News
Legends of the Big Dig
May 18, 2010
| If you never saw the Central Artery, the elevated highway that blocked downtown from the Harbor, you probably learned a lot at the Boston Preservation Alliance?s 2010 Living Icons Award ceremony on Thursday (we sure did). The event spotlighted the team that spent decades replacing it—the passion and politicking used to pull it off. |
 |
| Tony Pangaro (center) and Frank Keefe (right) recalled their days working with Gov. Dukakis to eliminate or stop the construction of highways that were ripping up or blighting the city. Frank, now with The Keefe Co, says the battles that started nearly 50 years ago overflowed "with enthusiasm and persistence." In the '60s, Tony, now with Millennium Partners-Boston, was the director of the Southwest Corridor Project that put the Orange Line underground and built a new park above. Frank says that project inspired The Big Dig, which depressed the expressway, installed new water pipes and fiber optic cables; built bridges, new mass transit lines, and created the 30-acre Greenway along the waterfront. |
 |
| The Big Dig was so complex, nothing like it was ever tried before and, Frank says, ?may never happen again.? But that didn't stop Dukakis (above). As a lawyer and then a state legislator, he worked to stop construction of several highways that would have slashed through the city. As governor, he and his transportation secretary,Fred Salvucci, got the $16B Big Dig going. The governor recalled: ?Fred came to me with the idea of tearing down the expressway and putting it underground. Even I as a dreamer thought it was cockamamie.? Now completed, it let the sunshine in, reintegrated neighborhoods, and catalyzed development. But, Dukakis demurred, ?I can assure you, our wives do not think of us as living icons.? |
 |
| Fred Salvucci, now a lecturer and researcher at MIT, said the governor was the reason we had the Big Dig. Now, the Greenway must be completed. Fred says, ?It's a public responsibility? to program and maintain it. Meanwhile, for the Preservation Alliance, the event raised $70k, exceeding expectations, director Sarah Kelly told us. The funds will help support educational programs, including some homeowner workshops on greening historic homes and making them more energy efficient. |
