Paul McMorrow – Snappy Title TK TK

And hello there to you. Not a whole lot of activity on these here internets lately. I know. A light blogging regimen is the sign of a guy with a bunch of work that actually pays.

But who needs rent money when you’ve got totally subversive and unprofessional government memos? That’s what we’ve got here. By all means, please do read on.

Here’s a quick addendum to a post from last month on urban renewal run amok in the Back Bay, and to this item in the April issue of Boston (On newsstands now! Buy buy buy!).

While I was researching the history of the Back Bay Architectural District’s borders and the debate over whether the district could be saved from itself with the addition of a couple modernist residential towers, I came across this July, 1967 memo from a BRA planning official named William Weismantel.

Weismantel sketched out three possible outcomes to a proposal to build towers in the Back Bay. High-rises might mix attract new residents and spur rehabilitation of the neighborhood’s increasingly shabby row houses; they might not mix with the neighborhood, and instead become oases of wealth in the midst of a death-spiraling slum; or, the city could block the towers altogether, and instead focus on preserving and rehabbing the Back Bay’s existing buildings.

It’s the second possible outcome that terrifies Weismantel, and he sketches it out in language that, it’s safe to say, rarely finds its way into BRA memos anymore:

New high rise fails to stimulate rehabilitation of row houses. High rise face out towards Public Garden or Charles River, on Arlington Street and the water side of Beacon Street, trying to ignore the “environmental sink” overcoming the middle of the district. In the middle, old row houses get older without the benefit of rehabilitation, except the worst kind: conversion to tiny apartments, dormitories, rooming houses, fraternities. William Lloyd Garrison’s statue on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall is pulled down and Dr. Timothy Leary’s lifted onto the empty pedestal during one of the spontaneous love-ins.

BRA planners don’t exactly write like that anymore. Sad.