INTRODUCTION

To the trained eye, or to the slightly educated eye, in my case, Kenmore Square flaunts traces of every major part of its history in the most obvious way. It has had the fortune of remaining mostly intact over the years, with only one or two instances of complete demolition and reconstruction. It's not too hard to imagine yourself standing in front of the old auto garage and sales center that used to be on Commonwealth Avenue, back when the Square had only a few shops and restaurants compared to the selection today. Or we could stand in front of the Belvoir looking westward and imagine nothing but wide open land with a train track or two criss-crossing in the distance. As I discuss some of the more interesting clues in Kenmore, try to imagine yourself in that time period, and think of the changes since then. Feel free to use the fire insurance atlases provided in The History to give yourself a better sense of what might have been around.

ARTIFACTS

By far the most recognizable landmark of Kenmore Square is the CITGO sign. It's common knowledge that the city of Boston purchased the sign some time ago when the CITGO gas station that used to be there closed down, but now that I know a little more about the history of Kenmore, the sign reminds me every day what a critical role transportation has played here. This artifact speaks of the auto sales and repair complex that used to cover half the block, back before the bookstore and before the theaters that have since occupied that space.

Think back to 1912, just a few years after the Model T Ford first captured America's attention, when the garages were first built here. They would have been the sole attraction Kenmore had to offer at that point, drawing in a relatively select crowd of people, namely those who could afford a car. Now the attraction is quite different, catering to the less wealthy college students. Hopefully we can look on the sign, and realize not only the past the it symbolizes but also the shift Kenmore has taken since that era to now provide a completely different type of service. The majority of the clientèle today is college students and Red Sox fans who come to eat and drink. There is little retail in Kenmore, just a comic book store, two bookstores, and a record shop, and since they're mostly independent businesses, their prices are low. The prices are perfect for Red Sox fans, too. Fast food stores like McDonald's and Popeye's are great for feeding the whole family before or after a game, without having to spend too much money.

Let us not also forget why the sign was saved. We know the city paid for it, and continues to pay for the cost of electricity and maintenance, but why should the city invest in the CITGO sign? The most probable explanation is public opinion. When the station closed down, someone must have wanted the sign to stay, and done something about it. The result represents the kind of coordination that must exist between the people and City Hall in order to build a stronger neighborhood. Jane Jacobs writes that there are three types of city neighborhoods: the street, the district, and the city as a whole. (Jacobs, 1961, 117) The street neighborhood should not be thought of as a single strip of houses whose residents are somehow drawn together by virtue of their spacial proximity alone. This is actually the least effective design of street neighborhood. The most effective design is dynamic and encompasses an entire network of streets that play different functions in the neighborhood. When these places are mutually dependent on each other, then they are also inclined to help each other survive. The district neighborhood represents multiple street neighborhoods and helps provide resources to the streets as well as bringing the thoughts and opinions of the people back to city hall. A strong street neighborhood needs a strong district to represent it to give it the power it needs to effect change, or in this case, to retain a neighborhood and city icon.

Another visible sign of the past is the numerous hotels that I wrote so extensively about in The History. One of them is now a BU dormitory, one is an assisted living home, and one is condominiums. But even as those buildings no longer serve their original functions, there is an apparent need for hotels in Kenmore Square. Soon after the Kenmore and Braemore converted to condominiums and apartments, two new hotels were born: the Commonwealth and the Buckminster. If there was some specific purpose the original hotels served in the first half of the century, such as temporary housing for Red Sox players, that purpose still exists today.

There are two constants I've discovered in Kenmore over its hundred-odd years of existence. First is hotels. Though the primary uses of the Square have changed from light industrial to doctors' offices to college oriented commerce, the hotels have remained. The second is commercial businesses. In the early 20th century basements stores started springing up all over Kenmore and basement stores still survive today. There certainly have been constant forces affecting the development, such as transportation (which by this point I've discussed ad nauseum) and the slightly more recent expansion of Boston University, but it's interesting that hotels and basement stores have been a staple throughout Kenmore's history.

Perhaps this indicates a transient nature in the inhabitants of Kenmore. This is at least the case with BU and MIT, which have many dorms and fraternities in the area. Each year a new set of approximately 5,000 students are introduced to the Kenmore area, and each summer some large number of students go on vacation and are replaced by summer interns from all around the country and the world. I recently discovered that BU has some affiliation the Hotel Commonwealth, so it wouldn't surprise me if it fills up with BU parents around graduation and moving times. Since there are a number other colleges within walking distance of the Square (Berklee, NE Conservatory, Northeastern), it wouldn't surprise me if landlords of other apartment buildings advertised to college students in particular, further increasing the percentage of the transient population in Kenmore and the need for hotels and varied restaurants and businesses.

TRENDS

On page 116 of Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs talks about inwardly turned "islands" in a city, and how paths don't criss-cross like they would in a small town of equal size. In the case of Kenmore, it's not an inward community, but rather one that embraces the high traffic flow of people through its borders, and it thrives from that. The people who live in Kenmore, and similar types of areas around the nation, don't go to the "triangle of convenience" (my friends and I have dubbed it so because of the three convenience stores in the Square) to see friends, they go to their friends' houses. I often go to a friend's house or room and see people I know there who I didn't even know knew that person!

In a city the circles we travel are much less dictated by geography than in a small town. We all have different triangles of convenience that we go to on a regular basis to do our grocery shopping and get our taquitos, and in each of those particular areas, we may know one or two people, and they in turn another two or three in a different area. Then slowly a clique may have outposts that span from Cambridge, to BU south campus, to Kenmore, to the North End, and back to Cambridge. One of the very inherent conveniences of a city--the ability to choose exactly what you want, and the ability to easily get there--is what makes an independent neighborhood within a city a ridiculous concept. Why should I be limited to befriending the people on my street when I can get to campus in ten minutes via SafeRide, or to the North End in twenty via the T, or to Allston in 15 by bus? This very concept is something I've been familiar with all my life, but I haven't realized it until now.

So the fact is the inhabitants of Kenmore Square do not cross paths in daily life, but they still support a thriving commercial district, and as such they are mutually dependent on each other. We have considered the idea that this cohesion helped save the CITGO sign, but let us now examine the storefronts of Kenmore to see evidence of the varied and evolving businesses.

Just recently a patisserie opened in the basement of the Hotel Commonwealth. Its neighbors include a used book store, a specialty wine and liquor shop, and an exotic restaurant. This is quite an array of shops that could only be supported in an area with high traffic flow where the costumers' tastes are varied enough to support this sort of diversity. Is the growing diversity a result of higher traffic flow, or has there always been this level of diversity? It's hard to tell just how healthy the stores are, so it's possible that there is a high turnover of specialty shops like these, but I can't see any evidence of this. I know at least the wine cellar and the book store have been there for a few years, so I don't think the newer shops should have much trouble surviving there.

Just down the street Popeye's is continuing the trend. For the past two years the basement level plot in the Hotel Buckminster that fronts Brookline Ave. had remained empty. Then all of a sudden I saw some signs advertising the coming Popeye's fried chicken joint, and two weeks later it was open, just in time for baseball season and the millions of Red Sox fans that will pass by over the course of the season. More and more restaurants keep popping up every year, and the old ones aren't leaving, so there must be a market for more restaurants. It looks like Kenmore will continue to provide Red Sox fans and college students a cornucopia of restaurants, as it has for the past half century.

CONFLICT

As I continued my journey through Kenmore I came to The India Quality Restaurant. I've gone there every weekend for the past two months to take advantage of their lunch special, but today is perhaps the first time I noticed the boarded up windows on one of the adjacent buildings. I didn't notice the boards because a school from Jamaica Plain has painted murals on all them. Why are these particular boarded-up windows special enough to receive a make-over by students who attend school some three miles away? And why is the building vacant in the first place? Let's go in order here and start with the question of the windows.

When I was in elementary school, there was a program for gifted artists where they were taught about painting and given time to practice their skill. At the end of the year they completed a 15' by 10' mural which was then mounted on the walls in the cafeteria. Some of the other elementary schools in the district had the same program for their students, which lasted five or six years in the early nineties. The aim of the program was to give underprivileged students a chance to excel in a non-school related field. Education was not valued very highly by many of the students and families in my school district, and many of them were not very intelligent. Since they usually received poor marks in school, they needed to be told that they were good in something other than school. I don't know terribly much about the social and economic processes at work in Jamaica Plain, but from what I gather it's a low-income area which probably has similar problems as my neighborhood growing up did. It makes sense then that they might try the same sort of art initiative, and display it in a very public place like Kenmore. That brings us back to the question of why the building is boarded up in the first place. It's certainly strange considering all the businesses around it seem to be doing very well. One thing is clear, however, that someone cares enough to at least beautify the building in its decrepit state. It's in a very visible place and could be a mighty eyesore to the regulars of Kenmore, had it not been so well cared for. Maybe the same sort of community involvement that I discussed earlier as related to the CITGO sign played a part in beautifying this rundown building as well.

CONCLUSIONS

As the final installment of this four part project comes to a close, we can now say some interesting and insightful things about Kenmore Square. For the last time I'll comment on how Kenmore's location on solid ground made it a superior choice for railroad crossings early on in the 19th century. Then, as the civilization jumped westward in the final decades of that century with the filling in of the Back Bay, various streets intersected here to give Kenmore its distinctive and advantageous layout. With so many corners and cross streets and ways to get to the square come just as many restaurants and shops with a respectable level of diversity. In recent decades the commercial success driven by Sox fans and college students has kept the square lively and dynamic as it caters to their various tastes and preferences. At the same time, the CITGO sign doesn't let us forget that the Square was once much more industrial, and served a largely different clientèle in addition to the one it now serves. Just as more leisure related businesses supplanted the automotive ones, we are only just starting to see how our healthy neighbor Boston University will affect the Square. It will be interesting to see how the institution's policies meet with the social inertia of Kenmore Square.

Ryan Luersen, 2007. 4.211J/11.016J, The City

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