Engaging Histories of Repair: Ruggles Station and Boston’s Southwest Corridor

Ruggles Station, situated at the intersection between the demographically and economically diverse Boston neighborhoods of Back Bay, Roxbury and Mission Hill, is a key but often overlooked site in the larger story of architectural and urban transformation in the 1970s and ’80s. In particular, the project offers a critical opportunity to consider the legacy of “redlining,” highway planning, urban renewal, anti-highway activism, and participatory design practices. Designed by the Black-led architecture firm Stull Associates (later Stull and Lee, Inc.), Ruggles is one of eight stations constructed as part of the Southwest Corridor Project, an initiative that included not only mass transit but also a 4.7 mile linear park in place of a proposed multi-lane highway that was stopped through community activism. The station and surrounding park gesture towards a more connected, more equitable urban future for Boston: the hope of its designers. Yet, few of its many daily users understand this significance. With its vaulted concourse, monumental arches and strong diagonal axis, Ruggles Station is a distinctive structure that houses an intermodal urban transit hub and the School of Architecture at Northeastern University. This presentation discusses how we have utilized Ruggles Station as a locus of architectural investigation and pedagogy, as a way to discuss urban renewal, postmodern civic architecture, community activism, the legacy of Black architects in Boston, and perhaps most importantly, interrogate the university’s own relationship to its urban context and neighbors. We will discuss the results of our research to date, which has been aided by 500 cubic feet of original drawings, papers and project materials from the Stull and Lee archive held at Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections. These include: an exhibition that placed the station in dialogue with its surrounding communities and within the broader architectural and urban debates that shaped American cities in the postwar period; a symposium featuring the architects, planners, and activists involved in planning the Southwest Corridor Project; teaching modules; and a forthcoming book project. Through this work, we have attempted not only to offer a powerful counter-narrative emphasizing the difficult work of repair in the wake of urban renewal rather than its ruin, but also show how through the lens of just one building, architecture students can be become engaged in a history that begs significant questions about how historical, political, and community-driven forces shape architecture and the built environment.