The Neighborhood That Nearly Wasn't

Each week 'At this Address' explores one of Charlestown's interesting, historical structures. This week we shift gears, and take time to look at a portion of Charlestown's recent history when its architectural legacy was threatened.

When you walk through Charlestown, it’s easy to take for granted the elegant architecture and the beautiful homes that comprise a good part of Charlestown’s square mile. The manicured lawns and freshly painted Greek Revival and Federal-style houses give a feeling of symmetry and tranquility. Some homes even display brass plates attesting to the age and good condition of the structure. You can often catch wide-eyed amazed tourists smiling and looking around on their trek to the Bunker Hill Monument.

What it not at all in evidence in the Charlestown of 2011, however, is any trace of the strife and pressure that consumed Charlestown in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when its very survival, as a town of lovely homes and neighborhood families, was threatened. This town, as we know it, almost disappeared.

Creation of the Boston Redevelopment Authority

In 1957, then-Boston Mayor John Hines, who had been elected on a pro-development platform, created the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The BRA, established to lay the foundation for developments in Boston in the 1950s, would act autonomously from the Mayor’s office. The following year the BRA acquired, by eminent domain, the West End section of Boston.

The West End housed mostly lower middle class and poor, hardworking families. Within several weeks time the BRA had displaced 7,000 West End residents in what it heralded as a “revitalizing slum clearance initiative.” The intended land takings in the West End by the city were kept secret until it was too late to oppose the project. Properties were taken and eviction notices went up. The BRA claimed that if they could build and attract middle class residents to the area, Boston’s economy would improve. Much of the Massachusetts General Hospital complex and the Charles River Apartments, with its infamous slogan “if you lived here you’d be home now,” stand where West End homes once stood.

What happened there, could have happened here

Across the Charles River, Charlestown residents took notice. The two neighborhoods were not that dissimilar, and Charlestown residents knew that what happened in the West End could easily happen here. Charlestown had already endured damaging government planning, from the 1901 laying down of elevated train tracks across Main Street to the 1942 razing of a neighborhood to build the Bunker Hill Housing Development to the bulldozing of dozens of homes to build the Tobin Bridge. The town was no stranger to seizure of property.

To add to the town’s vulnerability the population in Charlestown in the 1950s dropped 40 percent and the value of all Charlestown property went from $48.4 million in 1930 to $34 million in 1960. In the April 1960, Boston City Record, Edward Logue, Mayor Collins’ appointee as head of the BRA, bemoaned that Charlestown had become a “slum, as bad as any I have ever seen.”

Check Patch tomorrow for Part 2 of this story, which highlights how local organizations banded together to protect the neighborhood, and the formation of Self Help Organization of Charlestown, which united many Charlestown men and women in the fight to keep the BRA out of the town.