Inventing The Charles River

Author : Karl Haglund
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 536 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2002-11-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9780262083072

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Inventing the Charles River by Karl Haglund Pdf

An illustrated account of the creation of the Charles River Basin, focusing on the precarious balance between transportation planning and the stewardship of the public realm. The Charles River Basin, extending nine miles upstream from the harbor, has been called Boston's "Central Park." Yet few realize that this apparently natural landscape is a totally fabricated public space. Two hundred years ago the Charles was a tidal river, edged by hundreds of acres of salt marshes and mudflats. Inventing the Charles River describes how, before the creation of the basin could begin, the river first had to be imagined as a single public space. The new esplanades along the river changed the way Bostonians perceived their city; and the basin, with its expansive views of Boston and Cambridge, became an iconic image of the metropolis. The book focuses on the precarious balance between transportation planning and stewardship of the public realm. Long before the esplanades were realized, great swaths of the river were given over to industrial enterprises and transportation—millponds, bridges, landfills, and a complex network of road and railway bridges. In 1929, Boston's first major highway controversy erupted when a four-lane road was proposed as part of a new esplanade. At twenty-year intervals, three riverfront road disputes followed, successively more complex and disputatious, culminating in the lawsuits over "Scheme Z," the Big Dig's plan for eighteen lanes of highway ramps and bridges over the river. More than four hundred photographs, maps, and drawings illustrate past and future visions for the Charles and document the river's place in Boston's history.

Author : Anthony N. Penna,Conrad Edick Wright
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2009-12-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9780822977681

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Remaking Boston by Anthony N. Penna,Conrad Edick Wright Pdf

Since its settlement in 1630, Boston, its harbor, and outlying regions have witnessed a monumental transformation at the hands of humans and by nature. Remaking Boston chronicles many of the events that altered the physical landscape of Boston, while also offering multidisciplinary perspectives on the environmental history of one of America's oldest and largest metropolitan areas. Situated on an isthmus, and blessed with a natural deepwater harbor and ocean access, Boston became an important early trade hub with Europe and the world. As its population and economy grew, developers extended the city's shoreline into the surrounding tidal mudflats to create more useable land. Further expansion of the city was achieved through the annexation of surrounding communities, and the burgeoning population and economy spread to outlying areas. The interconnection of city and suburb opened the floodgates to increased commerce, services and workforces, while also leaving a wake of roads, rails, bridges, buildings, deforestation, and pollution. Profiling this ever-changing environment, the contributors tackle a variety of topics, including: the glacial formation of the region; physical characteristics and composition of the land and harbor; dredging, sea walling, flattening, and landfill operations in the reshaping of the Shawmut Peninsula; the longstanding controversy over the link between landfills and shoaling in shipping channels; population movements between the city and suburbs and their environmental implications; interdependence of the city and its suburbs; preservation and reclamation of the Charles River; suburban deforestation and later reforestation as byproducts of changing land use; the planned outlay of parks and parkways; and historic climate changes and the human and biological adaptations to them.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : DIANE Publishing
Page : 53 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2024-06-29
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9781428983656

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Water resources and the urban environment, lower Charles River Watershed, Massachusetts, 1630-2005 by Anonim Pdf

Author : Robert Buderi
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2022-05-10
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780262368483

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Where Futures Converge by Robert Buderi Pdf

The evolution of the most innovative square mile on the planet: the endless cycles of change and reinvention that created today’s Kendall Square. Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It’s a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It’s a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge, Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT’s once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square’s limitations—it’s “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What’s next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There’s a lot of work still to do.

Author : Michael Rawson
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2014-10-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674266575

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Eden on the Charles by Michael Rawson Pdf

Drinking a glass of tap water, strolling in a park, hopping a train for the suburbs: some aspects of city life are so familiar that we don’t think twice about them. But such simple actions are structured by complex relationships with our natural world. The contours of these relationships—social, cultural, political, economic, and legal—were established during America’s first great period of urbanization in the nineteenth century, and Boston, one of the earliest cities in America, often led the nation in designing them. A richly textured cultural and social history of the development of nineteenth-century Boston, this book provides a new environmental perspective on the creation of America’s first cities. Eden on the Charles explores how Bostonians channeled country lakes through miles of pipeline to provide clean water; dredged the ocean to deepen the harbor; filled tidal flats and covered the peninsula with houses, shops, and factories; and created a metropolitan system of parks and greenways, facilitating the conversion of fields into suburbs. The book shows how, in Boston, different class and ethnic groups brought rival ideas of nature and competing visions of a “city upon a hill” to the process of urbanization—and were forced to conform their goals to the realities of Boston’s distinctive natural setting. The outcomes of their battles for control over the city’s development were ultimately recorded in the very fabric of Boston itself. In Boston’s history, we find the seeds of the environmental relationships that—for better or worse—have defined urban America to this day.

Author : Frederick Law Olmsted
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 1102 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2015-01-15
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781421416038

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The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted by Frederick Law Olmsted Pdf

The final chronologically arranged volume in the series, it will present the last stage of Olmsted's career, with a firm that included his former students Henry Sargent Codman and Charles Eliot as new partners. During this time Olmsted concentrated his energies on his two last great commissions: one was the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 on the site of the Chicago South Park that he and Vaux had designed in 1871, with subsequent redesigning of Jackson Park and the Midway; the other was the extensive Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. There will also be correspondence concerning the development of the park systems of Louisville, Kentucky, and proposals for park systems in Milwaukee and Kansas City. The volume will present some of the remarkable retrospective letters he wrote to Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer and his son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. It will conclude with several undated and unfinished writings on the history and principles of landscape design.

Author : William A. Newman,Wilfred E. Holton
Publisher : UPNE
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : History
ISBN : 1555536514

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Boston's Back Bay by William A. Newman,Wilfred E. Holton Pdf

A fascinating look at the people, politics, and technology behind the massive landfill project that filled Boston's Back Bay

Author : Douglass Shand-Tucci
Publisher : Chronicle Books
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2016-05-24
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781616894993

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MIT by Douglass Shand-Tucci Pdf

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded in 1861 as the cornerstone of Copley Square in Boston's Back Bay, then the center of a progressive, proto-globalist Brahmin culture committed to intellectual modernism and educational innovation. MIT founder William Barton Rogers's radical vision to teach by "mind and hand" was immediately successful. In 1916 MIT, growing by leaps and bounds, moved its campus to the nearby Charles River Basin in Cambridge, where it now stretches along the shore overlooking the Back Bay. MIT: The Campus Guide presents the history of the Institute's founding and its two campuses. Today, the campus is studded with buildings designed by noted architects such as William Welles Bosworth, Alvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen, I. M. Pei, Steven Holl, Charles Correa, J. Meejin Yoon, Frank Gehry, and Fumihiko Maki, among others. Alongside the architecture is a distinguished array of public art including works by Picasso, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Frank Stella, Sol LeWitt, and Jaume Plensa.

Author : Nancy S. Seasholes
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 553 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2018-04-13
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780262534833

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Gaining Ground by Nancy S. Seasholes Pdf

Why and how Boston was transformed by landmaking. Fully one-sixth of Boston is built on made land. Although other waterfront cities also have substantial areas that are built on fill, Boston probably has more than any city in North America. In Gaining Ground historian Nancy Seasholes has given us the first complete account of when, why, and how this land was created.The story of landmaking in Boston is presented geographically; each chapter traces landmaking in a different part of the city from its first permanent settlement to the present. Seasholes introduces findings from recent archaeological investigations in Boston, and relates landmaking to the major historical developments that shaped it. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, landmaking in Boston was spurred by the rapid growth that resulted from the burgeoning China trade. The influx of Irish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century prompted several large projects to create residential land—not for the Irish, but to keep the taxpaying Yankees from fleeing to the suburbs. Many landmaking projects were undertaken to cover tidal flats that had been polluted by raw sewage discharged directly onto them, removing the "pestilential exhalations" thought to cause illness. Land was also added for port developments, public parks, and transportation facilities, including the largest landmaking project of all, the airport. A separate chapter discusses the technology of landmaking in Boston, explaining the basic method used to make land and the changes in its various components over time. The book is copiously illustrated with maps that show the original shoreline in relation to today's streets, details from historical maps that trace the progress of landmaking, and historical drawings and photographs.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 56 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Charles River Watershed (Mass.)
ISBN : UCSD:31822009790049

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U.S. Geological Survey Circular by Anonim Pdf

Author : Christine M. Delucia
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2018-01-01
Category : Collective memory
ISBN : 9780300201178

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Memory Lands by Christine M. Delucia Pdf

A powerful study of King Philip's War and its enduring effects on histories, memories, and places in Native New England from 1675 to the present

Author : Jeffry M. Diefendorf
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2015-03-05
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781317506065

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The Boston Contest of 1944 by Jeffry M. Diefendorf Pdf

During World War II, many European government authorities and planners believed that the damage caused by bombing constituted a great opportunity to transform their cities. Even as the fighting continued, a great many plans were drawn up, and this has been the subject of much scholarship. However, what is often overlooked is wartime planning in cities not damaged in the war. United States cities were not bombed, but in Boston, one of its leading cities, the last years of the war brought a major effort to encourage both new plans to modernize the city and also means of implementing those plans. The wartime initiative to transform Boston had several sources. Both the Great Depression and the war had led to major measures by the federal government to try to deal with fiscal challenges and the need for new housing for the many people who relocated during the war because of the creation of new industries to help the war effort. Boston hoped it could benefit from these measures. Moreover, in the late 1930s, Harvard University had become a key residence for figures important in modernist planning, including Joseph Hudnut, Walter Gropius and Martin Wagner. These factors combined in 1944 to inspire what was called The Boston Contest. Its goal was to suggest solutions to many problems found in the metropolitan area. These issues included commercial and industrial developments, housing, transportation, education, recreation, welfare, urban finances, metropolitan government, and citizen participation in solving problems. This book, published in 1945 contains the top 3 prize winning entries and excerpts from 9 of the other nearly 100 entries. It gives a fascinating insight into the developing ideas of urban planning in the United States at a critical juncture.

Author : Carolyn Merchant
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780231140355

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American Environmental History by Carolyn Merchant Pdf

By studying the many ways diverse peoples have changed, shaped, and conserved the natural world over time, environmental historians provide insight into humanity's unique relationship with nature and, more importantly, are better able to understand the origins of our current environmental crisis. Beginning with the precolonial land-use practice of Native Americans and concluding with our twenty-first century concerns over our global ecological crisis, American Environmental History addresses contentious issues such as the preservation of the wilderness, the expulsion of native peoples from national parks, and population growth, and considers the formative forces of gender, race, and class. Entries address a range of topics, from the impact of rice cultivation, slavery, and the growth of the automobile suburb to the effects of the Russian sea otter trade, Columbia River salmon fisheries, the environmental justice movement, and globalization. This illustrated reference is an essential companion for students interested in the ongoing transformation of the American landscape and the conflicts over its resources and conservation. It makes rich use of the tools and resources (climatic and geological data, court records, archaeological digs, and the writings of naturalists) that environmental historians rely on to conduct their research. The volume also includes a compendium of significant people, concepts, events, agencies, and legislation, and an extensive bibliography of critical films, books, and Web sites.

Author : James C. O'Connell
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 341 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2022-06-07
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780262545860

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The Hub's Metropolis by James C. O'Connell Pdf

The evolution of the Boston metropolitan area, from country villages and streetcar suburbs to exurban sprawl and “smart growth.” Boston's metropolitan landscape has been two hundred years in the making. From its proto-suburban village centers of 1800 to its far-flung, automobile-centric exurbs of today, Boston has been a national pacesetter for suburbanization. In The Hub's Metropolis, James O'Connell charts the evolution of Boston's suburban development. The city of Boston is compact and consolidated—famously, “the Hub.” Greater Boston, however, stretches over 1,736 square miles and ranks as the world's sixth largest metropolitan area. Boston suburbs began to develop after 1820, when wealthy city dwellers built country estates that were just a short carriage ride away from their homes in the city. Then, as transportation became more efficient and affordable, the map of the suburbs expanded. The Metropolitan Park Commission's park-and-parkway system, developed in the 1890s, created a template for suburbanization that represents the country's first example of regional planning. O'Connell identifies nine layers of Boston's suburban development, each of which has left its imprint on the landscape: traditional villages; country retreats; railroad suburbs; streetcar suburbs (the first electric streetcar boulevard, Beacon Street in Brookline, was designed by Frederic Law Olmsted); parkway suburbs, which emphasized public greenspace but also encouraged commuting by automobile; mill towns, with housing for workers; upscale and middle-class suburbs accessible by outer-belt highways like Route 128; exurban, McMansion-dotted sprawl; and smart growth. Still a pacesetter, Greater Boston has pioneered antisprawl initiatives that encourage compact, mixed-use development in existing neighborhoods near railroad and transit stations. O'Connell reminds us that these nine layers of suburban infrastructure are still woven into the fabric of the metropolis. Each chapter suggests sites to visit, from Waltham country estates to Cambridge triple-deckers.

Author : Martin Reuss,Stephen H. Cutcliffe
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2010-08-06
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780813929880

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The Illusory Boundary by Martin Reuss,Stephen H. Cutcliffe Pdf

This compelling new book challenges the view that a clear and unwavering boundary exists between nature and technology. Rejecting this dichotomy, the contributors show how the history of each can be united in a constantly shifting panorama where definitions of "nature" and "technology" alter and overlap.