By Matt Tempesta, Correspondent
Wed May 27, 2009, 04:04 PM EDT
Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/allston/fun/entertainment/arts/x124601691/Pub...

Allston-Brighton - For years, the stretch of land that runs along Lincoln Street in Allston has been a virtual jungle of overgrown weeds and unkempt shrubs. With the added mess of litter sprinkled in, the Lincoln Street Green Strip looked like another typical swath of forgotten urban greenery.
But it’s funny how much can change in a year.

Thanks to the hard work of local residents, and more than $200,000 in funding from the city of Boston Department of Neighborhood Development and the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Lincoln Street Green Strip has been transformed into a sprawling urban meadow, complete with 10-foot-tall sculptures and eight uniquely formed parterre planters, all crafted out of rustic weathering steel.

As dozens of local residents gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony on a cold, rain-soaked morning earlier this month, many couldn’t help but be awestruck by the transformation.

“When I lived here, actually just a block from here, this was kind of a scary area to cross to get to the Green Line, which I had to do every day to get to work,” said Ann Wicks, who is also the marketing and communications manager for NEFA. “It’s certainly much more pleasant and much more appealing.”

Mayor Thomas Menino was impressed by the strip’s new look.“It’s natural, it’s beautiful,” said Menino. “It took all of us working together. It’s a small thing but a big thing. This is a great day.”

Louise Bonar has lived in Brighton since 1964 and was all too familiar with the eyesore that was the Lincoln Street Green Strip. On her frequent trips to nearby Foreign Auto Body to have her car repaired, Bonar was able to witness the transformation firsthand.

“Driving by, I remember when it was unimproved, and that was pretty terrible,” said Bonar. “I think it’s very interesting. What else would you do with a steep slope that is unattended? I’ve watched it in progress, and it’s just nice to see what can be done with enough determined people.”

The redevelopment of the site would have been just an afterthought without its main catalyst, Harry Mattison who, for 15 years, has lived on nearby Mansfield Street, in the shadows of the once-grotesque stretch of weeds. After years of lobbying the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation to clean up the strip, Mattison finally got his wish in 2005, but it wasn’t easy.

“This was about as much as an eyesore as you could imagine,” said Mattison. “It was a long project even just to get the whole thing going. There were times when I thought, ‘Let’s just pave it over. Let’s tear out everything that’s there. It’s easy, it’s obvious, it’s simple. Covered with asphalt, it would at least be better than what we had 10 years ago.’ Certainly at this point I’m glad that I didn’t go too far with that idea.”

The design for the revitalized strip, which connects the Allston retail district to the residential area along Lincoln Street, was the brainchild of the artist group Legge Lewis Legge, a husband/wife/sister team based in New York and Texas. After some tough competition with other nationally known artists, the group won the NEFA grant in 2006, along with the rights to design the 40-foot-wide by 400-foot-long patch of land.
For artist Andrea Legge, Boston’s rich history was the driving force behind the layout of the strip. Influenced by the gardens of the Chateau Versaille in France, Legge Lewis Legge has brought to life a bit of Boston’s colonial past.

“We tried to look at the site and look at its history and the area surrounding it and try to make something relevant to that,” said Legge. “Boston has a lot of colonial reference in its architecture, in its history, obviously, so what we did was we went back to the original colonists and we brought over a European folly garden that’s already falling into ruin.”

One of the unique aspects of the new Lincoln Street Green Strip will be its constant transformation over the years. With the help of neighborhood volunteers to take care of the weeding, it is hoped that the strip will be a constant reminder to the hard work that went into it, and serve as an example for future urban development.

“We designed it so that it will change throughout the seasons,” said Legge “As the years go, as the seasons go, it will come in and be visible and invisible. The grasses will make the design and the snow will make the design. Almost every day, it changes and that was the intent. It’s like a ruin, but it still retains a lot of its beauty and its formal character.”