Saving America's Cities

by Lizabeth Cohen

    88. “Barbarians Strip the Palace,” Cityscapes of Boston: An American City Through Time, Text by Robert Campbell, Photographs by Peter Vanderwarker (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 154; “What It Took to Bring About the Best Public Building of Our Time,” Contract Interiors 128, no. 9 (April 1969): 115–33; from the BG: Matt Viser and Donovan Slack, “Mayor Says He’ll Build Waterfront City Hall,” December 13, 2006; Adrian Walker, “City Hall Takes the Fall,” December 14, 2006; Martin Nolan, “The Urban Reality of City Hall, Then and Now,” February 5, 2007; Matt Viser, “It’s Unique, But Is It a Landmark?,” April 25, 2007; George Thrush, “Clean Slate,” May 13, 2007.

    89. Ada Louise Huxtable, “New Boston Center: Skillful Use of Urban Space,” NYT, September 11, 1972; McKinnell, interview by Cohen; for more self-criticism from McKinnell and other designers about the plaza, see “50 Years: A Retrospective Symposium on Government Center and Boston City Hall,” extracts, in Re-Making Government Center, Boston Design Lab, Spring 2008 (Cambridge, MA: School of Architecture and Planning, MIT, 2009), 56–63, particularly 60.

    90. Ieoh Ming Pei, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 11, 2007, New York, NY.

    91. City hall and City Hall Plaza have long invited frustrations and proposed remedies; see, for example, Hilgenhurst, “Evolution of Boston’s Government Center,” 19; Kruh, Always Something Doing, 159–68; Gretchen Schneider, “The Never-Ending Story: City Hall Plaza,” AB 4, no. 5 (May 2001): 16–19; “Reimagining City Hall,” special issue, AB 10, no. 5 (September–October 2007); Gary Wolf, “Boston City Hall Plaza: A Modern Space for the City upon a Hill,” Docomomo US Newsletter 3, 10 (Winter 2008); “City Hall Plaza Should Go for the Green—as in Grass,” editorial, BG, October 1, 2010; Casey Ross, “A 10-Year Plan for City Hall Plaza: New Incremental Approach Starts with Remodeled T Station, Trees,” BG, March 16, 2011; Martine Powers, “Government Center Closing for 2 Years for Upgrades,” BG, March 22, 2014; Harry Bartnick, “Give Boston’s City Hall a Much-Needed Makeover,” BG, July 26, 2015; “Boston City Hall Adding Beer, Dogs, Ice Cream to Plaza,” BG, April 20, 2018; “Boston Winter Is Canceled Amid Plans to Renovate City Hall Plaza,” BG, July 3, 2018. Harry Cobb has pushed to open up the ground floor of city hall “and bring some life into it” and the plaza; Cobb, interview.

    92. On poor maintenance, Logue, “What’s So Bad about City Hall?,” BG, May 1, 1998.

    93. Boston Redevelopment Authority, Government Center Urban Renewal Plan, April 3, 1963, Revised May 29, 1963, 5. When the AIA awarded Boston’s Government Center a citation for excellence in community architecture in 1972, it praised how the center “combines new buildings superbly sited and designed with worthy old buildings artfully preserved and converted to new uses” and singled out John Collins, Edward Logue, and I. M. Pei as “inspired leaders at the decisive moments, assur[ing] the high quality of the development”; in Collins, interview by de Varon, Tape 6, December 21, 1976, 11.

    94. “BRA with C of C Presentation to Logue,” Thursday, March 15, 1962, 8:30 p.m., Lynch, Boxes 2, 6, 9.

    95. Esther Maletz Stone, email message to author, July 19, 2015.

  6. Negotiating Neighborhoods

      1. “Testimony of Mr. Edward J. Logue, Administrator, Boston Redevelopment Authority, Boston, Massachusetts,” Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Hearing Held in Boston, Massachusetts, October 4–5, 1966, 243–46. Even Michael Appleby, who investigated Logue’s Boston record to undermine Mayor Lindsay’s effort to hire him in New York, reported that Logue’s goal was to achieve more socioeconomic mixing in cities and suburbs; Michael D. Appleby, “Logue’s Record in Boston: An Analysis of His Renewal and Planning Activities, with a Foreword and Summary by Herbert J. Gans for the Steering Committee, Council for New York Housing and Planning Policy, Funded by the Normal Foundation, May 1966,” EJL, 2002 Accession, Box 22, Folder “Logue’s Record in Boston by Michael Appleby,” 19.

      2. Logue, “Power of Negative Thinking,” BM, February 1969, 60.

      3. Logue, “The Boston Story—Getting Started,” draft chapter for memoir, “Tales of a City Builder, Compared to What,” January 2000, MDL, 17–19v7; Logue, interview, Schussheim, 13; Logue, interview, Steen, July 11, 1991, Boston, MA, 12.

      4. “Statement by Edward J. Logue,” Boston, Massachusetts, May 26, 1967, Hearings Before the National Commission on Urban Problems, vol. 1, May–June 1967 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968), 193. On the three options for clearance, Appleby, “Logue’s Record in Boston,” 37; Logue, interview, Steen, August 3, 1989, Boston, MA, 291.

      5. Walter McQuade, “Boston: What Can a Sick City Do?,” Fortune, June 1964, 164; Evarts Erickson, “Boston Rehabilitation Gets Summer ‘Work Camp’ Assistance,” JH 21, no. 9 (October 15, 1964): 468–70; “Once Neglected House Becomes Show Place,” BH, September 17, 1965.

      6. Nancy Rita Arnone, “Redevelopment in Boston: A Study of the Politics and Administration of Social Change” (Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, 1965), 193.

      7. Logue, interview, Schussheim, 28.

      8. Arnone, “Redevelopment in Boston,” 125–26, 131–32; McQuade, “Boston: What Can a Sick City Do?,” 168 on incentives to commercial developers to build 221(d)(3) projects.

      9. “Can Urban Renewal Make Everybody Happy?,” AF 120 (June 1964): 104.

    10. John Collins quoted in McQuade, “Boston: What Can a Sick City Do?,” 168.

    11. Logue, “A Look Back at Neighborhood Renewal in Boston,” Policy Studies Journal 16, no. 2 (Winter 1987): 343; Logue testimony, National Commission Hearings, 199; Timothy Francis Rose, “Civic War: People, Politics, and the Battle of New Boston, 1945–1967” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2006), 223, including n366, on the limited supply of public housing.

    12. Logue, “Power of Negative Thinking,” 61; “Can Urban Renewal Make Everybody Happy?,” 104; McQuade, “Boston: What Can a Sick City Do?,” 168; Logue, “The Boston Story,” 34.

    13. John Stainton, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, May 30, 2007, Jamaica Plain, MA.

    14. Chester W. Hartman, “The Housing of Relocated Families,” JAIP 30, no. 4 (November 1964): 266–86; and in JAIP 31, no. 4 (November 1965): Logue, “Comment on ‘The Housing of Relocated Families,’” 338–40; and Hartman, “Rejoinder by the Author,” 340–44.

    15. Anthony Yudis, “B.R.A. Reports ‘Seven-Year Progress,’” BG, August 1, 1967.

    16. Alan Lupo, “Boston: 10 Years Have Changed It,” BG, February 19, 1967.

    17. Quoted in Daniel Golden and David Mehegan, “Changing the Heart of the City,” BG, September 18, 1983.

    18. Logue testimony, National Commission Hearings, 193–95.

    19. Arthur Reilly, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 25, 2009, Brookline, MA.

    20. McQuade, “Boston: What Can a Sick City Do?,” 168.

    21. Joseph W. Lund to Logue, May 25, 1967; Logue to Joseph Lund, June 1, 1967; EJL, Series 6, Box 150, Folder 416.

    22. Logue, “A Look Back at Neighborhood Renewal in Boston,” 340–41; McQuade claimed that Boston banks pledged some $20 million toward new mortgages to finance rehabilitation in “Boston: What Can a Sick City Do?,” 164; Logue testimony, National Commission Hearings, 213–15, 255–57, 263–65.

    23. “Can Urban Renewal Make Everybody Happy?,” 104; McQuade, “Boston: What Can a Sick City Do?,” 164.

    24. For the full history of B-BURG and its impact, see Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon, The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions (New York: Free Press, 1992); and Golden and Mehegan, “Changing the Heart of the City.”

    25. “Meet Boston’s Mr. Urban Renewal,” CSM, December 18, 1965.

    26. Langley Carleton Keyes, Jr., The Rehabilitation Planning Game: A Study in the Diversity of Neighborhood (Cambridge, MA: M
IT Press, 1969). For another helpful treatment of these three major neighborhood renewal projects, see Jim Vrabel, A People’s History of the New Boston (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014).

    27. Nicholas von Hoffman, “Ed Logue—the Master Rebuilder,” WP, April 15, 1967; also see Appleby, “Logue’s Record in Boston,” 30–31.

    28. James Q. Wilson, “Planning and Politics: Citizen Participation in Urban Renewal,” in Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy, ed. Wilson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), 418.

    29. Armone, “Redevelopment in Boston,” 20–21, 44–45; Nicholas von Hoffman, “Boston Is an Ingrate,” WP, April 9, 1967.

    30. Keyes, Rehabilitation Planning Game, 13. Keyes specifically targeted James Q. Wilson, Staughton Lynd, and Herbert Gans, who assumed that lower-income people were always excluded from urban renewal; Keyes, Rehabilitation Planning Game, 8–12.

    31. Logue, “The Boston Story,” 28v7.

    32. Heath, Act of Faith, part 1, 8. The Snowdens joined with the NAACP in endorsing Logue’s appointment; Melnea A. Cass, President, NAACP, to Joseph Lund, Chairman of BRA, January 24, 1961; Melnea A. Cass to Logue, January 27, 1961; Logue to Melnea A. Cass, EJL, Series 6, Box 150, Folder 420.

    33. On Washington Park urban renewal, see Keyes, Rehabilitation Planning Game, 143–90; Heath, Act of Faith; John H. Spiers, “‘Planning with People’: Urban Renewal in Boston’s Washington Park, 1950–1970,” JPH 8, no. 1 (August 2009): 221–47; Jennifer Hock, “Bulldozers, Busing, and Boycotts: Urban Renewal and the Integrationist Project,” JUH 39, no. 3 (May 2013): 433–53; David R. Gergen, “Renewal in the Ghetto: A Study of Residential Rehabilitation in Boston’s Washington Park,” Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review 3 (1967–68): 243–310; Report to the Community: Urban Renewal Reaches Midway Point in Washington Park, BRA, 1965; Walter L. Smart, The Washington Park Relocation Story, 1962/1966, BRA, April 1966; Benjamin Feit, “Freedom House and Boston’s Urban Renewal: The Determining Role of a Civic Organizing Institution in the Reshaping of Washington Park” (senior thesis, Yale University, April 2006).

    34. On the Snowdens and Freedom House, see “Interview with Muriel S. Snowden,” January 21, October 30, November 20, 1977, in Black Women Oral History Project, ed. Ruth Edmunds Hill, vol. 9, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1991), 1–120; Bradford Paul Meacham, “Black Power Before ‘Black Power’: Muriel Snowden and Boston’s Freedom House, 1949–1966” (senior thesis, Harvard University, March 2005).

    35. Thomas O’Connor, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 16, 2009, Boston, MA.

    36. Heath, Act of Faith, part 1, 13.

    37. BG, February 6, 1962, quoted in Rose, “Civic War,” 241.

    38. Wolf Von Eckardt, “Bulldozers and Bureaucrats: Renewal and the City,” New Republic, September 14, 1963, 17. For more evidence of community residents’ optimism about urban renewal, see Lewis Watts et al., The Middle-Income Negro Family Faces Urban Renewal (Waltham, MA: Research Center of Heller School, Brandeis University, for the Department of Commerce and Development, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1964).

    39. Logue, interview, Steen, August 3, 1989, Boston, MA, 288–89; Logue, interview by Heath, December 7, 1990, Boston, MA, in Heath, Act of Faith, 3; Otto Snowden and Muriel Snowden, “Citizen Participation,” JH 20, no. 8 (September 30, 1963): 435–39; Anthony J. Yudis, “Renewal Project Goes Over Big with Roxbury; Logue Cheered,” BG, January 15, 1963, which said that only three voted against the plan. For more on CURAC, see CURAC Files, FH, Box 30.

    40. “Statement of Edward J. Logue, Public Hearing of the BRA Concerning the Washington Park Urban Renewal Area,” January 14, 1963, 7:30 p.m., Boston Technical High School, 1, MDL. Community outreach by phone, mail, and personal conversations by Freedom House and CURAC was extensive; see “Freedom House and Urban Renewal—the Task Accomplished and the Task Ahead,” February 25, 1963, FH, Box 28, Folder 945 (Freedom House and Urban Renewal—Pinterhughes) for documentation.

    41. Heath, Act of Faith, part 1, 17.

    42. Julius Bernstein and Chester Hartman, letter to the editor, BG, June 1, 1966. For more discussion of the difficulties of low-income residents, see Irene Saint, “Washington Park Plan’s 4-Year Life Half Over, Problem of Low-Income People Remains,” BH, December 1, 1965.

    43. Arnone, “Redevelopment in Boston,” 102; “tea-drinking Negroes” in Logue, interview, Steen, February 4, 1985, Lincoln, MA, 38; Chuck Turner quoted in Rose, “Civic War,” 247; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in “Otto Snowden Obituary,” BG, September 30, 1995.

    44. Washington Park Steering Committee, Minutes, November 13, 1961, in Keyes, Rehabilitation Planning Game, 175; Heath, Act of Faith, part 1, 9–10.

    45. “Statement of Edward J. Logue, Administrator, Boston Redevelopment Authority,” “Federal Role in Urban Affairs” (Senator Abraham Ribicoff’s Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of Senate Committee on Government Operations, November–December 1966), Logue testimony, December 12, 1966, 2824; Keyes, Rehabilitation Planning Game, 226–27; anger at this decision was recorded in “Low Income Housing Badly Needed,” BSB, June 4, 1966; the vote was 45 to 29.

    46. Appleby, “Logue’s Record in Boston,” 32; also Arnone, “Redevelopment in Boston,” 193.

    47. Frederick Salvucci, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 16, 2009, Cambridge, MA.

    48. Muriel Snowden, “Planning with People: Finding the Formula,” Boston College Seminar, April 23, 1963, FH, Box 28, in Rose, “Civic War,” 247–48.

    49. “Statement by Mrs. Muriel Snowden,” National Commission Hearings, 232. For details on these civic projects, see Heath, Act of Faith, part 3, 1–8. For growth of organized opposition to Freedom House and the Washington Park renewal plan, see Spiers, “‘Planning with People,’” 237–41; Mel King, Chain of Change: Struggles for Black Community Development (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 73–78; Meacham, “Black Power Before ‘Black Power,’” 75–77.

    50. “Police Riot in Grove Hall, Scores Injured,” “Roxbury Fights Police Attack,” “Roxbury Residents Brutalized,” all in BSB, June 10, 1967; many other articles in BG, June 3–8, 1967. Also, Akilah Johnson, “The Forgotten Riot That Sparked Boston’s Racial Unrest,” BG, June 2, 2017.

    51. “Mayor Declines 3rd Term; Reviews Stewardship; Urges Continued Progress,” CR, June 10, 1967, 457, on the Grove Hall Welfare Office incident and ensuing protests.

    52. King, Chain of Change, 82–84.

    53. BG, December 11, 1976, quoted in Heath, Act of Faith, part 4, 2; Logue, interview by Heath, part 5, 7.

    54. Stainton, interview; Martin Nolan, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, May 24, 2007, Cambridge, MA.

    55. “Can Urban Renewal Make Everybody Happy?,” 103; discussion of the state’s position on Boston’s schools in Logue testimony, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights in Boston, 246.

    56. “Filth Litters Roxbury Streets,” BSB, July 23, 1966; Ronald Bailey with Diane Turner and Robert Hayden, preface by Danette Jones, Lower Roxbury: A Community of Treasures in the City of Boston (Boston: Lower Roxbury Community Corporation by the Department of African-American Studies, Northeastern University, 1993), 24–25, 33; after the bonfire and the anger it stirred, the city did clean up the garbage and put up barriers to prevent further dumping.

    57. On the LRCC, see Lower Roxbury Community Corporation Records, 1968–1978, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections (hereafter LRCC), particularly the history in “Urban Renewal in Madison Park,” c. 1970, Washington Park Urban Renewal Area Bulletin, Box 1, Folder 8; LRCC, The Future of Lower Roxbury Depends on You, printed pamphlet, n.d. but c. 1968; Bailey, Lower Roxbury, 19–26, 29, 32–47, 57–63; Gordon Fellman, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, December 18, 2010, Cambridge, MA.

    58. On Urban Planning Aid and its involvement in Madiso
n Park, see UPA Records, 1966–82, particularly its mission statement in “Attachments to Form 1023,” n.d. but c. 1966, Box 1, Folder 7; Gordon Brumm, “Urban Renewal in Washington Park and Madison Park,” Dialogues Boston 1, no. 2 (March 1968), Box 12, Folder 1. Also, “Roxbury Leaders Blast Renewal Plan,” BSB, May 28, 1966, for how Goodman presented UPA; Robert Goodman, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, April 24, 2010, Amherst, MA; Fellman, interview.

    59. “Contract Between Urban Planning Aid and the Lower Roxbury Community Committee on Urban Renewal,” July 25, 1966; and Dr. Forrest L. Knapp, Massachusetts Council of Churches, to Professor Robert Goodman, November 30, 1966, UPA, Box 1, Folder 7.