Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands, with Dr Pavla Šimková (episode 239)

Transcript

Music

Jake-:
[0:04] Welcome to hub history where we go far beyond the freedom Trail. To share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 2 39 Urban Archipelago and environmental history of the boston harbor Islands with dr Pavla Simkova,
Hi, I’m jake in just a few moments, I’m going to be joined by dr Pavla Simkova author of a terrific new book about the boston Harbor Islands.
Long time listeners will know that I’m a huge fan of the Harbor Islands. Urban archipelago explores how the city of boston transformed the islands on its doorstep time and time and time again as the city’s needs shifted over the centuries,
from a valuable site for farming to a worthless dumping ground.
For all of boston’s problems, to a wilderness of history and romance, to an urban park.
These many transformations reflect a changing city.
Pavla and I will discuss how boston initially embraced the islands, later turned its back on the harbor and more recently still has embraced them both again,
you’ll hear us argue about the 19 sixties plan to hold a bicentennial expo on the harbor and the role of Storyteller Edward Rowe Snow in promoting the harbor Islands to a new generation and you’ll hear us agree about the beauty and importance of this urban asset.

[1:22] But before we talk about the boston Harbor Islands.
I’d like to just pause and thank lisa W our latest patreon sponsor.
I’d also like to give a special shout out to lisa B from N. Y. C.
A longtime sponsor is working hard to share the black history of the Lower East side with their neighbors and who I recently had the opportunity to meet in person for the first time.
Both leases and listeners like them make hub history possible by giving $2, or even $10 a month to cover the expenses involved in making the show.
Their support allows us to purchase access to research databases, pay for audio processing tools to clean up how I and our guests sound and get access to web hosting and security and podcast media hosting to deliver the show to you the listener.
If you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, just go to patreon dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support us link and thanks again to all our new and existing sponsors.

[2:25] Dr Pavla Simkova is a historian and postdoctoral researcher at the Rachel Carson center at the University of Munich.
The Carson center is an interdisciplinary school focusing on the environmental humanities, from history to geography to anthropology to literary criticism, drawing fellows from around the world in the past.
She’s researched the environmental history of bohemia and her current project investigates the transnational environmental history of the Bavarian forest today. However, she’s joining me to talk about one of my favorite places, the boston harbor Islands.
Her book urban archipelago and environmental history of the boston harbor Islands follows the transformation of those islands from the time of colonization to its use as a dumping ground in the 19th century,
to a series of 20th century reinventions that left boston with a national park on its doorstep.
Pavla joins me now from Germany.

Jake:
[3:21] Pavla Welcome to the show. I have to say I’m really excited for our conversation today. I love the boston Harbor Islands. Peddocks Island is one of my favorite summertime destinations with my family.
So when you mass press asked if I’d like to take a look at your new book, I just jumped at the chance said yes immediately.
And before I get into the details of the book, I just like to ask reading your, your bio. It sounds like you’ve studied in, in both Germany and the Czech Republic. So how did you wind up with the boston Harbor Islands as a topic for your research?

Pavla:
[3:54] I guess that’s a fair question. You’re perfectly right.
I have no personal ties to boston as you can tell by my name and my accent, I’m not even from the United States at the beginning was really simple curiosity because I majored in american studies, american history,
And I came to Boston First in 2015 I think for an entirely different project.
Then I begin reading these these newspaper stories about spectacle island which at that time 10 years prior has been and this tremendous makeover and from the land for them to a park.
And I became, I became intrigued like because there are so there’s so much to unravel really,
why would anyone think that it’s a good idea to put a landfill in Ireland in the first place,
and there was so much money invested to to convert it into a park, there was millions of dollars so it must be, it must be important.
And also as I, as I started looking into this, there are hundreds and hundreds of articles about this. So I was wondering why does everyone care so much?
How is this place so important?

Jake:
[5:05] Well, you you also say early in the book that Spectacle Island in particular is a good stand in for all of the harbor islands. What what makes you think it’s such a good sort of a representative example of the islands?

Pavla:
[5:18] Well, because in my view it it really captures the the arc of development that in one way or another all the islands went through the transformation of Spectacle is very much in your face.
You may think that the other islands have been much less affected or look pristine and haven’t been changed so much.
But in fact you’d be hard pressed to find just just one island in the harbor that hasn’t been changed by by the influence of boston.
So Spectacle is basically a place where you can observe this development in a condensed form.
So to say that went through Most of the of the historical developments have affected the islands over time.
So, so I thought it was, it was a good place to delve deep into, to capture the wide variety of what’s been happening on the islands for the past 400 years.

Jake:
[6:14] Coming from a place of ignorance, I guess I only really study boston. Have we transformed our natural landscape here, the islands and the surrounding land more than other cities?
Was this a unique case? Or is this representative of other cities around the world?

Pavla:
[6:30] As far as the hub islands are concerned and bus is fairly typical in fact along the coast of North America.
There’s, there’s many examples of cities that have treated their harbor islands in much the same way as boston did a case in point.
Here is is new york city which in its harbor also has, has a few dozen islands in fact and has has used them over its history in much the same way as boston has,
as landfills, as quarantine hospitals and nowadays as a recreation area.

Jake:
[7:02] It’s funny, I was scrambling to finish your book over the weekend and I was I was in new york city over the weekend and I was reading the epilogue of your book on the train.
As the train went through Pelham Bay and past Pelham Island.
That was really inappropriate place to be reading that because you did draw some parallels between New york harbor and its islands and and boston, which I just happened to stumble across at the perfect moment.

Pavla:
[7:15] Oh, that’s funny.

[7:26] Yeah. Also another example of the Baltimore, which had two islands or three and and its harbor where they’ve connected these islands into one.
It was, it used to be hard island and Miller Island. Now it’s hard Miller Island and it’s a state park.
This is very much the ark that the Bosnia violence went through from work to play. So to say.

Jake:
[7:50] It’s good to know that we can use the harbor island to talk a little bit more generally about what you call urban islands.
What what did you mean by that specific turn of phrase that the boston harbor islands were urban islands?

Pavla:
[8:02] Well, first of all I have to say that I’m not the only one to come up with the term.
I thought I was the one, but then I kept reading and realized other people had had the same idea some of them before me said.

Jake:
[8:13] Mhm.

Pavla:
[8:15] But I think it plays on the one hand, on, on this traditional imagery of violence that has somehow isolated remote places,
and contrast this imagery with its opposite the urban or the city.

Jake:
[8:31] Well, I thought it was interesting, you’re pointing out how remote or apart from the city um the harbor Island seem when the harbor, many of the harbor islands are closer to the statehouse Dome than some of the outlying neighborhoods like,
where I live here in Hyde Park is quite a bit further from the boston waterfront than a Spectacle island or someplace like that.
How did that sense of otherness begin? What caused people to think of the harbor islands as something separate from the city.

Pavla:
[9:00] This is this is actually at the heart of my research. How is it that we perceive islands as so different or as so apart when in in geographical terms they’re not?
Of course it has to do with the water expanse in the first place.
Other as I show in the beginning of my book, when I’m talking about the colonial period and hasn’t always been so,
Right at the beginning, when Boston starts in the 17th century, water isn’t so much understood as a separation or rather as a connection.

Jake:
[9:34] Is it as simple as things like train travel, making it easier to travel on land than water for a lot of people?

Pavla:
[9:40] That’s one of the reasons, definitely. And also like in the case of Boston in the 19th century is also a time when uh, when Bostonians start looking toward the mainland and look toward the harbor so much anymore,
boston support is still very important, but it’s no longer the only place where the money comes from and where the economic activities.
And also boston is a city starts to expand on the mainland explosively.
So the harbor stops being so much of a focused and also the shipping traffic stops being the only way you can move about.
Also, it probably has to do with the tradition of cultural imagination, how we imagine islands to be.
And of course it has to do with the literature we read. And I think we’ll get into that when we talk about Edward Rowe Snow.

Jake:
[10:34] Yeah. Yes, absolutely. So just thinking about how people have imagined the islands at different times in the first chapter, you use uh,
Richard Mather Cotton, Mather’s grandfather as sort of a an example of the puritan migration period.
And he arrives into boston Harbor on the heels of the Great 16 35 New England Hurricane.
How would his experience as somebody who’s coming to settle here have been different than either the massachusetts people,
or even the early french or english or Portuguese fishermen who are doing seasonal visits to fishing camps in the islands.

Pavla:
[11:13] So starting with the Massachusetts paper, it’s actually interesting how the way they used the islands then mirrors the 19th century weighs the islands would be used because they don’t use them year round.
They use them seasonally as very much that they’re very much fringe uses really Because they use them as a seasonal hunting camps.
So they would use them for harvesting clams and marine animals.
I think there are a few agricultural hamlets on on several of the larger islands, but those are in the immediate pre contact periods in the 10,000 years before that these islands, uh,
really very much the periphery of the world of the native americans that lived there.
As for the fishing colonies from previous waves of european colonization.
These are very much one purpose users. So, so the fringe and prodigies would just come and establish fishing colonies and then expect to go back.
But that’s not what the English do. The English settlers, the puritans who arrived in the, in the early 17th century.
These are people who actually planned settling here and beginning a new life for them.

[12:30] The islands are resources that help support their new settlements.
They come into boston harbor um see the islands as places that can provide them with work for building with stone and gravel with,
posture for for the cattle.

[12:53] And with agricultural land because this original peninsula is really tiny,
and there’s almost no good agricultural land available.
So in order to support a population in the towns, people need to look around and the mainland isn’t really an option.

[13:14] The mainland of course was saddled before the periods came, but,
in the decades before boston itself was settled, the diseases that the previous settled waves brought into New England have almost wiped out the native population.
So the mainland now starts overgrown with vegetation again, and it seems like this really Impenetrable and and uninviting place where you can’t move around and,
I wouldn’t want to go really.
So what to do is turn towards the water towards the sea and the islands are really easily accessible because the water is the connecting medium and this time.

Jake:
[14:00] It was funny your your note that agriculture was very important on islands all up and down the north american coast. And he said I think there were 11 different hog islands and almost as many cow and calf islands which I hadn’t really realized.

Pavla:
[14:12] In fact, in fact there used to be to hook islands in boston harbor itself.

Jake:
[14:16] Except you can’t sell condos on an island named Hog Island. So now that Spinnaker Island now right yeah. How does that agricultural use very early on start to change the nature of the harbor islands.

Pavla:
[14:22] Yes, exactly.

[14:32] So first of all you come down the trees of the Islamic, that’s, that’s actually the major change in the agricultural sense.

Jake:
[14:35] Mhm.

[14:39] There would have been a mature forest when the puritan fleet arrived.

Pavla:
[14:43] It’s difficult to tell because there’s definitely were trees, but,
if on all the islands or if on some of them they’ve been cut, there are definitely accounts of townspeople going out on the islands to harvest woods at least on some of the islands, the trees have been preserved,
but after a few years of the puritans, not anymore,
losing the tree cover exposes the islands to erosion.
Of course, another factor that that supports that is the growth of harvesting some of the islands like Deer Island.
This is as much as 60 acres erosion and Gretel harvesting.
So it actually slides into the water and in the case of Deer Island into the main chicken child, which of course is a problem and and mixes made Used to be actually substantial island of I think 12 acres.
And today, you know it’s, it’s just a show, it’s, it’s on the visibility, low tide with a big knowledge.

Jake:
[15:45] Was that being used as ship’s ballast or what was the gravel being used for at that point?

Pavla:
[15:49] The most important use would be able to be a ship’s ballast ships that would come to boston would according to the current, need word theater lose balanced and leave european stones in boston or or take on ballast and,
either help themselves to it or buy it from people who would basically start selling the islands for ship ship ballasts,
I think that that’s what happened on Spectacle actually, people who never owned the island would go there illicitly, harvest gravel and sell it to the ships.

Jake:
[16:26] Well, that’s an interesting point. You raised that at a time at least the harbor islands, or most of the harbor islands, were seen as part of the commons. And we think about New England Town commons as being sort of a grassy space in the middle of town.
But In 1631, the Harbour Islands were common land. How did the island’s end up becoming held in common? And then how are they divided between the different towns around Boston Harbor?

Pavla:
[16:53] Puritan settlers, carrying the idea of commonly is land from their communities in Old England, so to speak, and it was really governed by the, by the simple ideas.
These islands had resources that everyone in boston needed, and since they understood themselves as a close knit community,
which acted together, which had this ideal of not every individual for himself but then acting as a body,
and then the idea of a common land or common pasture that wasn’t really foreign to them.

Jake:
[17:32] Thanks for pointing that out. I always think it’s funny there’s a certain school of thought here in the states, that the early settlers, early english settlers were sort of this proto libertarian capitalist, every man for himself.
Hewing settlement out of the wilderness with my own two hands. And at least here in New England, that that was very much not the pattern.
It’s good to be reminded of that every so often.
You also you pointed out in the book that partly because of the constraints of being on a small peninsula, like you said,
while other towns in the Bay colony stay agricultural for a long time, boston pretty quickly pivots to being an important center for merchants and commerce.
And then for a long time is the premier english ports in North America.
And during this period they do something called dwarfing out.
So can you explain what that means and and sort of how it changed the shape of the city.

Pavla:
[18:31] Oh this is my favorite part, boston is a really bad place for an agricultural colony.
The original Showman Peninsula is really small and also quite marshy.
So you can’t really farm it very well.
Um later on, people would solve this by farming the mainland and in these early days that’s not much of an option.
So what the puritans needs do as they turned to the sea and start this history of boston is an important part really.
And as the principal part of the colonies to accommodate the shipping, they start transforming and tweaking and changing the harbor to sue these shipping needs,
which in this period are fairly undemanding or fairly simple because the ships aren’t so big,
so simple as that.
But still you need places for the ships to berth.
So both merchants start building these dwarves, the most impressive of them which still stands today, although it’s not as impressive as it used to be. As long wharf.

[19:46] Have you come to boston? And the 18th century you would have been much more in awe of one more than you you would be today because,
boston throughout its history continued to, to expand into the harbor.
Actually. Long war for the extent one third of a mile into the harbor.
This was the gateway to boston.

Jake:
[20:11] So we have this very impressive gateway to boston in long war facing the harbor. Can you contrast that to what somebody would have seen if they were coming to boston by land in the same period to boston neck?

Pavla:
[20:26] A long war or boston harbor itself is really the front gate, the boston then coming from the other side from the mainland would be basically going through the back door.
You can’t imagine the entrance to boston idea or the connection of boston to the mainland as it is now Because Boston is still a peninsula in a way.
But as a priest to anyone, bad death wasn’t the case in the 17th century. So it was only connected to the mainland through this through this very narrow stretch of land called boston neck.
So so this neck was also so marshy and it would flood during storms.
So it was it was really an unpleasant way of of of getting into busting and during storms or high tide. It could be life threatening.
It wasn’t exactly the most representative part of town located there. So you would you would pass some cow pastures known today as boston common.
There was also the I think the town gallows. Yeah.
So there’s this very pronounced orientation toward the harbor that says the part of town that really matters.

Jake:
[21:40] Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned some of those sort of secondary uses along boston neck like using it for the gallows, because boston has always been looking for places to put undesirable institutions.
So through a lot of the 18th century, boston neck and the west End in Beacon Hill were pretty undeveloped, pastoral ridge,
rope walks, and then you would have things like the almshouse, the jail, the workhouse.
But eventually boston is going to try to grow into its Beacon Hill and west End.
What does the town do with some of those institutions as the town grows up in the late 18th and especially into the 19th century.

Pavla:
[22:25] First are pushed around the boston peninsula.

Jake:
[22:28] Which is growing at that point that we’ve already started some landfill around the turn of the 19th century, right with the the mill pond and the town cove.

Pavla:
[22:36] Yeah, that’s right. Although the town dog is really quite small today, it’s next to Quincy market,
the mill ponds which is located between the north and the west end is slightly larger but still it’s not so huge compared to to later development.
Yes, boston is growing but the spatial footprint is not growing as fast as the population, the population, I would close the peninsula, so to speak.
So these these undesirable situations and businesses are first pushed to the corners of the peninsula that are still solid empty In the 19th century.
I think at the beginning of the 19th century they get pushed to South Boston which is a new neighborhood by the time built partly on the peninsula called Dorchester Neck,
and on what used to be a real large expanse of tidal flats.
I think South Boston is the part of town where the existing land and the mainland are about 5050.
The amount of land making boston has been mind blowing all over its history really.

Jake:
[24:02] Yeah, people think of the Back Bay. It’s the Back Bay is just one of many land making projects, from East boston to Southie to the flats of Beacon Hill. We love to make, make new land here.
So what are some of those institutions that are getting relocated into South Boston and and out of the core as we start into the late 18th or early 19th century?

Pavla:
[24:26] So it’s mostly public institutions for people who are socially outcast institutions, for the poor, such as,
arms houses, work houses and persons of various kinds for juvenile delinquents.
There’s also the quarantine hospital which is also one of the institutions that’s been pushed around in boston serving space.
It starts on one of the, one of the hills the boston used to have and no longer has this, this particular one was on Fort Hill than boston then started using the harbor islands for this purpose.
So the first unofficial quarantine is apple Island. And if that sounds unfamiliar, and it’s because the island no longer exists, it’s it’s now under Logan airport.

Jake:
[25:20] One of several that are now under Logan airport?

Pavla:
[25:21] One of several. Yes, one of, I think three, the largest of them is is what was Governors Island?

Jake:
[25:28] What does this effort to move some of the city’s institutions that serve the poor or the indigent or people who were, at the time considered insane to the Harbor Islands?
What can that tell us about boston’s changing relationship with the Harbor Islands as we get into the mid 19th century?

Pavla:
[25:47] Boston in the 19th century is on the one hand, a seaport first and foremost.
And also on the other hand, the economic activity is relocated to to the manufacturing towns such as Lowell.
Of course it ceases to be a community where agriculture plays any significant role.
So the agricultural users of the islands are no longer needed To understand this.
Who we need to, we need to bear in mind and how much boston grows during the 19th century.
Because this of course is the time of mass immigration,
In 1810, Boston has 34,000 people, 80 years later in 1890 in his half a million.

Jake:
[26:40] That’s mind boggling.

Pavla:
[26:41] And it is, these people require space that the original boston on the peninsula just doesn’t have.
So, so what this this development brings about is also this uh, stronger sense of, of a hierarchy of places,
like that is that there are places in the city that are nice and and good and healthy in these places.
You don’t want the businesses that are, may be necessary for the functioning of the city but are really unpleasant to be around.
So you’re, you’re looking for for places to to put this.
These should be places which are somehow separated from the habitation and in this case they chose falls on hard islands.

Jake:
[27:31] What are some examples of nuisance industries, I think you call them in the book? What industries would be they’d be looking to relocate onto the harbor islands at that time?

Pavla:
[27:39] It’s actually not me who is calling them nuisances. But this is the official designation of boston’s board of health.
I can’t tell you how many times I read these businesses being nuisances and unfit to so, so this is, this is actually the official way they talk about them.
There’s businesses that process waste and waste of all kinds like garbage.
Also dead animals is, the 19th century cities is populated by numbers of animals that are probably unimaginable for us today, especially horses.

Jake:
[28:20] That’s just something I don’t think of. When I picture life in boston in the past, I think of the horse manure in the streets, but I don’t think of the dead animals that somebody has to find a way to deal with And a horse is a very large dead animal.

Pavla:
[28:34] Also in sheer numbers. So in the 1880s there would have been 14,000 horses in Boston, so one horse to every 26 people.

Jake:
[28:48] But horses wouldn’t have been the only livestock in the city. What other animals would people have been keeping.

Pavla:
[28:53] Surprisingly also cows. It was also several 1000.
It’s probably mostly in the outline industries to be heard. But still these large animals aren’t necessarily think about when you want to think about the cityscape.

Jake:
[29:06] Around that same time, 1881 used as an example that there would have been between the human waste, which was its own major problem to deal with animal waste, other sorts of terrible materials.
10 million cubic feet of waste, which sounds like a lot.
I have no scope of what 10 million cubic feet of waste would look like.

Pavla:
[29:32] What I used in the book to sort of help the readers and also myself imagine how much 10 million cubic feet is.
So this collected refused would have filled 113 olympic sized swimming pools.

Jake:
[29:49] It’s terrible to think of. And at this time there was no sewage treatment with that. People had sewers, private or public sewers, but they’re that sewage wasn’t treated in any way, was it?

Pavla:
[30:02] At first, No. So there also wasn’t any centralized way to deal with it.
So basically everyone would build their own syrup.

Jake:
[30:12] I used to be a tour guide as I would show people the back bay and explain some of the pressures that led to the filling of the back bay.
And I tried to explain that Bostonians had a habit of building a pipe that would connect to the nearest body of water and than forgetting about it and whether it was the back bay, the harbor, the Charles river sewers could just go anywhere and they would.

Pavla:
[30:32] Bostonians shouldn’t be too hard on themselves. And this was the common practice everywhere. At the time, every city that would have access to a water body of water course would do the same.
So this would be the huge way of trying to get rid of the waste for it to be washed away with with the river current or with the tide.

Jake:
[30:56] By the mid 19th century, the combination of the exploding population in Boston, the wave of immigration and annexation, the population is growing.
And then there are also changes to the landscape of Shawmut Peninsula that end up making the waste problem worse. So how did landfill worsen the sewage problem? And how did the city try to use more landfill to fix that?

Pavla:
[31:21] Boston in a way was the perfect location for establishing a seaport because it has this deep water harbor and also it’s surrounded by a really shallow water,
which is great for for building wars.
But for the growth of a large metropolis, it’s not the best place.
So the land making, just as you say, it’s caused huge problems for getting rid of the sewage because it’s decreased,
the angle of the sewers so the sewage would flow only reluctantly, so the sewers won’t empty into the shore line as they should.
And also the sewage would then settle on the tidal flats.
You can imagine, I don’t have to go into this.

Jake:
[32:10] You know, when when people ask, you know, wouldn’t you love to go back to the Victorian era or whatever their favorite time period is? All I have to do is imagine the smell of any city street in any city in the world to say no thanks, I’ll stay right here in the 21st century.

Pavla:
[32:24] Also, if you were in the 19th century, you’d probably, I mean smell not only would be worse, but your perception of the smell a bit different,
Because justice today, our theory of how diseases spread is the germ theory,
and the 19th century believed that diseases are caused by my Erasmus poisonous vapors that,
sort of hover in place with the foul air.
So smell was was actually an indicator of disease.
And this was a serious problem that had to be dealt with.

Jake:
[33:06] We start to see the city undertaking some big projects to try to clean up the sewage in particular and to try to control these smells, but it’s not just a beautification process, it’s seen as a means of public health.
Right, What was the solution that Bostonians came up with to try to fix the sewage problem early on?
Can you explain what the main drainage system was?

Pavla:
[33:34] Yeah, so, so it was I think designed in the 1870s and it was supposed to replace the maze of private tours that didn’t really work and caused this gross pollution.
What what the city of boston would do is to build the system of huge sewage tunnels that would have two main branches.
One is the north one that would empty into Shirley gut, which used to separate Deer Island from the mainland until the 19 thirties.
The south branch would go all the way to Columbia point where those of you have been to humans boston campus know that there’s the sewage pumping station still standing From from the 19th century.
So it’s, it’s this Richardson in Romanesque building that was this, this was built as part of this main drain system, pumping sewage over to moon island and and just pushing it down the harbor.

Jake:
[34:38] After the sewage was pumped through City Point or Shirley gut, what became of it, What how was it being disposed of at that time?

Pavla:
[34:47] It was basically done into the hard water, expected to float away with the tide which is sometimes there and sometimes didn’t.
And this, this was by the way, also the way of disposing of much, much of the refuse and garbage and some of it would be used as fill in boston,
Like the town doc and the mill ponds were largely filled with refuse and even East Boston in the early 20th century,
was still partly built on household ashes and and and stuff like that.
So garbage is a proven film material in boston.

Jake:
[35:29] One of the problems with boston’s method of dealing with sewage and garbage and just dumping it onto the outgoing tides is that a few hours later the outgoing tides become the incoming tides, and anything you dumped,
has a habit of of coming back a few hours later.
You just describe what the waste coming back on the tides, what the effect on seaside communities around boston would have been and what effect it might have had even on boston’s very important shipping interests.

Pavla:
[36:01] Of course, I mean, the seaside communities did what you would expect them to do.
That is complained that uh this is this is this is impossible because it washes washes up on their beaches.
Also, one of the ways to deal with refuse was to send it out on garbage boat and dump it in the several miles away from boston on the open water.
But the garbage boat masters did what they just did bother to go any further than they than they have to.
So they dumped and refused 1 2 miles beyond your island.
So it would wash back. And also they dumped it in in the newly trenched shipping channel,
which probably wasn’t too much of a of a danger to shipping as such because it was mostly mostly organic garbage, but still.

Jake:
[37:03] At least an annoyance, especially when somebody had spent very good money to have that channel dredged.
Going back to an earlier topic, we mentioned briefly, we talked about the problem of dealing with animals, both animal waste and then as livestock, especially horses, died in the city. How that was dealt with. And you introduced.
I’m just scanning my notes here. I believe his name was nejame Ward as an entrepreneur who took this on as a business right?

Pavla:
[37:32] Yeah, that’s right. Probably will 19th century cities needed a company like that.
As you mentioned, like horses are very large animals and leave a very large corpse that needs to be dealt with in some way,
and in boston, the company that specialized on this was owned by by name Ward who first started the business in West Roxbury.
That like I said it’s businesses of this sort were more and more unwelcome in the city proper.
So in the 1850s he relocated the business to Spectacle island.
And so if a horse died in the city,
then he is the owner or the policeman who found the corpse with telephone the company and they would come and collect the animal,
for it over the Spectacle and actually in several steps almost completely recycled.

Jake:
[38:32] So what are some of the products that can be recovered from a dead horse?

Pavla:
[38:37] I wouldn’t imagine that you can do so much with with a, with a dead horse. But first of all they would they would cut off the mane and the tail and use this for stuffing furniture basically.
Then the hide or that the skin of the horse would would would be used as well for for making furniture for the surface, for for shoes,
the meat would be processed into dog food and the bones to and out of the hooves. They would make glue.

Jake:
[39:11] What part of that process made it an offensive industry or a nuisance industry and led Ward to move his business out to Spectacle Island.

Pavla:
[39:21] The horses would be first would be rendered, so the height would be rendered.
And this is an incredibly smelly process and also the cooking of the meat and the bones and according to the records of boston board, board of Health.
The World Company also didn’t really adhere to sanitation regulations.
This was basically a business that created an incredible stench and In the 19th century city that we’ve talked about at length just couldn’t be tolerated near habitations.

Jake:
[39:54] Why was Spectacle Island considered such a perfect place to locate a business like the Ward Company?

Pavla:
[40:01] Well, first of all, it had no constituency. When the company came on the island, there is one family as tenants who would farm the island, but I believe they relocated after the company came there.
And the only people who lived on the island were employees of the company.
And also this goes back to actually the main theme of the book, like the largely imagined separation of of the island from the mainland.
So the water at this point seems really like like a separation like an interval between the habitations and the smell of Houston’s.

Jake:
[40:41] Whereas earlier in the puritan period, the water was seen as a connection. Now, it’s seen as a.

Pavla:
[40:45] Exactly, yeah. So, so there’s this, there’s this major shift that’s happening.

Jake:
[40:49] Can you describe the harbor during this period as being seen as boston’s ultimate sink? What what does that imply for you?

Pavla:
[40:59] In a way it receives all that undesirable or unwanted in the city proper.
So the harbor functions is waste receptacle basically.
And we talked about this, the sewage, the refuse get all dumped into the harbor.
The harbor islands are places where the sewage pumping station is located,
the first, the first sewage treatment plant is located on an island and the tanks are actually still there.

Jake:
[41:31] I think they’re used as the boston Police Department’s firing range now.

Pavla:
[41:33] Yes, that’s correct.

Jake:
[41:36] It’s an interesting re use of old infrastructure.

Pavla:
[41:39] It is. And then there’s Spectacle which gets regarded as waste hub for boston,
is because the war factories over over decades joined there by other ways processing businesses.

Jake:
[41:55] What what other businesses are located out there?

Pavla:
[41:58] At the start of the 20th century, at 1903 a garbage reduction plant.
So this is this is a waste processing business that extracts grease from garbage by by heating it relocates the Spectacle from from from from Columbia point.

Jake:
[42:20] You point out that for these businesses, like the waste reduction that had to be just foul.
If I think about everything that goes into a garbage dump and then heating that these high temperatures to try to extract grease, just foul smell.
You point out that the border between land and water and shore and islands looks very black and white on a map, but in reality it’s permeable and the smells are not contained by a shore line.
So as we look at these offensive industries being concentrated on the harbor islands, can we read anything into that about who had political power in boston, what constituencies were and weren’t being served?
By locating the offensive industries out in the harbor islands?

Pavla:
[43:07] I thought about that the first time, this looks like a clear case,
of environmental injustice, that you’d probably locate these near to immigrant communities or people that the government class considers in some way inferior.
And this is part of the case because the community that was mostly in the way of the smells from Spectacle Ireland is in boston, which at this point is a immigrant, largely irish community.
But on the other hand, the first two decades, you just have the board company plant on the island.
But at the time when, uh, the other companies started coming, this, this garbage reduction plant and another factory that manufactures glue from fish heads and like real businesses, you wouldn’t want to be around.

Jake:
[43:55] Oh man,
you!

Pavla:
[44:00] All this is happening at a time when the irish start gaining an influence in the city hall and when a irish mayor gets elected largely based on south boston constituency.
So I believe it has less to do with environmental injustice then for the notion that the harbor islands are really the ultimate fringe,
no one can complain that when these businesses are located there, because this is the best we can do.

Jake:
[44:33] And part of that is this perception that there are no people there, But as you point out, because of the industry’s on Spectacle Island, A small community starts to grow up on the island. Um, I guess it must have been in the late 19th and early 20th century.
How did the residents of Spectacle Island see their island as compared to what somebody in downtown boston might have seen?

Pavla:
[44:57] This is such an interesting part of the story is the community starts with all the people working for the world company in the 1850s and as the next businesses come.
And especially as the garbage reduction plant comes, the community close to some 150 people, that’s the highest number.

[45:16] I talked to a lady who used to spend her childhood holidays on the island because her grandparents worked for a garbage plant.
And also a couple of of the one time residents have written memoirs notes about their time on Spectacle,
It’s extremely interesting to read because they make a point and saying how nice the place it in fact was for them.
For them, it was home. Even contrasted it favorably to into the city, there was what they say is it was so nice and green and we could go swimming and we lived on an island.
So when we, when we went to the city, we would be envied by all they would turn this around as the island life being something that’s extraordinary and exciting.
Of course, these are not upper class people, this community is very much,
working class, and also middle class people who during the, during the depression are forced to take any job.
This place looking from the inside probably isn’t as bad as when looking from the outside.

Jake:
[46:31] And looking from the outside by the, I guess, the 1920s, the ward plant had closed, and I think from that point on, it was until almost 1960, just exclusively used as a garbage dump.

Pavla:
[46:44] Yes, so the so the world plant closed sometime in the 1910s, I believe, and the garbage reduction plant, which was the largest factory on the island, and also the largest employer closed in 1935.
So from then on until 59 there was basically a landfill.
The garbage then wouldn’t be processed in any way, it would just be dumped from the island.

Jake:
[47:09] It’s interesting that some place that from the outside looks terrible, this active landfill or garbage dump is seen by the residents very differently, and a great example of that.
You include a copy of the book of a hand drawn map by robert Wyatt of his island home.
Can you just describe that map a little bit and what it tells us about how the Islanders themselves saw Spectacle Island.

Pavla:
[47:35] I’m so sorry that I can’t show you any pictures because this map is just, it’s a treasure really, robert. Wyatt was, was the son of the superintendent of the garbage plant.
And he had lived on the island Until his, his 20s.
He went to Boston, went to live in Boston in the 1940s.
And in 2000 as an old man, he Has drawn a map like from his recollection of what the, what, what spectacle island looked like during his youth in the 1930s, 40s.

Jake:
[48:15] Mhm.

Pavla:
[48:16] It’s such a striking image because the map is extremely detailed.
Um it presents the island as a place where people live and as a place that is unleavened by human experience.
So he, he tells you like where all the houses are and who lived in them.
And he points out where good swimming walls and where they would fish from the pier and whose boat is moored where also he would show you where the garbage Phil is.
So it’s not just or green and nice.
And also it’s probably the most accurate map of the island from the period because,
I compared it to a map that at the same time the city of Boston would have a spectacle island.
And that map was from 1915.
And of course by 1940s it was completely outdated.
The course of the garbage that was dumped on the island and then they just increased its footprint by five acres by the time.

Jake:
[49:32] Why would the city have used an inaccurate or an outdated map as their official map? Do you think.

Pavla:
[49:38] I can’t really know, but my guess is that the city just cared very little at this point.

Jake:
[49:46] It seems to be a time when the city is very much turning away from the harbor and the harbor islands?
The network of harbor forts was out of date by the end of World War One and abandoned, mostly abandoned soon after World War II, The landfill, the garbage processing shuts down by I think it was the 1950s.
A lot of sort of middle and upper class Bostonians are no longer in touch with the harbor after that point.
So how how does the city go from having long wharf? Is this beautiful front door to boston to seeing the harbor as more of the back gate?

Pavla:
[50:22] From the late 19th century, wasn’t standing as a major seaport is basically a decline.
New York is from mid 19th century, the largest seaport on the east coast. But Boston is still the second.
Then, in the first years of the 20th century, it just really goes downhill from boston. Support is in decline.
It’s no longer as important for the city’s economy as it used to be.
And also in the middle third of the 20th century, there are two major developments that further reduce the number of people for whom the harbor is, a workplace, who engaged with it on a daily basis,
content authorization.

Jake:
[51:10] Instead of having sort of non standard or loose freight that stevedores and longshoremen would handle by hand.

Pavla:
[51:17] You put it into these slots, shipping containers, we know you know what went on today And this, so this development starts only in the 60s.
Also, the word processes in the harbor become much more automatic.
So you need some sort of machines basically take the, take the take over the labor of people, so you need less and less people.
Even the fishing fleet is diminishing.
So it’s a time when there’s too many people actually know the harbor or who have been there Also in the 1950s, the construction of the central artery.

Jake:
[51:57] The elevated highway that completely divorced boston from its waterfront.

Pavla:
[52:02] Exactly. So it cuts rides through downtown basically isolating north and and the waterfront from the rest of the city.
So it was extremely hard to go there and you couldn’t even see the harbor.

Jake:
[52:17] Around the same time, there’s this from a modern lens, disastrous redevelopment of the West End.
So boston starts looking at the Harbor Islands in the fifties and the 19 sixties with a new I for where to put people, I guess.
So what what kind of problems we’re planners trying to solve that made them look at the Harbor Islands for housing.

Pavla:
[52:42] Boston in in in 1950s, as I say, that’s on the brink of bankruptcy.
There’s between 1950 and 1960, Boston has lost 100,000 people to the suburbs and of course these people take their taxes with them in in the language of the time.
It’s dilapidated or run down urban core on its house.
It perceives itself as a city in crisis and and tries to and is looking for ways to solve this crisis.
So one of one of them is is urban renewal,
which tries to make the central city more attractive for middle class and welded residents in places such as the West End. It goes horribly wrong.

Jake:
[53:31] Right that the west End, the planners had seen part of the project as what they called slum clearance, but then it was actually the loss of community loss of housing that it was seen by the people who were cleared as losing their homes.
And the nice thing about the boston Harbor Islands is that, except for a handful of people, nobody called it their home at the time.
One thing you wrote about the the attitudes toward the harbor is that for planners and politicians at that time, the most useful island was an island stripped of its island. Nous. What does that mean?

Pavla:
[54:05] At this point, city and state government are basically looking at integrating the harbor islands into the city mostly as a residential development,
at this time a useful island is an island that serves as a society for, for real estate development as such. It needs to be connected to the mainland.
So this is a time when not so much as pushing the islands away as we’ve seen in the 19th century boston is trying to appropriate or incorporate them fully into its body,
and and basically build a new community in the harbor.

Jake:
[54:49] And what does it mean for an island to be stripped of Island nous And how does that make it more useful?

Pavla:
[54:57] Well, the key thing here is access. Obviously,
what the city planners are looking at is convicting the islands to the city through means such as such as Phil and and causeways and bridges,
and there’s a few islands where this actually happened, although for different reasons and then real estate development.
Obviously Long Island has has been connected to to the mainland by a bridge until 2014 which was torn down.
Moon Island, not Island Deer Island or connected by causeways and Thompson island.
There are there are plans to to connect it to Columbia Point but Phil and added, if you talked about this at length and in the episode devoted to the, to the expo 76.

Jake:
[55:49] Yeah, If if listeners want to go back and find that, that’s episode 2 19 about what I consider just a crazy plan to create a planned community in the harbor for a world’s fair for the bicentennial.
It’s fun to read about now, but I don’t think it would have been fun to live in boston at the time.

Pavla:
[56:06] I have to say, I don’t increase completely on that one. But the way you present it is the ability to use the phrase fever dream.

Jake:
[56:10] Oh, tell me about that.

[56:18] I think I did, yeah.

Pavla:
[56:20] Yeah. You present this as this ripped out of science fiction and it does look like that to to our contemporary eyes, but I think that the expo first of all is,
And you say that is very much a child of its time, this 60s technological optimism that’s like anything is possible and we can solve all problems. And we try.
On the other hand, it’s also very much in the tradition of other exhibitions of this kind because if you look at look at brussels with the otomi, um look at Seattle Montreal,
look at Chicago john Opie, the historian called called these these exhibitions fantasy worlds incarnate.
And this is this is this is this Yeah.
So like presenting this this blueprint for the future and being being really bombastic.
It is their job to be futuristic.

Jake:
[57:16] I think if it could have been done with federal dollars, it would have been a lot more easy to argue for here in boston. But as a boston resident, I’m glad I’m not Still paying the tax bill for that one.

Pavla:
[57:26] Yeah, I hear you.

Jake:
[57:30] The one thing that, that didn’t happen that boston could really use is that, you know, there was such a large scale housing construction was proposed tied to the expo plan.
So by not having the expo, we didn’t have these,
you know, enormous new housing developments on mainland and today housing the housing crisis is one of, I think one of boston’s biggest threats for the future that to continue as a workable city, people have to be able to afford to live here.

Pavla:
[57:58] This was one of the things that this project was hoping to solve, so maybe it wasn’t as useless as the as the as the designs would suggest to to to us today.

Jake:
[58:03] Yeah.

[58:07] Mm hmm, mm hmm.
You know, I thought I had heard it all when it comes to the boston Harbor Islands.
But there was another project from about the same time as the expo plan that I I had never stumbled across. And that was this idea of a second airport located out around the Brewsters the brewster islands.
I guess. First of all, will you remind the listener where the brewster islands are and then maybe describe what that plan to cite an airport there would have looked like.

Pavla:
[58:42] Yes. So the Brewsters are what you’d probably call the outer islands.
So they’re not exactly within the harbor. If you if you consider the harbor to be like everything that lies landward between Deer Island and point elegant and they’re they’re outside of that.
These are they’re like very small rocky islands. I mean these are those just really rock outcrops and famously harsh seas and and really rough weather around these islands,
And it just shows how divorced from the reality of the harbour as a place.
Some of the plants in 1960s were This is the idea that everything will just get bigger and larger and more in the future.
It grows out of the idea slogan airport will reach capacity in the 1970s and that Boston needs a second airport,
when the casting about for for for site for this airport.
It’s again the hard violence that seems to have all the space that’s needed and there’s nothing there.
So why not the fact that that’s also rough seas in deep water and it would cost billions of dollars just doesn’t enter the equation. So this is the project that I think is really just mind boggling.

Jake:
[1:00:06] But for somebody like Ralph Sirianni, who was a state rep for the town of Winthrop, where these new jets are coming on close approach, right over people’s rooftops all day long,
moving that jet traffic someplace else probably sounded like a great idea. And who cares if it’s possible?

Pavla:
[1:00:23] Yeah, of course. I mean there were good reasons for that. It just wasn’t a resolution probably.

Jake:
[1:00:29] Well, one thing, although we didn’t have a new airport or an expo or even the new housing that had been envisioned,
This sort of optimistic period of planning in the 60s and going into the 70s does result in sort of a new interest in the Harbour Islands for Recreation.
But that wasn’t the first time. I was a little surprised to read that there had been an earlier golden age of Harbour Island Recreation in the 19th century.
What sorts of pursuits can people find out in the Harbor Islands, then?

Pavla:
[1:01:01] In the 19th century, Boston Harbor is first and foremost used for the purposes of the seaport and also as this ultimate think as as this place where all the waste goes,
surprisingly, that starts to be used as a recreational area in a way for Bostonians.

[1:01:23] As I mentioned, the 19th century is a time when Boston becomes real. It is a large congested metropolis with all the, all the problems that the block cities have.
So people who can afford it sort of seek, we could say refuge or escape from the city for a while for a few days for a few hours.
So some of them the well to do, let’s say with this cover islands along the atlantic coast or places like Marblehead.
This romantic fishing village.
Others would just go both thing around boston harbor along the floor.
You would have places who, that would cater to these daytrippers.
So that would be, that would be restaurants and hotels that would offer clambakes and also like musicals, Monkey cages, punch and judicious is shooting alleys,
all kinds of amusements.
Also, the islands are places where you would go for a picnic, interestingly enough. In mid century Spectacle Island would be one of these places before the horse rendering factory came.

Jake:
[1:02:44] Well, interestingly after the heyday of the sort of nuisance industries in the harbor islands, boston starts to rediscover the harbor Islands as a destination for pleasure.
And although it almost pains me to say so after reading your book, I got a lot more of an appreciation for the role of one Mr Edward Rowe Snow and promoting that vision.
Um, can you, can you introduce mr Snowden if the listener isn’t familiar?

Pavla:
[1:03:10] Why why does it pain you.

Jake:
[1:03:13] Well, I guess I have spent so much time debunking myths that he presented as fact in.

Pavla:
[1:03:18] Ah?

Jake:
[1:03:20] Uh that I I I’m almost resentful that he’s often referred to as the,
sort of the pre eminent historian of the boston harbor islands when he he just made stuff up so often or embellished existing stories to the point where they’re almost unrecognizable.
But he was was a huge driving force behind rediscovering and then protecting the harbor island. So how did he come to occupy that, that role in boston?

Pavla:
[1:03:48] Yeah, first of all, I’m I’m with you on the, uh, I probably wouldn’t call him a historian.

Jake:
[1:03:51] Yeah.

[1:03:55] That that’s what I finally realized that he was a storyteller, but he’s presented in the boston area, often as a historian.
And then you, you read one of his stories, you read about the pirate Rachel wall and then you dig into primary sources and other writers and you realized that there was never a charge of piracy against Rachel wall.
She was hung as a highway robber, which is a fascinating story in itself, but there’s no pirates involved.

Pavla:
[1:04:21] Or there’s Lady in Black, which I couldn’t find anywhere Located until in the 1930s.
Mr Sloane comes along.
So yeah, let’s let’s let’s get into him.

Jake:
[1:04:36] So, so who is, who is Edward Rowe Snow first of all and how is he introducing boston to the islands on their back door.

Pavla:
[1:04:45] Editor Snow is actually originally a schoolteacher here.
He comes from Winthrop, but the school teacher days are over quickly because he,
devotes his life to his basically life on passion and that’s uh,
writing and lecturing about about the history of the atlantic coast and of the boston Harbor Islands in particular,
these books and they had these these sensational titles like piracy, mutiny and Murder and Secrets of the north atlantic coast.
He sends to be really this popular figure in the boston area.
So he has he has a radio show, he does tours of the harbor in the sixties and seventies.
Every sunday he would give a boat tour of of the harbor Islands and and point out places of interest and go to Georges Island and tell the story of the Lady in Black.
Ah He has a newspaper column, he gives lectures,
and probably most importantly he publishes nearly 100 books on the subject of the law of New England Coast and boston are,
so he he becomes this really authoritative voice on on the subject of boston and violence.

Jake:
[1:06:09] I can’t tell you how many people, especially people who are just a little bit older than me, say that their love of history comes from Edward Rowe Snow, So I have to give him credit there.
How did his mythmaking or his approach to the harbor islands help,
sort of reset people’s idea of the islands to this storied space of history and romance, and not just another part of the city that could be used for sewage disposal or whatever other use.

Pavla:
[1:06:37] This is this is so interesting what he does really, and it’s fascinating how you can trace his influence like the way we perceive the islands today to how how he talks about them,
as we’ve probably established by now The Boston Harbor Islands in the mid 20th century iron decidedly urban archipelago.
They’ve received boston’s trash, they’ve received boston’s dead horses,
Boston, sewage and in the 60s there are plans to build an airport on them and actually one airport is already built on them.
There are plans to integrate them into the city once and for all by building causeways and really connecting them to the city and and making them residential neighborhoods.

[1:07:29] And Edward Rowe Snow comes along and starts talking about these islands as if he were talking about Treasure Island.
He uses this imaginary of islands as places that are somehow extraordinary that are removed that are isolated and where you go and have adventure.
And he extends this image. I mean we all know this like from Robinson Crusoe sieve from Treasure Island and he extends this,
to these islands that are in fact, really mundane, really, really, really ordinary that because he’s so influential and because he’s basically everywhere.
He manages to sort of change the mindset, change the way how they think about the islands.
He manages to find like an exciting story for each and every of them.
Like Nix is made. There’s a pirate story on Lovells islands.
There’s a shipwreck and there’s there’s gold pieces being found from an old shipwreck and of course Boss life don’t get me started on that. There’s one fearsome storm after another. I mean, even Spectacle.

Jake:
[1:08:45] Even the garbage dump and horse rendering has a place of romance and history.

Pavla:
[1:08:50] Because, I mean, Spectacle must have been a real challenge for him.
So he goes to Spectacle in his book and talks to a fisherman who lives on the island and who he calls Portuguese joe,
whose name probably was Jose Zeferino, and he might have been part of the community of Portuguese fisherman who lived in in boston harbor.
So he talked to this person and he casts him in this role of this wise man who spends the the island more and the wisdom of the ages.
So he he manages to to transform even this unromantic island into something that’s extraordinary.

Jake:
[1:09:40] And in no small part, thanks to his influence, the state and the city begin to see the harbor islands is something worth protecting.
So how did Edward roast snows influence cultural influence around boston, combined with the sort of growing,
Environmental awareness of the late 60s and early 70s to lead to the creation of a state park and, eventually, a national park in the Harbour Islands.

Pavla:
[1:10:07] Edward is extremely important for us, but he can’t take all the credit Because at this time in the 1960s, there are also tendencies on the state level.
My Boston Harbor and the Boston Harbor Islands, a recreational area for Boston because this is also a time, when when recreation is discovered as,
not only a substantial needs of the population because this is a population that is perceived at the time as having.

[1:10:38] More means and more leisure time than any generation before them.
But I’m also as an economic asset that would draw people to massachusetts to spend their holiday.
So there’s a growing sense in that boston harbor should be, should be developed for creation and spearheading This movement is joe moakley, who we’ve talked about in the expo episode.
And of course ted Kennedy Who is then 20 years later, one of the people who are credited with making the National Park happens.

[1:11:14] On the one hand, there’s this basic tendency to see in the harbor islands as a potential recreational area for boston.
Then there’s Edward Rowe Snow who sells them to the people as basically historic places that are valuable in their own right.
And that’s, that’s also important because he doesn’t see that the islands as boston’s appendages.
He sees them as places that are apart from boston and that have their own exciting histories, even though it’s not strictly speaking, true, but still,
on the third hand, there’s the beginning environmental movement,
We probably all know the term environmental decade, which is used to refer to the 1970s where most of the groundbreaking environmental legislation is happening.
So all these things converge into a new perception of the Boston Harbor Islands as places,
that are both historically valuable, um, also nature or environment that’s worth preserving.

Jake:
[1:12:24] I know you’re short on time, but I wonder as boston began to see the harbor Island is something worth preserving it as a, as a destination for recreation.
There were two big problems that still had to be solved to both to protect the environment and to make the harbor islands an enjoyable environment for humans.
And that was boston’s continuing sewage problem and then the open landfill on on Spectacle Island.
So in a few minutes we have left. I wonder if you can tell us how how boston eventually solved, or if you would call it, solved those two critical environmental problems.

Pavla:
[1:13:00] These these two things are referred to are actually the two largest public projects that ever happened in boston and most people in your audience will be familiar with.
And so, so the first one is the boston harbor cleanup and Singapore.
The big dig in the case of the boston harbor cleanup.
It’s, I think quite obvious why this is important because it’s hard to have a recreational area that’s at the same time.
America’s security is harbor as boston harbor unfortunately has been called in the presidential campaign between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis.

Jake:
[1:13:35] Right.

Pavla:
[1:13:43] Bush scored some very important political points by going out into boston harbor and and calling this a harbor of shame.
If anyone wanted to have a recreational area or use the boston harbor as for a creation, then something had to be done about this.
So I would definitely call it a success because if you believe the water quality reports, it’s usually safe to bathe in the harbor.

Jake:
[1:14:10] I have personally been swimming in boston harbor.

Pavla:
[1:14:12] Exactly. And you probably wouldn’t have 30 years ago.
Yeah. So yeah, the, the most visible evidence of this project is the sewage treatment plant on on their island. With these acts shaped digesters.

Jake:
[1:14:17] No. Oh, no.

[1:14:30] There’s no way to process sewage that has zero byproducts. So now in 2021, what happens to the the final amount of waste that once upon a time would have just been dumped into the nearest creek river or harbor?

Pavla:
[1:14:45] The residue is as it always was released into the harbor, although in actual fact these days, not into the harbor, but so the pipes become longer, The pipe is now nine miles long.

Jake:
[1:14:51] Mhm.

Pavla:
[1:15:01] So the residue from the treatment is, is released into massachusetts Bay.

Jake:
[1:15:07] Where it’s much less likely to float back on the next incoming tide than the sewage was 100 years ago.
And so on the other hand, you said that the big dig was also a factor in the harbor, and specifically with Spectacle Island.

Pavla:
[1:15:22] This is also a nice example of not only boston influencing the islands,
but also the island’s influence in boston because as you can imagine the big thing generated like mountains of earth of excavate of dirt basically,
I think it was about 16 million cubic yards.
So so the project was, was desperately looking for places to put it.
And then spectacle basically came as a godsend to them because on the one hand you have a project that has this mountain of dirt and needs to put it somewhere.
And on the other hand you have a uncapped landfill that you’re looking to use as a park.
So when these two get married, you have Spectacle as it looks now, but also the dirt from big, big change, Spectacle beyond recognition. So it raised the island to be the highest spot in the harbor as it is today.
It’s completely obscures the landfill that’s still underneath.
So so the island is today is shaped differently is much larger, has different trees than than it used to have.

[1:16:37] But on the other hand, if it works before Spectacle violence, then boston wouldn’t look the way it does today because without the big dig you wouldn’t have this trade connection to the waterfront.
You have, there wouldn’t be the roads can the green wave, the tree connects downtown to the historic waterfront.

Jake:
[1:16:59] I’m sure the rediscovery of the harbor Islands is helped by reconnecting the waterfront to the city by burying the central artery.

Pavla:
[1:17:07] Absolutely. There’s also this boston harbor islands welcome center right on this greenway.
If you walk down from Statehouse towards the harbor, you can’t miss it really.
It’s, it’s right there and it advertises the island. So the islands today are Actually more present in the city than they have been in maybe 100 years.

Jake:
[1:17:31] So now 25 years, I guess after the national park was,
formed in 15 years, I guess after Spectacle Island opened up to the public, How do the park rangers and boat crews and the volunteers who are sort of this new generation of Islanders?
How how do they present the islands too, boston or to the public today?

Pavla:
[1:17:53] Mm hmm. Who as a private citizen, I have to say very well.
I’ve been on a range of tours and I really enjoyed them also.
I like the way how complex how, how the ends and the narrative is that they’re they’re telling because,
they’re not trying to sell the heart violence is a pristine wilderness or as places of pirate treasure and in the vein of of editor of Snow.
But um it is, it is really a combination of all the roles that the islands have had for boston.

Jake:
[1:18:21] Right.

Pavla:
[1:18:29] So they present them as they’ve once been home or at least used by by, by native people also as homes of, of Islanders of later times.
Then these places on the edge basically like on the edge of continent and also on the edge of boston referring to this role as periphery that the islands have had.
They also do look into these less savory uses that we spent a long time talking about.
I think that that the narrative of the National Park is,
really inclusive of, of all these roles that the islands have played as you may know, the motto of the National Park is minutes away worlds apart.
Yes. Yeah, these islands are so close but they’re so different.
What I’m trying to do in my book is really to say they’re minutes away, but they’re not really worlds apart.

Jake:
[1:19:27] Closer connected to us, Bostonians than we imagine most of the time now, I know I know that you’re basically out of time before I let you go.
If our listeners want to learn more about your book or to follow you and your work online, Is there a website or social media where they should look you up?

Pavla:
[1:19:50] I don’t have my own website. I just at the university one, so feel free to use that I enjoyed talking to you.

Jake:
[1:19:58] Well, Pavla I very much enjoyed talking to you, too. I appreciate your joining us today.

Pavla:
[1:20:03] Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Jake-:
[1:20:06] To learn more about Pavla to the book Urban Archipelago or the boston Harbor Islands themselves.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 239, we’ll have a link to Pavlos faculty page.
You can learn more about her as well as an affiliate link where you can support the show and local bookstores when you buy Urban Archipelago.
I’ll also link to a few related podcast episodes like episode 2 19 about the expo plan as well as episodes 1 47 and 2 13,
1 47 is about Rachel Wall who Edward Rowe Snow mischaracterized as a pirate And to 13 includes information about snow’s role in fabricating the 20th century rediscovery of Ben Franklin’s first literary work.
So you can see why I have less affection for the boston harbor historian than Pavla does.

[1:20:58] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on twitter facebook and instagram or you can go to hub history dot com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, Hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.
If you do drop us a line and I’ll send you a hub history sticker as a token of appreciation.
Also a good number of you listen on Spotify and Spotify just added ratings.
So if you want to give us a five star rating and the Spotify app, that would be terrific too.

Music

Jake-:
[1:21:38] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.