20th Century in the United States

The Columbia Point Housing Project, 1954-1986

From Cow Pasture to Public Housing? The Early Years at Columbia Point

The Columbia Point Housing Project was completed in 1954, and was Boston’s last large-scale housing development. With Columbia Point’s completion in 1954, Boston’s public housing comprised about 7.5% of the city's total dwellings - showing its commitment to support its residents and fulfill its liberal commitment of the government to provide basic social services.¹ The Columbia Point development cost a whopping $20 million and was poised to house 1,500 families, all on Boston’s coastline. It seemed like the city’s last large public housing unit was the final installment in its commitment to being a liberal city. However, the immense scale and oversight of the problems of large-scale developments partially hindered Columbia Point’s chances at creating and sustaining a healthy community. The lack of resources for tenants, as well as the shoddy construction and blatant disregard from building, show that the BHA had short-changed the tenants of Columbia Point before they had even moved in.

Unlike other public housing projects, Columbia Point was intended to be built outside of the downtown area, as it was more profitable to use the downtown space for creating a more expensive lifestyle. Hence, the cow pasture and dump location along Morrissey Boulevard was chosen and with a new vision - public housing in high rise buildings. Regardless of these social welfare offerings, the fundamental foundation for approaching any building project is finances. Columbia Point, right on the water, was romanticized as a coastal hideaway to conceal the utter isolation of its location. Boston chose these high-rises for economic reasons - they were able to house the most people on the least amount of land.² The Glaser and Grey architectural firm was hired by the Boston Housing Authority, but from the beginning Glaser and Grey warned the BHA that high-rise public housing in such a location would require a large emphasis on fostering a community. They instead chose to ignore that warning, and hire a different firm altogether.³ The Columbia Point Housing project was unlike any other one the BHA had previously built. Columbia Point was isolated, there was no existing community to merge into. Rather, this would be starting from the ground-up. Along with the buildings, the BHA needed to build a community for these tenants.

Tenant Life

Soon, there were external calls for the BHA to quickly get a community together. The Chairman of the State Youth Condition warned that it would become “a breeding spot for kid gangs” not because of youth inclination, but because it did not have a single shared room for communities or recreation.⁴ It was not until nearly two years later that certain amenities, such as a playground and daycare, were added or planned. Cultivating a sustainable and safe life for tenants was not a priority. As with most things at Columbia Point, despite the coverage and open dissatisfaction with the living conditions, it required quite a bit of time and bureaucratic in-fighting to make even these minor changes.

In April of 1962, six-year old Laura Ann Ewing was killed just around noon on her way to the store by a dump truck which had been going to or from the dump on the peninsula.⁵ This tragedy led to immediate blockade by the mothers, armed only with posters and strollers. ‘The Mothers,’ as they became known, wanted to hold the BHA responsible, garnered publicity, and finally forced the city to close the dump - which had been originally promised to be closed prior to Columbia Point’s completion. The activism of ‘The Mothers’ spanned long after the original tragedy. These mothers instituted clothing drives, protesting the current welfare system in Boston, and anything else that needed to be immediately addressed. 

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), predecessor to the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), only ran buses during two slots during the week - 6:40AM to 9 AM, and 3:50 PM to 6:30 PM, with no service on the weekend. That shuttle bus, essentially, only brought tenants to a traffic circle which still required more travel post-drop-off. Furthermore, in the early years, with almost full occupancy in the projects, the only stores in the area were a grocery and liquor store - not even a post office.⁶ In 1967, the Bayside Mall was built with some staple stores, but by 1972, the shopping center had also been condemned by sensationalization of crime with proximity to the housing project. A Woolworth manager at the Bayside Mall partially blamed the media representation - he said “The Boston Globe hasn’t helped us…all those stories and all adverse. Say something positive, mention the good things…”⁷ The short-lived mall had efforts to even help the neighboring communities with contributions to senior citizens, preschools, and youth groups; the quick attrition of the mall, which was fueled by lack of revenue, worsened the problem of isolation on the peninsula. 

Overall, the failure of the BHA to provide essential services for the community – recreation facilities, transportation, schools, and other basic needs – revealed the official lack of concern for the project's residents. In the later part of the decade, the structural failures of buildings would parallel the building of structural racism.

The "Urban Crisis"

By the mid-1960s, the housing project became synonymous with urban crisis as a growing percentage of Black and Brown tenants began to populate the housing project. Between the 1960 census and 1970 census of Columbia Point, the Black population of Columbia Point increased by a wide margin. In 1960, 91% of residents reported as “white” and 8% reporting as “Black.” By 1970, the number of Black residents jumped to 61%, while the number of white residents shrunk to nearly 39%.⁸ Among the issues which doomed the housing project were the “relaxing” of tenant rules that may or may not have stunted the growth of the project. Furthermore, The Boston Globe ran a seven-part editorial on the conditions of Columbia Point. Richard Hurt, the journalist for the Globe, uncovered that seemingly the BHA was intentionally “assigning a disproportionate number of "problem families" to Columbia Point.⁹ Hurt points out that the Old Harbor Village, a 1016-unit housing project in South Boston, “has fewer families on welfare; more "intact," or two parent families; and no blacks.¹⁰ At Columbia Point, the economic and age demographics were starkly different.

In 1962, by contrast, 50 percent of the residents of Columbia Point were under twenty-one. Six hundred families, or 40 percent, are on some form of public assistance - aid to dependent children, old age assistance, or disability assistance from the City of Boston Welfare Department. Two hundred and nine families, or 14 percent, are black. The turnover rate is 20 percent per year, compared with a citywide average of 12 percent.¹¹

Although Hurt’s work was important in pointing out the flaws of the BHA, the Globe itself, as its neighbor on Columbia Point, also carried a great deal of responsibility in the sensationalization of Columbia Point. The stories of racial ‘warfare’ between Blacks and Puerto Ricans, and Black and white tenants were frequently picked up in the years leading up to the busing crisis. In August 1971, the Globe ran an article titled, … about how a white family had been “driven out” of the housing project and were homeless. Carl and Anna Hannon moved out of their apartment and began living on the streets of Brighton while sleeping in vacant lots - and preferred that to the increasing racial violence they had been facing over the years. However, Hannon notes that the issue was not actually fear of racial retaliation, but rather crime and even reached out directly to the BHA and Mayor White, to which Hannon said: “I don’t think Mayor White has the personal citizen in mind when he runs this city. His office did nothing."¹² The title, “Couple say harassment drove them out of project,” is misleading and exacerbates an issue which has structural origins, rather than the widespread tropes about Black youth and criminality.

Three months later, the Globe ran “Any shelter to spare?” which tells the harrowing story of a Puerto Rican family that was woken up in the middle of the night to vandalism and racial epithets at their apartment.¹³ However, the title is misleading, as the article is making a more general discussion of the shortage of desirable public housing because of failing conditions and the winter months. In both stories, as well as other stories that continued to appear in the 1970s, show the city of Boston and the Boston Globe’s fascination with the idea of an urban crisis and racial violence, while directly failing to attribute both things as direct consequences of the shoddy development and poor management of the project that led to social isolation, lack of oversight, and support from the City of Boston.