Re: Monday's Boston Globe story on proposal for One Elmwood Street

[Rodney Singleton]

Steve,

Thank you for your letter of support. 

Kate Phelps, a member of our development subcommittee, wrote an excellent rebuttal letter that appears in today's Globe.

And as you know, it seems like we have to fight on many fronts, so I've included a White Stadium op-ed as well. Please chime in as you see fit in the comments section. 

Thanks!

Regards,

-Rodney

LETTERS

Roxbury neighbors have valid concerns about planned development

Updated August 2, 2024, 2:20 a.m.

A Roxbury family has spent four years trying to redevelop the house and storefront they own on Elmwood Street into an apartment building.PAT GREENHOUSE/GLOBE STAFF

Diti Kohli’s article on one family’s effort to develop their Roxbury home into rental housing reads more like a public-relations campaign to undermine urban neighborhoods that struggle to protect their spaces from rampant overdevelopment (“Grass-roots housing plan stuck in weeds: Stalled Roxbury effort is a case study of city’s approval process maze,” Page A1, July 29).

Highland Park has long fought for more housing — not less — to be built in the open lots left by white flight, insurance fires, and city divestment of the mid-1960s, while preserving the trees, community gardens, and parks it cherishes. Its organizations have consistently advocated for 1/3-1/3-1/3 housing (market rate, mid-rate, and affordable), insisting that the affordable be truly affordable, while aggressively defending the need to build Black generational wealth.

However, cramming a multistory tower (now down from seven stories to six, thanks to neighborhood opposition) of 39 micro-units renting at $2,400, with street parking (in other words, no newly created parking), into the neighborhood has no redeeming qualities except to enrich mainly one Black family. This de facto student housing would force rents up and crowd the streets with more traffic.

On Sept. 13, 2022, the Highland Park Neighborhood Coalition voted 27-4, with one abstention, to deny support for this project, and the Roxbury Neighborhood Council supported our position. It’s a shame the Globe did not report these details.Kate Phelps

Roxbury

The author is writing on behalf of the Highland Park Neighborhood Coalition Development Subcommittee, of which she is a member.

OPINION

August 1st, 2024

White Stadium: A threat to justice everywhere

Rodney Singleton

I’m old enough to remember the Urban Renewal days of the early ’60s, as our family home at 21 Munroe Street in Roxbury was taken by eminent domain by a then nascent Boston Redevelopment Authority. The reasoning for the taking, then and now, was blight and urban decay. But none of those reasons fit our home, begging the question: Why would a city do this to not just our family, but any family, and what blight and urban decay are you talking about? We don’t see that, define it please!

These days we see these city land takings for what they have always been: hurtful bias and racial bias against the working poor and working class, emigrants and people of color in Boston.

I started high school at Boston Technical High (now John D. O’Bryant) — when Judge Garrity ordered Boston’s schools be desegregated, ushering in an era of busing school children, meant to level what was a very separate and unequal educational playing field.

As a member of the White Stadium Impact Advisory Group (IAG), observing injustice and seeking justice isn’t new to me. I see the privatization of White Stadium to women’s soccer as seminal as the harms of Urban Renewal and busing combined! In my IAG capacity, and as a citizen of Roxbury for so many years, I never supported plans to privatize White stadium and realized folks in my neighborhood would be better served if I joined the Emerald Necklace Conservancy effort to fight on the side of real justice and became a plaintiff in the environmental justice lawsuit now pending against the city of Boston.

In 1963, from a Birmingham jail, Martin Luter King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The Wu administration isn’t privatizing the Public Garden, or the Boston Common, the more affluent areas of the city, but she’s privatizing parts of Franklin Park and White Stadium. What happened to the equity platform the mayor ran on and always reminds us of?

The Wu administration’s calculus for privatization is that the land is only being leased for thirty years and in that time, the stadium will be modernized, and women’s soccer is responsible for the upkeep of the new facilities. But wait a minute. Isn’t that just kicking the “injustice can” down the road for future mayors to deal with when the 30 years is up? And if that weren’t bad enough, Boston school athletics are displaced and the taxpayers of Boston are subsidizing women’s soccer, given the cost to renovate the stadium is far less than the $50 Million dollars the city of Boston is kicking in on the deal!

With the recent opening ceremonies of the 2024 Olympics, we note that Boston could have hosted these games, if not for not knowing how to include everybody in the spoils as a city, and we all would have had to pay for it, whether we liked it or not!

But the real injustice that led to years of White Stadium neglect was because of its location in the mostly Black and brown neighborhoods of Boston – that’s how we got here! Roxbury is the geographical center of the city of Boston. By design, Olmstead planned that the entire city would have equal access to a glorious city-wide greenspace. We can find adequate funding for the Public Garden and Boston Common, but not White Stadium? That’s the very same separate, but equal racial bias, school desegregation and bussing was supposed to address, right?

And it’s shocking to hear Mayor Wu talk about plans for White Stadium. In a roundtable press discussion, following a WBUR interview, where the mayor was asked what if women’s soccer fails to happen at White Stadium? Is there a plan B? Wu replied, “There is no plan B!” Joe Battenfeld of the Boston Herald pushed back on Mayor Wu’s answer: “No plan B? Why isn’t the mayor listening to constituent’s voices?” Many of us, me included, supported and voted for the mayor’s progressive agenda. But here I agree with the Herald, because they were on point and correct! What’s that about?

Boston is an old city, where the historical, evolving tapestry of its neighborhoods and voices tells collective stories that call out our creed and struggle and define the core of who we are in this city. Mayor Wu seemingly has no context of that core, what matters, and rarely listens to the voices that can help move the progressive needle that put her in office.

More than sixty years have passed since MLK’s call to justice from a Birmingham jail cell. Yet we never appreciated the real blight in our city that was undervaluing and not building the human capacity of people who call the city of Boston home. It was never about real estate or a real estate deal but should have been about people! So here we are sixty years later, having learned little, and willing to choose profit over justice at White Stadium.

Rodney Singleton, a resident of Roxbury, MA serves as co-chair for the Highland Park Project Review Committee and is a member of the Franklin Park Defenders.

On Wed, Jul 31, 2024 at 4:00 PM Stephen Jerome <stevej...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Rodney,

I trust you and other concerned Highland Park residents, particularly those who labored for decades to protect your historic and environmental resources, will write letters to the editor and an op ed to counter the negative obstructionist image of the Highland Park Architectural Conservation District in Monday's article in the Boston Globe by Diti Kohli. 

Isn't it ironic that Kohli's article completely overlooked that your ACD guidelines were painstakingly crafted to be less restrictive than typical historic district rules so that longtime residents, as well as newcomers, might not be hindered from contributing positive change and improvement to a district ravaged by arson, urban renewal and other decline? Perhaps it is not accidental that the article lacks a rendering of Webster's proposed design? 

Kohli's article raises many questions, such as why the BPDA and the ZBA approved a proposal that had not been reviewed by the ACD, or why the Mayor is not appointing commissioners to Landmark District and ACD commissions, including Highland Park's.  Leaving commission vacancies unfilled is not good government practice, and it flies in the face of  Mayor Wu's image as civic minded, constituent oriented, and efficient. 

Likewise, red flags arise whenever a property owner like Mr. Webster indicates they or their family will live in a proposed development. That rarely happens. It is just a tactic to help sugarcoat a controversial proposal that is incompatible with zoning and landmarks laws.

Please let us know how we may support the Highland Park Neighborhood Association and the HPACD Commission, especially in this instance of shoddy reporting. The overall impression left after reading Kohli's article is the Highland Park ACD and preservation planners in City Hall are anti-development, which may be reflective of a broader trend where landmarks are delisted and preservation is threatened by politicians and Big Real Estate interests falsely arguing that historic preservation is an obstacle to fixing regional housing shortages in order to skirt the law. 

Sincerely,

Steve Jerome

Diti Kohli's Profile | The Boston Globe Journalist

Muck Rack

https://muckrack.com › diti-kohli

[Kate Phelps]

Stephen,

I appreciate your thoughtful response. I agree: the use of the word “tower” was more emotive than accurate, a dangerous error to make when we’re seeking to build alliances with those in preservation and urban planning. 

Thanks, too, for taking the time to re-read the HP Architectural Conservation District’s Standards. As our Development Committee works closely with the ACDC, we need to remind ourselves of these Standards, doing a better job of respecting the actual urban history while seeking to preserve our racial and economic diversity…no small responsibility.

Best,

Kate

Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

On Friday, August 2, 2024, 1:31 PM, Stephen Jerome <stevej...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Rodney, and yes, I was so pleased to see Kate's letter today.  She hit it out of the park, but with respect, may I suggest caution, however, in future, with the word "tower?" 

Some of us who are interested in the proposed Hotel Alexandra (1874-1875, Peabody & Stearns, architect) development that would add eight floors to the long neglected, but distinguished sandstone and brick High Victorian Gothic five story landmark, on Washington and Mass. Avenue were chided about describing the proposed eight stories glass addition as a "tower!" This criticism was from colleagues in preservation and urban planning, not the SELDC or the developer. 

Although in the design review process it is fair to ask for height reduction, is the Webster proposal a "tower?" 

In the case of the Hotel Alexandra proposal, the final result, if built, will still be well under most people's concept of a tower. Perhaps "midrise" is a more accurate description? Have you ever seen descriptions of the Hotel Eliot, Hotel Warren, or Hotel Dale (please see illustrations below) and the other French flat apartment buildings that once adorned Highland Park and Roxbury as "towers"  (even when they included tower features, like conical turrets)? No one would ever describe the Cox Building as a "tower," right?

How should your design review committee and the Commission respond, if such structures of the height and scale of the Hotels Eliot, Warren and Dale are proposed today? The immediate abutters would be unhappy, but the historical record is that excessive height, scale and mass were very much a part of Roxbury after annexation and mindfulness of this historical context seems important. It is only human to have a knee jerk reaction against any proposed changes that threaten our concept of stately streets, sunlight and shadows, but extra care to look at the historical urban context and to follow the goals of the Architectural Conservation District's mission may allow some accommodation, right? 

With respect to the Hotel Alexandra, most abutters, South Enders and even the Preservation Alliance were so frustrated by its long term deterioration (and perilous future if allowed to languish much longer) that they accepted the added height, just to have something done there at last. This is not the place to argue who is right or wrong, but simply to offer my concern that Kate's use of the word "tower" might be unhelpful to city readers who see it as an exaggeration, weakening the letter's otherwise excellent points?

This is not just semantics. After reading the Globe article, I reviewed the Highland Park ACD standards and criteria, and unless I missed something, I saw no height limits or restrictions.

Kate's letter is wonderful, and it was great to see it without a pro-Webster/BPDA letter accompanying it. Especially refreshing to see it in the same edition as Jemison's exodus! 

Kudos to Kate and the Highland Park NA for getting a letter published.

Best,

Steve

  

[Rodney Singleton]

Thank you for your perspective, Richard.

The ACD was only recently formed, after decades of trying and failing. It is the only ACD in a neighborhood of color in Boston. The land catchment area doesn't extend beyond Highland Park. So saving the church may not have been possible, given we wouldn't have had a say. But I agree in principle, with you, that there should not be pockets of preservation. Many buildings worth saving for historical significance have been lost due to lack of wider protections.

Also, land use in Roxbury is a bit more complicated, because many parcels fall under the Washington Park Urban Renewal planning area:https://maps.bostonplans.org/zoningviewer/. After years of neglect, if the building(s) were viewed as blighted by the city, the city very likely exercised its eminent domain 121 powers to force the sale of the property. 

Regards,

-Rodney

On Fri, Aug 2, 2024 at 3:06 PM Richard Heath <rhe...@comcast.net> wrote:

 I live in Jamaica Plain so the Elmwood Street development is none of my business.

 But I can’t help but note a sense of preservation pick n choose in this matter

The Highland community and others allowed St Josephs Church to be razed without a peep 21 years ago

The oldest Catholic Church in Roxbury and  one of the oldest in Boston is destroyed.

I remain bitter about it and cannot forgive the abutting community for letting that happen,

Richard Heath

On Aug 2, 2024, at 1:31 PM, Stephen Jerome <stevej...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Rodney, and yes, I was so pleased to see Kate's letter today.  She hit it out of the park, but with respect, may I suggest caution, however, in future, with the word "tower?" 

Some of us who are interested in the proposed Hotel Alexandra (1874-1875, Peabody & Stearns, architect) development that would add eight floors to the long neglected, but distinguished sandstone and brick High Victorian Gothic five story landmark, on Washington and Mass. Avenue were chided about describing the proposed eight stories glass addition as a "tower!" This criticism was from colleagues in preservation and urban planning, not the SELDC or the developer. 

Although in the design review process it is fair to ask for height reduction, is the Webster proposal a "tower?" 

In the case of the Hotel Alexandra proposal, the final result, if built, will still be well under most people's concept of a tower. Perhaps "midrise" is a more accurate description? Have you ever seen descriptions of the Hotel Eliot, Hotel Warren, or Hotel Dale (please see illustrations below) and the other French flat apartment buildings that once adorned Highland Park and Roxbury as "towers"  (even when they included tower features, like conical turrets)? No one would ever describe the Cox Building as a "tower," right?

How should your design review committee and the Commission respond, if such structures of the height and scale of the Hotels Eliot, Warren and Dale are proposed today? The immediate abutters would be unhappy, but the historical record is that excessive height, scale and mass were very much a part of Roxbury after annexation and mindfulness of this historical context seems important. It is only human to have a knee jerk reaction against any proposed changes that threaten our concept of stately streets, sunlight and shadows, but extra care to look at the historical urban context and to follow the goals of the Architectural Conservation District's mission may allow some accommodation, right? 

With respect to the Hotel Alexandra, most abutters, South Enders and even the Preservation Alliance were so frustrated by its long term deterioration (and perilous future if allowed to languish much longer) that they accepted the added height, just to have something done there at last. This is not the place to argue who is right or wrong, but simply to offer my concern that Kate's use of the word "tower" might be unhelpful to city readers who see it as an exaggeration, weakening the letter's otherwise excellent points?

This is not just semantics. After reading the Globe article, I reviewed the Highland Park ACD standards and criteria, and unless I missed something, I saw no height limits or restrictions.

Kate's letter is wonderful, and it was great to see it without a pro-Webster/BPDA letter accompanying it. Especially refreshing to see it in the same edition as Jemison's exodus! 

Kudos to Kate and the Highland Park NA for getting a letter published.

Best,

Steve

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On Fri, Aug 2, 2024 at 12:21 PM Rodney Singleton <rodne...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Jon Ellertson]

Hi Richard.  I live only 1 block from Washington Street beyond which was the St. Joseph's Church.  I agree that it is shameful that the Archdiocese did not spend money to save that structure. Living here since 1967, I recall that the church had a weakness in the roof that might have led to a decision that repairs would be expensive.  Still, such a loss.  At about the same time, as you know, the Archdiocese was also abandoning the Holy Trinity complex bounded by Ellis and Highland Streets.  I understand these steps to be part of the larger and pervasive process of disinvestment by public, church and private institutions.

Jon Ellertson, Thornton Street, Roxbury

On Fri, Aug 2, 2024 at 3:06 PM Richard Heath <rhe...@comcast.net> wrote:

 I live in Jamaica Plain so the Elmwood Street development is none of my business.

 But I can’t help but note a sense of preservation pick n choose in this matter

The Highland community and others allowed St Josephs Church to be razed without a peep 21 years ago

The oldest Catholic Church in Roxbury and  one of the oldest in Boston is destroyed.

I remain bitter about it and cannot forgive the abutting community for letting that happen,

Richard Heath

On Aug 2, 2024, at 1:31 PM, Stephen Jerome <stevej...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Rodney, and yes, I was so pleased to see Kate's letter today.  She hit it out of the park, but with respect, may I suggest caution, however, in future, with the word "tower?" 

Some of us who are interested in the proposed Hotel Alexandra (1874-1875, Peabody & Stearns, architect) development that would add eight floors to the long neglected, but distinguished sandstone and brick High Victorian Gothic five story landmark, on Washington and Mass. Avenue were chided about describing the proposed eight stories glass addition as a "tower!" This criticism was from colleagues in preservation and urban planning, not the SELDC or the developer. 

Although in the design review process it is fair to ask for height reduction, is the Webster proposal a "tower?" 

In the case of the Hotel Alexandra proposal, the final result, if built, will still be well under most people's concept of a tower. Perhaps "midrise" is a more accurate description? Have you ever seen descriptions of the Hotel Eliot, Hotel Warren, or Hotel Dale (please see illustrations below) and the other French flat apartment buildings that once adorned Highland Park and Roxbury as "towers"  (even when they included tower features, like conical turrets)? No one would ever describe the Cox Building as a "tower," right?

How should your design review committee and the Commission respond, if such structures of the height and scale of the Hotels Eliot, Warren and Dale are proposed today? The immediate abutters would be unhappy, but the historical record is that excessive height, scale and mass were very much a part of Roxbury after annexation and mindfulness of this historical context seems important. It is only human to have a knee jerk reaction against any proposed changes that threaten our concept of stately streets, sunlight and shadows, but extra care to look at the historical urban context and to follow the goals of the Architectural Conservation District's mission may allow some accommodation, right? 

With respect to the Hotel Alexandra, most abutters, South Enders and even the Preservation Alliance were so frustrated by its long term deterioration (and perilous future if allowed to languish much longer) that they accepted the added height, just to have something done there at last. This is not the place to argue who is right or wrong, but simply to offer my concern that Kate's use of the word "tower" might be unhelpful to city readers who see it as an exaggeration, weakening the letter's otherwise excellent points?

This is not just semantics. After reading the Globe article, I reviewed the Highland Park ACD standards and criteria, and unless I missed something, I saw no height limits or restrictions.

Kate's letter is wonderful, and it was great to see it without a pro-Webster/BPDA letter accompanying it. Especially refreshing to see it in the same edition as Jemison's exodus! 

Kudos to Kate and the Highland Park NA for getting a letter published.

Best,

Steve

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On Fri, Aug 2, 2024 at 12:21 PM Rodney Singleton <rodne...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Rodney Singleton]



Thank you all for the wealth of information. From your discriptions, the building really made its mark on history, inside and out. What a loss.

I’m just trying to orient myself, based on the descriptions and pictures, and love that Jon always uses a map to get us all straight. Jon introduced me to this great site of very acurate old maps of Roxbury a few years back. This URL is to my childhood home from 1931 that my Great Uncle and Grandfather owned in the early 60s (21 Munroe Street):

http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/7802/Plate+032/Boston+1931+Roxbury/Massachusetts/ 

The map below is from 1931 too, of where the church would have stood, until it was raised. I see the corner of Circuit and Regent Streets, but am confused a bit by the orientation and picture given. Was the main address on Regent Street or Fenwick Street, which appears not to be a street anymore, based on new maps?

Also, is the City on the Hill Charter School, the old parochial building? Convent, I take it is now housing?

Thanks!

-Rodney

On Aug 2, 2024, at 9:41 PM, Stephen Jerome <stevej...@gmail.com> wrote:



For the recipients of this thread who read Richard, Jon and Rodney's comments about St. Joseph's Church, but who may not have lived here at the time (or have forgotten about it), I offer some historical information about the church, which stood at the corner of Regent and Circuit Streets, just off Washington Street, near its intersection with Cedar Street, on the Tommy's Rock side of the street.  

Although the church's interior was altered by leading Catholic Church architect Patrick Keely in 1886, the church's facade, (i.e. its distinctive early Romanesque Revival tower) was largely faithful to its original appearance as depicted on the 1849 Whitney map of Roxbury, a prominent historic and visually astonishing Roxbury survival for so long. The photos of the church in the BLC inventory form (attached from MACRIS) show the extensive damage when a large span of the roof collapsed in 2002. We cannot remember why the Landmarks Commission director felt the BLC hands were tied in challenging demolition plans, but when buildings collapse, or partially collapse, it is very difficult to override Inspectional Services.

As I understand from alumnae, families could pay what they could afford for tuition to receive a Catholic education at St. Joseph's School, and many who are alive still feel justifiably proud of the church and parochial school's outstanding legacies.  

Thanks to the hard work of many of you, there has been considerable progress since 2002, and one can imagine had the broad coalition of Highland Park residents who came together to establish the Architectural Conservation District and the Roxbury Neighborhood Council been as engaged in 2002, there might have been a better outcome at St. Joseph's, but again, when there is a structural emergency, it is very difficult to reverse ISD orders. 

Like the earlier losses of the nearby St. James Episcopal Church and the Church of God in Christ (formerly Swedenborgian Church), both on St. James Street, the demolition of St. Joseph's is still keenly felt, particularly by Roxbury historians, which is why efforts to preserve First Church, Eliot Church, the Cram chapel at St Luke's/St. James, Roxbury Street, the former St. James African Orthodox Church, Roxbury Presbyterian Church and other historic Roxbury houses of worship are commendable. 

With respect to the controversial One Elmwood proposal, after watching the January, 2023 BPDA ``public meeting" today, I concede that the proposed design "reads" as a tower. While removing one story is a step in the right direction, I hold faith that the ACDC will approve a more appropriate and contextual design. Likewise, it is up to us to raise concerns to our elected leaders that it is unacceptable for the BPDA and ZBA to approve and grant variances to projects that are so incompatible with Roxbury's historic urbanity and tradition of excellence in design, especially in historic and architectural conservation districts.

On Patriots Day, this year, I photographed William Dawes and his escort galloping towards the corner of Roxbury and Elmwood, and I am having difficulty trying to imagine how they would have looked in front of something like the present proposal. Perhaps the BLC and the Alliance can offer workshops where Roxbury developers might be shown how to better integrate infill and new construction to harmonize with their surroundings? There has been some success in the South End we might look to for inspiration. For example, the new building on the Harriet Tubman house site, built of brick and not radically higher than its surroundings, is a much better design than the proposed One Elmwood.

Steve

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Interior of St. Joseph's following its 1886 alterations, described in the attached newspaper article.

On Fri, Aug 2, 2024 at 4:38 PM Rodney Singleton <rodne...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you for your perspective, Richard.

The ACD was only recently formed, after decades of trying and failing. It is the only ACD in a neighborhood of color in Boston. The land catchment area doesn't extend beyond Highland Park. So saving the church may not have been possible, given we wouldn't have had a say. But I agree in principle, with you, that there should not be pockets of preservation. Many buildings worth saving for historical significance have been lost due to lack of wider protections.

Also, land use in Roxbury is a bit more complicated, because many parcels fall under the Washington Park Urban Renewal planning area:https://maps.bostonplans.org/zoningviewer/. After years of neglect, if the building(s) were viewed as blighted by the city, the city very likely exercised its eminent domain 121 powers to force the sale of the property. 

Regards,

-Rodney

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<St. Joseph's Church, RG-SE ADV, 13 May 1886.pdf>