Can You Dig It?
- Details
- Published on Friday, 25 November 2011 12:41
- Written by Matt Robinson
Boston Preservation Society goes deep for “Underground” tour
According to the BBF team, the tour was originally offered as a special one-time event in 1993 and 1994. “The 1993 tour was at the time a record-breaking tour,” says BBF Executive Director Mary Fichtner. “We had 308 tourees!” Thanks to the popularity of the tour, BBF brought back what is now called “Boston Underground” as a regular offering in 1995.
“The inspiration for the tour was during the early days of the Big Dig,” Fichtner explains, noting that watching all the intricate engineering inspired her to create the new tour. “How interesting it would be to explore subterranean Boston,” she thought.
With the new idea in place, it was time for the BBF team to get to work on the research. Poring over years of newspaper clippings and historical records and attending numerous public meetings about the Dig, Fichtner was able to get a spot on a special engineers tour of the new tunnel system before it opened and even took a class all about the Leonard P. Zakim Bridge. In doing all this research, Fichtner discovered that, as with so many things, the more things about Boston changed, the more they stayed the same.
“The path of the Big Dig…follows the contours of 17th century Boston,” she notes, explaining how the project was “forced into that path by hundreds of years of dense development everywhere else downtown.”
Though Boston may have had the first underground railway (the T) and the largest underground rehabilitation project (the Big Dig), it is not the first city to have a tour like this. “I’ve toured the sewers and catacombs of Paris,” Flansburh explains, “and I have taken Seattle’s famous underground tour, as well as an even more intriguing but much less known underground tour of Havre, Montana.” Even so, the BBF Underground Boston tour is revealing for locals and visitors alike and it is a real treat for history buffs and people who like to get down and (a little bit) dirty while doing something new in their hometown.
“The physical remnants of Boston’s history are still found in the city’s foundations,” Fichtner suggests. “When modern engineers dig down, they are face-to-face with Boston’s history: forgotten graves, sealed privies, buried wood piers, old granite foundations, soft landfill, unused pipes.”
As it is above, so it is below, Fichtner says. “There is no unused space under downtown Boston.”
