OWNERSHIP
CONDITIONS
HISTORY
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
SOCIAL AND DESIGN ISSUES
PLANNING PROCESSES

OWNERSHIP:
According to Andrea d'Amato, Commissioner of the Boston Transportation Department, the ownership of American Legion Highway has not been fully resolved between State and City agencies. The State requires that American Legion be considered a highway if State funds are to pay for its resurfacing. The City would like to make American Legion into a greenway, but does not have the money to resurface it or to fund the greening of it. As of 2002, the State is funding improvements to the road, but the process is being managed by the City. The City Parks Department cleans and maintains American Legion Highway, and many city officials consider the highway to be City property.

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CONDITIONS:
American Legion Highway is, for the most part, a four-lane, two-way road, all of which has a grassy, tree-covered median. This section of highway that runs along the southeastern border of Franklin Park at the Franklin Hill neighborhood has sidewalks on both sides. Several groups of apartment buildings line the highway to the east, including the Wayne Apartments (run by Cruz Management), Franklin Hill Public Housing complex (Boston Housing Authority), two small landscaped complexes managed by Realty Group and Amiff, and a smattering of multi-family homes. Lena Park Community Development Corporation headquarters and a group of townhomes built by that organization are also located in this community.

Five parking spaces and a sign for Franklin Park lie across the street from the Franklin Hill public housing development. From here, Franklin Park is a stunning, primarily open landscape, with rolling hills and tree-lined walkways. Between the golf course and American Legion Highway lie a playground, five picnic tables, and a pedestrian road that is closed to vehicular traffic.

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HISTORY:
American Legion Highway was originally developed as a wooded buffer between the park and the city, and to some extent it still serves that purpose today. One hundred years ago this neighborhood was very sparsely populated. The land around what is now American Legion Highway was heavily planted to screen the city from the park. Originally, there was one path into the park from American Legion, whereas now there are four. Although the original park concept separated active and passive users, the Franklin Park Management Plan of 1991 recommended a playground in the area in light of the great human density. That playground was then built by the Boston Department of Parks and Recreation.

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ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES:
Old oak trees line the section of American Legion Highway that heads southwest away from Blue Hill Avenue along the edge of Franklin Park. Like the hundred-year-old oaks that line the Arborway, these trees are not only coming to the end of their lifetimes, they have also been severely damaged by oncoming traffic over the years. There are scars and missing chunks of trees on the majority of oaks along this section of the Arborway, each of which corresponds to the direction of traffic, indicating that the trees were hit by vehicles gone awry.

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SOCIAL and DESIGN ISSUES:
In recent years, a child was killed in an attempt to cross American Legion Highway on his bike to play in Franklin Park. According to Georgia Jones, head of the tenant association for Franklin Hill, government officials were responsive to the community's need for safer access to Franklin Park at that time. There is currently no crosswalk directly in front of the paved common area for Franklin Hill. There are two crosswalks in the immediate area and there is a crosswalk with a streetlight at Lena Park to the southwest. However, cars tend to go very fast along this stretch of American Legion Highway, and this continues to be a dangerous intersection even when there are crosswalks to protect pedestrians.

Over the past several decades, the neighborhood along the southeastern border of Franklin Park has been perceived as one of the most dangerous in Boston. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Franklin Hill was portrayed in the media as the quintessential urban failure, particularly in light of drugs, gangs, homicide, prison rates, guns, and other types of violence. During this period, two people were shot to death while driving down American Legion Highway and their car crashed into the stone wall on the edge of Franklin Park. Now, however, these perceptions are changing. Gang violence has receded and tensions between Franklin Hill and Franklin Field (a nearby, much larger public housing community) have been reduced. People safely access Franklin Park from this entryway and in general report feeling far safer in the neighborhood than they did during the 1980s and early 1990s.

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PLANNING PROCESSESS:
In March 2002, there was a planning process underway for the renovation of American Legion Highway (see entry for American Legion Highway (as a whole)).

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