The Tragedy of the West End Urban Renewal In Boston

West End Corner

Setting the Stage for the Urban Villagers

Setting the Stage for the Urban Villagers

What do we know about American Cities in the 1950s? What do we know about Boston at that time? What do we know about the West End? How did people perceive the city? How did prosperity, views of older things and transportation come into play? From last weeks film, what do we know about the politics of that era? What was the relationship between the Irish-American political leaders and the Brahmin Bankers?

Setting the Stage for the Urban Villagers

Lewis Mumford, Americas leading urbanologist visited BC in 1957 to speak to the Boston College Citizens Seminar. There he painted Bostons Obituary Declining Tax Base Shrinking Population Dilapidated Public Services

Setting the Stage for the Urban Villagers

At that time Boston had two skyscrapers - the 1915 Customs House (496 ft.) and the the 1947 Old Hancock Building (495 ft.)

Source www.skyscraperguy.com & www.boston-online.com

Nr 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Height (ft) 792.8 750.0 604.0 601.0 600.0 592.0 591.0 525.0 509.0 505.0 500.0 496.0 495.0 477.0 452.0 390.0 387.0 381.5 342.0 298.0

Year 1976 1964 1983 1969 1987 1983 1971 1981 1977 1972 1969 1915 1947 1966 1991 1988 1967 1988 1992 1930

Building John Hancock Tower Prudential Tower Federal Reserve Building Boston Company Building One International Place 1 Financial Place First National Bank Boston One Post Office Square 60 State Street 1 Beacon Street 28 State Street Custom House Old John Hancock Tower State Street Bank 125 High Street 75 State street John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building 101 Federal Street Massachusetts General Hospital United Shoe Machinery Building

Source http://www.aviewoncities.com/building/_buildingsboston1.htm

Setting the Stage for the Urban Villagers

The three year preceding Mumfords visit to BC a number of important events took place that shaped the mood of the era

Setting the Stage for the Urban Villagers

President Eisenhower signs legislation to create the National Highway System - $40B - 160,000 miles - the dream of moving to suburbia.

www.fhwa.dot.gov

Setting the Stage for the Urban Villagers

In 1954 the Central Artery was built in Boston severing downtown and West End and the North End.

Setting the Stage for the Urban Villagers

In 1956 the Columbia Point Housing Project was built.

Why the West End?

Boston's West End is the most well documented neighborhood destroyed by urban "renewal," made famous initially by Herbert Gans's book, The Urban Villagers, 1962. Although approximately 63 percent of the families displaced by urban renewal were AfricanAmerican or Hispanic, this Boston community was mainly inhabited by working class Italians. It was a little piece of Italy, with narrow winding streets alive with urban social life. Too crowded and unAmerican for the middle class tastes of City planners, it fell to the bulldozer in 1959 and was replaced by high rise, expensive apartment buildings.
Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

The West End

23 Nationalities 48 Acres behind Beacon Hill from Mass General Hospital to North Station Between 1958 and 1960, the demolition years, 3,000 units of housing destroyed and 10,000 people forced to move

Views of the West End

Social clubs were common, formed along ethnic and street lines, this is the Annual Banquet of the Norman Club, 7 May 1944, an Italian association.
Courtesy of Bostonian Society/Salvatore Tringali Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

Views of the West End

The people who lived in the "slum". A 1948 shot of a playground in West end, with the actor,Leonard Nimoy in upper right.
Courtesy of Bostonian Society/Robert H. Levine.

Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

West End
Rich Jewish Heritage
Anshe Vilner's 3rd West End site at 16 Phillips Street actively served its congregation from 1920 to the 1970s
Source: http://www.angelfire.com/biz/LikeJACKnMARIONS/shulsWE.h tml

The Process of Demolition

July 1958 - Prior to Demolition

Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

The Process of Demolition

March 1959 - Half - Demolished

Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

The Process of Demolition

The Process of Demolition

September 1960 - Completely- Demolished

Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

The Process of Demolition

Boston Planning Board An Obsolete Neighborhood
Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

The Process of Demolition

Boston Planning Board And a New Plan
Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

From this to this .

Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

The New West End

Source: www.yale.edu/socdept/slc/urban/urban.htm

A brief aside yes, landfill

This detail from a 1991 birds eye view of Boston shows the present West End and its shoreline. The 1630 shoreline superimposed on this view shows the extent, location, and use of made land.
Nancy S. Seasholes Gaining Ground: Landmaking in Bostons West End Courtesy Tom Kane.

In Theory Revenue from luxury towers would

trickle down and make neighborhoods boom. But did it happen? Next Castle Square in the South End was bulldozed. Urban Renew continues to take land in the South End by eminent domain. Roxbury and North Dorchester are Redlined. Neighborhoods continued to decline.

Key Terms
Eminent domain, recognized in both federal and state constitutions, is the power of government to condemn private property and take title for public use, provided owners receive just compensation.
Source http://www.cato.org/events/020514pf.html

The term insurance redlining, describes the practice or policy of refusing to write an insurance product or varying the terms of an insurance product because of the geographical location of the property and because of the racial or ethnic composition of the area.
Source See Squires and Venez., "Insurance Redlining and the Process of Discrimination,," The Review of Black Political Economy, Winter 1988.

Boston by the decades

1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s and 90s Backwater Town Urban Exodus Racial Tension Unlimited Growth

The Urban Villagers

Identify the area Gans is talking about. What are its current boundaries? Have you been there? If so, what are your impressions? What sort of feeling do you get for the old West End? How do you assess Gans analysis of this book? What kind of job does he do blending psychology, sociology, and political philosophy? What were the perspective of the residents?, City Officials? Gans as participant observer? How was daily life organized in the West End? What was the view of the Catholic Church?

The Urban Villagers

What is Value Imposition? Is it significant in our own work in our placements? Examples? What are the ways of avoiding Value Imposition? Why is it so difficult to avoid?

Significance of the Urban Villagers for understanding of neighborhoods

A battery of questions 1. What are the symbolic boundaries of your neighborhood? 2. What are the sub-neighborhoods? 3. What infrastructures exist within the neighborhood to handle important political, economic, and social issues? 4. Is there something akin to a peer group society? 5. Or unlike the West End, are there community institutions and why?

Significance of the Urban Villagers for understanding of neighborhoods

A battery of questions 6. What are the most important community institutions and why? 7. How have your feelings and perspective of the neighborhood changed with necessary exposure? 8. What do you notice now that you missed before? 9. What makes the difference? In understanding a neighborhood there is no substitution for living there, talking to others, doing business, forming friendships, feeling at home. The West End teaches us the in adequacies of only using statistical analysis.