by Alan Lupo - Boston Society of Architects

by Alan Lupo
Reprinted with permission from Rites of Way: The
Politics of Transportation in Boston and the U.S. City,
by Alan Lupo, Frank Colcord, and Edmund P. Fowler.
Published by Little, Brown, 1971.
Spring, 1970: Lamartine Street in the working-class
district of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood in the city
of Boston, ground zero of the Federal Interstate Highway
System. A scattering of blacks and Puerto Ricans are
here, but mostly there are white Catholics who make up
the bulk of Boston’s population. Ask them where they live,
and they’ll as likely tell you the parish before the name of
the street. And if you’re not familiar with the parish, they’ll
think it strange. You’ll call their neighborhood parochial,
and some will call it colorful. Whatever you call it, those who
plan, design, and construct America’s highways call it a
right-of-way.
To find out what Lamartine Street was like, you have to
look on the odd-numbered side of the street, because
that’s not part of the right-of-way. It ranges from well-kept
two- and three-story houses to somewhat shabby threedeckers to a mix of commercial and residential red brick in
the style of Late Industrial Revolution.
Some houses on the even-numbered side also remain.
Number 260, for example, is a yellow house with brown
trim and a neat garden. Its occupants are an elderly couple.
Their home is not needed for the highway. But they have
seen and heard the bulldozers and the earthmovers rip up
their neighbors’ homes and leave a flat dirt wasteland, all
the way to Number 226, a vacant space two blocks long
and a block from the street to the railroad tracks.
The old man and his wife want to be left alone. They
watched the machines at work and then saw vandals rip
the plumbing and pipes and all the other vital organs out
of the abandoned houses, and, finally, they smelled the
stench of arson and heard the almost nightly wail and
clanging of fire engines.
From Number 226, a dilapidated house with its door
ajar, to Number 216 is more vacant land. Both Number 216
and the house behind it are gutted.
Here, in the yard adjoining Number 216, is one of
the last links in the chain reaction set off by the approach
of an interstate highway. A man’s personal life, from the
kind of beans his family ate and milk they drank, to the
frame of their television set, is strewn all over the lawn. His
wife owned a Maytag washer; they had a red scatter rug;
he wore size 10 French Shriner black shoes; and he read
Field & Stream and American Rifleman.
In back, in the large field that was once a neighborhood,
you find other artifacts. A grisly torso of a plastic monkey
in a soldier’s suit; a mangled tricycle with one wheel
missing; the heart of a record, with jagged edges
(“Unbreakable,” the label insists) that once featured Blue
Barron and His Orchestra in “Cruising Down the River”
with Vocal Ensemble; and two-thirds of another record,
this one a collection of Christmas carols by Bing Crosby.
Bing Crosby and Blue Barron and the American Rifleman.
It may not be your lifestyle, but it was somebody’s. It was
from the civilization known as White Urban Ethnic
American, a local colony of which was being plowed under
for Interstate 95.
Do you know that if I-95 is ever completed, it will take
you from Houlton, Maine, to South Miami, Florida, a
distance of 1,866 miles, without one traffic light? Not one
traffic light.
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Photographs by Peter Vanderwarker
The decision to halt interstate highway expansion through
greater Boston was a statement — rare for the times — that
cities are places worth saving. These photographs show
the breathing life that was allowed to grow, even in the razed
spaces, once the highway threat was removed. The homes
and neighborhoods saved from the wrecking ball, the
woods and meadows saved from the bulldozer, remind us
of another important truth: that given time and protection
from environmental insult, the world will repair itself.
RIGHT
Liz Ellenwood takes her dog Ophelia for a
walk along Lamartine Street.
BE LOW
Nan Russell and her daughter Lana enjoy
the Southwest Corridor Park.
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LE F T
The Inner Belt would have
crossed the Charles at
about the location of this
bridge.
BE LOW Nan Porter spends
an afternoon painting
in the park.
RIGHT
Phillip Gusmand
sells merchandise
near the Jackson
Square MBTA stop.
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RIGHT
At the public skate park
on the Southwest Corridor. BE LOW Cambridgeport, near the
Boston University Bridge.
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RIGHT
Liz Ellenwood pays a visit
to the community garden
on Lamartine Street.
BOT TOM LE F T The corner of Hamilton
Street and Brookline
Street in Cambridgeport. BOT TOM RIGHT Sarah Braker of Bikes
Not Bombs, outside the
nonprofit’s headquarters.
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