I spent most of yesterday in the BPL, dodging sleepy homeless people and researching a BoMag piece on Boylston Street’s weird place in the city’s architectural bureaucracy. Half of it is part of the Back Bay Architectural District, and subject to a litany of design and zoning structures; half isn’t. Unsightly newspaper boxes are banned from half the street, but allowed to pollute the other. The question is, logically enough, what the F?
The answer goes back to urban renewal, when Mayor Collins and the BRA were tearing down and encasing in concrete as much of the city as they could. Collins even proposed saving Old Boston from itself by placing up to eight high-rise condo towers along the A, B, C and D blocks of the Comm. Ave. Mall. (more…)
