Creating Pleasure Bay

in South Boston

This 1925 aerial photo shows where soil dredged from both the Reserved Channel and Pleasure Bay was being dumped to make new land between Castle Island and South Boston.  That land is now MassPort’s Conley Container Terminal. On the right, the now-demolished Head House can be seen flanked by beaches at City Point.

Courtesy of Boston Public Library

When landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted drafted his 1883 plan for South Boston’s Marine Park, he envisioned connecting it to Castle Island by filling in some 600 acres of mudflats. That took nearly 50 years to achieve.

First a wooden footbridge was built in 1892, and a delighted public flocked to the island. On Thursday nights in the summer, dances were held there under a wooden canopy hung with colored lanterns.  The footbridge was replaced by a cement path across the newly made land in 1928, and then by a paved road in 1932.

Across from Castle Island an iron pier stretched seaward from the Head House.  It defined Pleasure Bay and fulfilled Olmsted’s plan of increasing public access to the health benefits of sea air.  The 1938 hurricane heavily damaged the pier; it was replaced in 1953 by a granite causeway.  Six years later, Pleasure Bay was enclosed by a dike with two openings that allow the tide to flow in and out.

The 1880 map shows Castle Island nearly a half-mile offshore.

Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at Boston Public Library

Olmsted Pleasure Bay design Leventhal Center

Frederick Law Olmsted’s original 1883 plan called for Marine Park to be connected to Castle Island and the area in between to be named Pleasure Bay.

Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at Boston Public Library

Footbridge to Castle Island

The footbridge gave the public access to Castle Island for the first time and attracted hundreds, especially on weekends.

Courtesy of James Sullivan

Iron Pier

An iron pier built in 1896 led out to what was then called Head Island and is now known as the Sugar Bowl. A wooden canopy over part of the pier provided shade.

Courtesy of James Sullivan

Sign Location

More …

Community activists. Colonial law. Political will. New state regulations. The combination created the 43-mile Boston Harborwalk–a public path, stretching from Logan Airport through seven neighborhoods to the Neponset River. In 1978, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) sought to improve public access to the waterfront. They succeeded by integrating early Colonial laws into new state regulations.

In the decades that followed, community activists, city and state government, and developers of shoreline projects have worked together to ensure the Harborwalk is always constructed along the waterfront. Some sites also provide public amenities–bathrooms, meeting places, kayak launches,
etc. The result is a fabulous path welcoming residents and visitors to our vibrant clean harbor.

Early Colonial laws established public right of access along tidelands to protect citizens’ rights to fish, hunt, and navigate at sea and along the shorefront. These laws go back even further: They stem from Roman law, which was incorporated into English law and brought over to Massachusetts by English
settlers. Then, in the 1640s, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed laws permitting private docks in the intertidal area (between low and high tide) as long as public access was retained. Almost all of Boston’s waterfront is filled land that was once the intertidal area. This, together with the centuries-old legal right of access, served as the underpinnings for the 1978 CZM regulations.

Resources

  • O’Connor, Thomas H., South Boston My Home Town (second edition), Northeastern University Press, 1988, 1994.
  • Reid, William J. Castle Island and Fort Independence. Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1995.
  • Sullivan, Jim, South Boston, Postcard History Series, Arcadia Publishing, 2007.
  • Seasholes, Nancy S., Gaining Ground, A History of Landmaking in Boston,  MIT Press, 2003.

Acknowledgments

  • This sign is made possible by funding from a Boston Community Preservation Act grant.
  • Warm thanks to historians at the Castle Island Association for their guidance and expertise in creating this sign and to the Department of Conservation and Recreation for their partnership.
  • Thank you to Brendan Albert and Kate Gutierrez for generously funding Spanish translations for the Castle Island/Pleasure Bay signs.
  • Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind Recording Studio and Thomasine Berg for their partnership in creating the audio files.