Visited some buddies in Boston over Easter. Was a nice day and they decided to show me a little of Boston’s history by taking me on the Freedom Walk. Just before Quincy Market, you pass the oldest public school in Boston. Just after that, you pass a picturesque old building – the old City Hall or State Department or whatever;p it now houses a pricy French eatery. It’s a pretty grand looking old building. You look at it for a while, and then you see the sign.
On the fence in front of the old government house is a notice from the Architects Institute of America, or some such. It chronicles how architects are doing so much to save crumbling inner city buildings and restore them for future generations. “It’s a common problem in architecture; how to make a silk purse from a silk purse”. “An ad hoc committee of concerned residents formed committees to help restore” these illustrious buildings to their former grandeur. “People actually attended meetings saying they would prefer a pleasant restored old building to the latest in sleek high rises”.
Barf! Since when is Quincy Market the inner city? From my experience, architects are usually good at turning sow’s ears into sow’s ears… shouldn’t this reality get equal press? Is it so hard to believe that, even in the United States, something like saving an old building actuially happened? Even once? And why is this such a triumphant blow for democracy anyway? Imagine you were born in an inner city. Life is hard, mom does her best to get by, the walk to school is dangerous and you have to approach the gangs and addicts who pollute your neighbourhood. You face the prejudice and disgust that some Americans reserve for the poor and downtrodden, knowing too little of their past and assuming too much about their future. Say you’re black, or Asian or white trash if that helps you, but I don’t insist. Isn’t your biggest dream to consume overpriced Pate de Foie Gras with Craquelins in a restored mansion in your inner city neighbourhood? Do you cry yourself to sleep hoping concerned ad hoc citizens will demand a pricy French restaurant to be erected in the name of neighbourhood pride? Who else is tired about self-righteous architects building ugly boxes patting themselves on the back and designing fetid crap?
I think they’re just trying to make up for the mistakes of the sixties, when they ripped out whole neighborhoods (Scollay Square, West End) to put in ugly, sixties-style, “urban renewal” projects. While it’s a bit gratuitous back-patting, it’s an improvement over the sort of thinking that led to tearing down all of Scollay Square and replacing it with the brick wasteland that is City Hall Plaza. A vibrant neighborhood, even if it is the red-light district, is an improvement over the cold, impersonal, ugly expanse of brick punctuated with ugly concrete buildings that sits there now.
None of the items you mentioned are anywhere near the poor sections of the city. Hell, they aren’t even in residential areas. To see what’s being done in the places that don’t get gourmet restaurants, you’d actually have to go there. I believe there’s a tour of significant spots in relation to the civil rights movement (for example, Malcolm X lived in Boston, and Martin Luther King went to college there) that would take you through those neighborhoods.
Also, to get from School St. (location of Maison Robert and the site of the first school in the country) to Quincy Hall, you have to walk down Washington St. to the Old State House (which still displays the lion and unicorn) into City Hall Plaza, down the stairs, across Congress St. and continue to the other side of Faniuel (sp?) Hall.
But I don’t really see what the purpose of your rant is. Aside from a little self-importance, and using “inner city” when “downtown” would be more appropriate, I don’t see what’s objectionable about the sign. Boston is a city with a reputation that has much to do with its history. To the extent possible, it is better for the city as a whole if old buildings stick around longer. They are a large part of the appeal of the city to tourists and potential residents. Boston without the old buildings would be like Boston without the colleges.
I have to agree with most of Dr_Paprika’s post. (Hey, Doc you live in Boston, too? How about you waterj2? Might be fun to get together sometime.) Quincy Market isn’t “the inner city”, and it wasn’t disgustingly run down even before the renovations of the mid-1970s. If you said “inner city” to me I’d think of parts of Roxbury or the South End or Jamaica Plain.
On the other hand, I think architects often do a good job of preserving and restoration (not City Hall Plaza, though – you can die of thirst crossing that vast, barren, windswept plain of bricks). The limiting factor is money. Usually preserving old buildings and facades is a heck of a lot more expensive than tearing down and rebuilding. Sometimes folks just don’t like the old buildings. Look at what happened to the original beaten metal front to Jordan Marsh in downtown Boston back in the mid 70s.
If you want to see a city that HASN’T preserved its downtown at all, go visit Rochester, N.Y. It was a preservationist’s nightmare – the city seemed determined to wipe out its architectural history downtown.
The downtown section of Boston (and isn’t that what “inner city” means in most places?) is also the oldest, most historic, most attractive to both residents and tourists, and most worth preserving. Few other American cities have anything comparable. Why should Boston have to be straightened out and filled in with Modernist crap like Dallas? There’s enough of that crap already, and not enough of anything in this country that gives one a real sense of being anywhere in particular. Do we all want to have every city be a series of glass boxes and strip malls with generic stores, and no one daring to get out and walk anywhere even if they could? That’s most of North America right now, but not Boston and a few other places. As many mistakes as have been made here by the architects, in most other cities they don’t even try.
Waterj2 is right on about architects and urban planners compensating, perhaps overcompensating, for the excesses of the sixties. Although they thought they were doing the best thing for the city’s future, they’re now seen as vandals with the present ideology of preservation being seen as the one true way. Future generations will probably have different views.
Now, if you’d like to comment on Boston being too racially and economically segregated outside of the college areas, I’ll agree but I’ll also add that it’s greatly improving. However, architecture has little to do with that.
So when’s the next Boston bash, Dopers? Sounds like we have to go to Maison Robert (the former City Hall, incidentally), or at least the Roisin Dubh at the Quincy Market that our smug Canadian friend so dislikes. First round of Guinness is on me.
Cal, don’t you remember the first Boston Dopefest last summer? I was sitting directly across the table from either you or Pepper Mill. At the moment, I’m off at college, but not for much longer. I would not be at all adverse to another get together if I can make it back into town. Especially if I can get the pinko liberal to buy the drinks. As I recall, Elvis is in the aeronautical engineering field, which is what I majored in at first, which could lead to exciting dinnertime conversation on things such as the Kutta condition and Reynolds numbers. Yeah!
Another comment on the OP is that I recall for many years that the Old City Hall building sat there unused for many years before someone found something to do with it. In many cities, someone would have replaced it with a new building. I recall hearing that a similar fate almost befell the Old South Meeting House as well. It was actually suggested that it be relocated to the top of a building that would be built in its place. Historically significant buildings have often fallen victim to economic concerns. That one survived isn’t exactly amazing, but falls well within the realm of things they can legitimately toot their own horn about.
In regard to the idea that today’s ideas will be just as misguided in retrospect as those of the fifties and sixties, I doubt it. The current attitudes owe much to the principles first expounded by people like Jane Jacobs in the fifties and sixties. I think that those ideas came from a much more careful look at how cities function, both socially and economically. While I doubt that the science (art?) of urban planning has reached perfection, we are currently proceeding much more cautiously than the orgy of automobile-driven postwar reconstruction. That era, I think, will stand out as being uniquely mistaken in its aims and æsthetics.
Hmmm… I wonder how often planning for a dopefest comes out of a Pit thread?
BTW, Cambridge is redoing one of its buildings, where the traffic department is located. AFAIK they aren’t modernizing it at all, unless you mean “new bricks that look like the old bricks.” Its looking good, too.
Boston has some cool looking areas. Shame to give that up.