Media Coverage Archive

The Beacon Hill Times, November 18, 2003
ESPLANADE LANDINGS MAKE TEN MOST-ENDANGERED LIST

Excerpt:
You may never have noticed them. If you did, perhaps you’re so accustomed to their crumbling condition that you never imagined that anyone cared about them or that they might be saved.

But the Esplanade Association, led by Chestnut Street resident Linda Cox and her Back Bay co-president Jeryl Oristaglio, made the case that three landings on the banks of the Charles were important enough and enough in need of repair to be listed on the Massachusetts endangered historic resources list. At the beginning of November, Preservation Mass, the commonwealth’s nonprofit historic preservation organization, announced that the landings had made the list.

Now the Esplanade Association’s task is to use the distinction the list provides to raise money to save the landings.

“We’re raising awareness of the plight of this irreplaceable resource,” said Cox. “This is just a listing, with no money with it. It helps bring attention to the problem.”

The Boston Globe, April 7, 2002
LITTLE-BOAT PEOPLE RETURN TO LAGOON

Excerpt:
During the Great Depression, one diversion that Bostonians clung to was the sight of a flotilla of model boats tacking and racing along the Storrow Lagoon on the Charles River Esplanade.

But the arrival of Storrow Drive in the 1950s choked nearby parking, and by the time of the Vietnam War, the organized races were no more.

Until now.

Sponsored by the Esplanade Association and set up by the Marblehead Model Yacht Club, the motorized boats are again taking their places near the joggers and rollerbladers alongside the Charles. ...

The Boston Globe, December, 2001 (Op Ed)
THE STATE OF THE CITY AWARDS

Excerpt:
Herewith then, we offer our annual report on the landscape and cityscape to commend and condemn such events in the first year of the millennium. ...

Sapphire Necklace for Gem Polishing
The ragged edges of the 8.5 mile-long Charles River Basin, the 108-year-old masterwork of Charles Eliot that forms the open space of the city, has a chance for a new sparkle in the MDC's award-winning master plan.

Designed by architects Goody, Clancy; orchestrated by planner Herb Nolan; propped by 200 community advocates; specified in 192 pages and already adorned by the Esplanade Association's new Gloucester Street playground; the plan has promise ...

The Boston Globe, September 1, 2001 (Op Ed)
PARTNERS FOR PLAYGROUNDS

Excerpt:
Back Bay and Beacon Hill families have gone deep into their own pockets to build a state-of-the-art playground on the Esplanade between Gloucester and Hereford streets. While organizers from the nonprofit Esplanade Association politely describe the $400,000 effort as a "public-private partnership," it is clear that private donors bore nearly all of the costs of design and construction.

In 1999, the Metropolitan District Commission, which owns and manages the Esplanade, removed three dangerously outmoded play structures from the park. Appeals from the neighborhood to replace them failed to convince MDC officials, who are caught between a level-funded budget and high demands for new parks, pools, and playground enhancements in Mattapan, Dorchester, Chelsea, and other areas needier than the Back Bay.

If private money doesn't flow into the Esplanade, it will go downhill," predicts Linda Cox, co-chair of the Esplanade Association. To protect the playground, the group held a clambake this week to raise an additional $100,000 for a maintenance endowment ...

The Boston Globe, September 10, 2000
“FRIENDS” TO HELP UPGRADE ESPLANADE

Excerpt:
“Citing the need to raise money to upgrade and restore the Esplanade, residents of Beacon Hill and Back Bay are forming a "friends" group for the historic stretch of parkland between the Museum of Science and Boston University. ... The MDC deemed the playgrounds unsafe and did not have the money for repairs. Earlier this month, the Esplanade Association, along with the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, the Beacon Hill Civic Association, and District 8 City Councilor Michael Ross, held a fund-raiser for a new playground that grossed $10,000, Cox said. ...

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