Hey, there! Log in / Register

Another barrage of bullets across MLK Boulevard

Evidence markers and cops on Martin Luther King Boulevard

Photo by Live Boston.

Live Boston reports Boston Police responded to Martin Luther King Boulevard near Malcolm X Park on a ShotSpotter report of up to 18 rounds being fired around 9:50 p.m. on Thursday.

Police quickly found at least ten spent casings as well as evidence at least one bullet shattered a car window, in a stretch of MLK Boulevard that saw large volleys of gunfire on Aug. 26, Aug. 5 and July 22.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Have become a nightly nightmare so much so that parents are telling their children the sound of gunfire is just a form of Boston Lightning.

up
Voting closed 2

Does anyone know what the story is with MLK Boulevard? It's such a big road and doesn't really go anywhere. It looks like a bunch of homes were demolished to build it sometime after 1955, but it's really not clear why.

up
Voting closed 0

I'm curious too. Here's what I found doing a cursory search:

In Boston, Martin Luther King Blvd. travels a half mile in Roxbury from Washington Street to Warren Street. A blank vestige of urban renewal, it had little identity before it was named for King. Thus, says state Representative Byron Rushing of Roxbury, “You didn’t have the problem of un-naming anything else.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/01/18/boulevards-broken-dreams/...

Fits w/ 1955. Just some not unusual sub-standard urban renewal of the time. An area seen as blighted and was demolished. Never quite fully redeveloped as a neighborhood street.

up
Voting closed 0

Google Washington Park Urban Renewal Plan. Lots of material out there.

The Greatest Generation got back from destroying German and Japanese cities and tried to do it here too. West End, Washington Park, Lower Roxbury (for I-95) a bit of Allston got destroyed. Charlestown was next but by then people saw living in their nana's firetrap might be a better life than some city planner's idea of decent housing. I'm glad they were stopped.

That's why there is a drag racing strip in the middle of the Bury. As Paul Weller said "The Planners Get Embarrassed When Their Plans Go Wrong".

up
Voting closed 0

Fascinating:

https://roxbury.fandom.com/wiki/Washington_Park_Urban_Renewal_Program-Pa...

> The triangular shaped new community was as comprehensive as any urban renewal district in the region; indeed of the ten General Neighborhood Renewal Plans created by the BRA in 1961, Washington Park was the most self contained Urban Renewal District in the city. It included new police and fire stations, a courthouse, two public libraries, a shopping mall, YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, a public recreation center that included gymnasium , pool and covered ice rink and outdoor basketball courts, a health center, elementary school and five garden style housing developments totaling almost 2000 apartments or townhouses all fully occupied today. At its completion in 1975, $70.4 million had been invested to build the new community of which $31. 3 million came from the federal government. The BRA estimated in 1978 that 2,600 families had been relocated due to the taking of thousands of homes and the leveling of 150 acres of land –over 1/4 of the site - to create the new community.

> Bisecting the triangle nearly in half was the new Crosstown Boulevard that cut a four lane swath from a widened and straightened Warren Street to Washington Street. Humboldt Avenue would also be widened from its junction with the Crosstown to Seaver Street. The Crosstown (named in honor of Martin Luther King when it was completed in 1968) was originally conceived as a link in the I- 95 highway scheme as a feeder route from Columbia Road to an interchange at Heath Street.

up
Voting closed 1