Long ignored former beach on the Charles in West Roxbury could be reborn as new recreational area

DCR has hired a landscape architect to draw up possible plans for returning Havey Beach, along the Charles River across from the VA Hospital in West Roxbury, into a place where people would actually want to go again.

The firm hired by DCR is developing "a feasibility study" for adding "accessible parking, trails and recreation opportunities" - but not swimming - to what is now a stretch of woods with a few poorly maintained trails and a boarded-up former bathhouse with fake windows painted on, but which was once a large riverfront beach back before it and similar beaches were closed as the Charles became better known for its dirty water.

DCR holds the latest in a series of Zoom meetings at 6 p.m. today to restore public access to the area, which starts where the Roche skating rink ends on the parkway outbound. It's work that state Sen. Mike Rush (D-West Roxbury) has been leading the battle for for more than 15 years - going back to when he was a state rep.

Back in the day, Havey Beach used to be a lively area for people to hang out and swim in. In 1935, what was then the Metropolitan District Commission opened a beach on the land - and turned a Queen Anne-style stable into a bathhouse where people could rent bathing suits for 5 cent or a towel for 1 cent.

The bathhouse was built in the late 1800s as a stable by Matthew Bolles, a Boston banker who owned 28 acres along the Charles and Spring Street, according to a 1988 report by the Boston Landmarks Commission. Bolles sold the land to the city, which used it for the Parental School for Boys - a home for troubled youth - until it shut the facility and sold the land to the Veterans Administration in the 1930s. The MDC bought the land along the river and the stable, which it used for a few years as a police station before turning it into a beach facility.

Boston firefighters and state troopers would win commendations for saving children drowning in the river - although records show that while the firefighters only got thanks from their department, the state troopers also got days off.

At approximately 5.40 p. m., July 5, 1944, Lieut. Raymond W. Frazel of Engine Company 4, while off duty, and at Havey Beach, West Roxbury, was attracted to the plight of two young women who were struggling in the water of the Charles river about 30 feet from shore. Lieutenant Frazel immediately entered the water and swam a distance of about 35 feet to one of the girls whom he brought to the shore. The girl then informed him that her sister who was in the water with her had disappeared below the surface. Lieutenant Frazel again swam out into the river and diving down repeatedly recovered the unconscious form of an- other girl whom he brought to shore. He then performed artificial respiration and restored her to consciousness. Lieutenant Frazel was undoubtedly responsible " for saving the lives of the two girls, and he was highly commended by the Fire Commissioner.

Even as other freshwater beaches in Boston were closed in the late 1940s due to water pollution, Havey stayed open, although, it, too, was eventually shut. The Charles did become cleaner, and by 1985, the Charles River Watershed Association was predicting the beach could be re-opened in a couple of years.

But instead the former beach became home to a new forest, with only a modest path down to the water, at the end of which today sits mud and a lone marker: