CHARLES  RIVER  PARKLANDS  UPDATE
September 2002
Archives—Table of Contents

Sit a Spell

There's no better way to say welcome than a nice place to sit down. That's as true in our parklands as in our living rooms. Jeryl Oristaglio and Linda Cox, co-founders of The Esplanade Association, recognized the vital need for new benches along the Charles River and lobbied the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) to provide 75 of them.

At about the same time, the MDC was notified by the Office of Environmental Affairs of an operations and maintenance budget allocation that needed to be spent by the end of the fiscal year. According to Matt Thurlow, a Project Manager for the MDC, the bench project was one of the ideas submitted and approved, to the tune of some $550,000. The result? The Esplanade Association did not get its 75 benches. Instead, it received a windfall of 450! The new benches were installed, before the June 30 deadline, along both sides of the river from Watertown Square to the Museum of Science, replacing all existing benches and even adding some in new locations.

Named for historic landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff, the Shurcliff benches feature a graceful, dark-green, curved-metal framework and comfortable wooden-slat seating. The design originated in the 1930s and was refined in the 1950s, after Storrow Drive was built. Due to their deterioration, the old benches had not attracted many users in recent years. Now, "I've never seen so many people using the benches," Linda Cox says. "Bicyclists stop there, lovers, groups of people-it's a dramatic improvement." Matt Thurlow agrees. "It came out fantastically," he says.

Charles River Parklands is published by The Charles River Conservancy, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of the Basin parklands of the Charles River.

• Next: Slip-Sliding A-W-A-Y
• Back to this issue's table of contents
• Newsletter Archives - Table of Contents

Email: crc@thecharles.org

 
© 2002, The Charles River Conservancy.