River Portraits > Our own Hortus Conclusus

By Bettina A. Norton

Back in the days of World War II, the Esplanade was much more accessible from all the streets approaching it from Beacon Hill. With sporadic traffic then, we children could easily cross Embankment Road at Revere Street and go to our favorite spot for a picnic, right across the road: a little field enclosed by shrubs. About eight feet or so high, the shrubs made us feel as if we were in the country, a true Fête Champêtre.

The plot of land on Embankment Road between Revere and Pinckney Street, vacant at the time, was used for a Victory Garden, heightening our feeling of luxuriating in a rural setting.

My sister and I picnicked there often. As our parents worked, we felt we had free rein over the refrigerator, and we took unfair advantage of their charge account at Fink's, our local corner store. Being from an Italian family, we bought all sorts of strange delicacies like sardines and pickled artichokes. Our friends, who would join us sometimes, could not understand why we ate them.

With the widening of Embankment Road to make Storrow Drive shortly after the end of the war, the shrubs were cut down. The Victory Garden disappeared, and River House, designed in 1950s-style architecture, took its place.

And traffic predictably increased, to the point that we were almost run down one afternoon. I marched my sister down to the Department of Transportation building at the entrance to Sumner Tunnel and complained to some police captain. I demanded a traffic light. One eventually did go up —but at the base of Pinckney, not Revere Street. (That was my first direct experience with municipal workings.) Nonetheless, I did feel some pride at my accomplishment, and my father often bragged about it.

But we lost our "hortus conclusus."