By Katie Koenig
The Back Bay Fens
In my last post, I covered the inland end of the Emerald Necklace. This time, I’ll explain the Back Bay Fens and Charlesgate, jumping back towards the Charles River.
The Back Bay Fens is a 100-acre park located in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood. The area hosts a myriad of activities and opportunities. There is the Kelleher Rose Garden, sports fields, a “Victory Garden” from World War II, other war memorials, the Shattuck Visitor’s Center for anyone meandering through the Emerald Necklace, and more!
I explain it in History of Boston’s Green Spaces 1: The Esplanade, but to briefly summarize, the Back Bay Fens were another park that arose when Boston hired landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to reform the sewage-filled tidal lands in Back Bay, along with the Esplanade, Commonwealth Avenue Mall, and the Public Garden. The Emerald Necklace Conservatory explains that he transformed the site to host a cleaned, meandering creek with natural landscaping in his recognizable style, relying on pre-existing natural landmarks to guide his park designs.
After the city dammed the Charles River in 1910, the park began filling into a marsh again. The damming reduced the salinity of the water, so Olmsted’s plantings, which thrived on brackish water, had to be replaced with other varieties of vegetation. Arthur Shurcliff, another landscape architect, took up this task, also adding the Kelleher Rose Garden and ball courts. His designs, which overtook most of Olmsted’s original, naturalistic plans, are more in line with the more formal early 20th century park style.
In 1942, this park became more than just a recreational spot: it was one of forty-nine spaces in Boston explicitly designated for the war effort. The Massachusetts Historical Society explains a lot about the history of the Back Bay Fens’ victory garden. Most of the U.S. food production during the war went to feeding troops, so citizens were encouraged to grow their own food so that more was available to send abroad. Within a year, American households were growing almost half of all vegetables that the continental U.S. was eating at the time.
To this day, the Victory Garden still exists as the last remaining WWII victory gardens, and Boston residents can adopt one of the 500 plots of land to garden (with caveats, of course). In fact, nowadays, they are so popular that there is a waitlist to get a plot, with many people still growing vegetables while others focus on growing leisure spots and flowers!
Charlesgate
Charlesgate, the park area just north of the Back Bay Fens, connects it to Commonwealth Avenue along the Emerald Necklace. It was also designed for the Muddy River to drain into the Charles River, connecting the Back Bay Fens to the Esplanade as well, although the mid-20th century brought about the construction of several major roads that overshadow the greenery and outright cut off Back Bay from the Charles River.
In the last decade, the city has renovated several aspects of these parks at the urging of the Charlesgate Alliance and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. These groups have partnered for the Charlesgate Revitalization Project, working to restore Olmsted’s original visions for the park next to the Back Bay Fens!