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Parts of Boston used to really stink
By adamg on Thu, 07/06/2017 - 11:40am
In 1878, the Boston Board of Health published this map of the smelliest place in Boston and Cambridge. As the Boston City Archives tells us, "the biggest culprits were sewer outlets and 'offensive trades.' "
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Comments
"Mud-sewage flats" sound lovely
Funny to see where some of them have been replaced by multi-million dollar buildings.
yes!
It's amazing what 139 years will do...
Replaced by noise, pollution, and barriers to the river...
I-93
Storrow Drive
Mass Pike
Memorial Drive
Would You It Rather Be A Fetid Swamp?
The Charles stopped being the great tidal flats that are up and around Ipswich and Essex in the 1810's. The dam that became Beacon Street was built. The smells that were produced then were the result of industrial pollution and poop.
People poop. Your cute little fluffy doggie poops, poop goes somewhere. The solution then was to dump it into the harbor. That worked up until the late 1980's, when people got smart and the harbor and rivers around here are incredibly cleaner than they used to be.
My father in law used to swim in the Charles, and he used to come out a different color every once in a while depending on what was being dumped into the river that day.
The biggest markings on the map are in the Miller's River area of Somerville / Cambridge. The reason why; slaughter houses and meat packing. Things that were needed because people needed to eat. You could have had a nice little river with cute little fish weirs and simple living there if you wanted. Just get the wayback machine cranked up to 1400; i.e. The Stone Age around here.
Your complaint about barriers to the river are disingenuous. The Charles as we know it is a unnatural creation. Memorial Drive and Back Bay, along with the original Charles River Dam, where the MOS is, allowed for MIT and other industries, formerly heavy, now life science that give us those job things and those life saving things.
Prior to the creation of the "barriers" to the river, the Charles kind of looked like the Neponset does now after Lower Mills, tidal, with lots of mudflats. Nice I'm sure, not suited to an economic engine like the one that rings the Charles.
There was a complaint a few weeks ago about cars in the North End. We should go back to the way Boston was with no cars, no cars anywhere. Like it was 1790.
You can have 1790's Boston population density and natural beauty anytime you want. It's called Newcastle / Damarscotta Maine. Get packing.
There is plenty of access to the rivers and harbor around here. However, if you want Amazon Prime, Food to make it to the stores for you to buy, Red Sox games, walks in the park, bars, stores, places to have parades, there is a trade off. It's called you not having to wear a tri-color hat, breeches and big brass buttons and not having to worry about dying of Yellow Fever. It also means good healthcare, tomatoes in January, and ice cream. Sorry.
No, not 1790
In 1790, there would have been horsesh*t everywhere.
With a modern mass transit system in place, it should be possible to exclude most if not all cars from downtown areas.
In other words: fix the T, then encourage people to keep their cars out of downtown.
Um, guess what
The MDC was still dumping sewage on the outgoing tide up to and until a judge stepped in unprocessed human feces in the 1980s, and the MWRA was born to clean up the mess without the federal loans that could have been had 10 years earlier.
Cars blighted the landscape long before that - and their blight did not prevent ANY of what you are speaking of. Many of the swamps were drained in the 1890s to 1910s before cars were even much of a consideration.
If you are going to talk about history, at least learn some first. I LOVE MY CAR is not history. Although the baby boomer obsession with cars and insistence that everyone else pay for their car love needs to be history.
That's a lot of poop
That's a lot of poop postulating
Roads ARE barriers to the river
It's not a choice between roads and a fetid swamp. And also sometimes we do need roads along or near a river. However a 4 or 6 or 8 lane limited access expressway has no business along a public waterfront!
Would You Suggest Destroying Neighborhoods Then?
Where is the road supposed to go? Remember - The upper and lower decks went through a degraded industrial area that had been filled in decades before the road went through and it wasn't exactly going through Big Sur or Diamond Head.
The area of the SE Expressway along Malibu Beach was going over unused piers. The only beach that got blocked was Tenean, the roadway went further south over old railroad tracks in Milton.
I would rather have had the road go through these areas rather than some Robert Moses monstrosity going through houses.
I'll take people over your unfettered beach access any day,
Also, PS - Most of the harbor front in Boston outside of the former MDC areas is South Boston is privately owned, not public. Memorial and Storrow Drives are public spaces.
The Esplanade predates Storrow Drive
I don't know what that has to do with the expressway.
It does have to do with that false choice you present between highway and fetid swamp. We could have a nice, easily accessible parks, like what used to be there.
You're also assuming that all
You're also assuming that all car lanes are always absolutely necessary. Evidence says that's not true. Highway tear-downs in Seoul, San Francisco, Atlanta, Paris, and others did not create a traffic apocalypse.
But what if Storrow were just made less like a freeway? What if it looked like Memorial Drive? I would argue it would still be too big, but at least people could get to their park without having to climb high bridges (and going half a mile out of their way to get to the bridge).
John's assumptions are a lot more thought out
Compared to the original comment on this thread. I-93 didn't cover over parkland. Nor did the Mass Pike. The argument could possibly be made about Storrow and Memorial Drives, but I gotta laugh at the implication that Storrow Drive made people stop going to the Esplanade.
The first comment posited a theory that without any of Boston's highways, the city would be better. As one who runs, walks, and takes transit about the entire route of the cancelled Southwest Expressway, I see how big roads could impact communities, but in the end yes, we need highways.
The traffic lights on
The traffic lights on Memorial Drive are not any closer together than the pedestrian overpasses on Storrow. So I don't see how making Storrow more like Memorial Drive would make it easier to cross. You'd have to go out of your way on either road, and you'd trade walking up a ramp for waiting 2 minutes for a green light.