Symphony Hall Open House Sunday

Posted by John B. Kelly

Left: tripping hazard in front of Symphony Hall. Photo: Jesse Colbert

Please come join us at another of Neighborhood Access Group's "Access Education Days" at Symphony Hall, Sunday, October 22 at 12 o'clock noon. We will be there until 2 p.m. or so passing out flyers to the many people who will be visiting Symphony Hall during its "Open House," which runs from 12-5 p.m.

We support people coming to the event -- please come here some good music.

What we want to do is educate visitors that Symphony Hall is a bad neighbor to the hundreds of elderly and disabled people living right next door in the huge Symphony Plaza complexes. Symphony makes us "pay" every time we try to pass by, as sidewalks on the three sides of the building are horrible: one of the most tilted sidewalks in Boston, a dangerous and a missing ramp, and lots of tripping hazards. And it's been this way for years and years.

Unfortunately, Symphony Hall has focused its energy, not on improving access to its sidewalks, but making sidewalks throughout the area fit its ideas of aesthetic beauty. It is an integral member of the Fenway Alliance, which drove the project that installed bricks up and down Huntington Avenue, over the neighborhood's fierce objections. Symphony has also teamed up with City Hall to plan for the installation of fancy but often very bumpy decorative crosswalks in the area next year, as part of the Symphony Area Streetscape Project.