Columbia Point (Boston)

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1888 German map of Boston Harbor showing Dorchester in the lower left hand corner.

Landsat image of Boston showing Columbia Point peninsula.

Columbia Point, now called Harbor Point, in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts sits on a peninsula jutting out from the mainland of eastern Dorchester into the bay.

The community was, in the 1600s and 1700s, a calf pasture: a place where nearby Dorchester residents took their calves for grazing. It was largely an uninhabited marshland on the Dorchester peninsula.

In 1845, the Old Colony Railroad ran through the area and connected Boston and Plymouth, Massachusetts. It is still today an MBTA rail line. In the 1880s, the calf pasture was used as a Boston sewer line and pumping station. This large pumping station still stands and in its time was a model for treating sewage and helping to promote cleaner and healthier urban living conditions. It pumped waste to a remote treatment facility on Moon Island in Boston Harbor, and served as a model for other systems worldwide.

Land-filling had caused the creation of Columbus Park on the peninsula and what was then called “Day Boulevard”, now Morrissey Boulevard, by 1934. There was a huge trash dump on the peninsula which turned into more landfill for other use.

During World War II, small barracks were built on this landfill for some prisoners of war. After the war, these were re-used for the Columbia Point Veterans Village. Also, in 1950, Boston College High School relocated from the South End of Boston to its present home on Morrissey Boulevard.

More landfill on the north shore of the peninsula had been created to build the Columbia Point Development housing projects which were the largest in Boston and New England and built by the Boston Housing Authority. The area was now known as Columbia Point. The Columbia Point Development was completed in 1954 and had 1,500 apartments. Other infrastructure was added, including public schools. The “T” train stop was called Columbia, and is today known as the JFK/UMASS stop on the Red line.

In 1965, the first community health center in the United States was built on Columbia Point: the Columbia Point Community Health Center and was founded by two doctors, Jack Geiger from Harvard University and Count Gibson from Tufts University. It still stands and is in use today as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center on Mount Vernon Street.

The Columbia Point Housing Projects fell into disrepair and became quite dangerous. By the 1980s only 300 families lived there and the buildings were falling apart. Eventually, realizing the situation was almost hopeless, in 1984 Boston turned over the management, cleanup, planning and revitalization of the property to a private development firm Corcoran-Mullins-Jennison. The construction work for the new Harbor Point development began in 1986 and completed by 1990. It was a beautifully laid out, mixed income community, now called Harbor Point Apartments. It has received international acclaim for its planning and revitalization from the Urban Land Institute, the FIABCI award, and a gold medal with the Rudy Bruner Award.

[edit] Timeline

(cf. Lawton, University of Massachusetts, Boston, research materials)
1630 - Puritan settlers land on Columbia Point. The site is used as a calf pasture for the town of Dorchester until 1869.
1884 - The Sewage pumping station opens at the end of Mile Road.
1942 - Camp McKay, used to house Italian prisoners during World War II, is built on the north side of the peninsula.
1954 - Columbia Point housing project opens and the first tenants move in.
1966 - The Columbia Point Health Center, the first community health center in the country, opens.
1966 - Construction of the Bayside Mall begins.
1971 - Construction of University of Massachusetts, Boston begins.
1975 - Tenants at several public housing projects file suit against the Boston Housing Authority, complaining of sub-standard living conditions.
1978 - The Boston Redevelopment Authority receives a $10 million federal grant for improvements at the Columbia Point housing project.
1979 - The John F. Kennedy Library is formally dedicated.
1984 - The Boston Housing Authority’s receivership ends and Corcoran, Mullins, Jennison, a private development company, takes over the management of Columbia Point, initiating a major cleanup and intensive maintenance improvements.
1985 - The Massachusetts State Archives opens in November.
1986 - The construction of the new Harbor Point housing complex, a mixed-income community, on the site of the former Columbia Point housing projects, begins.
1998 - Harbor Point Apartments achieves a 99% occupancy rate and celebrates its tenth anniversary.