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When the BRA proposed bulldozing the Combat Zone
By adamg on Thu, 05/05/2016 - 7:23am
Time was, the idea behind the Combat Zone was to concentrate all the adult entertainment in one small area to keep it out of the rest of the city. Then the BRA figured it could just demolish the entire area and all the theaters and shops would just, poof, disappear. But people fought them.
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Comments
Wow.
I was a tot in 1974 but it's hard to wrap your head around how different this area was even through the 80s. The combat zone extended, as I remember it, from Boylston and Tremont to Chinatown but the influence was even wider. Park Square, where the bust station was, was pretty seedy, lots of boy prostitutes and goings-on. And of course the Four Seasons didn't take up that block next to the Public Garden--it was a row of down at heel brownstones with retail on the first floor. There was a McDonald's and Walker's Western wear...just a very different vibe, and nothing like the posh place it is now, though that next block with Shreve's and the Women's Union. And Brigham's and Bailey's. Hmm--didn't mean to turn this into s nostalgia exercise but yes--I can imagine the dilemma that the whole combat zone presented in those days to the BRA and the like.
Bust Station
Typo of the day.
FTW!!
Though as I remember it was definitely the bust-less end of the Zone...
The Four Seasons block
Actually Walkers was on the block before the Four Seasons block. The block where the Colonial Theater is. The Four Seasons block had the Playboy Club, which included a parking lot in front of it. After the Playboy Club closed the building remained empty for some time. It was also briefly, and I mean very briefly, a gay bar with a name like "Club Med" or something. That block also had an appliance store that sold washing machines and things like that, which I think was run by the old Boston Gas. There was also a restaurant called Jason's, and a popular gay bar called The Bar, later known as Skippers. Altogether a far more interesting area than it is now.
It moved up the street later but...
in the late 1970s it was on that block. I was fascinated by it--I really didn't get at the time who in Boston would be dressing like a cowboy. :)
It was definitely a more interesting area in those days, for sure.
80s?
Even up until 2000, it was much different than it is today. I remember getting late night Chinese food, and the prostitutes were lined up on Tyler Street. The block of Stuart from Tremont to Charles was littered with drug dealers, usually spaced out about 30 feet. We used to watch them from my friend's apartment on Warrenton Street.
Our little city is all growns up.
The BRA really does need to go
"The Park Plaza reports call for revitalization of underutilized areas, and predict an influx of newer, wealthier residents and customers into the area. According to a March 1974 Department of Community Affairs report, over three-quarters of the new housing proposed as part of the Park Plaza project were for “middle and upper income residents.” The influence of big developers and the lack of affordable housing in the proposal serve as points of contention for some people."
Yeah, because who wants to live around poor people? Let's just keep pushing them aside.
not informed
As you mention in your own comment, the report is from March 1974.
Think about what the road building departments were doing then, the T, the state wouldn't give gay marriage licenses back then! I mean think about what any gov't office was doing back in March 1974. If they tried to do it now, they would "need to go".
I'm sort of old.
I can relate to exactly what Sally was saying since my mother worked (and me later) in a office building that is now a store for $250 bras and condos for people with a higher income bracket than me.
The problem was in 1974 there was a lot of poor people near Park Square. Collectively it was called SouthEndBayVillageChinatown.
If anything this plan was to stabilize the area and keep the area from degrading further. Park Square sucked in the 70's. Well into the 90's there were still hookers everywhere and please relate to me the wonderful grit of getting your wages relived from you on your way home from work there.
Granted the people of the Back Bay, Beacon Hill and Jack Fallon of R.M. Bradley who stood up to Kevin White and other developers were out for their own self interest but the resulting Four Seasons and later The Heritage did a lot more to stabilize that area than massive 600 foot Royal Scam office buildings plopped in like the GM headquarters in Detroit or public housing projects.
As far as pushing poor people around? If anything the developments of the mid-70's for housing in the downtown and peripheral areas resulted in public housing in Chinatown and the conversion of Stearns into affordable housing more than any rich people housing.
OK, let's not give too much
OK, let's not give too much credit to the Four Seasons: it is a faux-brick bloody abortion of a building. It may have "stabilized" the area (your word), but wasn't that pretty much only purely by accident of a long construction period and other factors related to the way it was built? (And the way the immediately adjacent blocks were bought/controlled during and after construction.)