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Harvard gets OK to begin planning work for new Allston development centered on a road called Cattle Drive
By adamg on Fri, 03/16/2018 - 2:16pm
The BPDA board yesterday approved Harvard's request to ditch all the zoning on 14 acres it owns in Allston so the university can begin figuring out exactly how it wants to build out an innovation district of its own that would include 900,000 total square feet of office, lab and hotel space and new residences.
The vote means Harvard can now negotiate directly with the BPDA over exactly how it fills in the land between the Harvard Business School and the Harvard science center now under construction, rather than worrying about zoning codes that would also require one or more hearings before the Board of Appeals at which the university would have to justify exceeding those requirements.
Harvard 's proposed Economic Research Center would also include up to 900 parking spaces.
Harvard has said it would be willing to build a temporary stop on the Worcester Line until the state finally gets around to building the permanent station it had once proposed but which it now says may have to wait until at least 2040. Harvard has also proposed letting workers and residents of the new district use its existing campus bus system.
The school has also proposed naming the main road through the district Cattle Drive, in homage to the stockyards and slaughterhouses in the area.
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Comments
Cattle Drive?
Did some 8 year old, who likes puns, come up with that name?
No kidding
It was probably just a mis-steak.
Cattle drive
I've got no beef with that name.
What?
I find it quite a-moo-sing.
That's a bunch of
Bull Sh*t
Cattle Drive - MBTA during morning commute
How history repeats itself with packed train cars!
Slaughterhouse street?
Slaughterhouse street? Abattoir avenue?
Abattior Avenue?
Actually there used to be an Abattoir Road in Brighton on what is now Birmingham Parkway behind the old Channel 38, now WZLX building.
http://www.bahistory.org/Abattoir.html
Gore Street in Cambridge ain't named for Al. It is named because of the meat packing plant that is where the rink and Twin City Plaza is now.
The other great road name that Harvard has under that land northerly of Seattle Street is Dedham Parish Road.
Christopher Gore (and J. P. Squire)
No, Gore Street in Cambridge was named for Christopher Gore, the Governor of Massachusetts when the street was laid out circa 1809. He is best remembered for his mansion, called Gore Place, now a museum, on the Waltham/Watertown line just off of Main Street (Route 20).
It's just coincidence that the street named for Governor Gore got to be gore-y many decades later.
But Abattoir Avenue did really exist in Brighton, according to an old street directory, "from 31 and 69 Market street, through the Brighton Abattoir property, to North Beacon street, near Parsons street".
Another local road with meat connections is Squire Road in Revere, which went through the hog farms owned by the Squire family. Most of those pigs ended up the J. P. Squire plant, mentioned above, on Gore Street in Cambridge, at the Somerville line. It was for many years the largest pork packing facility in the U.S., outside of Chicago.
And of course Porter Square is named for the Porter House hotel that used to stand (in the mid 1800s) at 1972 Massachusetts Avenue. Proprietor Zachariah Porter became famous for a cut of beef that he served at the hotel, now known as the porterhouse steak. There were slaughterhouses near his hotel back then, and many of Porter's hotel customers were cattlemen who had driven their cows down the street to the abattoirs.
So maybe we should rename that section of Mass. Ave. to Cattle Drive?
No, Gore Street is named for
No, Gore Street is named for Governor Gore, 1809-1810. http://hul.harvard.edu/lib/archives/refshelf/cba/g.html#gorest
The Gore Place mansion in Waltham was his.
It Sounds Like A Road Filled With Flocks Of Traffic!