Existing comment:
Charlestown Training Field/Winthrop Square
The Training Field's Struggle for Survival
Road projects in two centuries endangered the "communitie's meeting place."
Despite the Training Field's historical importance, road projects in the 19th and 20th centuries threatened to destroy what was once called the "communitie's meeting place."
In 1869, George Washington Warren, president of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, proposed building 60-foot-wide avenue from City Square to Monument Square, which would have destroyed some of the Training Field. Charlestown residents successfully resisted the plan.
In 1930 and again in 1947, plans for the Mystic River Bridge -- now the Tobin Bridge -- called for a connecting ramp that would have effectively marooned the Training Field inside a traffic circle. The Reverend Wolcott Curler, Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Charlestown, launched an impassioned and ultimately successful campaign to relocate the ramp and save the Training Field. |