Guest Editorial, Post-Gazette, Nov. 9, 2018
www.BostonPostGazette.com
What would the late State Rep. Michael Nazzaro think of the city of Boston’s plans sell the North End’s beloved Nazzaro Community Center that bears his name, in order for a private developer to build modern condos? It’s hard to imagine that he would be pleased. He devoted his career to saving the North End, fighting successfully against the Boston Redevelopment Authority who had already decimated the West End. He knew that once you give up your authentic legacy and culture, you can never get them back again.
Even now most North Enders don’t know that some city officials have been working for months on a plan to sell the Nazzaro Center. City architect Allistair Lucks and the consultants of the Sasaki group briefed the public on Oct. 17 about their plans to close the Nazzaro Center and create a new community center on Sargeant’s Wharf. When pressed by citizens at the packed meeting, they admitted that they had already sought a real estate estimate to sell the Nazzaro building.
These consultants half-heartedly presented an option of expanding the Nazzaro building, but they said it would require closing off a large portion of the open-air Polcari Playground, which no one–not the North End residents who were present at this meeting, nor even the city architects themselves—thought was a good idea. The new expanded building still wouldn’t be big enough, the architects said.
Instead, the city architects want to give up the N Bennet St. location and move all the community’s programs into a large new building on Sargeant’s Wharf or next to the Mirabella Pool. The people at the meeting did not like this idea either. They complained that it would be in a flood zone, and the youngest children and the North End’s seniors would have a very hard time crossing busy Commercial St. Instead, the residents offered a much more logical solution: keep some programs in the current Nazzaro Building, updating it as necessary, and build the new basketball court and swimming pool on the city’s Fulton St. parking lot. Then the community would finally have enough space.
City officials were not pleased with this, because it would cost them money. They tried to frame this issue as being only about the facilities that the North End’s young people need, without regard to what they are asking the community to give up. They didn’t calculate that the Nazzaro Center and Polcari Playground are beloved public institutions, used throughout the day, by citizens of all ages for over 100 years. Those of us who live nearby love the sounds of the children on the playground, the staging of the bands for the feasts, the Halloween Party and all other community events there. To sell the North End’s cultural legacy for private development—because the city is too cheap to build a new regulation basketball court for the North End on Fulton St.—is outrageous.
With your help, we can get Boston Landmarks status to protect the Nazzaro building and Polcari park, while still supporting the city’s plan to build a new basketball court and community facility on Fulton St. We are gathering signatures now for a Landmarks Petition. We hope all of our officials and neighbors will sign it. The petition would save the beautiful exterior of the building, and the open space of the park. It would not, however, prevent updating the inside of the building as needed, and redesigning it for new uses. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have one corner of the building be devoted to a museum of Italian-Amerian heritage?
The Landmarks Commission should accept our petition because the Nazzaro building at 30 N Bennet St. has such historic significance. But getting it protected will require strong community support, including lots of people showing up at a hearing that will be held on our petition, some months from now.
The importance of this building is not just local, but national. Originally the North End Bathhouse and Gymnasium, the Renaissance Revival building was sponsored by Mayor “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, President John F. Kenney’s grandfather, and designed in 1906 after the Villa Medici in Rome by one of the city’s most celebrated architects. It was refurbished by our only Italian-American Mayor, Thomas Menino, in 2004 for $1 million, including a new floor on the basketball court. It was where World Welterweight Champion Tony DeMarco began his career.
The building is an artifact of America’s Progressive era at the turn of the 20th century, when social reformers were struggling to respond to the overwhelming flow of immigrants arriving from Europe. In Boston, they lived in crowded North End tenements without baths or even private toilets. The land on N Bennet Street was bought by the city in 1902, and the ornate bathhouse was designed in 1907 at a cost of $130,000. By the time it opened in 1910, the Irish area had become largely Italian, with some Jews also living there.
In her book Washing the Great Unwashed, scholar Marilyn Thornton Williams describes how reformers thought the baths would not only improve health, but also the moral character of the poor, making them better citizens. Public baths aimed to bridge the gap between the classes and help achieve a small measure of social justice. Cleanliness was extolled as one of the hallmarks of civilization and progress. Even as late as 1940, about 90% of North End homes were without private baths and about 50% lacked private toilets.
Although bath reformers can be criticized for not demanding for the poor the same private bathing facilities that they enjoyed in their homes, Boston Mayor Josiah Quincy maintained in 1898 that the public baths were “architectural monuments of the city” which raised “the whole idea of public bathing to a high and dignified plane.”[i] The most notable example of this was the North End’s ornate North Bennet Street Bath House, as cited by Maureen Meister, Arts and Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New England.
The building was still used regularly as a bathhouse by an estimated 900 North End residents until it closed in 1976. In 1985, it was restored and repurposed as the Nazzaro Community Center, with recreational and community programs for all ages. Old timers still remember taking their showers here, and, as teenagers, getting ready for their dates: “Back then there was no bathtub or shower in my childhood apartment. We had the North End Bathhouse,” wrote Natalie Cinelli in NorthEndWaterfront.com a year ago. “My cousin Lucille, who grew up with me in my grandmother’s building on the fourth floor, recalls the Saturday nights at the bathhouse when all the young girls would be getting ready for their big dates, doing their hair, primping and putting on makeup, gossiping about boys. A true communal experience!”
The Nazzaro Center is completely unprotected right now by any historical landmark status, and can be torn down or sold by the city at will. Please join us and sign the Landmarks Petition, and tell our officials that we want the Nazzaro Center and Polcari playground to be maintained for public use. The North End should not have to sell out its treasured legacy in order to get the new basketball court and other facilities that its tax-paying citizens deserve.
Sincerely,
Ellen Hume
savethenazzaro@gmail.com
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