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Castle Square

by Alison Barnet
Wednesday Jun 4, 2014

The Katsianes were the first family to move into Castle Square in 1966. The project wasn't even finished. They had been living on Appleton Street in a fourth floor walkup, complete with cockroaches, and were dying to get into the brand new Castle Square, which, Mary Ann Katsiane says, was just "a big dirt pit" when she started wheeling baby Jared over there in his stroller "begging for a place."Among the advertised attractions were cooking gas, Formica counter tops, colored ceramic tile baths, and sliding glass doors to balconies.

Before Castle Square as we know it, there was a neighborhood of brick houses, stores, churches, a synagogue, a public school, Harvard Veterinary School, and Lincoln House, a South End House settlement, where Mel King was director of Boy's Work. From 1898 to 1933, the Castle Square Hotel and Theatre was a huge presence on Tremont Street across the street.

In 1959 when the city decided to redevelop the area, residents were shocked. It had been, after all, only a couple of years since the demolition of the adjacent New York Streets. "Staff at Lincoln House worked hard to keep channels of communication open between neighbors and city officials," wrote Albert Boer of United South End Settlements. "A number of mass meetings were held to inform neighbors, squelch rumors, and help prevent panic."

300 Protest Redevelopment of Castle Sq.

Over 300 South End residents attended a stormy meeting at the Lincoln House last night...The proposed plan will entail moving 900 families...Unidentified newspaper, November 24, 1959

After the old neighborhood was cleared, there was a long wait before anything was built. A column in the Mid-Town Journal highlighted the burden on local businesses, some of which moved to the other side of Tremont "to wait it out, hoping that the day would come soon that there would be a project teeming with people and they would be able to resume business again on a profitable basis."

Today Mel King recalls "a good fight." Organizers learned lessons from the New York Streets experience, when no housing was offered. They demanded replacement housing, a "right of return," and former residents received first preference. "Despite the long wait," he says, "they did build."

When Castle Square and its 500 family apartments officially opened in May 1967, Globe reporter Anthony Yudis described it as "the largest private moderate-income housing program in the city." Manager Ed Abrams said he expected 657 children.

Castle Square was 30% white, 30% black, 30% Asian, and 10% "Hispanic"-a good experience, says Mary Ann Katsiane, and comfortable for mixed race families like Vicki Williams's.

The Williams family moved in at the end of 1966, when their daughter was six months old. Like Mary Ann and Richard Katsiane, they had been living in a less than desirable apartment, Williams in the Fenway. Castle Square was economically as well as ethnically mixed, Williams remembers. There were professional people, a doctor and a young architect, and her nearest neighbors were Chinese, Hispanic, and black. "The cooking aromas were great," she says.

There was no playground at Castle Square in the beginning; Jared Katsiane remembers playing in big round concrete tubes. There was no laundromat at first either, a major inconvenience for families with small children, especially since washers and dryers weren't allowed in the apartments.

In March 1967 residents had put out the first Common Bond (El Lazo Comun), a newsletter in three languages. Early issues were full of ads, announcements, recipes, and appeals for help from people "who have fun ideas for a block party." By late 1968, however, there were letters of complaint about vandalism, trash, and even clothes stolen from the laundromat-Katsiane and Williams both signed that one. By 1970, Common Bond had become radical, taking on wider South End issues and advertising the Black Panther's free health center.

Back in the heyday, Williams remembers that developer Bertram Druker's son Ronald would visit with residents in their living rooms and listen to their concerns. Barney Frank and his mother used to come and serve spaghetti dinners to the elderly.

In 1971, when the Katsianes finally had a car, they moved to Vermont and eventually to Haverhill. Williams moved to Greenwich Park in 1976. "The first two or thee years at Castle Square were okay," says Katsiane, "then infighting began. It was too stressful."

Recently, Castle Square, now co-owned by the tenants association and WinnDevelopment, got a $46 million "deep energy retrofit." Solar panels, state-of-the-art insulation, and other "green" upgrades were added. Hear all about it on July 14 when Jared Katsiane leads a Monday night walk. A filmmaker, he now works at Castle Square as a youth video instructor. He also coordinates bimonthly film nights, a big step up from the lemonade stand he and his sister once ran on Dover Street.

Alison Barnet is the author of the recently-published South End Character, Speaking Out on Neighborhood Change, which can be purchased for $10 at the South End Branch Library; Blunch, 59 East Springfield Street; and at South End Food Emporium, 465 Columbus Ave., after reconstruction.

Alison Barnet is the author of Extravaganza King: Robert Barnet and Boston Musical Theater. She has lived in the South End since 1964 and has been writing about it for almost as long.


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