As promised, the barbed-wire fencing around the Salem Jail has finally been removed! (A second, inner wall, was partially dismantled when the Jail was closed and demolished when the renovation began.)
In other news, the new courthouse is now easily seen from the same corner:
There was never a time during the Salem Jail’s existence that people would be waiting to get in to the Jail, but it happened yesterday during a scheduled open house.
There were about 30-50 people in line at any one moment and about an equal number of people in the Jail itself. Several hundred people likely went through. (Relatively few people visited the other buildings in the open house, the jailer’s building and the (reconstructed) carriage house.)
There wasn’t much overlap between the areas we were allowed to visit in the open house, and the parts of the Jail that Dan Stanwood took me through two years ago. The open house took us through the eastern side of the building facing the parking lot; the tour was mostly on the west side. (Dan offered to take my party through more of the facility but we were short on time and I had had enough video to make the show out of anyway.)
The front entrance hasn’t changed much from then:
Now:
The pay phone pedestal is still there! If you’re observant, you may have noted the white metal wheelchair lift in the old photo. Inmates with disabilities were brought in with the lift (and stayed on the first floor as the rest of the building was not accessible.)
Today, there’s a ramp, or what appears to be one.
Inside, one of the old cells near the entrance has been preserved:
This will be part of a small museum.
The new Jail has an elevator:
Reportedly, the hook on the ceiling of the dining area upon which people were hanged, is still there in one of the units:
One of the units:
In a few months this could be someone’s home.
My Flickr stream of the old Salem Jail.
My Flickr stream of the Salem Jail renovation, including the open house.
Bridge St. reconstruction starts today. There'll be an informational meeting at the Carlton School tomorrow night at 7. I won't make that meeting. The neighborhood is no stranger to construction projects like the Veterans Riverway and the Veterans Memorial bridge, and this project is the end of an overall plan spanning over 30 years.
This Salem News article has the usual cynical commentariat about flagmen, corrupt officials and lazy workers. Yawn. I love how there are always magical private sector pixies about that would finish projects instantly if we only stood back and let them. I seem to recall, though, reading over the years of private sector, excuse me, Private Sector contractors getting paid by the day and padding projects.
My colleague Charlie will bear it worse than I will since I live a good distance south of the construction.
(For such a “tiny insignificant greenspace”, it’s remarkable just how much it insulates me from most traffic, especially since I’m just feet away from moving cars on the Ash St. side of my parking lot.)
The elevator construction in my building continues. A few days ago, I held the door for a five-man crew wrangling a very large item through the front door. Later that day, I’m with a neighbor and one of the contractors waiting for the elevator and they get to talking about the work. That big package I helped get in the building was, as I suspected, the elevator cab. This has to be assembled on site. I’ve been trying to find pictures of elevator construction on Bing and Google without much success.
That was the first sign of progress I’d personally seen, though I’ve heard the pounding and construction noises for the past few months. (My unit is neatly between the old elevator and the new one!)
The elevator shaft was finished in January:
And the permanent view from my window:
According to the contractor (and not an official announcement), the work itself will be done in a few weeks. A few weeks after that, the elevator will be inspected—there are only two inspectors for the whole state—and presumably open for service after that. So sometime in mid-April, we’ll be using our new elevator.
After that, the talk is that the old elevator, long prone to breakdowns and stalls, will be replaced. So the construction noise won’t stop for me.
Construction of a new elevator continues on. This view from my window isn’t the greatest, but it’s probably the last time I’ll get such a good view.
The scaffolding is going up outside my window again, this time I presume to set forms for the elevator wall.
Once this goes up, I’m probably not going to get to see much else of the construction. I’ve always wondered how they install the elevator cab into a building. Perhaps I’ll get to see, or not.
The Salem Jail renovation is moving along. The whole interior of the main building is now completely gutted, in what appears to be the busiest week for the project since it started.
More photos on my Salem Jail Renovation Flickr stream.
According to the Salem News, these steps of doom may go away in a few years: The state is funding the reconstruction of Salem Depot.
I won’t consider this one in the bag until the construction crews show up. There’s still the meeting tomorrow night, and if it’s anything like the courthouse meeting, we could be at this a while longer.
In the meantime, I’m going to redouble my efforts, with the Commission, to improve pedestrian access on Bridge St. and place talking audible signals at every signaled crossing downtown.
The work continues on my building. I’ve been told to expect work on my apartment to begin in a week or two. I’m guessing the week of the 30th or the week after, at the latest.
After taking this picture, I now know why it was so loud in my unit this week. How loud?
This loud! Measured from my living room. I hope the masons were wearing hearing protection.
Changes are coming to my very home! For the past several years, the Housing Authority has been trying to get funding for a new, second elevator for my building. The original elevator is breaking down. If a second elevator could not be installed and the original elevator needed to be replaced, the whole building would be uninhabitable, so I was told by the executive director when she came here for a tenant meeting.
I have mixed feelings: The renovation will take away two of my living room windows. and move two others. One doesn’t miss natural lighting until one doesn’t have it anymore.
There’s no possibility of stopping this or depriving my neighbors of an elevator, but I think I’ll miss my windows.
I’ll be chronicling this project on Flickr.
The bars on the window of the Jail are being removed this week.
For the first time, you can look into the building!
Looking forward to seeing the fence come down, one hopes soon.
Today marks the 2nd anniversary of this blog. I started blogging a construction project in my neighborhood, Salem's Last Road, and it’s fitting that I am now blogging another construction project right next door. (Salem Jail Renovation—Finally!)
The groundbreaking was yesterday. I wanted much to be there and take video, but I had SATV business get in the way.
Whatever I think of the project, it’ll be beautiful. It already looks better now that the old inner fence is gone. I’m looking forward to the day the barbed wire goes away. The Jail and the small pocket park between Howard and St. Peter complement each other very well.
Unfortunately, as my blog continues, another blog I regularly read is no more. Salem Politics is defunct; its proprietors took a leave of absence for health reasons, and now the blog is gone.
They were the blog that North Shore Sunday confused with mine in their story on blogging. It was an embarrassing mistake but the proprietors of Salem Politics were nice about it and hoped I’d get some traffic out of it.
There was no love lost between Salem Politics and the denizens of Salemweb, but I’ll still miss the blog. There is a crying need for local journalism, yet what we have faces an uncertain future. I’ve enjoyed writing this blog, but I’m not a journalist.
But as long as I’m in Salem, I’m still blogging. I’ll love it if my third anniversary was a blog about the new Salem Depot, or the courthouse or even a new playground on the Common for kids with disabilities.
After three years, after many delays, I was wondering if the Salem Jail project would actually happen. Three years ago, I got a notice in my building, which uses the Jail for overflow parking, that the lot would be closed. Obviously not, as this picture in late March shows:
We got another notice:
When I attended the last meeting of the Planning Board in March, people were optimistic that the deal would close. Was it for real this time?
As also reported by Globe North, New Boston Ventures has finally closed on the Salem Jail. There will be apartments, which could be converted to condos after five years, a restaurant (one restaurant, not multiple as the Globe implies) and a museum.
I’ve posted about the Jail before, with very much mixed feelings ("Salem Jail developer switching from condos to apartments", "Salem Jail Visit" and "Salem Jail Update".)
I even filmed the inside of the Jail!
(By the way, I have asked Dave Gauthier to reschedule the full documentary I did for air on SATV. Since it is evergreen programming for Salem, I gave SATV perpetual permission to rerun it at various times, including Halloween, and now.)
I’m expecting and fearing my future neighbors may be insecure and obsessed with historical value; some wise-ass on the Salem News discussion boards already explained that the Jail residents would see the bypass road, apartment buildings, and my own elderly apartment complex.
Thanks. I’m proud to have lowered property values in Salem since 1963, the Common since 1985 and downtown since 1995!
Despite that, I have no animosity towards the developers. I’m glad the building is being preserved; it became one of my favorite places when I filmed it last spring, despite its sad history. We’ve seen so many promising projects die in Salem because we had to have them perfect when we could not possibly get that, that I’m glad to see one project go forward in this economy (which is not over the hump by any measure.)
I had a nice chat with the developers after the planning board meeting, and an invitation to stop by the construction trailer to get permission for pictures. I’m planning on recording the project as it unfolds, and scheduling a site visit with the Salem Commission on Disabilities when the project progresses to completion.
Yesterday afternoon, the First Baptist Church was finally moved into place. It was nearly in its final resting spot Saturday morning when this picture was taken.
This large fragile brick box made the move thus far without any problems. It was braced with beams and cables as you can see above and below:
And this is where the new courthouse will go:
The church move is stalled. Soft footing and now, bad weather, have delayed yesterday’s planned move. The moving crew was out today doing some preparation, but nothing was moved yet when I took this picture around 11:45 AM. (The snow was getting much heavier so I couldn’t stay to watch.)
Salem News: Federal Street church going for a ride today, and Church move postponed.
P.S. WHDH had a reporter outside Dunkin Donuts outside the post office around noon. Missed being on TV by that much! I’ve seen and walked by many news trucks due to living near the courthouse, but have never been on live commercial TV.
Whenever a new construction project is proposed or underway, such as the bypass road and the courthouse project, many Salemmites recoil. We think, why change things like “The Overpass”? We look at things downtown and assume they were there forever.
Jim McAllister, local historian, reminds us otherwise in a recent Salem News column, Jim McAllister- Road and bridge work a constant in Salem. The overpass project of 1948-1952, and the new rail tunnel and demolition of the old Salem Station in 1958 were both more momentous—and traumatic—than any road project in the past few years, including the bypass road.
McAllister:
The overpass was the second part of a three-stage project to eliminate dangerous and congestion-causing railroad grade crossings in downtown Salem. The first stage saw the Washington Street railroad tunnel extended all the way to Bridge Street. That project got underway in November 1949 and took 29 months to complete.
The second piece of the project set out to rid the city of one of its worst traffic bottlenecks — the grade crossing at the intersection of Bridge and North streets. Traffic routinely backed up a half mile on North Street during heavy travel times or when a train was crossing the intersection on the Bridge Street tracks. On more than one occasion, congestion was so bad at the intersection that fire trucks heading for North Salem from downtown were rerouted through Beverly.
“The more things change,” etc.
It was traumatic for downtown, too:
The building of the North Street overpass necessitated the razing of the historic bridge that was the site of Leslie's Retreat in 1775 and the taking of 43 buildings located on North, Federal, Franklin, and Bridge Streets, and on Odell Square. Approximately 125 people were displaced.
[…]
Of all the buildings that were demolished for the overpass, none would be missed more than the North Street Arena. The rambling wooden structure sat in the middle of a block on the western side of North Street between Federal and Bridge streets, and had been an important venue for sports and civic events for 65 years.
No buildings were taken for the bypass road project. A dozen homes were taken for the bypass road. Three houses were taken for the courthouse project. People are complaining bitterly, Bridge St. residents with good reason, but this seems to pale next to what the overpass project involved, and to what happened next.
A few years later, Salem would go forth with what many say was its most traumatic demolition, the destruction of the old Salem Depot:
SALEM — Fifty years ago today, 10,000 onlookers gathered near Washington and Bridge streets to watch the first train roll through the new Salem train tunnel.
It marked the end of a years-long construction project, referred to as the Big Dig of its time. The project involved the demolition of the Salem Depot, through which trains would roll down Washington Street and through the massive granite archway framed by two medieval-looking towers.
A half-century later, the memories of the project and the old Salem Depot are still fresh in many longtime residents' minds.
"Part of Salem died when they did that," said Tony Salvo, 80, a former mayor who remembers the old train station fondly. "It was a big mistake tearing that building down. The old train station was like a castle. It was a landmark."
As with the overpass, the project was needed to accommodate increasing road traffic; the train tunnel was extended completely under downtown, from Bridge St. to Margin St. People on Washington St. (and City Hall!) are well familiar with the rumble of underground trains.
The tunnel project had three phases that were carried out over the better part of a decade. It cost more than $8 million, and more than 40 landowners were forced to move their homes and businesses to make way for new overpasses, the tunnel, parking lots and the new train station, according to Salem Evening News articles from the time.
[…]
The prolonged construction throughout the 1950s dealt a heavy blow to downtown businesses, and the upheaval also frustrated residents.
"This was in the works for years and years and years. It was kind of like the Big Dig," McAllister said, "and people got so fed up with going to Salem that they just didn't."
The merchants never fully bounced back, but the completion of the tunnel coincided with the construction of the North Shore Shopping Center (the present-day Northshore Mall), McAllister said, which changed the way people shopped.
This can’t be understated: The tunnel project doomed Salem’s downtown. When I mourned the loss of Almy’s 25 years later, little did I realize that this had been set in motion even before I’d been born.
We are dealing with the decisions made 50 years ago, when the car was ascendant, the roads seemed to keep going forever, and trains were old fashioned and outmoded.
I hate loss. I would have mourned the Salem Depot, the old North St. Arena, the Flatiron Building and all the other buildings no less deeply than others had I been around at the time.
But part of me is glad the Salem Depot is gone, as much as the rest of me misses it. Had the Depot still been there (the tunnel project would have had to happen anyway), we would have seen no end of opportunistic developers, exploiting the Depot for condos, to make a quick cheap buck on History!
A few years ago, Mike Sosnowski had suggested building a parking garage on one of the old Riley Plaza lots. No problem there. But he suggested making it in the style of the old Depot.
I ripped him one. On live TV too.
I have the deepest resentment for manufactured history, such as we see too much of in Salem. I have even more resentment to making a fake train depot out of a parking garage, which would have been a bitter insult to people remembering the original structure.
Still want to complain about the courthouse? Or the bypass road? Remember, whatever I may think of the project, no houses were taken for it. And those that could have taken the three houses off the state, would not or could not.
Lots of transportation developments for August! Besides the bypass road, there’s news all over, and out of, Salem in the past few weeks.
The North Shore is getting new MBTA buses. Historically, Lynn Garage (the center of MBTA bus activity here) has been one of the last garages to get new equipment. In 2004, we still had the old broken-down RTS buses, most of which were 16 years old, with the old flip-dot electronic signs I could never read.
The sting is not so bad this time, since the Neoplan buses that are currently in service are less than five years old and in good shape, if somewhat dirty. Most importantly, they have new LED signs I can read!
But I look forward to the new buses; I’ve seen them running the 455 today, so I’ll be on one soon.
Here's a hat tip to Beyond Red and Blue: Robert Sullivan wrote a post on Walk Score, applying that site’s walking score to various T stops. Responding to my post on Walk Score, Mr Sullivan says:
I found the walkability scores for all the stops on the Newburyport/Rockport line (see below), and Salem actually gets a 94 (out of 100), which is better than all of the Red Line stops in Dorchester and all of the Blue Line stops in East Boston. Salem gets a near-perfect score thanks to such nearby amenities as a movie theater, a "bookstore" (Harrison's Comics), and a "fitness" establishment (Body & Soul Massage).
The Walk Score data is, as they say themselves, incomplete; there are two full-service bookstores nearby (Cornerstone Books and Derby Square Book Store) and of course, the Y.
The worst score I've come across so far is Rowley Station, which gets a single-digit 6. Chelsea and Lynn each get a 75, which says something about how underserved those areas are despite having very dense populations.
I had thought Newburyport would be the worst score since it’s so far from downtown, but Rowley is truly a bedroom-community stop. In Lynn, Central Square has been rundown for decades, and a sad story of decline and city mismanagement.
Salem is paying attention to pedestrians at long last. A Globe North article from a few weeks ago, “Salem joins effort to steer commuters away from cars” explains:
Salem is a great walking city, and residents and people who work there have traditional transportation options: commuter rail, bus line, Salem State shuttle, and a ferry to Boston.
But its roads still overflow with traffic, particularly at peak periods.
So it's not surprising that the city became the first municipal partner for the North Shore Transportation Management Association, a new group that is trying to reduce gridlock and the region's carbon footprint through alternative commuting methods.
"It seems like it's a perfect time to be looking at those things," Mayor Kim Driscoll said. "We don't have anything in our region that asks, 'How do we get to employment sectors? How do we get to places where students are going? Is there a better way to get people to where they want to be, that's good for them, saves them money, and also helps the environment?' I think there are a lot more options for us to think about."
I’m glad the Driscoll administration is making this shift away from car-centrism; it’s been delayed for too long, but it seems to be finally coming after years and years of lip service and inaction.
According to a press release I got from the mayor’s office, the city is fixing some curb cuts in and around downtown:
City Works to Improve Accessibility in the Downtown
SALEM, MA – This week, the City of Salem’s Department of Public Services is working to improve the accessibility in and around the downtown for disabled individuals who live or visit the City.
The Department of Public Services has hired Marchese and Sons Construction to make sidewalk and ramp improvements in several areas within the City’s extended downtown area. Close to 20 curb cuts that have been identified as problematic for individuals with disabilities are being completely reconstructed to make it easier for people to traverse.
“While many improvements still remain, this round of construction is a great start to ensure that all individuals feel welcome in our City and can navigate in our downtown safely,” stated Mayor Driscoll. “I am pleased that the Department of Public Services has made this work a priority.”
New ramp curb cuts are being installed at the Public Library crosswalk where no curb cut had existed before; Essex Street at Hamilton, Beckford, Cambridge and Barton Square; Washington Street at Church and Lynde Streets; the crosswalk at 27 Charter Street (Salem Housing Authority senior housing complex); and at 60 Washington Square.
I’ve seen them working at North & Essex Sts., a known problem area, and had assumed it was related to courthouse work. It’s excellent news!
But the city shouldn’t stop there.
One of Andy LaPointe’s pet causes, and now my pet cause, was to get the new-style talking audible signals in Salem. I’ve talked about this too many times to mention. We have these at Salem State College Central Campus, Vinnin Square, and Marlborough Road.
But not on Bridge St. at the train station. Nor at St. Peter St. (this last one was promised by Sue Cranney, project manager for the bypass road, in my presence.)
I suggest a project for the new association: Get new audible signals—not the buzzer or the chirping models—throughout downtown Salem, and other pedestrian-heavy areas on the North Shore.
Finally, a trolley story in the Times: Downtowns Across the U.S. See Streetcars in Their Future - NYTimes.com. Cities like Cincinnati are trying to get new trolleys. When I was in Cincinnati on a business trip 10 years ago, people were just beginning to kick the idea around. At that time, they had a “Big Dig” project of their own underway, Fort Washington Way. There seems to be a sense there, as there has long been in Boston, that there’s no more room for new road projects.
I just wonder what planet the Times is on. How can people embrace the great cost and disruption of construction for trolleys, when, as I’ve wrote before, any such project in Massachusetts would die of learned helplessness (“It costs too much!” “It destroys the character of the city!” “It lowers my property values!” “It brings those people here!”)
Next up: Bypass road opens Monday and the courthouse traffic project reaches an important milestone as the old east ramp off Bridge St. is permanently closed, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday the 21st.
When the bypass road was opened briefly last week to serve as a detour while Bridge St. was being paved, I got to see Salem's newest transportation corridor--the road--next to Salem's oldest transportation corridor--the rails.
The engineer is blowing his horn for work crews putting in sound barriers on March St., which you can see near the end of the clip.
The bypass road wasn't only open to detoured traffic but also to this jogger!
Yesterday, the bypass road was temporarily opened so that Bridge St. could be repaved, as mentioned in my last post. Unsurprisingly, the traffic signals caused a jam well past Salem Depot.
The road has been closed and will remain so while the work remains to be completed. There's still a hole on the Howard St. traffic island, and still people from National Grid milling around.
Traffic on Bridge St. some six weeks before the bypass road is scheduled to open up.
An update to my last update: I noted the electronic sign outside my house telling me Bridge St. would be paved; no surprise there. But they’re detouring through the bypass road, according to the News today.
This is going to be fun to watch. As of last night, the lighting was still not completed; the lights on the pedestrian path were not lit and only half of the lights on the road are lit, from Saunders west to St. Peter. National Grid still had their hole in the ground at the Howard St. traffic island and it just has to be related.
I’m going to have fun standing on March St. watching our first traffic jam on the new road!
