The Charles River Esplanade

Boston's Back Bay, once a large tidal flat, was filled in by the eighteen eighties. The Charles River Esplanade began as a ten-acre riverfront green space between the Charles River Dam Road and the Longfellow Bridge, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted with outdoor gymnasia, a riverside promenade, pathways, and landscaping for passive and active recreation for the largely immigrant population of the West End. Because the river remained tidal and foul smelling, damming it in nineteen ten transformed the mud flats into a wide basin with a constant water level and new parkland along the banks. In the nineteen thirties, Arthur Shurcliff transformed and nearly doubled the park's size by adding trees, pathways, monuments, docks, and narrow waterways. In nineteen fifty-six, the expanded park was dedicated as the Storrow Memorial Embankment. Construction of Storrow Drive in the early nineteen fifties brought additional basin fill at the river's edge, extended the lagoon island to replace land lost to the new thoroughfare, moved several structures, and added more recreational facilities, creating the park known today as the Charles River Esplanade. The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation manages the Esplanade in partnership with the privately funded nonprofit Esplanade Association, which since two thousand one has helped drive millions of dollars in improvements including rebuilt docks, new playgrounds, a revitalized Eliot Memorial, and restoration of the Lotta Fountain and Hatch Shell Oval Lawn.

Cambridge, Massachusetts · United States