MassDOT Plans to Tweak Its Highway ‘Blunder’ in Back Bay

A historic black-and-white photograph of Charlesgate Park before the Bowker Overpass and Storrow Drive existed. The photo is taken from an elevated vantage point looking down at the Muddy River and the bridges that carry Commonwealth Avenue, Beacon Street, and Back Street over it. In the foreground two Model T-type cars drive along a mostly empty Commonwealth Avenue while a man crosses the street on foot in front of them. In the background is the Charles River and the Harvard Bridge, and the Great Dome of MIT is visible on the other side of the river in a mostly industrial riverfront district in Cambridge.

Under the agency’s current plans, the Bowker Overpass, the four-lane highway viaduct which effectively obliterated Boston’s Charlesgate Park in the mid-1960s, will remain in place for at least another decade.

Streetsblog Massachusetts