A unique and potentially lovely but little noticed area of Boston lies on the southeast side of Jamaica Plain. Many people only know the unique sub-neighborhood from seeing it through their windshields as they drive (as fast as 45 miles an hour) on Morton Street between JP and Dorchester, along with commuters going to and from Boston and the South Shore.
The area—rich in green space and history—could and should be made more hospitable—visually and in terms of access.
Amazingly, the borders of five Boston neighborhoods with five different ZIP Codes come together in a box-like pinwheel within yards of each other near a stand of trees in the Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature and Wildlife Sanctuary’s east side along Morton Street.
The neighborhoods that unite in one small area are: 02130, Jamaica Plain; 02121, Grove Hall; 02124, Dorchester Center; 02126, Mattapan; and 02131, Roslindale—quite a diverse group whose nexus should be noted and celebrated.
I am calling this special spot and the half mile radius I drew around it on a map that includes parts of all the neighborhoods “Five Corners.”
Running through Five Corners northwest to southeast is a mile of Morton Street, also labelled Massachusetts Route 203.
I told some long-time Boston residents that the busy urban thoroughfare is one of just 35 streets in the state to have the prestigious title of “parkway.” They told me I should look it up again. Based on their familiarity with the street, they said, I surely had my facts wrong and should double-check. No way Morton Street could be a parkway.
Not only is it an official parkway (I checked.), but Morton Street has also been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2005.
Built by the City of Boston Public Works Department around 1930, the parkway stretches right through Five Corners from the Arborway in JP to Gallivan Boulevard in Dorchester. Morton Street is also listed as part of the Metropolitan Boston Parks.
What a treat to realize, when looking carefully at the map, that the Tuskegee Airmen Bridge that crosses Morton Street is so close to the convergence point of the five neighborhoods, it can serve as the physical marker of the center of Five Corners.
The Tuskegee Airmen was a group of African American military pilots (fighters and bombers) and airmen who fought to much acclaim in World War II as part of the United States Army Air Forces. The bridge holds a section of American Legion Highway (ALH) over the Boston Nature Center and the parkway.
Just like Morton Street below it, the memorial bridge, dedicated in 2012, needs some care and attention.
The monument to an important group is concrete with a rectangular opening with more concrete at the feet of its supports. No plaque or other art, not even the name, has been placed on it at Morton Street. The sign on the highway above is said to be barely noticeable. Neighbors have said they want to get the bridge and its tribute to Black history revived.
Some of the same neighbors were disappointed to learn on July 10 that the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved the building of a soccer field on woodland/wetlands at 550 Morton Street by Brooke Charter School (BCS), located nearby on ALH. BCS is planning to build walkways, a bathroom building, seating, storage area, driveway and associated utilities and stormwater management systems in addition to the synthetic athletic field. To do that they say they will have to remove some trees, but say they will plant more than that.
Area residents formed a special 214 7A corporation called “Morton St. 10-residents” a few years ago to try to block the project in an effort, they said, to protect the environment. A petition against it at Change.org has collected 1,726 signatures.
Harvard Commons homeowner and Morton St. 10-Resident member Aalana Feaster told the Gazette the group was filing suit right away. She vowed to keep fighting the athletic field “for as long as it takes.”
“I’m terrified about the soccer field,” nearby homeowner Jessica Spruill and one of the 10-Resident group, said in a Zoom gathering recently, commenting on the possible effect it might have on property values. “This is a nice neighborhood.”
Five Corners is also part of an official, Massachusetts-designated Environmental Justice (EJ) neighborhood. Residents tend to have lower incomes and a higher number of people of color and often people for whom English is not their first language, thereby qualifying them for extra-sensitive treatment to make sure they are respected in environmental decision-making.
Not only do five neighborhoods meet in Five Corners, but just yards to the north of the spot, Franklin Park—part of the City of Boston’s Emerald Necklace—and Forest Hills Cemetery (a “garden” cemetery) align on both sides of Morton just before the bridge. On the northern end of Five Corners are Shea Circle and the Stonybrook neighborhood in JP. On the south are Hunt Almont Playground in Mattapan and West Codman Hill/West Lower Mills southeast in Dorchester.
Five Corners is obviously very green—containing most of the largest contiguous acres of green space in Boston. That’s not even including the Arboretum just outside Five Corners to the west in the two neighborhoods of Roslindale and JP. Then there are the occasional wooded green oases that appear along the road, like the controversial one right now at 550 Morton.
Smaller organized green spaces in the sub-neighborhood include: the City’s Harambee Park, and Mt. Hope, New Calvary, St. Michael’s, St. Mary’s and Oak Lawn cemeteries.
Feaster emphasized, as she often does, that all the Five Corners green spaces with their cooling effects and oxygen emissions, among other positives, “are not just for the local community’s benefit. Other neighborhoods are also impacted and get benefits for their communities.”
Residential uses are about equal to green space in Five Corners—much of which was once hundreds of acres taken up by Boston State Hospital (BSH), a historic mental hospital that was closed in 1979 and ceased to operate in 1981.
Olmsted Green and Harvard Commons, set back from Morton Street, as well as the Boston Nature Center, were built on that land. Hundreds of mixed income housing units there have added many residents to Five Corners in recent years. Longer-existing residential neighborhoods include Franklin Field North and South and Wellington Hill.
Five Corners is dotted with a variety of organizations, including Brooke Charter School, Lena Park Community Development Corporation and Sportsmen’s Tennis Club on ALH. A large MBTA bus yard is on the northern edge of Five Corners, and the multi-story former Shattuck Hospital building, whose present and future uses regarding homelessness are under discussion, is in nearby Franklin Park with an entrance on Morton. A Veteran’s of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post is to the south.
In keeping with the phenomenon of many borders coming together, the small sub-neighborhood also has much more representation by elected and appointed officials than most areas of the same small size.
Two district city councilors, three state representatives and two congresspeople, to be exact, represent the area that’s just a mile in diameter, with district lines all close together, too. Five Corners has, more typically, just one state senator.
To further complicate things for people, the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services appears to have at least three neighborhood coordinators in the area that are each assigned to different parts of the sub-neighborhood.
As one observer commented, “Things that need attention can more easily fall through the cracks” in that situation. That and the fact that Five Corners is on the edge of five neighborhoods and the government districts there, may explain how the neglect has happened over time.
With all the official neighborhoods and ZIP Codes so close together, the only authoritative way people in Five Corners can know for sure what official Boston neighborhood they or the place they are interested in is located is to go to the US Postal Service website ZIP Code look-up page (https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm) and type in the street address without ZIP Code. Word of mouth or going by a neighbor’s ZIP Code doesn’t necessarily lead to the right Code for another place nearby.
Massachusetts parkways like Morton Street are “defined by the following criteria: A broad landscaped thoroughfare; especially one from which trucks and other heavy vehicles are excluded. A roadway in a park or a landscaped thoroughfare connecting parks. An expressway located on a strip of land legally constituting a public park and therefore not open to heavy vehicles,” according to Wikipedia.
The online encyclopedia reports in another entry that nationally: “Many parkways originally intended for scenic, recreational driving have evolved into major urban and commuter routes.”
Anyone who travels Morton Street in Five Corners—which is under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), not the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) as many other parkways are—sees lots of green on the sides. But moving vehicles, including bicycles and MBTA buses, dominate, for sure.
Green space edges on Morton Street seem neglected, as if the street pavement and the green space don’t want to know each other closely. It’s no wonder people question the parkway designation, especially if they are familiar with the Jamaicaway and Arborway in JP, which are designated the same.
Five Corners would look and feel a lot less like a cross between the other side of the tracks and a no-man’s (or woman’s) land with some common sense, classic improvements.
Local greenspace advocate and member of the Arborway Coalition Sarah Freeman, who lives near the northern end of Five Corners spoke with me (I also live in Five Corners in JP near Franklin Park.) in mid-July about some possible simple changes we have noticed or heard people mention that would soften the feel, broaden the uses and increase the appeal of the streetscape.
Further brainstorming about possible improvements needs be done by local residents, green space managers and owners, representatives of local organizations and the myriad elected officials who represent Five Corners, along with MassDOT.
What sometimes seems like a confusingly large quantity of stakeholders in small area could be transformed into a crowd of united Five Corners supporters. Here are some early ideas of things they might consider in addition to improvements they propose:
• Trucks and other heavy vehicles are supposedly “banned” from parkways, yet Morton Street sees them every day. I think that exception should be allowed. Whatever the Morton Street stakeholders decide should prevail, I think.
• On the other hand, to have a section of Morton Street in Five Corners where the speed limit is posted at 45 miles per hour is ridiculous and confusing. The 30- and 35-mile an hour sections are fine.
• The edges of the street are raggedy. So-called “sidewalks” appear haphazardly place and unreliable. You can’t count on them for sure if you want to walk to a bus stop, for example. Surfaces to walk on range from dirt and leaves, to cement, to macadam, often in poor condition and placed close to the street. One macadam sidewalk next to Franklin Park had a light pole in it for a while.
• Attractive, prominent markers should be put on both sides of the Tuskegee Airmen Bridge and well-placed signs elsewhere declare the street’s historic designation. (How about including “Parkway” or “Way” in the name?)
• Sidewalks and attractive wayfaring signs, to the Boston Nature Center and possibly Forest Hills Cemetery and other places of interest on and near Morton Street like the signs at Jamaica Pond, could aide and encourage visitors and welcome residential neighbors on foot, by bicylce, by bus or in cars, with safety always in mind, of course. Franklin Park has an entrance and sign on Morton.
• More crosswalks like those on the Jamaicaway and Arborway would also be appropriate on Morton Street to help local residents get around and do some traffic calming, too. Feaster, who lives in Harvard Commons, said she would like to see trees planted in the medians.
Some residents have said they would volunteer to help with that. Feaster and the 10- residents group have advocated that the Canterbury Brook area could act as a special outdoor classroom, perhaps in cooperation with the Boston Nature Center.
• Canterbury Brook and the wetlands and woodlands it feeds on both sides of Morton, could use regular maintenance, according to The Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA) Associate Attorney Zeus Smith.
In a letter to DEP about the soccer field proposal he cited water quality issues there “including siltation, trash collection, bacterial inputs, low dissolved oxygen, and more resulting from stormwater pollution from surrounding dense development and impervious surface,” even if there are increased stormwater controls.
In a sign of possible future neighborhood cooperation with making improvement in the area, Feaster and others in the Morton St. 10-residents group have said they would like to help with maintenance and clean-up of green spaces, including the brook area.
“We want money allocated to the [wild] green spaces” in Five Corners she said in an interview on July 10, “We want arborists, pruning and restoration. We want to see their maintenance, restoration and preservation.”
Feaster emphasized, as she often does, that all the Five Corners green space with its cooling effects, and capture of harmful carbon dioxide, among other positives, “is not just for the local community’s benefit. Other neighborhoods are impacted and get benefits for their communities.”
“People deserve better,” than the present Morton Street, Freeman said. “Let’s work together to restore the safe, multimodal, historic parkway. It should feel as nice as other parkways.”