Huntington Avenue Timeline
Posted by John B. Kelly, who is feeling much better
Part One: The Gentrifiers Strike Back
Mid 1990s: Huntington Avenue redesign process takes place, ostensibly to bring the "E" Green Line into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. City of Boston and powerful institutions like Northeastern ("We were involved from the very beginning of this project" -- NU official Jeanne Levesque) and the Fenway Alliance use opportunity to gentrify the Avenue, which will be renamed the "Avenue of the Arts."
Required community meetings held, but disability perspective on bricks either not heard or ignored.
April 9, 1999: Northeastern submits its Master Plan to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
The Huntington Avenue improvement project will significantly improve the pedestrian environment through sidewalk widening and resurfacing, landscape improvements, new pedestrian crossings, new traffic signals, street lighting enhancement, signage improvements, tree plantings, and pedestrian amenities. (Page 10, "Pedestrian Circulation," my emphasis)
The problem with this plan is that it writes disabled people right out of the picture. It seems that disabled people don't count as "pedestrians," a group of people which seems to include only the designers and boosters of this project, and people who look like them.
The "sidewalk widening" the planners had in mind includes many new trees and their big grates (we have nothing against trees, we just don't want to have to compete with them for safe passage), which effectively narrows the path of travel to an uncomfortable, bare minimum.
To "improve the pedestrian environment" even further, the gaggle of gentrifiers introduce danger into the pedestrian experience with the most dreaded form of bricks known to humanity, "Original City Hall Pavers" (or " Dysfunctional Expensive Dangerous Broken Crap That Some People Like the Look of"). The do-gooding improvers just thrill to the site of the bricks' broken edges, uneven sides and that "weathered," "authentic" look. Trying to ride or walk over these bricks is sheer hell, as Jack Grieco and Alyson Perry explain eloquently below.
And guess what "new pedestrian crossings" means? That's right, it means a brick paver crosswalk designed to ensure that disabled people never escape the brickish hell that the gentrifiers have sentenced us to. These crosswalks have yet to be installed, and MBTA engineer James Eng told me that the MBTA would be fine with leaving the crosswalks out, as their installation would require digging up the street again.
Summer, 2003: Totally functional concrete sidewalk on Huntington Avenue from Massachusetts Avenue to Forsyth Way starts being ripped up and replaced with "Original City Hall Pavers". People with disabilities freak out.
August, 2003: At the request of NAG, City Councilor Michael Ross intervenes on behalf of of disabled residents, tries to persuade city to reconsider. City Engineer Peter Scarpignato says he will not stop the project. He had earlier told the Northeastern News, "It's going to be a beautiful renovation and something that we'll all be very proud of."
Contractor McCourt illegally leaves sidewalks inaccessible for months, and often fails to maintain temporary access. People are forced to risk their lives in the Street. The city does not notice.
September 9, 2003: Neighborhood Access Group and the Boston Center for Independent Living organize a protest against the switch to bricks on Huntington Avenue. Coverage in the Boston Globe, Boston Courant, Northeastern News.
Wheelchair user Paul Kahn tells the Boston Globe, "It's just bump, bump, bump, bump until you can't pay attention to anything else. It's really awful. It just seems crazy to go backward in accessibility in favor of some kind of pseudo-authentic look.
"One group's aesthetic preferences must not take precedence over the personal safety of another group," says John Kelly.
"We will have a very, very thorough public process," DPW Commissioner Joseph Casazza tells the Globe, "but I'm not going to bring construction to a screeching halt in this city. We're not changing our plans at this stage of the game anywhere."
October 3, 2003: Globe music critic Richard Dyer writes about a concert at Symphony Hall, where "high heels arriving on the Huntington Avenue side moved gingerly along the handsome but treacherous new brick sidewalk." Anyone who wears high heels has their own horror story about bricks.
4 Comments:
This is very informative. When John Kelly is that eloguent about rights and public safety people should take notice. Get Menino into a wheelchair and have him try to read poetry while he travels down Huntington Avenue. Keep up the great work.
I meant Jim Kelly of course!
I am a moron. I need to rest. Jim Kelly didn't say that at all. But you would make a good city councilor. I wonder what the cultural institutions are thinking about it now and how to get them more on disability rights side. The idea of allying with the high heal community makes a lot of sense.
I'm a student at Northeastern. Notice that in the last few months, the crosswalks were painted engravings of brick shapes instead of tearing up the road for brick crosswalks.
I came across your post today as there are a group of wheelchair protestors at the corner of Huntington and Parker streets this afternoon.
Even regular pedestrians do find these sidewalks treacherous!
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