In the heart of Boston's Financial District and multimodal transit system, this natural oasis offers community members and tourists alike a vibrant rest spot as they navigate America's most historic city.
Contextualizing Dewey Square Park
The Greenway
Dewey Square Park was established in 2008 as one of eight spaces forming the Rose Kennedy Fitzgerald Greenway. It is the result of a public-private partnership between the Metropolitan Department of Transportation and the Greenway Conservancy.
Stretching from Boston's North End to Chinatown, The Greenway aims to bring nature and community spaces to some of the city's most crowded urban zones. Dewey Square Park is no exception.
Location & Brief History
The Park sits at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Purchase Street, diagonally across from MBTA’s South Station, the largest joint bus and train station in New England.
Under the square’s surface runs I-93, informally known as the Central Artery due to its crucial routes for Boston drivers.
Amidst these intersecting transit routes, Dewey Square park offers a natural oasis for pedestrians and community members to escape the incessant traffic of urban movement.
Oasis Effect: Borders and Plazas
Entering Dewey Square feels like slowing down. The park acts as an oasis, with physical and natural barriers creating separation from the surrounding skyscrapers of the Financial district. As Frances Halsband observes in her 2005 article “Campuses in Place,” the tensions between city life and “greens” are most evident at the edges of spaces. While Dewey Square is not a university quad like most of Halsband’s case studies, the principles of “fuzzy” and “hard” boundaries she explores can nevertheless be applied to the park’s three primary borders. "Fuzzy" edges are characterized by permeability, encouraging movement across or through the space, while "hard" borders are impermeable and uninviting, prioritizing feelings of enclosure and protection. According to Halsband’s metrics, Dewey Park’s two southeastern boundaries would be categorized as “fuzzy,” while the walled border along Purchase Street would be “hard”.
Beginning with that northern edge of Dewey Square, a six foot concrete wall topped with an ornate blue fence protects park-goers from the heavy traffic of Purchase street. A pollinator garden maintained by the Greenway Conservancy runs alongside that physical barrier, adding elements of natural life to further distinguish the park oasis from its surrounding urban environment. Incorporating nature into this border reduces the harsh ambiance created by the otherwise “hard” boundary, while preserving its protective purpose.
Unlike the impermeable boundary along Purchase Street, the square’s southeastern edges invite pedestrian flow from Summer Street and Atlantic Avenue into the park. They achieve this welcoming effect via wide cobblestone sidewalks and purposeful tree lines. The corner of Dewey Square closest to South Station operates as an extension of the transportation hub, with stairs leading down to train and bus tracks. It also offers a smooth transition from Summer Street’s sidewalk into the cobblestone plaza of Dewey Street.
Dewey Plaza
As Chidester explains in “Public Places, Private Lives,” plazas have historically been centers of professional, social, and political life for surrounding residents. Although Dewey Square plaza is a 21st century development, it displays many similar characteristics to the historic Greek and Roman plazas analyzed by Chidester. Rotating weekly food trucks invite office workers in the Financial district to enjoy their lunch break outdoors, and the Boston Public Market hosts a seasonal farmers market on weekends.
These varied activities are made possible by public amenities including metal tables, trash cans, and warm lighting. The plaza occupies approximately half the total space of Dewey Square, and serves as its primary entry point, a “fuzzy” border, dividing the urban intensity of the Financial District and South Station from the tranquil oasis of Dewey Park.
Finally, a wide, tree-lined brick sidewalk with two layers of elevated curb establishes the Park’s south-western border. These features create permeability while also maintaining clear delineation between the Park and Atlantic Avenue. The semi-permeable nature of this final boundary invites pedestrians to make passive visual contact with the Park's interior, without entering the space directly.
Since this sidewalk border is also Dewey Park's only connection to the rest of the Greenway, it serves a crucial place-establishing function. Lamp posts with branded “Rose-Kennedy” flags increase the area’s legibility and provide design continuity with the rest of the Greenway. Legibility refers to the ease with which individuals can navigate an unfamiliar space, and it is best achieved when places are marked with identifiable logos, such as the Greenway's flags. The continuity of the Greenway logo across all eight of its parks contributes to a cohesive sense of place.
A final note on that locational identity: Atlantic Avenue sidewalk is the best external angle from which to view the large mural constituting the fourth edge of the rectangular park. This 70x76ft mural is one of many elements designed to bring community and shared identity into the park.
Having welcomed pedestrians with carefully designed “fuzzy” and “hard” borders, Dewey square works to build a sense of community belonging through the park’s interior design elements. As noted previously, the focal point of the park is a large mural along its western wall. The mural’s enormous size and vibrant color scheme draw attention from viewers outside the square, even up to four blocks away, and provide a recognizable photo opportunity for travelers. It transforms an otherwise-empty concrete wall into a detailed façade. Since textured, colorful, and varied visual stimuli increase visitors' comfort in the spaces around buildings, this mural plays a key role in grounding the space.
In addition to establishing spatial identity for Dewey Square, the mural invites pedestrians to engage in the park’s sociocultural scene by artistically expressing community values. Its artists are often underrepresented minorities or important figures in New England’s cultural scene, who bring messages of social justice, resistance, and belonging to their work. The artists’ backgrounds and art are explained in numerous plaques interspersed around the park, increasing visitor’s understanding of the people and place they’re encountering.
Other community-building elements include a bright blue Free Little Library box constructed slightly below adult eye-level. Children and adults alike are invited to “take-a-book, return-a-book,” establishing an inclusive atmosphere where each visitor can add a small contribution to the park’s collective experience. It both encourages community members to return with books of their own, and tempts visitors to spend longer stretches of time in the park’s interior oasis.
That calming effect is supplemented by red Adirondack lawn chairs dispersed across Dewey Park's green lawn. Since the chairs are easily-rearrangeable, visitors feel free to sit alone, or engage in optional conversation with other park goers. As architect Jan Ghel points out in his 2011 publication “Life Between Buildings,” these optional interactions create “passive, chance contacts” and “resultant social activity," thus increasing community engagement. Ghel describes the ideal "living city" as replete with opportunities for these types of casual exchanges between residents.
Furthermore, New-York-based sociologist William H. Whyte explores the importance of minor seated movements. He argues that the freedom to adjust ones' seat, even just a few inches, is crucial to creating a welcoming environment. Dewey Park's Adirondack chairs allow visitors to fulfill social expectations of politeness and privacy, thus increasing community comfort within the park. The seating available in Dewey Park plays a key role in fostering a sense of community belonging by provoking spontaneous social interactions and facilitating polite behaviors.
While the park offers a safe-haven for pedestrians and community life, its skyscraper borders and highway basement can create a disjointed feel relative to its surrounding space. This disconnect results from the differences in scale between the park and its bordering buildings.
The eight parks comprising the Rose Kennedy Greenway are meant to offer pedestrians a nature-centric route through the city; however, they are not contiguous, and thus the oasis effect created by each is broken as pedestrians are forced to cross multi-lane, high-traffic roads. The changes of pace between easily walkable “5 km/hour architecture” and street “60 km/hour architecture” can be disorienting to visitors unfamiliar with the area.
Additionally, the skyscrapers of the nearby Financial District can be both dizzying and suffocating. As urban geographer Larry R. Ford notes about New York City's skyscrapers, their height creates "dark tunnels" because it proves "impossible to [take a] step back." When pedestrians cannot see beyond the nearest line of buildings, their scale relative to human perception is flawed. That dizzying effect, while reduced somewhat by the well-designed boundaries of Dewey Square, is amplified in winter months when skyscrapers block what minimal sunlight exists from entering the park. This issue is challenging to avoid given the park’s location within Boston’s Financial District, but it is nonetheless important to note its potential impact on park goers.
Lasting Impressions
Dewey Square Park offers a slower-paced space within the vibrant urban experience of downtown Boston. Its combination of well-designed boundaries, a multi-use plaza, and inclusive community amenities establish a distinct spatial identity which welcomes new and returning visitors alike. Although the collective Rose-Kennedy Greenway struggles to overcome Boston’s dizzying urban landscape, Dewey Square itself effectively maintains a quiet oasis for pedestrians to enjoy.