Commonwealth Avenue (Boston)

The Commonwealth Avenue 2006

The Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton (2007)

The street near Kenmore Square (2007)

The Commonwealth Avenue (commonly called by the inhabitants Comm Ave called) is a major road in the cities of Boston and Newton in the State of Massachusetts of the United States . It begins at the western corner of the Boston Public Garden and runs west through Back Bay and Kenmore Square . The trail then continues through Allston , Brighton and Chestnut Hill . From there, Commonwealth Avenue runs as part of Route 30 through Newton to the crossing of the Charles River on the Weston border .

background

The road is often the by Georges-Eugène Haussmann landscaped boulevards in Paris compared. It is laid out as a parkway and is interrupted halfway by a wide, grassy strip of grass. There are many statues and memorials on this Commonwealth Avenue Mall . This part of the route forms the narrowest section of the Emerald Necklace , connecting the Boston Public Garden with the Back Bay Fens .

Where the street reaches Kenmore Square , the MBTA - Green Line B comes from underground to the surface and runs in the center of the street through the Boston University campus and through the districts of Allston and Brighton to Newton near Boston College . The sub-area in Newtons consists of two lanes, which are separated from each other by a strip of grass overgrown with trees.

history

The Commonwealth Avenue Mall was designed by Arthur Delevan Gilman . Frederick Law Olmsted is responsible for the section in Newton, as well as for the integration of the Parkway into the system of the Emerald Necklace. The first statue on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall green belt was erected on the corner of Arlington Street in 1865 .

The end of the street in Newton was built in 1895 and at that time already envisaged a track for the then Middlesex and Boston Street Railway (now MBTA ). Since 1930 the train connections have ended at the Boston city limits, buses lasted on Commonwealth Avenue in 1976. In order to increase the use of the route by cars , the amusement park Norumbega Park , which was closed again in 1963 , was built in 1897 at the end of the street over the Charles River .

Statues

Starting at the Boston Public Garden , heading west, the following statues can be viewed along Commonwealth Avenue Mall :

• Alexander Hamilton - co-author of the Federalist Papers . Sculpture by William Rimmer . This is the first statue to be placed on the mall in 1865.
• John Glover - soldier in the American Revolutionary War . Sculpture by Martin Milmore , 1875.
• Patrick Andrew Collins - Former Mayor of Boston. Sculpture by Henry Hudson Kitson and Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson . The statue was moved from its original location in Charlesgate to this new location in 1966 due to construction on the Bowker Overpass .
• The Vendome Memorial - Memorial to nine firefighters who died in 1972 during the Hotel Vendome fire . Sculpture by Theodore Clausen in collaboration with the landscape architect Peter White , 1997.
• William Lloyd Garrison - abolitionist and journalist . Sculpture by Owen Levi Warner .
• Samuel Eliot Morison - marine historian and writer . Sculpture by Penelope Jencks , 1982.
• The Boston Women's Memorial - Cenotaph with statues of Abigail Adams , Lucy Stone and Phillis Wheatley . Sculpture by Meredith Bergmann , 2003.
• Domingo Sarmiento - former President of Argentina . Sculpture by Yvette Compagnion , 1973. Although the statue was donated as a gift from the Argentine government in 1913, it did not reach Boston until 60 years later.
• Leif Eriksson - first European explorer of Newfoundland . Sculpture by Anne Whitney , 1887. Commissioned by Eben Norton Horsford , the inventor of baking powder , the statue originally stood on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue , but was moved to Charlesgate in 1917.

literature

• Boston Parks and Recreation Dept: Dartmouth Street Mall, Commonwealth Avenue to Boylston Street . Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-1-153-47027-8 (English).
• Charles Sprague Sargent : The trees of Commonwealth Avenue, Boston . Library of Congress, Brookline December 31, 1909, OCLC 29712237 (English).
• Linda Nevins: Commonwealth Avenue: A Novel . St Martins Pr, 1997, ISBN 978-0-312-15496-7 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Commonwealth Mall. In: Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay. Archived from the original on November 4, 2007 ; Retrieved December 2, 2011 . 
2. ^ Back Bay History. In: Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay. Retrieved December 2, 2011 . 
3. ^ Robert F. Pollock: Norumbega Park. Auburndale (Newton), MA. In: defunctparks.com. 1999, accessed December 2, 2011 . 

Web links

Commons : Commonwealth Avenue (Boston)  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

• The Commonwealth Avenue Improvement Project at Boston University
• MIT Commonwealth Avenue Case Study