Boston molasses flood civil suit install#

The neighborhood seemed to really like it.” “My idea actually got a good amount of traction,” Webb says. The proposal included two small pools, a fountain, and a wall listing the names of the flood victims. Webb knew the flood’s 100th anniversary was coming up, and drafted designs for a park-like setting where a dome with the same dimensions of the original molasses tank would be turned on its side, allowing people to walk under it. He was answering a request for ideas from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and the then-Boston Redevelopment Authority, which sought to find new ways to use land along I-93. It’s kind of sad that’s all there is.”īack in 2014, Webb proposed installing a molasses flood memorial along the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. You know what I mean? It’s that small and unnoticeable. “It almost looks like a park sign, like ‘Please clean up your trash,’ or something. “It’s more like a street sign that’s been nailed into a wall that’s about knee-high as you enter this playground,” says Bryan Webb, a civil engineer working in Cambridge. And until then, we’re stuck with the little green sign. Liz Nelson Weaver, the group’s signage committee team lead, estimates it will be installed near the park’s Little League fields in late 2019 or early 2020. It will feature a more detailed history of the molasses flood, along with photos and a small map.

Boston molasses flood civil suit install#

As part of a years-long initiative to install more interpretive signage along Boston’s 43-mile Harborwalk, volunteers are creating a 32-inch by 24-inch sign in Langone Park. A group called the Friends of the Harborwalk has received approval from the city to put up a larger sign. But I think it’s great that it’s there,” says Alex Goldfeld, president of the North End Historical Society. “I have heard people say that they’ve had a difficult time locating the plaque, especially because it’s not at eye level. Because for about 75 years, there was nothing. In fact, I’m also thankful it exists-and grateful to the Bostonian Society for installing the first-ever plaque there. “I guess I’m thankful there’s something.”

“It certainly doesn’t do the tragedy justice,” says Stephen Puleo , author of Dark Tide, the essential text chronicling the Great Boston Molasses Flood. They placed it on a squat stone wall along the perimeter of the North End’s Langone Park, during a time when the Society was installing historical markers all over the city. The sign was installed by the Bostonian Society, a preservation organization that maintains the Old State House, in the mid-1990s. “Best to do your research before going as there is no local information on site other than the plaque.” “This is an often forgotten but very interesting piece of Boston history,” reads another. “Insufficient plaque for the sheer tragedy that occurred here,” reads one Google review for the marker, which boasts a rating of 4.5 stars. But there isn’t enough room to communicate all of that on a small green sign. Beyond the havoc it wreaked, the tragedy resulted in one of the state’s first class-action lawsuits, and set precedence for modern zoning laws. Two children home from school during lunchtime perished while gathering firewood. The flood hit the working-class immigrants of the neighborhood hardest, killing and injuring people like wagon drivers, paving yard laborers, blacksmiths, and unsuspecting victims inside their homes. Pieces of the exploded molasses tank knocked down elevated train tracks and crushed buildings. People caught in the clutches of the wave suffocated to death. A molasses tank explosion that sent a 15-foot-high wave of sugary sludge sweeping through Boston sounds comical, and to some, a little far-fetched. The story of the Great Boston Molasses Flood has long captured the imaginations of history lovers across the country. And if I wasn’t looking for it, I may not have seen it at all. At the moment, the small sign is the only marker honoring the Great Boston Molasses Flood, a tragedy that killed 21 people in the North End. “Boston Molasses Flood” it read in white lettering, followed by a three-sentence description of the event that occurred 100 years ago this month. I scanned the street until I found what I’ve never once spotted before: a small green sign on a stone wall, positioned about a foot or so off the ground. I was inspecting the sidewalk closely, searching for a plaque marking one of the craziest-and deadliest-disasters in Boston’s history. While strolling along Commercial Street on a recent January morning, I kept my head down.