Urban Acupuncture
by Mary Ann Travis

Hadrian Millon and Wellington Reiter have dug themselves into a big hole.

In a chrome-and-glass conference room near Dewey Square, in the heart of Boston's most high-priced commercial real estate district, the wiry, energetic Wellington "Duke" Reiter (A '81) talks passionately and persuasively about the 120-foot-high tower he wants to build nearby.

Expensively dressed real estate developers, architects and private-sector financial types whisper in the ears of city officials as Reiter describes the vertical urban monument he's designed, inspired by ancient Rome.

Hadrian Millon (A&S '80), a blondish, mild-mannered man who wears a business suit appropriate for a state highway department consultant, has arranged this public meeting for Dewey Square "neighbors" to voice their concerns and give their opinions about the public art project planned for their "hood."

But Dewey Square is not your typical neighborhood. People don't live here--they make money here. And among this concentration of modern, high-rise testaments to Big Business, there's a lot more money to be made.

Dewey Square is anchored by South Station, whose façade resembles the Roman Colosseum. South Station is the hub of passenger train service for metropolitan Boston and much of New England. Dewey Square, which is really more of a triangle, is home to several wealthy institutions including the Federal Reserve Bank, the biggest building looming on the block.

The worried Boston officials scattered in the audience for Millon and Reiter's presentation are starting to get a little hostile. They are used to being in control of things, and they feel that control slipping away from them as the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, flush with U.S. federal highway money, puts a highway through (and under) their city. They and their cronies don't have as much control of the project as they'd like. Reiter's tower adds another element that isn't theirs.

Let's not commission any public art until we build more buildings around Dewey Square, say the city officials and their business pals.

Millon sticks to his guns. Plenty of skyscrapers already exist around Dewey Square, he says. This is a built-up area with an established culture and long history. Why delay? Besides, Reiter's design incorporates the immense foundation left over from the construction of a gigantic crane used in tunneling the underground highway. The crane dropped supplies and placed trucks into the tunnel. Only the crane's foundation remains at Dewey Square. Recycling this expensive foundation as the base for Reiter's tower makes both economic and artistic sense.

After the meeting, an interloper hooks an arm around Reiter's shoulders, pulling him aside. You aren't really going to do this now, without knowing what can be built later, are you? Maybe you can be a part of our action later. Why do public art before there are new buildings on the new surface that is being created? Shouldn't art respond to the new environment that's coming that we, the city, will be managing?

But the divide-and-conquer scheme doesn't work. Millon and Reiter are united. Millon wants to do his job, fold up and go home. Reiter wants to build his tower, mark this Boston spot and do it to stand the test of time.

These Tulane graduates, who only met on the project known as the Big Dig, have dug themselves into a big hole. And they're not getting out anytime soon.

The hole that Millon and Reiter are in--the hole from which Reiter's tower will rise--is a drop in the bucket in the whole Big Dig project or, as it is formally known, the Central Artery/Tunnel project.

The Big Dig is the largest construction project ever undertaken in North America. Only the Chunnel (the tunnel under the English Channel), the Panama Canal and the Alaskan pipeline rival the Big Dig's complexity and price tag.

When completed in 2005, the Big Dig will have taken 16 years to build and cost $13.6 billion. Although the project is dubbed the Big Dig, its marvels are not only underground nor do they all have to do with excavation. The Big Dig also soars. It includes two, side-by-side Charles River bridges, one of them the world's widest cable-stayed bridge.

The Big Dig does, however, involve quite a bit of digging. Many of the 161 lane miles of the new or reconstructed highway through Boston will be underground. Among its wonders, the 8- to 10- lane, 1.5-mile, below-the-surface Central Artery expressway--a leg of I-93--will feature the world's largest tunnel ventilation system. The northbound tunnel highway is scheduled to open in July 2002.

A second tunnel highway--the Ted Williams Tunnel, a section of I-90 that was the first major finished component of the Big Dig, completed in 1995--goes under Boston Harbor, allowing cars to zip to and from Logan Airport. It will connect to a tunnel highway underneath South Boston.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Growing up on the "backside" of Beacon Hill, Hadrian Millon saw firsthand the leveling of Boston's West End.

Navigating by foot Beacon Hill's narrow, slippery, brick sidewalks, Millon and his father, Henry Millon (A&S '47, '49, A '53), a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, often went to watch the West End "progress," including the construction of architectural monstrosities such as Boston City Hall.

"We would walk down there and see everything torn down and see the new buildings going up. It was very exciting," recalls Millon.

Hardly anyone protested the destruction of the West End at the time. "It was seen as getting rid of the old and bringing in a new award-winning kind of architecture. That was the spirit of the time," says Millon.

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