If you’ve been wondering what’s going on across from the Jackson Square T station at the corner of Lamartine and Wise Streets, it’s new construction by the JPNDC. This project is slated to include approximately 35 units of affordable housing and several thousand square feet of retail space on its ground floor.
The project combined a long-vacant lot at the corner of Center and Wise streets and the lot where an 1870s apartment building stood (until the JPNDC demolished it for this project). The apartment building was the last of the small scale buildings that had survived the swath of demolition that scarred the neighborhood before the plan for I-95 to pass through the neighborhood was scrapped in the early 1970s. The lot the building sat on ended up being oddly shaped when Lamartine Street was reconfigured for the Southwest Corridor project, and the architectural team for the JPNDC found it too unwieldy to retain the existing building and create new street level uses at the site.
The Boston Landmarks Commission agreed in a 2007 demolition delay hearing, and the building was swifly demolished. It has taken a number of year to find funding for the new project, but it’s great to see the new building moving forward.
The photos below show the building that was demolished and construction of the new building underway.
Proposed Hyde Square Rotary improvements
At yesterday’s Centre/South Street Corridor Advisory Group meeting, consultants for the city’s transportation department revealed preliminary plans to improve Hyde Square’s iconic rotary.
The proposed improvements reclaim asphalt from the roadway and create two significant plaza areas. One new plaza is in front of 401-403 Centre Street (at the southwest corner) and the second is at the corner of Centre and Day streets (in the northeast corner). Significant sidewalk widening would also happen in front of Sorella’s restaurant.
The wider sidewalks and plaza areas would allow for larger street trees, new street lighting, and additional street furniture. Crosswalks would also be shortened dramatically, creating easier pedestrian crossings at the square.
The thick red lines in the plan indicate dedicated bicycle lanes along Centre Street leading into the rotary — a great improvement for cyclists.
Find out more about the project at the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s web site.
Creating some private outdoor space for the residents of the redeveloped Church is no simple task. One of the developer’s proposals removes the roof from the sacristy (the lowest part of the building in the foreground).
This would allow the developer to create a landscaped private outdoor courtyard overlooking the future green core of the campus.
The big question is whether the Boston Landmarks commission will allow part of the sacristy roof to be removed.
Another proposed outdoor space creates a terrace between the two large smokestacks at the rear of the church.
Have you been by the Blessed Sacrament Campus recently and seen the newly restored Rectory?
Thanks to a tremendous efforts by neighborhood residents, the Boston Landmarks Commission agreed that preserving the Rectory building was important in the site’s redevelopment.
As a result, the site developers found an acceptable way to restore the building’s historic exterior while updating the interior for modern condos.
The entire building was lifted off its foundation so that a new foundation and parking garage could be constructed, then the Rectory was wheeled into position and lowered onto its new foundation. Below you can see a historic photo of the building and its restored exterior in its new location on Creighton Street.
