign is prominent in the middle background. The bakery was just up the hill on Quincy Street, a couple of buildings west of Blue Hill Ave. Also notice the Drake's delivery truck which has backed into their loading dock, almost entirely blocking the traffic flow.
The bakery certainly contributed a lot of good working class jobs to the neighborhood. (And Kasanov's was nearby as well.)
When Drake's was still baking at this location...
School Field Trips would take us from Nathan Hale/(Dudley(arsoned)) to Pepsi and Wonder Bread in Natick. Pepsi gave a voucher I redeemed at Blair's Foodland in Washington Park Mall.