Bunker Hill Park

2005-12-24T20:51:00.000-08:00

This is my Grand Intervention proposal:

Our New Park
by Tim Quinn

We were standing at the window on the tenth floor of City Hall looking west up the hill toward the Music Center. Spread out below was the new park, still un-named. The philanthropist directed our attention to the beautiful home midway up the hill that contained the ground floor of the museum bearing his name. He explained, "That home is the portal to our past. Built into the new false hill below are the four huge floors of our new Museum of Los Angeles. The false hill has more than enough room left over for the courthouse and administrative functions for the County. Those facades are on the Temple side." We had seen the pictures earlier, the reproduction of the old sandstone courthouse seemed to be tucked right into the hill side.

"Let's take the walk up so I can show you what we have done." We followed--who wouldn't?

We regrouped at the top of the stairs leading down to the Civic Plaza that now comes right up to the base of City Hall, Spring Street running underneath through tunnels for both the trains and buses. Our guide continued as he descended the stairs, "The cobblestones you see covering the plaza came from the old Santa Fe Freight Depot over in the Arts District. They covered the freight-handling yard, next to Sci-ARC, for nearly 80 years before we brought them here. The Museum of Jazz stands there now. Fascinating place. Makes one proud to be an Angeleno."

He gestured toward a Mayan-looking structure occupying the southern border of the Plaza. "That magnificent elegant structure comprises the grandstand and walls of The Taste, a court for Ulama,
a sort of handball or squash descended from a game played by the original residents of this area. I understand the game is still played in some parts of Mexico." A couple of us laughed at this; he had forgotten we were the Ulama team from Cal State Long Beach.

As our guide strolled across the cobblestones, he pointed to the pond at the far northern end of the Plaza. "We realized that an urban park should provide frequent opportunities for what we call `micro-vacations,' moments away from the city. These might supply the restorative tonic a hard-working civil servant obviously craves, yes?" We nodded.

We sat on the low stone wall at the edge of the pond. "Lesley's little lake here provides a variety of opportunities to forget where you are for a few minutes. We named it Poundcake Pond for the hill that stood here until 120 years ago. Besides, it sounds better than either New High Pond or Courthouse Lake. You can see the far shore is actually muddy. We've brought in crawdads and rainbow trout, a few catfish, but they're just for looking at." He threw in a small pebble. "The sounds of water are very calming. Don't you think? The ducks are real, by the way."

We walked the edge of the pond to Broadway where a stream spilled out from under a remarkable small bridge built entirely from small boulders. "We have been harvesting the boulders from local excavations going on Downtown, including our own, to mimic an old L.A. style perfected in the Lummis Home. Do any of you know it?" Some of us apparently did. So he continued, "One of our original goals for the park was to create a place that would age gracefully. Accomodate the roots of growing trees. Show the use of generations in the beautiful patinas and worn surfaces of real materials. We finally concluded that we could accomplish that by building a park that might have stood here, even hundreds of years ago, somehow. So we took what material came from the ground, as Lummis and dozens of others had before us, to make the things our park required: bridges, walls, benches and tables. Of course, it's all a big fiction. There is a giant concrete building under our feet, but this is Los Angeles, dammit. We know how to do fiction." The old guy was getting worked up, but as he gestured across Broadway at the new fake hill, I had to agree. It looked like it was coming down in the next quake, but it appeared to be an absolutely authentic California chapparal-covered hillside rising steeply from the sidewalk.

As if on cue, the signal changed to walk. We took the suggestion and crossed to the other side. The smell of the sage enveloped us as we made the sidewalk and I did, for a second, looking up at the yucca blooms, forget where I was. A local bus whirred past bringing me back to the city. Our guide continued south to the center of the block. Stopping, he said, "We've taken some liberties with the shape of the hill here to achieve a naturalistic impression. No buildings on this end, except for Court Flight." He pointed to the funicular rising up the hill above us. The funny little skewed boxes that made up the cars seemed pretty rickety. "Fiction again, its a completely safe, but accurate, re-creation of the train that served this end of the hill during the same years that the better-known Angels Flight thrived over at Hill and Third. People love this sort of stuff." It was clear from the bounce in his step as he entered the car that he was one of those people. We went up. Our benefactor looked out over the landscape as it gradually spread out below us. "My, those towers are new, aren't they. Things are changing so fast." I couldn't tell how he felt about it. Our reverie was interrupted by the comic last clunk of the car arriving at the top of its run.

The rest of the park spread out before us. The top of the hill was almost flat, rising gently toward the Court of the Music Center. In the middle distance was the Victorian mansion we had seen from City Hall. Behind it, slightly higher, the Chandler Pavilion. Now at ground level, it was finally evoking the ancient temple that inspired it. All around the new hill, Downtown's high-rises formed a glittering frame for what I realized was Los Angeles's new Acropolis. What philosophy might arise to match this beautiful place? What civic spirit ignited? What music written? But our guide was speaking. "These photos we have mounted here were taken by Ansel Adams in 1940 from this spot. The comparison is quite amusing. About the only thing left is City Hall. Beautiful photographs though, don't you think?" We did.

We spent a half an hour wandering through the gardens that occupy the eastern end of the plateau. The beds and path were bordered by the same stone work that made the bridge down below: rounded river rocks carefully fitted to form graceful sloping walls. My favorites beds were the cactus and agaves. Huge century plants and more flowering yuccas. We re-assembled in front of the mansion.

" . . . built in 1880 for the families retirement from the mining business. The Bradbury's had met in Mexico where she was born. They worked in mining and real estate in Mexico and up and down the state before coming here to retire because of the old man's failing health. Didn't work though: he died a couple years later. Simona proved to be a powerhouse, an able businesswoman. It was she, with her husband's business partners, that built the block on Broadway bearing their name. I believe it shows a woman's influence and the architectural sophistication of someone raised in old Mexico. She built a few other buildings, too, including one that served as the county courthouse for a time. Quite a woman, apparently."

"She used the home. Our reproduction is all plastic, by the way. Pretty convincing though. She used the home as a social center, opening it for gatherings and meetings of her wide circle of friends and the many clubs and committees she belonged to. It was a well-known and welcoming place. That is why we chose it as the portal to the museum below. It embodies an attitude toward neighborhood and community, a meeting of public and private needs. It has great dignity. At the same time, it celebrates workmanship. It elevates family, community and the civic dialog by its fine example. It is a handsome building, don't you think?" We did.

"But there is a bonus," he continued, "The home later came into the hands of the young Hal Roach. This would have been around 1912 or 15. He used it as the headquarters for his film studio, the interior and exterior as film sets. That would have been silent film, by the way. You know, black and white, really early stuff. We have a little theater downstairs where we show nothing but films shot up here on the hill. Amazing collection of stuff. Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, funny, funny stuff, right here."

We walked to the corner and up the path toward the Music Center Plaza. "On the right up ahead is our new little amphitheater. Diverse program lined up there, you'll see. Most of the art you see was commissioned for the site, but some of it was saved from basements and bad installations elsewhere. The older things, you know, mostly Pershing Square." We fanned out over the lawns and paths looking over the collection, enjoying the live music. I eventually found myself in the Music Center Plaza and noticed a new building there. Or an old one that had not been there before. It was a standard issue clapboard two-story boarding house. "It is a duplicate of a building that used to be here when this was the intersection of Bunker Hill Avenue and Court Street." The philanthropist was standing beside me. "We call it the Jon Fante Residence. Its a haven for writers, poets, artists to spend some time in Downtown Los Angeles. We've already booked two years, lots of interest. Who wouldn't want to work up here for a little while, hmm?" I had to agree.

This proposal incorporates ideas from other participants and blog contributors. It is not intended to subsume or replace those contributions, but to honor them. They include Josef Bray-Ali, Lesley Taplin, Stuart Rapeport, Steven Rosen, and others.

2005-10-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

Reintroducing Los Angeles to Its History

We maintain some distorted version of Los Angeles in our heads. There is no way to bring back the hill or the neighborhood that once filled what is now a park that looks like a mall. Some of the variety can be re-injected though. It was built once why not build it again. A sign in front could say, "This home once stood on ground approximately sixty-five feet above this spot. It was built by Mr L.L. and Mrs Simona Bradbury in 1861. It was later occupied by the Hal Roach Studios, and was torn down for a parking lot in 1925. It was rebuilt in 2007 to remind us of our not so distant roots."

2005-10-06T15:50:00.000-07:00

It seems that the Park is conceived as an entirely separate entity from the rest of the Grand Avenue development, and is planned to be built on top of a parking garage (already existing).

I have a suggestion: What if the one of the project parcels were used for all the parking, so that there would be no parking facilities (except for valet, service and handicapped needs) on any of the other parcels, including the park? This would ensure that even though the project will be designed as fully dependent on automobile visitors, those visitors would be expected to traverse the urban fabric of the area in order to come and go.

Parcel M is located on 2nd & Grand, across Second Street from Disney Hall. The western slope of Bunker Hill and Hope St could serve as the auto entrance and exit, and at the Grand Avenue street level there would be a pedestrian entrance and street level retail, and perhaps also an apartment tower or office tower.

This would allow the Park, and Parcels Q and W to fully utilize their urban potential, and actually interact with the street without
requiring pesky driveways all over the place. Nothing kills the urban street like auto entrances and exits.

2005-10-04T19:40:00.000-07:00

Leslie Taplin writes;

You had asked a very good question of the group, namely, what kind of park would you be inclined to take your friends to visit? I thought that was an excellent parameter for considering design ideas. I have a simple answer that keeps coming back to me - one with a lake. And ducks. And maybe fish. Lakes are not like other bodies of water. They aren't like most fountains downtown which too often, when they are working, have an aggressiveness that pushes you away. Lakes make you go inward, a walk around a lake is a meditation. Staring into a lake is a deepening experience, and when people go deeper in that way they get quieter, more kind to others and to themselves. Ducks are just entertaining, and their quacking would add a nice white noise to the sound of buses and commuter traffic. They're fun to feed, the scraps of your bag lunch. A lake might even become a welcome stopover for migrating flocks of visiting birds. Those who live downtown could follow those migrations over time, clock the seasons by it. I don't know enough about fish to make any recommendations about them, but flashes of silver under the water always quickens the heart. That's my answer to your question what kind of a park would I really visit, and bring my friends.

2005-09-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

This is not exactly about the Park, but about the Grand Avenue development in general. Grand Avenue's built component proposes 1800 housing units, a large amount of retail, and a hotel. In addition, they are proposing 4,000 parking spots. Immediately adjacent to the development is a Red Line station.

Here are the statistics for the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, also developed by Related:

Time Warner Center is a 2.8 million square foot, mixed-use project located on New York's most prominent development site at the southwest corner of Central Park. Designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the project consists of two 80-story towers rising from a seven-story podium. The development was completed in 2004 and contains almost 1.1 million square feet of office space, 338,000 square feet of retail space, a 251-room luxury hotel, 201 luxury condominiums, a 1,100-seat jazz theatre and a 500-space parking facility.

Note how much parking Time Warner has. It is also immediately adjacent to a subway station.

I am VERY concerned that this Grand Avenue project has been hijacked by a totally suburban mindset. The Paseo proposed would turn all the activity inward, away from the street. How much would you want to bet that the streets will be lined by blank concrete walls. Despite all the denials by the developers, that is exactly what their plans seem to be in my view. By encouraging an inward facing development with huge amounts of parking, are they really trying to contribute to a healthy downtown, or are they trying to make this project a singular destination that does not encourage interaction with the larger downtown?

2005-09-15T18:40:00.000-07:00

Someone suggested that the park could become the repository for historic architectural fragments, a sort of outdoor museum of the city. With that in mind I walked past SCI-arc and the adjacent land soon to be developed into residential gold by Richard Meruelo. The SCI-arc building originally served as the Santa Fe freight depot around a hundred years ago. Meruelo's flat land was part of the facility and much of it is still covered by tan cobblestones. Acres of land densely covered by heavy rectangular bricks of solid stone. Each one hand made. The neighborhood story goes that they were used as ballast in cars returning from the East after delivering a load of fresh fruit.

These stones could be used to pave the plaza at the bottom of the hill or the pathways in the gardens. They're not native, but they are substantial, have seen a lot of history and show it. This would bring the texture that dreaded places like City Walk fail to achieve, the wear of use on real materials that cannot be faked and that contributes so much to our sense of investment and permanence. City Hall is among our best buildings and the stone covered civic plaza would lend to its dignity.

2005-09-14T23:57:00.000-07:00

El-Brayjerino posts this comment:

I have a degree in Anthropology, so this idea really stood out as a way of coming to terms with this region's history, and a means of showing that history to future generations through the playing of an ancient and wholly indigenous game.

How about building an Ulama court somewhere in the park? Ulama is commonly referred to as "the ball-game played by Native Americans".

The game, or forms of it, have been around for over 3,500 years. It is still being played, but only in a few small villages in western Mexico.

There used to be an Ulama court in the Los Angeles area (built by the Chumash out at Malibu point).

Ulama courts, in Mexico, are called "taste"s (TA-stay). They don't come anywhere near the size and maintenance requirements a football, baseball, or soccer field would require.

Cal State Los Angeles has two of the world's foremost ulama scholars at its campus. James Brady (Archaeology) and Manuel Aguilar (Art) recently completed a round of ulama-based research in 2003.

Here are some links that might help you get a better idea about ulama, and whether or not it might have a place in the new park to be built downtown:

A general guide to the ball-game:
http://www.ballgame.org/

Dr. Brady and Dr. Aguilar's "Projecto Ulama" web-site:
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/anthro/jbrady/ulama/proyectoulama.htm

Additionally, Archaeology magazine published an article about this research in their September/October 2003 issue (Volume 56 Number 5) in an article entitled "Extreme Sport" by Colleen B. Popson.

Check out a portion of it here:
http://www.archaeology.org/0309/abstracts/ballgame.html

I'm not much of a visionary, but I have spent my whole life in Los Angeles, and I feel that we need some legitimate means to allow people here to become "natives" of this region - to connect with its history, natural and built environment.

2005-09-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

South Pasadena

The soils that make up downtown and much of the basin and valleys are rich in river rubble. Rounded rocks from pebble sized to boulders. There is an indigenous architectural style in the area that takes advantage of this ready building material to create beautiful sloping foundations and walls with the stones sorted for size with the largest, naturally, at the bottom and the smaller ones at top.

Alhambra Park

Could the stones and boulders from the excavations one block away be harvested and used to accent and buttress the terracing in the park following this native Los Angeles style? I saw large piles of these stones at the excavation for the Elleven project in Southpark. Examples of the style can still be found throughout Pasadena and South Pasadena.

El Alisal - the Lummis Home

2005-09-14T17:28:00.000-07:00

Disney Hall sits right on the sidewalk, it draws you toward it. This, certainly, can give us some hope that these folks also walk those sidewalks. I've spoken to Brenda Levin at Starbuck's, saw Witte rushing into Office Depot. Oldenburg's collar and tie shows Gehry can share the spotlight. These are encouraging signs to me.

I can't get past the feeling that Luckman, the Chandlers, Welton Becket and Perriera must have hated Downtown, been embarassed by its corny and very visible roots. They built a Music Center and Park that seem downright pathological in its desire to cut out the street and the people that used its sidewalks. Topped by the behemoth Chandler Pavilion, the complex quickly became a symbol of the imperial self image of an absent ruling class as, months after its opening, the Watts Riots brought the city to its knees.

I am not an architect or an urban planner but I imagine the Music Center and its surrounding 'neighborhoods' have become textbook examples of how to screw up a good thing, how to miss an important opportunity. I will say again that Disney Hall shows vast improvement and I hope that Gehry can prevail again in creating a place that even its designers and builders would be happy to live, work and play.

We still need to ask questions, make suggestions, insist that they explain themselves. Even well meaning people can overlook important considerations or meaningful opportunities. The people that know and care about downtown have the perspective to see those opportunities and articulate them.

2005-09-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

Name the Park .

Bert Green posts:
What to call the park...

A few suggestions:
Grand Park
Civic Park
Downtown Center Park
Pound Cake Park

Tim adds:
Joel C suggests in a comment below ...

Grand Square Park

2005-09-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

From The Grand Avenue Commitee web site:

The park is envisioned as several distinct areas that will be landscaped and programmed to serve a variety of uses. On the west end across from the Music Center, the park will be programmed with cultural, arts and entertainment events. The existing garage ramps will be relocated to allow a grand terrace to connect Grand Avenue to a new great lawn. The center of the park will feature a colorful garden area with both open and intimate spaces. The east end will be designed to host civic celebrations and multi-cultural festivals and complete the entrance to the front of City Hall.

Lots of room for comment and suggestion there . . .

2005-09-11T22:45:00.000-07:00

Julie Rico, President, Weeneez LLC "The Best Chili Dog in the West." & Executive Director LA Art Fest, responded to my inquiry with this proposal;

Dear Grand Avenue Enthusiasts,

At the park level I would love to see interactive sculptures, of course! In addition, I am interested in a pathway that is above the park with a floating pathway that rises to different levels throughout the Grand Avenue project. The pathway would function on many levels including:

Pods For people to rest
Pub Pods
Vendor Pods
Pods for people to Lunch
Pods for people to Observe below
Pods for Vendors
Pods for kids (a sort of Play House)
Pods that house interactive video art linked to other countries. For example there could be another POD in Mexico City and the LA person could see and communicate with the visitor in Mexico in the POD.

The pathway would be bent and shaped with a lot of character with the intersection of the PODS running throughout the Project.

The POD/Pathway concept would increase the flow of traffic from one end to the other end of the park. Instead of walking on the ground through the park you could take the POD route to your desired venue. The pathway could also function as a great exercise pathway. One part of the pathway could be separated for pedestrians that are interested in getting to their desired
location more quickly or walkers or runners.

It would look futuristic in the city of the future Los Angeles.

2005-09-11T11:06:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to fear that this blog will focus on history too much. That is my gateway into the problem, so I want to address it now. Why are we talking about the history of the area when all that history is gone, missing. Can't a park just be a park? Isn't Los Angeles the city of the future. Is the past of Los Angeles relevant now that we are in such a forward looking moment?

Fact is, the park and the music center, all of Bunker Hill really, are a catalog of bad choices in city planning. If this new park was somewhere else entirely I would still suggest looking at the history of Bunker Hill for guidance on what not to do, on how to screw up a good idea. We should all get together for a walking tour and marvel, together, at the truly awful and thoughtless choices made by the designers of the current situation. Then make a list of them and give it to Related as things needing fixing. I would bet they agree. The music center is world reknown for this and the park would be too, if it wasn't hidden and unrecognized.

2005-09-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

An ongoing conversation on geography with Brady Westwater, President of Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council: (I have added picture links to help clarify)

Brady:

Actually - The park isn't really on Bunker Hill, you know.

My reply:

Tell me more, I am aware that the part of the hill which is now called the 101 freeway was called 'fort hill' or 'fort moore hill' and that the little piece of the hill where the high school originally sat and was later removed for the courthouse, now the criminal courts building (which, oddly, sits in a pit), was called Poundcake Hill. I thought Bunker Hill was all the hills south of Temple, which ended about where the library is. A crescent shape, which is still there but much flattened, the other end of which would have been Court Flight at Broadway opposite City Hall and the beautiful but now extinct Hall of Records, in between.

Are there other names? or configurations? I still think Bunker Hill Park is an appropriate name. Better than Civic Park for sure. Bunker Hill Avenue was between Grand and Flower and ran all the way from Fifth to where there is still a small piece above China Town. Right through the Music Center Plaza which is the West end of the park, which approximates the old path of Court Street down to Broadway and then Spring. 'Bunker Hill Park' memorializes the hills it replaces. There was a park high above First and Hill, or at least vacant land. I have seen a great picture on the web looking down from there to the Times building down below.

Brady replies:

As for Bunker vs. Poundcake - lots of contradictory stuff out there, but a couple of points are agreed upon. Temple was laid out in the notch between Fort(Moore) Hill and Poundcake Hill, making all of Poundcake south of Temple.

The old Courthouse and old Episcopal Church were on the South side of Temple and were at the bottom of Poundcake. They are where the criminal courts building is now at Temple and Spring, which was the northern edge of Poundcake.

Old photos show Poundcake extending far, way far to the east of Bunker Hill - where the mid to upper civic center is now.

Second Street seems always to have been considered to be on Bunker Hill.

The Bunker Hill re-development project's North end is First Street, though some contemporary - but no old ones that I know of - show it going to the Freeway.

The Mott tract map of 1868 predates the Bunker Hill residential development, but it includes All of Poundcake and misses part of the heart of Bunker Hill housing area - making it not a reliable point of reference.

Of the homes referred to as being on Bunker Hill over the years, I do not recall any of them being North of Second Street, though that is my recall.

I have found no dividing line between Bunker Hill and Poundcake Hill ever mentioned.

end brady's reply

we will explore this more. The underlying issue is what to call the park. What do you think?

2005-09-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

My main concern
is that we learn
from past failures,
urban derailers
like Bunker Hill one
that destroyed not one
but two areas
which brought despair
to demoed residences here
and vacated commercial there.
So in this planning nexus
lets focus on connectedness.

Poet-Broker
Ed Rosenthal

2005-09-08T01:53:00.000-07:00

The Scale of the Opportunity

At the last public meeting Martha Welborne, the managing director for the committee, compared the budget for the park to the Millenium Park in Chicago. Though the budget for Chicago was quite a bit larger than our budget it included construction of the underground parking that is already in place in our case. She went on to say that the budgets for the two parks were very similar, about $50 million.

Millenium Park is pretty cool, lots of features, a big Gehry Bandstand, a fountain by Jaume Plensa with giant video faces, a big Anish Kapoor scuplture, gardens, plazas and lawns. It is quite a bit larger than Bunker Hill Park will be. Many of the features carry the names of individuals or corporations suggesting that they were able to supplement the budget with donations. Welborne said that was a possibility here, too.

So, the thing is not built yet, public opinion could still sway the decision makers and the donaters to produce a park we will love and use for generations, that will enrich Los Angeles with something more than a grassy patch to be glimpsed from a passing car.

What would draw you the few blocks to the park on a weekend afternoon or summer evening.? What would make it a must do when friends come into town? What would make you proud to show to your relatives Thanksgiving weekend? Look, Los Angeles is growing up.

2005-09-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

juanito da weirdo posts:

Let's start by tearing down the O.J. Courthouse and turning the entire block on the west side of
city hall into park space to complement the mall running up to the Music Center.

Tim adds: The OJ courthouse is just to the left in the picture below. The middle third of that block will be changed from parking to park.

Joel C said...

Both County buildings should go, but the Courthouse is the highest priority. With it gone, the whole park and area will make sense from an urban/pedestrian perspective. If it stays, nothing will be connected.

2005-09-07T18:30:00.000-07:00

This block, between Broadway and Spring, will be in the park.

This is the block between Hill and Broadway, to be re-parked.

photos by Tim

2005-09-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

Open Thread . . .

what about this park Downtown?

2005-08-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

Available Inspiration.

The key to creating a unique experience, a uniquely Los Angeles experience, at the park is to recognize that it is a unique place already. Its features have been removed but the history remains and explains so much about Los Angeles and Downtown.

At one time the dual bore tunnel portal under the hill at First and Hill Streets virtually symbolized the city and its very advanced public transportation system. Some familiar silent film sequences were filmed from the top of the tunnel taking advantage of the perspective.

Ansel Adams took a series of memorable images from the end of Court Street, at the top of Court Flight high above Broadway between First and Temple. The images show City Hall just beyond the old Hall of Records and Courthouse.

In the middle of what is now the Music Center plaza used to be the residential intersection of Court and North Bunker Hill Street. Small houses built in the 1880's probably. One corner held a small apartment building. The sort of place John Fante might have lived.

This history is all within the boundaries of the project. Each of these could generate an authentically Los Angeles experience with honest roots at its actual location.

Imagine a Court Flight recreation topping off at the Ansel Adams Memorial View Platform 85 feet in the air where visitors could compare the current city with the one Adams shot from the same spot in 1940.

Photo links to Los Angeles Public Library online photo collection.

2005-08-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

Court Street .

There was a place, a street which lead along the crest of a hill. The street was lined with fine homes which overlooked the old parts of downtown. At the end of the street was a small parking lot and an apartment building which had stories running down the hill to Broadway down below. A small funny funicular ran up and down the hill next to the apartments. It was called Court Flight and from its top one could look out at city hall which, still, rose above your head beyond the buildings in the intervening block. If you looked left you would see where Broadway ran into a tunnel under another part of the hill just beyond the Hall of Justice. To your right were the enormous retaining walls built by Beaudry a generation before in the first round of hill removal.

Court Street now runs like a ghost high above the park and property we are contemplating. It represents a terrible mistake in city planning. A real place, grown from infancy in response to its situation was erased in favor of a fantasy of efficiency and worldliness.

The hill was razed, completely removed. A neighborhood became a cypher and downtown entered into a dark ages which it is only now emerging from. I don't mean to suggest cause and effect, only that removing the hill was symptomatic of a lack of faith in downtown. We have come to disagree in the meantime.