A cool, salty breeze whipped through the tall grass of the wetland just north of a small peninsula, which consisted of three rolling hills.  The fluid updrafts caused by the breeze held the gliding osprey aloft, searching for fish caught by the retreating tide.  With the tide gone, a narrow footpath composed of raised silt emerged at the mouth of the wetland, separating it briefly from the river to the north.  During low tide, the path was used for movement by tribal members of the Penacook Federation – the first residents of the area that would later be home to the central core of the City of Boston.

When it was exposed, the half natural, half artificial causeway represented the busiest artery on the peninsula, called Mishawmut by its human inhabitants, and served as a shortcut through the wetlands.  This cove would later be called Mill Pond by European settlers, but the Native Americans at the time did not know that.  Nor did they know that the wetlands would later be permanently isolated from the northern river – later named the Charles – and used as a source of immense mechanical power.  They did not know that one of the largest cities on the continent would bloom on the peninsula, or that its citizens would participate in the filling of the wetlands that hosted the fish and osprey.  The Native Americans did not know that the sporadically traveled footpath would become the northern border to a site that would play a major role in city transportation, which would fuel the continuous evolution of the land use and natural processes on the site.  The transportation path used by the Native Americans was shaped by the tidal cycles and by the surrounding region, which served as a source of food for many animals, and a natural habitat for even more.  For centuries, transportation through the area was shaped by these natural processes and land uses.  While the Native Americans knew this, they did not know that the next civilization would succeed in reversing these roles.

The peninsula was renamed Trimountaine by European settlers, who moved to the peninsula in the middle of the seventeenth century.  While most development throughout this century occurred at the center of this peninsula, Puritans constructed mills around the wetland.  The footpath to the north was raised into a soil berm, and the wetlands were named Mill Pond.  Factories developed at the southern tip of the pond, where a manmade creek called Mill Creek connected the otherwise isolated Mill Pond to the eastern harbor.  Throughout this era of mill construction, the industrial land use continually relied on natural processes, which included the tidal cycles that provided the power necessary for manufacturing.  The conversion of the footpath into the dirt berm, however, eliminated the direct link between natural processes and human movement.  Pedestrian and vehicle traffic could and did use the causeway artery at any time, regardless of tidal conditions.  The severance of this transportation path from natural processes led to a growth in the use of the artery for the movement of goods and people.  As movement increased, so too did the development of mills and factories along the shore of Mill Pond.  The primitive infrastructure that facilitated that movement had begun to affect land use.  The modern role of transportation infrastructure and its influence on land use had begun to emerge.  As roadways began to envelop the pond, industry grew.  The growth of industry fueled the growth of the urban fabric throughout the city.  Growth along the borders of the site continued for more than a century, and intensified through the 1700s.  By the close of the eighteenth century, the city no longer had room to grow.

A solution to the need to expand beyond the current limits of the peninsula was proposed by renowned architect Charles Bulfinch in 1804 to the citizens of Boston, who had taken an increasingly ambitious approach to municipal development over the previous century.  In his proposal, Bulfinch outlined a plan to extend the shoreline out into the Charles River, creating fifty-five acres of undeveloped city land where the Mill Pond existed at the time.  The proposal was named the Mill Pond Plan of 1808, and was enthusiastically undertaken by local builders, engineers and laborers.  Soil was transported from underdeveloped regions of Beacon Hill by horse-drawn cart, and deposited systematically in the isolated wetland.  By the 1860’s, the project was complete.  Upon the raised land, a calculated grid of streets was laid out, surrounded by Merrimac Street, Charlestown Street, and Causeway Street.  In the plan, these three streets formed a near-perfect equilateral triangle, and served as a reminder of the original shoreline and the edge of the tidal wetlands that once composed Mill Pond.   This grid of roadways served as the original transportation network on the reclaimed land, and was the first feature placed on the fifty-five acre plot. 

The completed project leapt from the maps drawn by Bulfinch at the dawn of the century.  Roads, boundaries and shorelines appeared exactly as they did on the original plans.  Only one planned feature was absent in 1867.  Between Canal Street and Haverhill Street, Bulfinch had drawn in an artificial waterway, which had been intended to maintain the water link between Mill Creek and the Charles River.  This water link was previously accomplished by the connection of Mill Pond to the eastern harbor with the man-made Mill Creek.  With the filling of the cove, Mill Creek would terminate abruptly at the south end of the site.  The canal designed by Bulfinch was intended to reconnect the creek with the Charles River to the north.  In its place appeared the tied iron rails of the Boston and Main Railroad Company.  As construction completed on the Mill Pond Plan, the booming railroad industry acquired vast tracts of open land, and began creating a massive network of rail lines and terminals that extended from the new shoreline of the Charles River to Haymarket Square.  The rise of this advancing mode of transportation had led to the conversion of the intended land use between Canal and Haverhill Streets.  Instead of an elaborate promenade and waterway, a railroad had appeared. 

With the railroad came noise and pollution.  The attractiveness of the land within the heart of Bulfinch Triangle abruptly declined, sending potential residents fleeing to other developing neighborhoods.  The introduction of the railroad instead appealed to industry, which flocked to the vacant lots within the Triangle.  Furniture factories, marble works, and blacksmiths began to appear along the rail line, which served as a convenient freight connection with both suppliers of materials and sellers of the manufactured goods.  With industry came added noise and pollution, resulting in further deterrents to residential investment.

The link between transportation and land use had developed and grown strong by the end of the nineteenth century.  The transformations undergone by the Triangle throughout the 1800s had altered the natural processes that had once influenced transportation and land use.  Tidal cycles, which had shaped land use until the close of water-powered mills in 1808, ceased to play a major factor in water processes on the site.  Offshore wind, which had once moved in crisp gusts toward the center of Boston, was captured and channeled by thoroughfares such as Causeway Street and repeatedly rerouted down avenues and alleys, creating a series of chaotic vortices that caught and retained soot and smoke from nearby railroads and factories.  Drainage of precipitation originally occurred during the retreat of the tide, when rain and seawater were carried back into the harbor.  Following the Mill Pond Plan, the raised berm and streets surrounding the site created ridges that dictated the movement of surface water, which ran toward the center of the site where it was captured below the streets in a network of storm drains.  As the development of roads and rail continued within the site, natural processes became increasingly altered by surrounding transportation infrastructure. 

A large scale transformation of transportation infrastructure occurred again near the close of the nineteenth century, when the streets within the Triangle were fitted with rails and ties for new streetcar lines.  The electrification of these lines throughout the site and throughout the city occurred concurrently with the abandonment of the heavy rail lines in the heart of the Triangle, as railroads moved their infrastructure to a modern facility immediately north of the site.  The southern depot and rail yard were abandoned.  The disappearance of the railroad affected mills and factories within the site, which relied on the network of heavy rail to carry goods and materials into and out of the dense urban area.  Soon after the railroad vanished, so too did much of the industry within the Triangle; taking with it the noise and pollution that had deterred residents from owning nearby homes and apartments.

Within the Triangle, the appeal of apartments was further enhanced by the intricate network of streetcars, which came to dominate the streets by the beginning of the twentieth century.  With travel time between the site and downtown shortened by the new mode of transit, loft apartments began to appear in large numbers, and comprised a major portion of the land use by 1909.  The Boston Rubber Shoe Company, which existed on the site for more than twenty-five years, closed its doors by 1929 and the vacant factory was converted to loft apartments and leased to tenants.  The patterns of land use had once again been impacted by changes in the transportation infrastructure within the Triangle. 

Expansion of the streetcar network led to more residential development.  In turn, this added development fueled further expansion.  By 1905, construction was underway on an overhead viaduct that would provide further light rail access from North Station to downtown.  As this massive green steel structure slowly covered Causeway Street, nearby residential development intensified.  Obscured from sunlight by the elevated viaduct, Causeway Street gained a claustrophobic appearance, remaining cold and dark throughout the day.  Melted snow from above crept through cracks and froze to form large icicles on the underside, resulting in a scene resembling an arctic cave.  Offshore winds were captured and channeled by the behemoth, where they were kept cool until diverted along side streets, where sunlit vortices collected fresh air and made it warm and stale. 

Streets within the Bulfinch Triangle were invaded once again after 1909, when the automobile began permeating the urban landscape.  Displacing streetcars, these awkward new vehicles required vast amounts of storage space.  To accommodate the abrupt influx of cars, a series of buildings were razed in order to make way for parking lots along major streets.  This was the ultimate fate for the building that stood at 123 Merrimac Street until the 1920s, when it was demolished and replaced with a vest pocket parking lot, leaving a roofline scar on the building at 119 Merrimac Street.  Buildings at the southern tip of the triangle were dealt a similar fate by 1929 when the widening of Haymarket Square for automobiles required the destruction of five additional buildings along Canal Street. 

The development of automobile infrastructure proved to be both influential and destructive to land use on the site.  In 1950, land acquisition and construction began for the elevated Central Artery Expressway, which extended through the center of Bulfinch Triangle east of Canal Street.  Over the following decade, this project consumed most of the land between Canal Street and Beverly Street, eliminating entire blocks of buildings and replacing the stolen structures with an immense viaduct.  The blight of the viaduct was declared immediately, and prompted road builders to transform the Chinatown elevated artery into a depressed highway.  For Bulfinch Triangle however, the damage had been done.  Shops and homes had been destroyed, and the new structure not only deteriorated the neighborhood aesthetic, but led to the introduction of overwhelming levels of traffic onto the narrow streets of the site.  Residents fled.  In their place arose a commercial center, which took advantage of the high-volume access to regions beyond the city in a spirit that commemorated the initial attraction of industry to the old railroad that once existed on the same parcel of land. 

Today, Bulfinch Triangle exists in a form resulting from the development of transportation infrastructure that has persisted since the original settlement of the Mishawmut peninsula by Puritans.  Land use patterns have adapted to the automobile as the dominant mode of transportation.  Natural processes such as the movement of air and water, and the incidence of sunlight occur in forms resulting from the structures developed to move goods and people.  Such trends in land use and natural processes are governed by the development of transportation infrastructure.  This continues to occur in contrast to the role of these trends before European settlement, when transportation was dictated by natural processes and land use. 

As the development of infrastructure continues, so too does its impact on land use and natural processes.  The current undertaking to depress the elevated artery will lead to further evolution in land use and natural processes.  As surface land is reclaimed from the overhead viaduct, development will shape the urban landscape, and serve to redistribute use of land for residential, commercial, industrial and institutional purposes.  Trends in incident sunlight and air and water movement will again change noticeably.  As land use and natural processes change, transformations in the urban landscape will continue to leave traces and artifacts that commemorate other historic periods that relate to other dominant modes of urban movement.  Transportation will continue to influence regional factors that had served as dominant characteristics for centuries.

A plaque on the corner of Causeway and North Washington Streets identifies the attached building as the Kearny Building.  On this plaque, an engraved map illustrates the original shape of Mishawmut and identifies the footpath that once existed along the northern face of the building.  The crisp, salty wind that once whipped through the landscape now dodges brick facades and becomes trapped in channels and vortices caused by overhead viaducts and side streets.  Rainwater and melting snow run toward the center of the site in a rhythm unmatched with the former approaching and retreating tides.  Parking lots have replaced the tidal pools over which osprey searched for stranded fish.  Residential apartments and factories replaced the wetlands, which were in turn replaced by commercial uses.  The evolution of human movement has sparked changes in natural patterns and fundamental land use on the Bulfinch Triangle, which has left the physical landscape in a form far different than that observed four centuries ago.  From the raised silt footpath used by members of the Penacook Federation to the complex Central Artery/Tunnel project that will be used by the current inhabitants of the peninsula on which Boston has been built, the progression of infrastructure used for human movement has continued to fuel the evolution of the modern urban landscape.

 

Bibliography

1.      Digital Sanborn Map of Boston.  Map.  Boston: ProQuest, 1867.

2.      Digital Sanborn Map of Boston.  Map.  Boston: ProQuest, 1885.

3.      Ditigal Sanborn Map of Boston.  Map.  Boston: ProQuest, 1895.

4.      Digital Sanborn Map of Boston.  Map.  Boston: ProQuest, 1909.

5.      Digital Sanborn Map of Boston.  Map.  Boston: ProQuest, 1929.

6.      Jackson, Kenneth.  Streetcar Suburbs.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

7.      Jacobs, Jane.  The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  New York: Modern Library, 1993.

8.      Land Use Plan.  Map.  Boston: BWSC, 1995.

9.      Mill Pond Plan of 1808.  Map.  Boston: BRA, 1808.

10.  Panorama of Boston.  Map.  Boston:  BRA, 1905.

11.  Mill Pond in 1826.  Map.  Boston: BRA, 1826

12.  Mill Pond in 1771.  Map.  Boston: BRA, 1771

 

 

While specific references are not cited in the text, the aforementioned resources were used in the compilation of the story, as well as assignments 1 – 4 as prepared for 11.016: The City.  Assignments 1 – 4 are available online in the form used for this paper.