CAPTION: Mounds of greenery fell to the ground after landscapers cut back a popular wisteria plant on Garden Street last week.

CREDIT: Suzanne Besser




Those who were accustomed to the fragrant violet-blue flower clusters that bloomed each May on the twisted wisteria vines at 15 Garden Street were saddened to see them drastically cut back on October 23. While the building’s new owners could not be reached for comment, next-door neighbor Martha Pierce said that the heavy vines had separated from the house and fallen halfway off. For at least a week, she said, they were being supported by a lamppost, and neighbors were worried that they had become a safety issue. “As sad as it was to see the vines go down, there was a legitimate reason for doing it,” said Pierce.

Phyllis Brown of Cambridge Street and Bob Uvello, who works at the Mass General Maintenance Building across from 15 Garden Street, both remembered when the wisteria was first planted 28 years ago by Jerry Sawyer, a former owner of the building. “When Jerry was alive, he took good care of it,” said Brown. “Pruned, it is beautiful. Just last spring, the whole street smelled beautifully. But the wisteria had gotten out of hand.”

Several neighbors said they suspected the wisteria had damaged the house. “From the looks of it, this is a good opportunity for the new owners to do masonry work,” said Pierce.

The landscape company that cut back the vine left standing two twisted woody trunks several inches in diameter. According to information provided on http://ohioline.osu.edu, they should bloom again within two or three years if proper pruning and training procedures are followed.

The Temple Street signage and trash management practices of the Subway franchise at the corner of Cambridge and Temple streets violats zoning agreements with the Beacon Hill Civic Association and irritates neighbors, some say.

“Subway has made a travesty of all promises to the [civic association]. In addition to the signs, there's the ATM and overflowing trash barrels stored on Temple Street. That offense to community procedures, and their disregard of the residential setting, are the biggest issues, and ones that [the civic association and Temple Street neighbors] ignore at their peril,” Temple Street resident Betsy Peterson wrote last week in an email to the civic association.

The recent appearance of a neon sign, along with an eight-inch decal on the Temple Street window’s lower portion, is neither “acceptable nor appropriate” according to the agreement the franchise’s owners, Manuk Ozcan and Nathaniel Van Camp, reached with the civic association last summer, according to Tom Clemens, chair of the association’s Zoning and Licensing Committee. “Clearly they agreed not to place any neon signage in the Temple Street window,” Clemens said.

Clemens contacted Ozcan and his attorney, Adam Lowenstein, about the violations but had not received a response as of Friday morning.

Lowenstein told The Beacon Hill Times on Friday that he and his clients never had an official agreement with the civic association nor signed any documents binding the franchise to certain signage guidelines. “We do feel that we are in compliance with what we had said,” he said of the verbal agreement reached during the committee’s approval process.

The neon sign does not violate agreements because the sign is indoors and not outdoors, Lowenstein said. He also said that, although he had not visited the franchise, he did not think the trash cans had been left outside on Temple Street.

“From my understanding, there have not been any real issues. What we probably have here is a couple of neighbors who are upset by the volume of traffic,” he said.

One Temple Street neighbor, however, said that he has seen the restaurant’s two blue garbage cans outside on Temple Street since Subway opened and that the garbage, which is not usually lidded, has attracted rats.

“I don’t like to look at garbage every time I go in my house, quite frankly,” he said. “It’s about being a good neighbor. I don’t think a business should leave their garbage cans out.”

The problems come after the restaurant’s installation of a non-authorized ATM in August. Clemens said that he did not pursue the issue with Lowenstein because he could not find any provision that would prevent Subway from installing one. “The ATM was just not on our radar screen,” he said.

On October 30 around 9:00 p.m., a black man wearing a cap and a mask entered Primo’s Convenience Store at 24 Joy Street, pointed a gun and demanded that the employee behind the counter open the cash register and hand over the money. The employee, who does not want to be identified, said he became very nervous and shaky, and did not move as fast as the robber wanted. The robber, who was holding the gun to the back of the employee’s head, then assaulted him in the head several times with the gun and pushed him to the ground.

At that time, a customer entered the convenience store, causing the assailant to flee with an indeterminate amount of money. The employee did not require medical attention.

Officers from Area A-1 Boston Police arrived on the scene within five minutes and immediately broadcast a description of the suspect, who still remained at large at press time.

Owners of the three neighborhood grocery stores within Beacon Hill were dismayed by the news, but insist the neighborhood is safe and the occurrence unusual.

Sohan Saini, owner of Primo’s, said he would immediately install security cameras and take other measures to insure the safety of his employees. The store’s manager said customers come in and out all day and evening, and it is rare that an employee is alone in the store.

Stuart Eicoff, who has owned the Beacon Capitol Market at nearby 32 Myrtle Street for about 25 years, said that, although his store has been broken into during the night when no one was there, he has never had a robber come in and point a gun at him. “Nor do I even think about it,” he said. “It’s just my naïve, trusting nature.” In light of the recent incident, however, he said he would now consider putting security cameras in the store.

At the time of last week’s hold up at Primo’s, Eicoff’s employee had briefly closed the store in order to help with a problem elsewhere, Eicoff said. However, the store, which also has an alcohol retail license, is busy with customers during the evenings.

Victor and Dee Patel, new owners of The Beacon Hill Market at Myrtle and Anderson streets, said neither they nor the previous owner who had been there for four years had ever had any problems. “I have been in this business for more than five years at a couple of locations in New Jersey,” Victor Patel said. “This is the best neighborhood, both safety-wise and people-wise, that I have ever been in.”

The store has a constant flow of customers, which may even increase because the Patels recently installed a new ATM machine, lottery machine and money order machine. It also has an elaborate camera security system and alarms, he said, all of which deter robberies, he said.

CAPTION: Former Mayor Kevin White stands with Mayor Thomas Menino in front of a recently-unveiled statue honoring his contribution to Boston.
CREDIT: Dhan Shrestha


Mount Vernon Street resident Kevin H. White, who was mayor of Boston from 1968 to 1983, was honored last week by family, friends, neighbors and former administration members, who gathered at historic Faneuil Hall to unveil a statue commemorating his contribution to Boston.

White, who currently is the longest serving mayor in the history of the city, saw Boston through turbulent times while revitalizing the city. He is known for his focus on Boston’s neighborhoods, his vision for downtown revitalization and waterfront development, and his role in the re-opening of Quincy Market.

Beacon Hiller Robert Beal, a close friend and neighbor, called the ceremony “a very spectacular day and tribute to a man who changed the city. It was dead and tired when he became mayor, and he made it into a 24-hour city.”

Beal said he has developed a close relationship with White during the last ten years. “He is a neighbor and I’m looking over him now.”

For the last three years, Beal served on the Dedication Committee, which was charged by Mayor Menino with finding a fitting tribute to White. That committee, which included his wife Kathryn White, his children and two of his grandsons, selected the spot outside Faneuil Hall to place a statue of him.

The committee then chose Gloucester artist Pablo Eduardo to create the larger than life size bronze sculpture of White in a walking gesture to convey movement. They also chose landscape architects Halvorson Design Partnership, who worked with the artist to design a setting for the figure, which includes four granite bands etched with quotes White made during each term he served.

Beal co-chaired the fund raising committee with two other Dedication Committee members, John Connors, Jr., and Micho F. Spring. They raised more than $750,00 for the project from individuals, corporations and the Edward Ingersoll Browne Fund.

Two grandchildren, Andrew Strawbridge, now age 10, and Benjamin, now age 12, were actively involved in the whole process. “When we did the selection of the sculptor last fall, I asked them to come along, write down what they liked and didn’t like, and then to rank them,” said Beal. “They looked them over and ranked the first one with a 5 and 6, the second with a 1 and 2, and then gave a 9 and 10 to the Pablo.”

“I then looked around the room and asked if everyone else agreed,” said Beal. “They did. So the boys can always say they made the recommendation of who would make the statue of their grandfather.”

It’s our home

We’ve been doing our home renovation and design issue for many years because we know Beacon Hill residents love their houses and apartments. Local homes get filled with furniture and accessories from Charles Street shops. Local homeowners get advice from the guys at Charles Street Supply.

Our homes are especially nice in the fall and winter when the small spaces can seem cozy and appropriate.

But in this neighborhood, home is not just inside. It’s also outside, in the neighborhood itself. Some of us rarely leave the Hill. We work in the neighborhood. We shop in the neighborhood. If we can’t get it here we do without. When we go out for dinner, we think we’ll go to Cambridge or the South End, but nine times out of ten we’ll say to ourselves, “Let’s just walk over to Pierrot, or Grotto, or the Bistro, or Lala Rokh or . . .”

This home that we rarely leave gets characterized as “tony” by the larger media. But a better description is quirky, and wonderfully so.

It’s a place where to get to one hairdresser’s shop, you have to walk through a frame shop.

It’s a place where the young working population is loud and boisterous, according to the Boston Police details hired by Suffolk University. They are our young colleagues, and they keep us up at night. It must be that these young lawyers, money managers and researchers finally have enough free time to party and enough money to buy the hootch.

It’s a place where perfectly respectable people aren’t above carrying home from the piles of trash something that will exactly meet their needs.

It’s a place where hundreds of people have opened their doors on Halloween to friends, neighbors and strangers for decades, and no one — trick or treaters or the people passing out the candy — has ever had a problem.

It’s a place also where at least a dozen people each year open their gardens to thousands of people, and no one has ever had a problem.

It’s an environmentally sound place to live — half the people don’t own a car and half walk to work. The row houses we occupy are efficient at keeping out the cold in the winter and the heat in the summer.

It’s a place that people don’t leave when they grow old and retire. Why would they, when they have everything at home that most people seek in a retirement community — safety, convenience, companionship and ease of living. There’s even an organization, Beacon Hill Village, devoted to making sure this part of the population thrives.

It’s a place where residents welcome visitors. Acorn Street residents, for example, are known to step out of their houses and ask where visitors are from. They tell them a little about the history of the place. Other residents, seeing visitors at a locked gate, sometimes let them into a private area.

It’s a neighborhood that takes a lot of pride in itself. Residents are willing to put in the time that it takes to run the civic association. They subject themselves to restrictions about the color with which they can paint their front door. A group of garden club women tend several gardens on the Hill. Many residents and business owners are willing to bundle up in cold weather to put up the holiday decorations and take them down.

We live in this home with more than 9,000 other people. Even though it is small, about a quarter mile square, the number of tussles due to its density are few.

There are problems, of course — unrestrained trash, un-swept streets, untended dogs and a disappointment or two when a beloved shop closes its doors and a less appealing business moves in.

But the bad is far outweighed by the good.

We are lucky to call this neighborhood home.