Artist erects mock up of a three decker in the Seaport

I just wonder if the "Artist" actually has any understanding of what he's parodying

3 Deckers enabled Boston / Cambridge / Sommerville and much of Medford, Chelsea, etc., to house the huge increase of people who had recently immigrated in much better conditions than in NYC tenements circa 1900.

That said, there were often several families, many newly arrived from oppressive situations in Central / Eastern Europe, who lived in student-like crowding in each 3 Decker. Scan some census records from 1900 or 1910 and you'll find more than a dozen people living at one address -- i.e. a single floor of a 3 Decker. Full disclosure my father's family lived in a 3 Decker in Sommerville after my grandfather arrived from Europe in that time period.

The first residents of the 3 Deckers provided the labor, often completely unskilled at first, which built the Boston that existed prior to WWII. Their children formed much of the Greatest Generation which Won WWII, attended college with the GI Bill, often moved to the suburbs and then created most of Boston which with we are familiar.

Their children, the boomers [grandchildren of the original 3Decker-ites], grew-up in the suburbs, attended graduate school and launched the technological revolution from which everyone is benefiting today. Now many of the boomers are returning to the core of Boston [at least during the warmer months] from which their families set forth to conquer the new world.

Some of the 3 Deckers renovated to the uber are becoming a kind of pied-à-terre for the returning boomers not able to afford the waterside condos or the tops of the towers. Some are providing a place for the Gen-X and Millennial working in Kendall "where the future lives". However, Many 3 Deckers are just doing what they've always done -- provide an adequate, affordable house for a new group of immigrants or upward ascenders.

What the city [and inner burbs] need is many new "3-Decker like" houses for the next cohort who after growing up in Boston can set out from here to conquer the solar system. Perhaps, they will be modular units which can be made in a factory and then installed in a frame [e.g. a hotel in NYC being fabricated in Poland and then shipped over for final assembly]*1.

*1
https://www.6sqft.com/built-in-poland-and-shipped-in-pieces-nycs-biggest...

Built in Poland and shipped in pieces, NYC’s biggest modular hotel project is 55 percent complete
POSTED ON MON, JANUARY 9, 2017 BY MICHELLE COHEN
The 20-story, 300-room project at 185 Bowery was constructed in Poland and shipped to New York in 210 pieces.
Owned by Dutch hotel developer/operator Citizen M with Brack Capital Real Estate, the high-rise hotel at 185 Bowery is more than half done, reports the Wall Street Journal. It will be the largest permanent modular hotel project ever in NYC. Modular construction is more common in Europe; the developer already has nine hotels up and running and 14 in the works. They’ve used the technique of stacking sealed, factory-made units containing finished hotel rooms on the majority of those projects....

The hotels’ compact rooms and standard designs lend themselves to the modular approach. CitizenM has tasked Polish company Polcom Modular with building the units for the Bowery hotel.

The Pod Brooklyn hotel across the East River in Williamsburg is also getting modular units from Polcom Modular. Developers of the $110 million, 249-room project said modular construction was about 15 percent cheaper than the on-site construction generally in use.

Note: Both of those projects are now complete and open for business
http://polcomgroup.com/portfolio/