Boston University campus

Lergnom
Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:16:06 +0000

The highway is a 1950’s creation named for the guy who led the project to dam the river at the Museum of Science. That stabilized the water levels and made the lagoons, etc. possible. It’s unfortunate they put highway on both sides of the water, but the use of the land as a park didn’t have a long history and people didn’t care much about it - except for some grand plans to build islands and the like. The river was ignored for generations and I think suffered from left over bad feelings from the creation of Back Bay; the Charles had lots of mud flats and marshes - Lechmere means swamp - and these smelled bad, particularly the part that is now land.