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New BPL branch, affordable condos could replace former bank building in Uphams Corner

By adamg on Fri, 08/23/2024 - 10:22am

A Worcester developer and a local architecture firm say they will soon file detailed plans for replacing the shuttered Dorchester Trust at 555-559 Columbia Rd. in Dorchester's Uphams Corner with a two-story Boston Public Library branch and 33 affordable condos.

In a filing with the Boston Planning Department, Civico of Worcester and DREAM Collaborative of Boston say the units will range from studios to three-bedroom condos.

The building, where the library would replace the current library branch down the street, would have a 21-space underground garage.

Mayor Walsh first announced plans for a library on the site in 2017. The BPDA awarded the project to Civico and DREAM Collaborative in April.

The project is the second one to marry a new BPL branch and housing formally announced this month. Preservation of Affordable Housing and Caste Capital filed a letter of intent for their plans to replace the current West End Library with a 12-story building with two floors for the library and ten floors for 119 affordable apartments.

555-559 Columbia Rd. filings.

Neighborhoods: 
Dorchester
Topics: 
Development
Free tagging: 
Uphams Corner
Columbia Road
BPL
Boston Planning Department


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Comments

By PeyoteEatingWaterBear on Fri, 08/23/2024 - 11:57am.

This is a great idea. They should do this with all the BPL branches, at least 12 stories of affordable housing on top. The older branches are falling apart and Lord knows Boston needs all the housing we can get. YIMBY all day!

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By John Costello on Fri, 08/23/2024 - 1:10pm.

May we please get a plaque on the building owing to the anti-Catholic history of the parking lot there now?

Here is the sanitized history of part of the site.

https://www.dorchesteratheneum.org/project/sarah-baker/

Here is what the church used to look like which was on part of the site.

https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/gusn/194929

Little backstory - Ms. Baker hated the Irish (So did fellow Dorchester resident painter Chide Hassam - Twilight on Boston Common, All those patings of Flags on Fifth Avenue, etc.).

There was a codicil in Baker's bequest that the church to be built could only be a Catholic Church if it was first used as a stable. The Archdiocese wanted a church in Upham's Corner in the 30's and was rebuffed from buying this church. Instead they bought a phone company building up the street and that was St. Kevin's until it got turned into residential by the Archdiocese a few years ago.

In this day and age of anti-foreigner MAGA rage in this county a little reminder that Know Northingism, which was mid-18th century MAGA, was associated with this place would be nice.

I can't wait for the discrimination is ok because it was in the past replies and I should get over it. The double standard which is coming should be great.

By SwirlyGrrl on Fri, 08/23/2024 - 2:37pm.

There was a codicil in Baker's bequest that the church to be built could only be a Catholic Church if it was first used as a stable. The Archdiocese wanted a church in Upham's Corner in the 30's and was rebuffed from buying this church.

Covenants and wills were allowed to be used to discriminate beyond the grave in many ways. When someone claimed that covenants in house deeds in my neighborhood would forever bar me from expanding into a two-family house even if the state banned single family restrictions, I pointed out that deeds in my neighborhood also barred selling to people of color ... but we all know those weren't legal past 1965. Bad enough that the city split the neighborhood into two precincts in entirely separate wards to split the Jewish community that moved in post-war.

Then there was redlining ... but by then Irish Catholic communities yielded sufficient power (mostly due to having been here longer) to not be lumped in with Italians, Portuguese, Greeks, Jews, and Blacks when neighborhoods were determined to be "hazardous" for investment because of their presence.

I think a plaque covering the issue could be more than about a single bigot - it could be called out as an example of the ways in which legal documents such as wills, codicils and covenants were used in discriminatory ways to exclude immigrants and children of slaves, sometimes beyond the grave.