IT’S NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to propose almost any change at the local level in Massachusetts—a new apartment building, a corner-store zoning variance, even a bicycle lane—without setting off yelps of protest. Though these complaints come in many varieties, a perennial and familiar one is the fear any such change will corrode the “historic character” of the place in […]
Garrett Dash Nelson
Posted inNews Analysis
Stark differences make many Mass. communities neighbors in name only
IN 1847, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ordered that a line be drawn from the mouth of the Shawsheen River, down along its eastern bank, and “thence in a straight line westerly, to a marked stone in the wall … by Jacob Barnard’s house.” This formed the first two legs of the boundary of the new […]
Posted inArts and Culture
The dysfunctional geography of ancient borders in a modern pandemic
LOOKING AT AN aerial photograph or walking down a side street, you’d be hard-pressed to find the border between Waltham’s South Side neighborhood and West Newton. The residential areas on both sides of the municipal line were developed around the same time, in the 1910s and 20s, and the street grid totally ignores the boundary. In […]