February 8, 2014
Our discussion in class on Wednesday let me begin thinking of cities in a very different way. I have seen aerial maps of the Boston area before many times, but I had never noticed the way different sections of the city interact with each other, the way the layout suddenly changes from a jumble of spiraling, interconnected roads in the Downtown area to the neat, grid-like streets of Back Bay. I hadn’t given a second thought to the road that cuts between the Public Garden and Boston Commons, hadn’t thought of the history of the area that might have caused it to be formed that way. When I saw the picture that a previous student took in Italy of the curved wall encapsulating multiple properties, I still wasn’t asking the right questions. I noticed the large green area and was comparing it to the small or nonexistent yards the other residences seemed to have. I was looking at the size and shape of the buildings, and how old they seemed to be. I saw that the road was curved. Although each of those details can tell their own story, I wasn’t asking the most important question: which of these details is an anomaly and why? When the full picture was revealed and it became obvious that the curved road was not an isolated phenomenon, but part of the outline of an ancient Roman amphitheater, I realized that I have to start asking questions in a new way when I’m investigating the area of Boston I choose for my project. Cities are overflowing with detail and one of the greatest challenges I will face this semester is trying to separate extraneous facts and oddities from the important discrepancies that will help tell the story of how an area came to be the way it is.
February 15, 2014
This week I decided on my site in Boston: the area between Haymarket and the Paul Revere House, which encompasses the Big Dig/ Greenway zone. There are many aspects of this site that I find intriguing, especially the close proximity of the old and the new, and I’m hoping to find evidence of the changes the area has experienced over time during my field work this semester. I’m especially curious about the Paul Revere House and its continued existence. Is it in its original location, or has it been moved? If it was moved, how and why? If it wasn’t moved, how have things moved around it and in relation to it? How has the construction of newer buildings around it impacted the house? Were there any concerns about digging the Sumner tunnel right underneath it? (I need to check if they are actually vertically aligned, but either way, they are extremely close.) Haymarket also poses many questions. Has there always been a market there, and if so, was it a more permanent installation? How long ago did the current incarnation of Haymarket start? There is even a T station named “Haymarket”. Why is Haymarket enough of a landmark that it earns its own stop?
Grady Clay writes a lot about breaks in city grids and why they occur where they do. One of his specific examples is in Kansas City, where the break is delineated by Interstate 70. This makes me wonder if Route 1 through Boston was placed there because of a break or if a break was created there because of old roads surrounding the city and newer highways were simply built on top. The other thing I noticed about Grady Clay was his writing style and the way he makes use of diagrams and pictures. Every point he makes uses a specific example of some sort, usually told as a story. He refers to images constantly, which helps the reader visualize the points he’s trying to get across extremely quickly. While writing the assignments for this class, I will keep in mind the differences between how I have been taught to write in the past and how to write for the field of urban studies.