Landscape Information
Winding through downtown Boston, this 1.5-mile linear series of parks and open spaces measures seventeen acres along the path of a former elevated highway. Officially opened in 2008, the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy assumed stewardship and management responsibilities the following year through a lease agreement with the State.
The Greenway is the result of the decades-long Central Artery Project (commonly known as the Big Dig), which buried Interstate 93. The project and its distinct parks restored visual and physical connectivity between downtown Boston and several historic neighborhoods, including the North End, Long Wharf, South Station, and Chinatown. The distinct parks that make up the greenway are each unique in character and spatial composition. Moving from south to north, the parks include: Chinatown Park (which marks the arrival at the Chinatown neighborhood by Carol R. Johnson Associates with Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu), Dewey Square (a plaza that foregrounds Boston’s South Station by Machado and Silvetti Associates, Utile, and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society), Fort Point Channel Parks (a horticulturally rich and exuberant site by Halvorson Design Partnership and Massachusetts Horticultural Society, with subsequent plantings by Copley Wolff Design Group, Inc.), Wharf District Parks (which reconnects Boston with its harbor by EDAW and Copley Wolff), Armenian Heritage Park (Stantec), and North End Parks (which serves as a “front porch” for the North End by Crosby, Schlessinger, Smallridge, LLC and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol).
