Globe Magazine Gives Thumbs down to Brick Sidewalks

Posted by John B. Kelly

In a great boost to the "dump the bricks" cause, Monica Collins of the Boston Globe wrote a fantastic one-page essay in today's Globe Magazine, page 16. The piece will be available at this link for the next four weeks.

Collins said all anyone needs to know with the words:

Concrete sidewalks with brick accents not only solve the walking and rolling problems, they are cheaper, too.

NAG's Kelly gets the first and last word in the story, and Chris Hart from Adaptive Environments, Ann Hershfang from WalkBoston, and Michael Muehe from the Cambridge Commission for Persons with Disabilities help knock nails into the coffin of brick sidewalks. Collins writes about her conversion experience:

Until my consciousness was raised, I blamed myself when I snagged on a bad brick and took a tumble. "After you fall, you stand up and you say, 'Stupid me. Why did I do that?' " says Christopher Hart of Adaptive Environments, a local firm specializing in accessible design. "But it's not you. It was the physical surface you were walking on."

And that is the key to our success: when enough people realize that they don't like brick either, the bricks will be gone. In just a few decades, bricks will be a bad memory of a bad decision.
Collins nails the city good on its initial, very pathetic, attempt to wiggle out of its legal responsibility to ensure that its sidewalks are compliant. As she sums up in her final paragraph, concrete sidewalks with a brick "accent" along the curb are far preferable to all-brick:

Such a design would work on Huntington Avenue, where a lumpy sidewalk built in 2003 with Old City Hall pavers poses an obstacle for well-heeled Boston Symphony-goers and wheelchair riders. The sidewalk there is the subject of a lawsuit by Kelly's Neighborhood Access Group. The state's Architectural Access Board agrees and has ordered the city to fix the misshapen walkways around Symphony Hall and Gainsborough Street. Initially, the city denied responsibility and pinned the blame on the MBTA, which built the sidewalk. Spinetto now promises the work will be done by July 1. Kelly holds out for concrete: "Concrete is the only guarantee of a smooth path of travel. They can put the brick near the edge, and we can all admire it from a distance."

The sidewalk isn't exactly the subject of a "lawsuit," but a complaint before the Architectural Access Board. No lawyers involved! (Not that there would be anything wrong with that...)