Columbia Point, Boston
Columbia Point, in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts sits on a peninsula jutting out from the mainland of eastern Dorchester into the bay. Old Harbor Park is on the north side, adjacent to Old Harbor, part of Dorchester Bay. The peninsula is primarily occupied by Harbor Point, the University of Massachusetts Boston, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, and a complex at the former Bayside Expo Center, Boston College High School, and the Massachusetts Archives. The Boston Harborwalk follows the entire coastline. History. 17th–19th  centuries. In Dorchester, Columbia Point was the landing place for Puritan settlers in the early 1600s. The Native Americans called it "Mattaponnock". The community was, in the 17th and 18th centuries, and through to the mid-19th century, a calf pasture: a place where nearby Dorchester residents took their calves for grazing. It was largely an uninhabited marshland on the Dorchester peninsula. Its size was originally . Many landfills, subsequent to that time, have enlarged the land size to in the 20th century. In 1845, the Old Colony Railroad ran through the area and connected Boston and Plymouth, Massachusetts. The station was  originally called Crescent Avenue or Crescent Avenue Depot as an Old Colony Railroad station, then called Columbia until December 1, 1982, and then again changed to JFK/UMass. It is an MBTA rail line station for both the subway and commuter rail line. In the 1880s, the calf pasture was used as a Boston sewer line and pumping station, known as the Calf Pasture Pumping Station Complex. This large pumping station still stands and in its time was a model for treating sewage and helping to promote cleaner and healthier urban living conditions. It pumped waste to a remote treatment  facility on Moon Island in Boston Harbor, and served as a model for other systems worldwide. This system remained in active use and was the Boston Sewer system's headworks, handling all of the city's sewage, until 1968 when a new treatment facility was built on Deer Island. The pumping station is also architecturally significant as a Richardsonian Romanesque designed by the then Boston city architect, George Clough. It is also the only remaining 19th century building on Columbia Point and is in the National Register of Historic Places. 1900s–50s. Land-filling had caused the creation of Columbus Park  on the peninsula and what was then called “Day Boulevard”, now Morrissey Boulevard, by 1934. There was a huge trash dump on the peninsula which turned into more landfill for other use. During World War II, small barracks were built on this landfill for some prisoners of war. After the war, these were re-used for the Columbia Point Veterans Village. Also, in 1950, Boston College High School relocated from the South End of Boston to its present home on Morrissey Boulevard. More landfill on the north shore of the peninsula had been created to build the Columbia Point Development  housing projects which were the largest in Boston and New England and built by the Boston Housing Authority. The area was now known as Columbia Point. The Columbia Point Development was completed in 1954 and had 1,500 apartments in 27 nearly identical three- and seven-story buildings. When the Columbia Point public housing project opened in 1953, its initial demographics reflected that of the city's population: white tenants made up more than 90 percent of the population while black families made up approximately 7 percent. All reports at the time indicated that racial and ethnic tensions were minimal, that  there were high levels of social trust within the neighborhood, and by 1955, had a long waiting list of families wanting to become new tenants. Other infrastructure was added, including public schools. The MBTA rapid transit stop was called Columbia, later to be known as the JFK/UMass stop on the Red Line. 1960s. In the 1960s, there was a movement of community residents from the Columbia Point housing projects to get the city dump, which was located on the peninsula, permanently closed. They were able to get attorney F. Lee Bailey interested and to represent them. Eventually, the city  dump closed in 1962 and the private dump, called Mile Road Dump, was ordered closed in February 1963 by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Under the tenure of Boston Mayor John F. Collins (1960–1968), the Boston Housing Authority segregated the public housing developments in the city of Boston by moving black families into the development at Columbia Point while reserving developments in South Boston (such as West Broadway Housing Development) for white families who started refusing assignment to the Columbia Point project by the early 1960s. In 1965, the first community health center in the United States was built on Columbia  Point, the Columbia Point Community Health Center, and was founded by two Tufts University medical doctors, Jack Geiger and Count Gibson. Geiger had previously studied the first community health centers and the principles of Community Oriented Primary Care with Sidney Kark and colleagues while serving as a medical student in rural Natal, South Africa. The health center was funded by the federal government's Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and was needed to serve the community living in the Columbia Point Public Housing Projects which was on the isolated peninsula far away from Boston City Hospital. The center still stands  and is in use today as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center on Mount Vernon Street. In 2012, due to shifting demographics, Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center reduced its primary care hours and focus, moving its primary care patients to the Neponset Health Center in the Neponset neighborhood of Dorchester. 1970s–80s. In 1974, the University of Massachusetts Boston campus was opened on the tip of Columbia Point, and called the Harbor Campus. In 1977, after an unsuccessful bid to have the John F. Kennedy Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts close to Harvard University, ground was broken at the tip of Columbia  Point for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, designed by the architect I. M. Pei, and dedicated on October 20, 1979. The Columbia Point Housing Projects fell into disrepair and became quite dangerous. By the mid-1970s the Boston Housing Authority was under community, political, and legal pressure and orders to renovate and cure the living conditions at the site. By the 1980s only 300 families lived there and the buildings were falling apart. Eventually, realizing the situation was almost hopeless, in 1984 the City of Boston turned over the management, cleanup, planning and revitalization of the property to  a private development firm Corcoran-Mullins-Jennison. A 99-year lease from the city of Boston was granted to and co-owned by the (Harbor Point Apartments, L.P.) Harbor Point Community Task Force (tenants' elected board) and a partnership of developers led by Corcoran-Mullins-Jennison Corporation. Construction on the new Harbor Point development began in 1986. During a recession in 1988 with a slump in the housing market, deficits and expensive loans ($175 million in state and federal loans), the Harbor Point development came close to bankruptcy. Chevron Corporation rescued the redevelopment by investing $34 million, with  Chevron taking advantage of $38 million in corporate tax credits and depreciation established by Congress in 1986 encouraging investment in low-income housing. The renovations to the newly mixed-income complex, renamed Harbor Point Apartments, with 1200 apartments (two thirds market-rate and one third subsidized) were completed in 1990. It has received praise for its planning and revitalization from the Urban Land Institute, the FIABCI award, a gold medal with the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence in 1993, and was used as a model for the federal HUD HOPE VI public housing revitalization program begun in 1992 . 2000s. In 2008, plans and proposals were unveiled and presented to public community hearings by the Corcoran-Jennison Company to redevelop the Bayside Exposition Center site on the Columbia Point peninsula into a mixed use village of storefronts and residences, called "Bayside on the Point". There were serious problems with the ongoing development plans, since the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority had planned to build a sewage odor control facility just adjacent to the development site. However, in 2009, the Bayside Expo Center property was lost in a foreclosure on Corcoran-Jennison to a Florida-based real estate firm, LNR/CMAT , who bought it. Soon after, the University of Massachusetts Boston bought the property from them to build future campus facilities. In February 2010, The University of Massachusetts Boston in conjunction with the University of Massachusetts Building Authority formally signed the purchase papers and bought the Bayside Expo property for $18.7 million. In 2010, the university plans to break ground and start building a new science laboratory and other facilities. In late 2012, a developer, Synergy Investments, announced plans to put up a residential building at 25 Morrissey Blvd. right next to the JFK/UMass train stop, on an abandoned  lot, to further develop the foot of the Columbia Point peninsula. Also, in 2012, developer Corcoran-Jennison Companies announced plans to build another residential building on Mt. Vernon Street on the site of the office complex next to the former Bayside Expo. In 2014, the Boston Redevelopment Authority began a study on redeveloping the main road on Columbia Point, Mount Vernon Street, in conjunction with the Master Plan for the peninsula. On March 30, 2015 the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate was dedicated by President Barack Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden in attendance. The Institute  has been open to the public since March 31, 2015. In 2018, discussions opened up as to what to do with the two Boston Public schools on Columbia Point: Dever Elementary School, which was in receivership, and the McCormack Middle School. There were plans for a high school to be placed there. In Fall 2018, UMASS/Boston opened up two new high-rise student dormitory buildings on the campus next to the Athletic Complex. These were the first on-campus dormitories built at UMASS/Boston. In 2019, The Bayside Expo site now leveled and owned by UMASS/Boston is leased  out for 99 years for development to Accordia Partners for $235 million. In October 2018, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced a comprehensive climate change adaptation proposal to protect the Boston Harbor coastline from coastal flooding, and in October 2020, the Walsh administration released a 174-page climate change adaptation report for the Boston Harbor coastline in Dorchester with a section on Columbia Point and Morrissey Boulevard. In March 2022, the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) approved a proposal by the Dorchester Boys & Girls Club and the Martin Richard Foundation to construct a 3-story field house on Mount Vernon  Street. Timeline. Source: Lawton, University of Massachusetts Boston, research materials