KINGDOM COME

The tale of Northeastern's campus conquest

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YMCA OF GREATER BOSTON (1913)

Empires don’t appear out of thin air, they rise from the ashes. And on January 13, 1910, as first light bloomed over the corner of Berkeley and Boylston Street, there was no shortage of smoke.

“The fire was one of the most spectacular, as well as one of the most fiercest, that the Boston department has had to deal with in years,” with “volumes of smoke,” wrote a reporter for the Boston Daily Globe.

The YMCA was destroyed. Its classrooms, home to the Evening Institute of Young Men, were among the estimated $200,000 (over $5,000,000 in today’s cash) worth of damage.

The land that the Huntington Avenue YMCA now occupies was first purchased by the organization in 1902 for $5 per square foot, totaling nearly $190,000, with future plans of moving from the Boylston location worth in total over $500,000. Fires have a tendency to either end or expedite plans.

Luckily, the quick move for the Evening Institute in 1913 to Huntington Avenue was a convenient expedition for a community in dire need for dorms. As written in a 1907 Globe article prophetically titled “Housing of the Thousands of Students in Boston is a Perplexing Problem,” over 30,000 students sought housing in the city and the Y was opening its doors citywide.

“No thinking person can doubt that the presence of in the city of a composite body on large and composed of such diverse elements is fraught with many perplexing problems.” The YMCA, according to the article, was one the foremost “pioneers in the movement to provide safe and attractive homes” for students, “so rapidly spreading, for the better housing of students and for a safer and pleasanter social conditions for them.”

This would prove to be fertile ground for the newly-named Northeastern College to set up camp.

BOSTON OPERA HOUSE (1957)

On November 8, 1909, the Boston Opera House opened it doors for the first time with a performance of Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda.” The Boston Globe’s headline the next day read: “Boston’s New Opera House is the Best Equipped Temple of Music in America.”

The Opera House’s glory was finite. In 1957, Boston’s building department declared the Opera House unsafe and beyond repair, closing the building after a 48-year run.

The Opera House’s demise came as Northeastern University was growing too big for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) housing. Never one not to seize on an opportune moment, Northeastern purchased the Opera House for $160,000.

Speare Hall, a dormitory for students, soon replaced the Opera House.

But Northeastern’s use of the property was met with backlash. Eugene Willard, a Boston resident, wrote to The Boston Globe: “Those interested in wiping out all trace of these venerable landmarks call it progress. But it is the wrong kind of progress.”

In 1980, the former B.F. Keith Memorial Theatre became what is now the Washington Street location of the Boston Opera House. While the new Boston Opera House has made progress in bridging the cultural gap Northeastern created, Boston Globe reporter Jeremy Eichler believes it cannot replace the original. In an opinion piece from the Globe, Eichler wrote, “The city has not had homegrown opera of truly international standing… Taking a step back, this absence of a proper venue is a striking void in the cultural life of a city so rich in other dimensions, an Achilles’ heel in a musical scene that otherwise ranks with the finest in the nation.”

MESERVE HALL COMPLEX (1961)

Behind Northeastern’s historic buildings and modern buildings, there are numerous property acquisition stories. Those stories are hidden in the bricks and stones, and you can still find evidence of them if you look closely. For example, you can find a stone on Leon Street, behind Ryder Hall, that says “United Drug Company Research Development.”

The United Drug Company (UDC) began its operations and supplied the Rexall Drug Stores in 1903. It then opened approximately 12,000 drug stores across the country from 1920 to 1977. Northeastern archives explain just which buildings comprised the UDC.

“In the 1930s, UDC built six buildings on its Boston campus that housed its corporate offices and manufacturing and research facilities,” according to the United Drug Company products collection. “Northeastern University purchased the buildings from United Realty in 1961. One of the six buildings is now divided into four sections: Lake Hall, Meserve Hall, Nightingale Hall, and Holmes Hall.”

A 1988 publication titled titled, Tradition and innovation: reflections on Northeastern University’s first century, recorded more details: “Evidence of the United Drug Company survives today… On the fifth floor of Lake Hall, the Math Department enjoys the dark wood paneling and marble fireplace of United Drug’s president’s office. Every floor in the building carries a large, walk-in safe, perhaps for protecting secret product formulas.”

The Meserve Hall complex witnessed the early expansion of Northeastern. Today, three other buildings on the block that Northeastern purchased from United Realty were eventually demolished. Meserve and its brethren continue to watch the university change.

HENDERSON BOATHOUSE (1989)

In 1989, after a 25-year wait, Northeastern finally had their own boathouse. Before that, the men’s crew had rowed at the Riverside Boat Club in Cambridge and the women’s crew were guests at Boston University’s boathouse, where they warmed up on concrete floors while BU rivals used mats and where they could not even take a shower.

The university originally aimed for the Magazine Beach area in Cambridge, but people in the neighborhood “did not want to have anything to do with a private university from Boston, trying to use their public land to build a boathouse,” recalled Walter “Buzz” Congram, the men’s rowing head coach from 1977 to 2000, who played an outsized role in fighting for a new boathouse.

As the university turned its sights on Brighton, the residents there, too, were skeptical about any use of public land by a private university, wondering if it would be beneficial for the community.

What ensued was a 7-year process, beginning in 1982, that was described as “The Seven Trials of Hercules” during a 2001 speech at Northeastern. The university tried to sway the Brighton community by offering up summer rowing programs for local residents, and today they share the dock and racks outside the boathouse with Boston Latin School, Brookline High School and other community rowing clubs.

Another obstacle was getting the Metropolitan District Commission to approve a 99-year lease on “the last piece of Charles River land available for such an enterprise,” as Antoinette Frederick wrote in her 2017 book “Northeastern University, Coming of Age: The Ryder Years, 1975–1989.”

At last, with a price tag of $2.5 million, the boathouse was completed in 1989, ushering Northeastern into the elite club of Harvard, MIT and BU that have long had their own facilities. Two years later, American Rowing magazine would select Henderson Boathouse as the “best boathouse in the United States.”

At the dedication ceremony in the boathouse on November 18, 1989, Northeastern President John A. Curry told about 500 people gathered, “We have a home. A group of high-achieving nomads finally have a home.”

THE FENWAY CENTER (2007)

The Fenway Center was once a rose that went by another name, a name that to many smelled much sweeter.

Located on Saint Stephen Street, the building has served as Northeastern’s musical performance venue since 2007. Before that, however, the community knew it as St. Ann’s University Parish, one of the Fenway’s most cherished Catholic churches.

In the early 2000’s, the Boston Archdiocese was forced to close near 70 churches. In 2004, rumors swirled that St. Ann’s, beloved by Fenway residences and Northeastern students alike, would be one of the parishes to close its doors. A year later, those rumors were confirmed.

Father John Unni, a pastor at St. Ann’s, lamented its shuttering. He saw the parish as a unique blend of the Fenway’s population: both seasoned residents and rotating students. “Take a look around,” Unni said during the church’s final mass. “There is a rich array of faces, smiles and waves; wrinkles, skin color and faith background.”

But a vacant building near Northeastern is never vacant for long.

Within mere days of the parish saying its goodbyes, a bidding war ensued between the university and the Fenway Community Development Corp. (CDC). Northeastern vaguely proposed an open meeting place, and more money.

Through rallies, skits, and a detailed proposal, the Fenway CDC aimed to turn the site into mixed-income housing, with affordable housing making up 25 percent.

City Councilor Michael Ross attended one of these rallies, and to the Huntington News, implored Northeastern to let up. “All we are asking is why can’t Northeastern give the neighborhood a chance?” he said. “Why can’t we coexist, why can’t we do some things for Northeastern, and Northeastern do some things for the community?”

Said a 2005 Huntington News op-ed piece, “It is ironic how for the past two years, the university has preached the same platitudes of ‘Love thy neighbor,’ and yet with an ability to set a real example for the students and the city of Boston, they have exposed themselves as having deep wallets and shallow intent.”

Within a week, Northeastern owned the building.

RENAISSANCE PARK GARAGE (2008)

The Renaissance Park Garage opened in 2008.

Located on Columbus Avenue in Roxbury, the 900-car garage occupies land previously owned by the Boston Planning and Development Agency.

In 2013, a group of minority businesses called Columbia Plaza Associates (CPA) sued Northeastern, claiming the university had shorted CPA on profits from the development of Parcel 18, a plot of land which now contains the garage and the International Village dormitory. CPA also claimed Northeastern’s developments on the parcel violated Boston’s Linkage Program, a citywide initiative created in the 1980s to ensure that residential neighborhoods and minority groups would benefit from urban development in downtown Boston.

Kevin Cohee, chair and CEO of One United Bank, a member of CPA, told the Bay State Banner when the suit went before the Suffolk Superior Court in 2016 that CPA had made an agreement with Northeastern that the school would be a managing partner on the garage building project and that the two parties would split profits equally. Cohee said CPA was not compensated by Northeastern after building the garage and International Village. Members of CPA alleged they had lost out on a potential $100 million in profits from the garage.

“Northeastern literally swindled the organizations out of the dorms and paid nothing, and out of the garage and paid nothing,” he told the Banner.

In June of this year, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled in favor of Northeastern.

INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE (2009)

Northeastern unveiled International Village, a 22-story dorm in the heart of Lower Roxbury, in 2009 — and four years later, the university found itself at the center of a lawsuit over the building’s development.

In the same 2013 lawsuit filed over Renaissance Park Garage, CPA sued Northeastern over the development of parcel 18. Though Northeastern owned the chunk of public land, CPA owned the development rights — and CPA claimed they were frozen out of the $300 million deal to construct International Village.

CPA acquired the development rights to parcel 18 through the Linkage Program. According to CPA, the group then struck a deal with Northeastern to develop the land together, first constructing what is now the Renaissance Park Garage and then collaborating on an unspecified joint venture. The latter never happened, and International Village was built on the land instead.

Northeastern argued that there was no unfair practice involved and that CPA did not have the exclusive rights to development on parcel 18.

After a contentious trial, the Suffolk County Superior Court ruled in favor of Northeastern. The ruling was upheld on appeal earlier this year.

“The black community received nothing,” Henry F. Owens III, counsel for CPA,told Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders. “It was taken away by Northeastern’s greed.”

INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING COMPLEX (2013)

Most recently, Northeastern has worked with the architectural firm Payette to design and build a $225-million, state-of-the-art engineering complex on Columbus Ave. Campus administrators believe the building, along with the still in-progress walkway that will bridge the “south” side of campus to its counterpart across the MBTA tracks, will facilitate further research and open up Roxbury and its residents to the university and surrounding neighborhoods. These are noble goals, but how well have, or can they, been achieved?

Take the new bridge. In an interview with News@Northeastern, first-year student Douglas Reab expressed his excitement about the bridge, saying how residents of Roxbury will now have easier access to Fenway and other surrounding neighborhoods. However, his enthusiasm isn’t shared by everyone. Residents of 772, 774 and 776 Columbus, three apartment buildings that directly face ISEC, have been plagued with constant construction since Northeastern broke ground in 2014. “It just doesn’t stop,” Sydney Smith, a fifth-year student who has lived at 776 Columbus for three years, said. “We weren’t told that, between this and the new dorm [Lightview], we would be surrounded by construction for years. It’s disruptive and ridiculous considering what we pay in rent.” Rents are $5,000 in those buildings, on average.

Another issue is the access to other neighborhoods that ISEC purportedly offers to residents of Roxbury. According to university’s website, community groups are welcome to use ISEC as a meeting ground for events. The $3,500 price tag for events, however, is a hefty blow for a neighborhood where the median household income is around $26,000 annually, significantly lower than Boston’s $56,000 a year.

ISEC boasts an incredible 234,000 square feet of space, packed with brand new equipment that will no doubt continue to push Northeastern’s limits into the future of research. The cost, however, has yet to be determined.

LIGHTVIEW (2019)

The latest in a series of luxury residence halls developed by the university, LightView boasts a state-of-the-art fitness facility, fully equipped kitchens with stainless steel appliances, and a 24-hour “Academic Success Center” with iMacs and free printing.

LightView will not operate under the umbrella of Northeastern Residential life, but apartments in the complex will only be open to Northeastern students. Prices will range from approximately $1,300 to $1,800 per month.

The university has launched efforts to promote the new building to students, including an extravagant kickoff event where American Campus Communities raffled off Apple Watches, 4K televisions and a $10,000 scholarship.

However, the benefits seen by Northeastern students do not seem to be extended to the local Roxbury community.