Jeff Durham reports no injuries after a driver took out a wall at Fresh Pond Parkway and Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge sometime before 11:30 a.m.
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Walls have to understand that
By RalphM
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 12:24pm
Walls have to understand that cars are going to hit them.
Brattle
By downtown-anon
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 12:37pm
It looks like the wall at Fresh Pond Parkway and Brattle.
Is that the snake wall?
By anon
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 12:45pm
Is that the snake wall?
Is it that "curvy" brick wall
By Scratchie
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 12:50pm
Is it that "curvy" brick wall? That's a landmark and probably expensive to repair. Not as simple as just stacking bricks in a straight line.
The driver should have to pay
By Kinopio
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 1:31pm
The driver should have to pay for its repair and hold a sign saying what an idiot they are while the repairs happen.
There's a word for that
By Ari O
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 1:46pm
"insurance"
The driver will get a few points, though!
I’m pretty sure that at some
By Rikibeth
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 2:20pm
I’m pretty sure that at some point in the early 1970s that wall did t used to be curvy, and it got run into a LOT, and my parents said they rebuilt it curvy because it would help lower the impact force of collisions? And I remember being able to see repair lines in the mortar of the curvy version ALL THE TIME.
Wall was always curvy
By LT
Thu, 05/16/2019 - 9:30am
I'm almost as old as the wall (1950s) and it has always been curvy. It was designed by an architect.
Serpentine Brick Walls
By Bob Leponge
Thu, 05/16/2019 - 4:30pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinkle_crankle_wall
Not knowing what happened
By Patriciax
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 12:36pm
Not knowing what happened here, I do see many adults looking at phones while they are driving.
"Adults". My favorites are the mothers that drop their kids off school in their huge suburbans and immediately get on the phone when they turn on the ignition.
Again, I don't know what happened here but maybe people are just stupider in 2019.
As somebody said in the Arlington thread...
By Scratchie
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 1:17pm
I hope the driver didn't drop their phone.
we don't know what happened
By Michael
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 1:23pm
Was the wall behaving aggressively, perhaps making obscene gestures at the SUV driver? Was it in a crosswalk aware of its surroundings, or did it just dart out like so many bicyclists and walls that have jumped into traffic forcing me to drop my fajita, grab the steering wheel and swerve out of the way? Of course many of UH's resident car-haters will jump to absolve the wall of any blame but ask for all the facts first please
Arrest this moron for
By Kinopio
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 1:30pm
Arrest this moron for destruction of property and then take away their license.
Yes, this person should lose
By Pfhlick
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 9:57pm
Yes, this person should lose the right to drive for a long, long time. Driving should be treated seriously as both a privilege and a responsibility. Lucky that no person was hurt; taking drivers off the road when they are responsible for a wreck like this is common sense. If the driver has even a thimbleful of same, he or she won't want to drive after this, anyway.
Excessive speed
By perruptor
Thu, 05/16/2019 - 6:21am
You're going too fast. This is a very difficult stretch of road, and you don't know if another car forced this one off the road, or if the driver had a medical event, or really, anything about what happened. If the police determine that this driver was texting or otherwise being stupid, then I'm right there with you -- stop them driving for a long time. Right now, we don't know why this happened.
Medical Event
By anon
Thu, 05/16/2019 - 1:14pm
Largely predictable and preventable. We all should have to submit evidence of having a physical to renew a license - that would take the "ignoring diabetes and heart disease" folks out of the equation.
Huh
By Melissa
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 1:48pm
That curvy wall used to be taken out on a regular basis, but it's been a while. You can see the places in the cement where it's been repaired. Perhaps the guardrails helped.
Also, that has to be one flimsy brick wall to be knocked out so much, and the car not turned into a blob of tin foil. I guess modern SUVs are better that way.
How the heck does this happen
By anon
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 4:06pm
How the heck does this happen? There's not even a curve in the road at that point. One would have to swerve into the wall.
It's narrow and curvy
By perruptor
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 7:06pm
It shouldn't be four lanes, but it is. Some drivers can't handle it, and if one of them crowded their neighbor, bad things can happen. As others have said, this wall has been crashed into repeatedly.
Brattle is straight there
By downtown-anon
Thu, 05/16/2019 - 6:16am
Fresh Pond is curvy, but this driver was on Brattle driving towards Fresh Pond (unless the car was turned around in the action). Brattle is 2 lanes and pretty straight. The driver had to be doing something pretty unusual to end up where they did.
Serpentine wall
By Charles Bahne
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 4:27pm
It's called a serpentine wall, and it's at the corner of Brattle Street and Fresh Pond Parkway, 199 Brattle Street to be exact.
It was built in 1965, the same year as the house behind it, which was the residence of (and designed by) Hugh Stubbins. He was a prominent local architect of the late 20th century; among his works are the Federal Reserve Bank building near South Station, and the Citicorp Building in New York. You can see a longer list of his works on Wikipedia.
The concept of the serpentine wall was invented, I believe, by Thomas Jefferson. It's best known for minimizing noise, which is highly appropriate with all the traffic at this location.
Parts of the wall have indeed been knocked down many times over the years by auto accidents.
Mr. Stubbins died in 2006 and his family no longer owns the house.
Year built
By downtown-anon
Thu, 05/16/2019 - 12:15pm
Interesting to get some history on this.
The city of Cambridge lists it as built in 1950.
https://www.cambridgema.gov/PropertyDatabase/20070
My recollection from the 1980s...
By Bob Leponge
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 4:50pm
... was that the serpentine brick wall was hit more than once *by the same driver* -- nobody I knew knew if that was weirdly coincidental or a specific vendetta or a behavioral problem of some kind.
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