Scope and Contents
These records document community activism around the development of three sites in Boston, Massachusetts: the Southwest Corridor, Tent City, and Melnea Cass Boulevard. For each site, Kruckemeyer played an important role in advocating for neighborhood interests to be taken into account in the development schemes proposed by private, city, state, and federal entities. The records also document the planning, environmental impact studies, and construction of the Southwest Corridor, for which Kruckemeyer served as project manager.
Series 1. Community Anti-Highway Activism documents the community-based activism and explorations of viable alternatives to the highway in the years leading up to the Southwest Corridor Project. The records reflect Kruckemeyer’s involvement with the Tubman Area Planning Council, a group of neighborhood residents and other stakeholders who opposed the proposed highway, and with the South End Committee on Transportation (SECOT), which supported public transportation for the community. Entities such as the Greater Boston Committee on the Transportation Crisis (GBC), a coalition of anti-highway community groups across several Boston neighborhoods and neighboring towns, and The Southwest Corridor Land Development Coalition, which represented community views about how to best use the land already cleared for the highway, and of which SECOT was a member, are also represented. This series contains meeting materials, reports, studies, notes and correspondence, mainly dating 1969-1973.
Series 2. The Southwest Corridor Project was developed in the land originally cleared for the highway planned through the neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, the South End and Back Bay. A combination of public transit, open spaces and recreation areas was designed, resulting in a 4.1 mile corridor consisting of subway stations, parks, bike lanes, and more. Approved in 1972, construction began in 1979, after 9 years of planning and environmental impact work. This series documents the development of the project through reports, memos, notes, correspondence, plans, flyers, and newsletters, dating 1968-1993.
Series 3. Tent City Corporation documents community-based advocacy for mixed-income housing to be built on a cleared site near Copley Place. Kruckemeyer served on the Advisory Board beginning in 1979, and later served as President; his papers contain correspondence, memos, newspaper clippings, reports and photographs, dating 1978-2017.
Series 4. The Friends of Melnea Cass Boulevard, a coalition of neighbors and stakeholders, was co-founded by Kruckemeyer to push back against the city’s proposed redesign of the boulevard, particularly in its plans to remove mature trees that lined the boulevard. Records include design plans, notes, photographs, correspondence, flyers, hearing materials and meeting materials, dating 2007-2020.
Dates
- Creation: 1966-2020
Conditions Governing Access
Records with personal phone numbers, home addresses, and email addresses are restricted for 12 years.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright restrictions may apply.
Biographical Note
Ken Kruckemeyer received his Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1963, and completed a second Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1965. In 1967, Ken and his wife Ann moved to the South End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, and became involved with the Harriet Tubman House, part of the United South End Settlements (USES). USES provides community services such as daycare, education and healthcare. Becoming a part of the South End community led Kruckemeyer to a life-long commitment to organizing around issues impacting the neighborhood such as housing and transit. In his own words, “My professional work expanded from architecture to community building and project management of civic networks—streets and sidewalks and bike paths and parks and buses and transit and trains and highways.”
By the late 1960s, Kruckemeyer and others had established the Tubman Area Planning Council to advocate against and propose alternatives to the proposed construction of the I-95 highway, routed through the South End and threatening housing loss for the neighborhood. Multiple local community groups joined together under the umbrella organization Greater Boston Committee on the Transportation Crisis (GCB), formed in 1968-1969, which successfully pressured Governor Francis Sargent into halting highway construction within Route 128. In 1971, Sargent formed the Boston Transportation Planning Review (BTPR), tasked with reviewing whether highways or mass transit should be established within this area. Around this time, the South End Transportation Committee (SECOT) was formed by South End residents, to examine and respond to transportation proposals that would impact the neighborhood. Kruckemeyer was a member of SECOT (and likely a founding member). Other groups that formed around this time include The Southwest Corridor Land Development Coalition, which represented community views on how to best use the land already cleared for the highway, and of which SECOT was a member.
Eventually, Kruckemeyer became a project manager for the Southwest Corridor Project, the successful alternative to the original highway proposal, serving in that role 1973-1981. In the land originally cleared for the highway, a combination of mass transit, open spaces and recreation areas was designed, resulting in a 4.1 mile corridor comprised of Orange Line MBTA stations (Forest Hills to Back Bay), public parks and gardens, bike lanes, and more. The corridor spans and connects the neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, the South End and Back Bay. Approved in 1972, construction began in 1979, after 9 years of planning and environmental impact work.
In the late 1970s, Kruckemeyer became involved in advocacy around Tent City, a site near Copley Square that was vacant since housing on the site was demolished in the 1960s. A four-day sit-in was organized by South End activist, community leader and politician Mel King (1928-2023) in 1968, after Boston Redevelopment Authority plans to turn it into a parking garage were made public. Soon after the protests, the Tent City Task Force was established, to advocate for affordable housing to be built on the site; the Task Force became the Tent City Corporation in 1979. Kruckemeyer joined its Advisory Board that year, and later served as the corporation’s president.
From 1983-1991, Kruckemeyer served as Associate Commissioner, Highway Engineering, for the Massachusetts Department of Public Works. From 1991-2010, he served as a Research Associate/Affiliate at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, first teaching in, then co-directing, the International Honors Program “Cities in the 21st Century,” semester-long study abroad programs for undergraduates to learn on the ground through immersion in several African, Asian, and South American cities.
In 2006, Kruckemeyer co-founded the Livable Streets Alliance, an organization that advocates for safe and affordable transportation solutions to ensure communities are connected and livable. In the early 2010s, Kruckemeyer helped establish the Friends of Melnea Cass Boulevard (FMCB), a coalition of neighbors and other stakeholders that contested the city’s unilateral redesign of the boulevard, advocating instead for a redesign that would benefit the neighborhood the most. Initially built as part of the Southwest Corridor Project, the boulevard was lined with hundreds of trees at neighborhood residents’ request. Redesign proposals by the city sought to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety around the boulevard, a goal shared by FMCB; however, proposals consistently required the removal of mature trees in order to achieve that goal, despite residents’ opposition. After a 2018 reconstruction plan that would have removed over 100 trees was approved, FMCB-organized community protests led the City of Boston to officially postpone its plans to redesign the boulevard in 2021.
Extent
10.5 cubic feet (10 boxes)
Language
English
Overview
These records document community activism around three sites in Boston, Massachusetts: the Southwest Corridor, Tent City, and Melnea Cass Boulevard. For each site, Kruckemeyer played an important role in advocating for neighborhood interests to be taken into account in the development schemes proposed by private, city, state, and federal entities. The records also document the planning, environmental impact studies, and construction of the Southwest Corridor, for which Kruckemeyer served as project manager.
Arrangement
Arranged in 4 series: Series 1. Community Anti-Highway Activism; Series 2. Southwest Corridor Project; Series 3. Tent City Corporation; and Series 4. Friends of Melnea Cass Boulevard. Within series, files are arranged alphabetically.
Physical Location
100/5/5-7
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated to Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections by Ken Kruckemeyer in January 2024.
Sources for Biographical Note
- “Ken Kruckemeyer.” WGBH.org. Accessed September 4, 2024. www.wgbh.org/people/ken-kruckemeyer
- “Kenneth E. Kruckemeyer.” LinkedIn.com. Accessed September 4, 2024. www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-e-kruckemeyer-1936719/
- The Harriet Tubman House Memory Project Ken Kruckemeyer. Giordana Mecagni (interviewer); Danielle Rose, Kimberly Villafuerte Barzola, and Dory Klein (transcript editors). January 19, 2021. Boston Research Center, Northeastern University Library, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections, and Boston Public Library. Accessed September 4, 2024. repository.library.northeastern.edu/downloads/neu:4f184503s?datastream_id=content
- Princeton University Alumni. Class of 1963. “Ken Kruckemeyer.” Accessed September 4, 2024. tigernet2.princeton.edu/topics/3883/page/class-yearbook-k-o
- MassMoments. “Activists Erect Tent City in Boston.” Accessed September 4, 2024. www.massmoments.org/moment-details/activists-erect-tent-city-in-boston.html
Processing Information
Original folders were replaced with acid-free folders, and Kruckemeyer's original folder titles were transcribed onto them. Acronyms were spelled out for clarity. Unfoldered material was placed into acid-free folders. In cases where folders were unlabeled, or material was unfoldered (about 15% of the collection), the processing archivists devised a title.
- Title
- Finding aid for the Ken Kruckemeyer papers
- Author
- Irene Gates and Aleks Renerts
- Date
- December 2024
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections Repository