Emerald Necklace

So I wanna kinda go back a little bit into its expansion because the, again, for a lot of folks who are even, who are still around, this was a real deep wound and a real betrayal, I think, for a lot of people.

East Boston used to be home to one of the really beautiful beaches and parks that Frederick Law Olmsted, who's a very famous park developer, he created the Emerald Necklace in Boston.

The Wood Island Park that I'm referring to in East Boston was really the sort of endpoint that he believed was sort of, you know, this really great endpoint of the Emerald Necklace.

And it was a very popular beach for working class folks, again, who, and neighborhood people to, to go to.

And there was a Neptune Road you could drive down, and if you look at the old pictures, it had the really big classic triple deckers up there and the big trees sort of overlaying it, and it was considered one of the prettiest drives to the best location, um, in the area, in a neighborhood that did not at the time have very many parks.

but it's leased to Harvard University, which has always directed the Arboretum's activities.

The design for the landscape, I want to add, was the work of one of my heroes, Frederick Law Olmsted, who, of course, was a designer of a lot of great park systems, including Boston's Emerald Necklace.

Anyway, that's a remarkable beginning.

Well, this is