OWNERSHIP
CONDITIONS
CONTEXT AND HISTORY
DESIGN ISSUES
SOCIAL ISSUES
PLANNING PROCESSES
TESTIMONIES

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OWNERSHIP:
-- City of Boston
-- The Boston Department of Parks and Recreation is responsible for the plantings along Columbia Road

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CONDITIONS:
Columbia Road is a major thoroughfare that begins at the eastern edge of Franklin Park in Dorchester and links to Circuit Drive within the Park. It represents a possible extension of the Emerald Necklace from Circuit Drive in Franklin Park northwest towards the Boston Harbor.

The Boston Parks Department plants and maintains the medians and edges of Columbia Road close to Franklin Park, which are planted with young trees and grass. Although closer to Franklin Park Columbia Road has elements of a greenway, the road does not compare to the lush, green, un-peopled parkways in the Emerald Necklace. Farther northeast of Franklin Park, Columbia Road has a concrete median and no trees and looses all semblance of a greenway.

Traffic and parking:
Columbia Road is wide enough to accommodate four lanes of traffic, as well as a median and a parking lane and sidewalks on both sides. According to Mass Highway, Columbia Road had average daily traffic of 32,800 west of I-93. Columbia Road is served by Bus #16. There is parking on both side of Columbia Road near Franklin Park.

Residential development and vacant lots:
The area around Columbia Road near Franklin Park is primarily residential, with two- and three-family homes as well as several large apartment buildings. In 2002, Theroch II apartment complex on Columbia Road just east of Washington Street (D) is undergoing reconstruction as part of a Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program called Demolition Disposition, or "Demo Dispo," which is administered by MassHousing (Commonwealth of Massachusetts). The apartments were constructed in 1920 and foreclosed in 1991. As of May 2002, the buildings were boarded up.

There are several undeveloped parcels on Columbia Road south of Washington Street that illustrate the diversity that undeveloped lots in this area. Three are owned by the City of Boston through foreclosure. Of these, two connected parcels are listed as "charity properties" (179 Columbia Road). They are bounded by a white picket fence. The grass is cut and five mature maple trees shade the edges. There is a tire swing hanging from one of the strong maple branches and a few make-shift chairs are in a circle beneath the tree. A path cuts through the lot and connects with Vaughan Road. Adjacent to this lot is another parcel owned by the City of Boston. This parcel is covered in trash. It is not bounded by a fence. Virtually no grass grows on the lot. It an uninviting area that appears to go unused. Directly across the street from these properties are a group of three narrow, privately owned parcels that are overgrown with grass and covered in trash. The parcels are accessed via steep stairs and thus offer a view down onto the street below. With clean-up, these parcels could be attractive to residents of the dense housing developments to the east.

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CONTEXT and HISTORY:
Frederick Law Olmsted intended Columbia Road to be a continuation of the Emerald Necklace -- the Boston City park network that connects parkland from the Back Bay Fens to Franklin Park. Under his original plan, Franklin Park would be connected to Marine Park and Pleasure Bay via Columbia Road, the Dorchesterway, and the Strandway (collectively the William J. Day Boulevard). The park system would thus have resembled a horseshoe of continuous greenway and parks.

The conditions of Columbia Road when the parks system was being established, however, precluded this vision from becoming a reality. When Columbia Road was formally designed in the late 1800s, there was already a relatively high density of buildings. The road had street rails that were used by a streetcar trolley connecting Uphams Corner and Franklin Park. There was a grass strip in the center and roads on either side, one for commercial traffic and the other for pleasure traffic. As a result, Columbia Road failed to serve the purposes of either the businesses or the pleasure travelers well, and there was not enough room for what Olmsted considered a proper parkway.

During a period of high racial tensions in the area in the 1960s, Columbia Road served as a barrier between two opposed ethnic groups -- the blacks and the Irish. According to one social history of the area, "The very presence of a black face in parts of Irish Dorchester was considered sufficient provocation for a chase and beating; the sanctity of the neighborhood and parish was of paramount importance" (Levine and Harmon, The Death of an American Jewish Community, 1994, p176).

Physical improvements to Columbia Road were made between 1992 and 1993. More recently, the Boston Department of Parks and Recreation began planting and maintaining trees, grass, and planters along the western-most section of Columbia Road. Despite the recent "greening" of parts of Columbia Road by the Boston Department of Parks and Recreation, the corridor is not a parkway along the lines of other sections of the Emerald Necklace in Jamaica Plain.

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DESIGN ISSUES:
-- As mentioned above, Columbia Road is not considered part of the Emerald Necklace despite the fact that it was part of Frederick Law Olmsted's original plan to connect the major greenspaces of the City of Boston. The elements of green along Columbia Road are meager due to the dense neighborhood development, and they are eliminated altogether northwest of the Park.

-- Double and even triple-parking occurs along Columbia Road, and residents complain that enforcement of violations could be much more rigorous.

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SOCIAL ISSUES:
Some residents of the poor and heavily minority neighborhood in Roxbury and Dorchester along Columbia Road have questioned why Columbia Road has not received the kind of care and attention that other sections of the Emerald Necklace, such as the Arborway, have received.

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PLANNING PROCESSES:
The Emerald Necklace Conservancy sees enhancing the connections between Franklin Park and Marine Park and Pleasure Bay via Columbia Road as a long-term vision for the Boston Parks system. According to Simone Auster, director of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, a vision for a "completed" Emerald Necklace has not yet been flushed out by the Conservancy or other groups, but the idea of the system connecting to Pleasure Bay and Castle Island via Columbia Road and eventually back to Back Bay Fens or Boston Common resonates with many Bostonians.

The Roxbury Stratetic Master Plan published in 2004 says that the implementation of transit service along Columbia Road will greatly improve the accessibility between elements of the Emerald Necklace, particularly if combined with street reconstruction, including trees and historic lighting, to restore this important street to "boulevard" status.


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TESTIMONIES:
"It should be a priority to reconnect Columbia Road and give it a boulevard feeling. The quality of space, the mature trees and grass -- they should be as much a part of making this area feel special as on the opposite side" (Margaret Dyson, Boston Department of Parks and Recreation).

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