Confused by its unconvenient location, this poor tree has grown in all kinds of twisted directions in search for light

Restaurants throughout Hanover Street decorate their entrances with flowers and bushes

There are many problems associated with the disregard for foliage which are described by Spirn in chapter 8 of The Granite Garden, including increased heath in the climate, increased pollution and flooding, and decreased quality of water; at least a couple of which can be easily noticed to be very evident problems in North End just by walking through its streets. To lighten up the situation a little and create a more pleasant atmosphere, many establishment owners have taken it upon themselves to decorate Hanover Street with small plants outside their businesses that they themselves take care of. It is fairly common to see restaurants hang flowers from their entrances, making an effort to make them thrive even outdoors during the winter, or other businesses maintaining small bushes in pots near the sidewalk. Although it creates a very artificial-like and unrealistic environment, it is quite welcomed as an attempt to break the monotonicity of the large bed of concrete throughout North End, and it is a factor that plays a very important role in shaping the visual setting of Hanover Street.

The Paul Revere Mall

Molten snow creates a puddle of water that will not sink, a very common sight in the mall

As one continues walking north through Hanover Street, the situation keeps looking even better as the Paul Revere mall shows itself. Surrounded by a very densely packed neighborhood and three story buildings everywhere, this large open space immediately calls for attention and seems like a very forced yet much needed attempt to give the neighborhood some air. The Paul Revere mall is a wide open, completely flat park with pleasant vegetation, very tall trees and plenty of benches; erected in honor of the revolution hero and featuring a large statue of him riding a horse in the center. Favored by the shade provided by the trees and the humidity of the coastal area, large quantities of moss grown in the walls and even over the trees themselves. Interestingly enough, however, the mall is not a conventional park in the sense of being located over a grassy garden, but is instead covered with bricks. This has a very unpleasant consequence during the winter, as I have found in each of my trips, which is that the mall gets very easily flooded once the snow starts melting. The brick bed and the wide, flat area of the mall make for a terrible combination; water from the molten snow accumulates in the park and just stays there, unable to drain anywhere. Puddles are almost always guaranteed to make anyone's stroll through the park a struggle.

A robust tall three among the many
that thrive in the mall

There is, however, something even more interesting and peculiar regarding the brick bed in the mall. The mall contains several extremely big, tall, and old looking trees, and their excellent thriving calls for a lot of attention. The alignment of the trees is almost perfect; all of them grow straight and tall, without bending, and they are all about the same size and height, managing to grow at the same rate. This sort of flawlessness in nature is hard to come by in a city, and even more so in a public space as the Paul Revere mall. Indeed, as Spirn notes in The Granite Garden, "Some habitats are extremely stressful, and the range of plants that can survive within them quite narrow. [...] Unfortunately, the city's most valued public spaces are among the most stressful; streets, plazas, and parks can aggravate the worst problems of the urban environment." (p.175). The thriving of these trees therefore becomes even more puzzling when one considers the brick bed of the park over which they are planted. Taking a close look, it becomes evident that these huge trees are planted on a mere square whole on the brick bed, much like the small square of soil that the trees outside the mall in the sidewalks of Hanover Street get. The tree on the right is a generic sample of the trees in the Paul Revere mall. Even though it is planted in a very small square of soil, about the same size as that of the trees outside the park, its trunk has managed to grow immensely, to the extent that its width occupies almost the whole area of the square, and the tree has managed to thrive and grow very tall

Even the petty tree near St Stephen's
Church (top) creates cracks in the floor
near its base, yet the trees in the mall
(bottom) seem to sit confortably in the
space they are given

Puzzling as this might be, it actually suggest there is a crucial distinction between the setting here and that on the outside. What could account for the difference in the success of the trees, given that the surface in which they are planted is almost identical? One viable conclusion that one might get to is that the surface looks identical, but the underground setting is very different. Could it be that, unlike the 'concrete pots' in the sidewalks, these trees actually have a large, uncontained bed of soil below them? This assumption would further be justified by the lack of cracks or deformations of the brick bed near the bases of the trees. Throughout North End, and really pretty much any urban area in general, one can notice how concrete potted trees will deform the terrain around them and form cracks on the concrete as they struggle to get out. The bricks that make up the surface of the Paul Revere mall seem particularly weak in terms of holding up together, so it would be reasonable to think that the roots of these trees do indeed have more space to grow deeper and wider, without having the need to attempt looking for space near the surface. All of a sudden, this current day natural setting starts drawing our attention to the past. If the Paul Revere mall was indeed not built over concrete, but fertile soil, what could account for it? What was there in that large open area before, anyways, and how did they manage to clear it all at once for the construction of the mall?

All of a sudden, this current day natural setting starts drawing our attention to the past. If the Paul Revere mall was indeed not built over concrete, but fertile soil, what could account for it? What was there in that large open area before, anyways, and how did they manage to clear it all at once for the construction of the mall?

A little bit of research can actually confirm most of these suspicions. An article by Conor Finley on the North End Waterfront Webpage, under the title of "Prado History Part I: The Making of the 'Paul Revere Mall' " tells the story of this peculiar place. Indeed, the mall does happen to not be built over concrete, but instead has a wide, deep, and continuous bed of loam beneath its surface, which is most definitely responsible for the very notorious increase in the success rate of these trees. The answer to why there is a loam bed there rather than concrete and what laid there before that allowed them to manage to clear the whole space at once, however, is perhaps a little less subtle that one would like it to. The area where the mall resides today was once, unsurprisingly, a dense tenement housing complex. In 1933, however, the government simply decided they needed to give the neighborhood some air, so they went ahead and demolished the housing complex. In other words, what allowed them to clear that large area all at once was basically just power and brute force. Once they did that, keeping the idea of the future mall in mind, they removed part of the concrete and filled in the large bed of loan on which the park would be built. In the end, this is a very important example of how the current natural setting of the site can lead us to discoveries about the past, and how the setting itself has been continuously changing throughout the years. Below is a map of North End around the year 1743. The rough boundaries of the site are marked in red, and the present date location of the Paul Revere mall is shown in blue. Even though this was a long time before the events described, the housing complex where the mall would be built is already visible.

Pavement is deteriorated and facades are worn down an crumbling in Salem Street. One can find bush pots similar to the ones in Hanover Street, except these have not been successful and people have starter littering them

Finally, the last particular spot of interest in the present day setting of my site is Salem Street. When it comes to the natural setting, however, Salem Street is more notorious for its lack of it. This is a very narrow one way street that runs parallel to Hanover Street, the Paul Revere mall lying between them. Narrow as it is, there is almost no space at all for adornment as there is in Hanover, and one can walk several yards without encountering any tree or any form of vegetation whatsoever. In a sense, this is a little more representative of the general situation of the North End. Salem Street seems particularly forsaken, however. Cracks in the pavement are very common and seem to have accumulated without anyone ever fixing them. Other signs of erosion can be seen all over the place; walls are decolorized, facades are worn down and details on some stone engravings are heavily weathered. Overall, it creates a very strong contrast with Hanover Street, which attracts much more tourism and is thus more taken care of, so this signs are quickly fixed or concealed in it. Looking at Salem Street quickly takes us back to the reality, however, and it serves to remind us that the weathering and natural processes are there all the time, struggling to change how things look against human desire.

All in all, Boston is overall a place that has undergone remarkable changes in its setting in the course of the less than four hounded years since it was founded, due in part to human hands but also to countless and very powerful natural processes that have shaped and molded it, which have existed throughout and will continue to exists for years on end; and North End is one notable example of a zone where these makes themselves visible. Whether its trees cracking tons of concrete as they expand their roots in search for nutrients, moss growing on walls whenever it gets a chance, flat areas being inundated and eroded by water because of lack of proper drainage, or just hard stone buildings being deteriorated throughout the years and feeling the slow but constant effect of weathering, North End serves as a very strong example to show us that natural processes are always present, even in the most urbanized zones. Ignoring them would be a mistake, and improper consideration of them can lead to floods, overheating, deformed pavement in the streets, etc. In the end, humans will always have to plan accordingly to this everlasting force of change.

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