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| The Spamming of Bostonby Jane Holtz Kay
Call it the spamming of Boston. Not only the Library, but dozens of Boston's premier architectural and historic sites are on the auction block for an army of "information" (and we use the word loosely) panels scheduled for Boston's sidewalks and spaces. As the German profiteers of the Wall USA company slather the city's historic landscape with this marketable litter--technically called the Boston Street Furniture Program--the advertisements featuring the film "Dumb and Dumberer" unwittingly provide an apt description of the deal. For a relatively small sum, the corporation has launched phase one of a 20-year contract program of shameless commercials and pedestrian clutter including:
Add the forthcoming 250 bus stop shelters and ll information kiosks consisting of large rounded message-bearers, and the visual litter grows and grows. Even now, some crowd out pedestrian passage, and one map even manages to mislabel parts of the South End! The gaudy illumination of others mars the soft glow of evening streets. In the name of economy (what else?), our "Preservation Mayor" has accepted a litter of artifacts whose assault on the cityscape destroys vintage vistas and dominates historic neighborhoods and architectural districts--take, for example, the Nissan ad flags flapping in front of Back Bay Station, obscuring the entry. It's not just the gaudy advertisements; their terrible placement defines Boston's clueless posturing. A somewhat earlier Nissan billboard above the Copley Square subway declaring "the best way to see the city is not underground" was a portent. (Was this an MBTA death wish or just mismanagement?) This is how the city slides. Not with a bang but inch by inch, row by row. With nary a word of demurral from the Landmark Commission, the number of these backlit assaults can only go up, the landscape down. It is typical of these financially-challenged, short-sighted times that the city plays the naming game, peddling the labels for parks and public spaces to corporations. But worse. It isn't enough to see today's advertising banners on street lights, or to walk on Nike ads painted on the floor of the subway at Marathon time; this "street furniture" program will overrun our daytime streets and flood our nights with backlit glitz that dulls the evening streets and the stars. To be sure, it isn't the first incursion in the city. Spaces already littered with news boxes, illegal signage, and sandwich boards make walking awkward and views ugly. In the name of freedom of speech, schlock marketing has already managed to make picture-perfect places (the Public Garden) and public walkways (State Street) into litter collectors for "newspaper" boxes. Forty-plus such boxes, many empty, sit before the Back Bay Station. Do we really need more? No matter that Bostonians, from tourist industry advocates to neighborhood activists, argue "what price beauty?" The modest scale of the payments ($750,000 as first installment) and the failure of the Mayor and Landmarks Commission to say "no" reflect not only city chief's disrespect for our town but the commission's continuing unwillingness to protect the urban landscape at any scale. High art and low, upscale historic architecture and shared historic sites (such as the Gaiety Theater) alike, are up for grabs by the privatizers and the privateers.
Andy Singer, a cartoonist friend of mine, recently drew a picture titled "The Modern University." It features the "Exxon Science Building," the "David Jones 'caffeine free Diet Coke' Endowed Chair," and the "AOL-Time Warner Library." Maybe he and the mayor are on to something. Life seems to be imitating art in these parts. But to those who care about their heritage, it's no laughing matter on this city's streets.
Jane Holtz Kay is architecture/planning critic for The Nation and author of Asphalt Nation, Preserving New England and Lost Boston. For more on the subject see www.janeholtzkay.com. |
"Everything's pink and blue and weird at first," says the bus shelter sign standing just outside the Boston Public Library. "Weird," indeed, it seems, as you survey this "Yahoo personals" advertisement outside this stunning edifice by McKim, Mead, and White at Copley Square, as well as other prize sites across the city. An onslaught of kiosks, toilets, shelters, and informational signs, plastered with blatant billboards, are turning the city streets into an advertisers' alley.
Street furniture defenders argue for the shelters' sleek modernity. And, no question, such artifacts unadorned elsewhere can be transparent and attractive. But the slathering of commercial messages undoes their elegance and subsumes their service to Madison Avenue messages. "Pink and blue and weird" won't do much for the paying customers here to see the staple brick and sizzle of the real city, and even less for those who care about its past. The sell-out to spam, not to mention pedestrian access, will degrade the days and nights of those who live here full time.