The Back Bay Fens, often simply referred to as "the Fens," is a parkland and urban wild in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1879. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to serve as a link in the Emerald Necklace park system, the Fens gives its name to the Fenway–Kenmore neighborhood.
History The Fens is a large picturesque park that forms part of Boston's Emerald Necklace. It is essentially an ancient spot of saltwater marshland that has been surrounded by dry land, disconnected from the tides of the Atlantic Ocean, and landscaped into a park with fresh water within. The park is also known as the Fens or the Fenway. The latter term can also refer to either the surrounding neighborhood or the parkway on its southern border.
When Boston was settled in the early 17th century the Shawmut Peninsula on which it was built was connected to Roxbury by a spit of sandy ground called "The Neck." The adjacent area of marshland to the west was a tidal flat of the Charles River. The area became malodorous with time as it became tainted with sewage from the growing settlement.
For the dual purpose of eliminating the health and aesthetic problem created by the polluted bay waters and creating new and valuable Boston real estate, a series of land reclamation projects was begun in 1820 and continued for the rest of the century. The filling of present-day Back Bay was completed by 1882. Filling reached Kenmore Square in 1890 and finished in the Fens in 1900. These projects more than doubled the size of the Shawmut Peninsula.
Olmsted's challenge was to restore the spot of marsh which was preserved into an ecologically healthy place that could also be enjoyed as a recreation area. Combining his renowned landscaping talents with state-of-the-art sanitary engineering, he turned a foul-smelling tidal creek and swamp into "scenery of a winding, brackish creek, within wooded banks; gaining interest from the meandering course of the water."
Olmsted designed the Fens to be flushed by the tides twice daily. However, in 1910 a dam was constructed at Craigie's Bridge, closing the Charles River estuary to the ocean tides and forming a body of freshwater above the dam. Thus, the Fens became a freshwater lagoon regularly accepting storm water from the Charles River Basin.
Soon after, noted landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff, a protégé of Olmsted, added new features such as the Kelleher Rose Garden and employed the more formal landscape style popular in the 1920s and 1930s. An athletic field was also added.
In 1941, at the outbreak of United States involvement in World War II, citizens planted a victory garden within the Fens. While these were common in their era, the one in the Fens is now the last continually operating Victory Garden in existence and today is a much-valued community garden of flowers and vegetables.
In 1983, the Back Bay Fens were designated as a Boston Landmark.
The Emerald Necklace Conservancy is headquartered in the park and operates a year-round visitor center.
Features Entrances
The Back Bay Fens was designed with six entrances, with straight roads and formal lawns that contrasted with the more wild Fens.
The original main entrance was the Beacon Entrance, running from Beacon Street to Boylston Street, bounded by Charlesgate East and Charlesgate West. A crescent-shaped bridge crossed over the Boston and Albany Railroad, connecting the Commonwealth Avenue Mall with the Fens at Gaston Square. The entrance has been wholly modified, beginning with the addition of a bridge for the Ipswich Street line in 1898. A bust of Patrick Collins was added shortly after the mayor's 1905 death. The Charles River Esplanade, completed in 1910, connected with the Beacon Street end of the entrance. The bridge carrying Commonwealth Avenue was replaced with two bridges for separated eastbound and westbound traffic in 1917. Storrow Drive was built along the Esplanade in 1951–55, severing the connection with the Beacon Entrance. The construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension in the 1960s caused the removal of the curved bridge, separating the entrance (now Charlesgate Park) from the rest of the Fens. It was replaced with the Bowker Overpass, which overshadows the remaining parkland; the Muddy River was moved to a small side channel, and the bust was relocated east along the Mall. Isolated from the Fens, Charlesgate was included with the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in its 1978 Boston Landmark designation.
The Boylston entrance is located just southeast of the Beacon Entrance, where Boylston Street meets the Fenway. A statue of John Boyle O'Reilly was added in the triangular center of the junction in 1894. The intersection was rebuilt in 1982, with the statue relocated into the park.
The Westland Entrance is on the east side of the Back Bay Fens, with lawns lining a block of Westland Avenue between the Fenway and Hemenway Street. Westland Gate, a pair of marble monuments with lion's-head fountains feeding horse troughs on the side, frames the entrance. It was designed by Guy Lowell and funded by Ellen Cheney Johnson as a memorial to her husband. Westland Gate was completed around 1905, at which time it replaced the Beacon Entrance as the main entrance to the Fens.
The Huntington Entrance runs along Forsyth Way from Huntington Avenue to the Fenway on the south side of the Fens, just east of the Museum of Fine Arts. As originally laid out by Olmsted, it had twin roadways framing a canal that carried the Stony Brook into the Muddy River, with a bridge carrying the Fenway and paths over the brook. The entrance was rebuilt several times as the Stony Brook was placed in conduits; the canal was filled in 1905 and the bridge demolished.
The Tremont Entrance is a wide formal lawn on the southwest corner of the Fens. It originally ran to the Fenway from Huntington Avenue at Longwood Avenue, in the direction of Tremont Street. Initial plans called for it to continue as a parkway to Tremont Street and over Parker Hill, but high lands prices prevented that design. The Emerald Necklace and its parkways were instead built along the Muddy River, and the Tremont Entrance was only built to Huntington Avenue. The Huntington end of the entrance was "obliterated" by expansion of Boston State College (now occupied by the Massachusetts College of Art and Design) in the 1960s and 1970s. The remaining section north of Tetlow Street is now Evans Way Park. The park and eponymous street were named for Robert Evans, whose wife Marie Antoinette Evans funded a new wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1915 in his memory.
The Longwood Entrance follows the Muddy River from Brookline Avenue at the west end of the Fens. Narrower than the main section of the Fens, the Longwood Entrance connects it to the Riverway. Roadway widenings in the 1950s covered over much of the river between Avenue Louis Pasteur and Brookline Avenue. Phase 1 of the Muddy River Restoration Project, which lasted from 2013 to 2016, daylit this section of the river and restored much of the former Longwood Entrance. The section between the Riverway and Avenue Louis Pasteur (including the former Longwood Entrance) was renamed as Justine Mee Liff Park in 2013, honoring a former Boston Parks and Recreation Commissioner. The park opened in April 2017.
Bridges
Within the main section of the Back Bay Fens (Boylston Street to Avenue Louis Pasteur), three road bridges and two footbridges cross the Muddy River. The road bridges were designed by John C. Olmsted, Frederick Law Omlsted's adopted son. The largest and most significant is the Boylston Street bridge, designed as a "brilliant collaboration" between architect Henry Hobson Richardson (a frequent Olmsted collaborator) and the Olmsted firm. John Olmsted designed the main stone arch span, while Richardson added the tourelles flanking the arch. The foundation and abutments were built in 1880, though Richardson did not submit his design until July 1881. Cape Ann granite was not chosen as the material that December; although Richardson preferred rough boulders, seam-faced rock was used. The arch was constructed in 1883, and the bridge opened in 1884. The bridge was "totally different from any other masonry bridge of its day", and Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge applied its scale and materials to later structures along the Emerald Necklace.
The Agassiz Road bridge, which connects Park Drive and the Fenway through the middle of the Fens, was designed by John Olmsted. It has five small brick arches, with granite abutments and piers supported by spruce piles driven into the marsh. The bridge is faced with Roxbury puddingstone salvaged from old walls in Franklin Park. Construction began in 1887 and was completed in February 1888; parapets were added when the road was paved in 1891.
The Fen Bridge connects Park Drive and the Fenway at the west end of the Fens opposite Avenue Louis Pasteur. Also designed by John Olmsted, it is a masonry arch with a span. Like the Agassiz Road bridge, its abutments are granite supported by spruce piles and the facing is reused Roxbury puddingstone. Construction lasted from February to November 1891; the bridge opened with Audubon Road (now Park Drive) on January 3, 1892. The cost of the bridge was $27,699 (). The triangular median at the south end of the bridge was designated Higginson Circle after Henry Lee Higginson in 1920. The west parapet was removed in the 1950s when the Muddy River was culverted through the Longwood Entrance.
A pair of footbridges are located on opposite sides of the Museum of Fine Arts: one across from Forsyth Way, the other north of Museum Road. They were built in the 1920s (the Forsyth Way bridge replacing an earlier crossing) as part of Arthur Shurcliff's reconfiguration of The Fens, and rebuilt as concrete bridges with granite facing in 1979. A third footbridge at Evans Way existed in the early 20th century, but was gone by 1915. A replacement was designed during the 1920s work and finally built in 1939. The bridge was disassembled in 1979 with the other footbridges, but it was never rebuilt, possibly due to funding shortfalls created by Proposition 2½.
North from Boylston Street in Charlesgate Park, the Muddy River is crossed by Ipswich Street, the Worcester Main Line railroad bridge, the Massachusetts Turnpike, two bridges carrying Commonwealth Avenue, Beacon Street, and Storrow Drive, as well as the elevated Bowker Overpass and its ramps. The west border of the Fens (where it meets the Riverway) is Brookline Avenue, which crosses the Muddy River on a wide bridge completed in 2016.
Former bridges
Along with the Evans Way footbridge, two road bridges are no longer extant. The Fenway originally crossed the Stony Brook canal at the Huntington Entrance on a five-arched bridge designed by the firm of Walker & Kimball. The outer arches were occupied by footpaths, allowing pedestrians to cross under the road. The bridge was faced with red brick ornamented with Milford granite; the archways were faced with patterns of colored glazed bricks. A small iron footbridge crossed the canal just north of the road bridge. The bridges were removed when the canal was filled in 1905; the road bridge was demolished with explosives.
At the Beacon Entrance, a curved bridge crossed the Boston and Albany Railroad (and after the 1890s, Ipswich Street). Its south end connected to Boylston Street at Gaston Square, while its north end met Commonwealth Avenue. Although Richardson sketched designs for truss and suspension bridges, Frederick Olmsted insisted on a plate girder bridge; Richardson's contribution was ultimately the design of the decorative metalwork and lamps. The bridge was constructed in 1880–83. It was demolished around 1962 during construction of the Turnpike Extension and replaced by the Bowker Overpass, though the south abutment remains extant.
Structures