Mock by 2019 Now + There, now known as Boston Public Art Triennial, Accelerator Artist Pat Falco takes the form of a “full scale mock up” and shifts it to represent a cross-section of a classic Boston a triple-decker. Through a collection of archival and contemporary images, handmade wallpaper, and an updated redlining map reflecting the city’s Inclusionary Development Policy—the piece is an investigation into the history of workforce housing and how it fits into the city’s development, past and present.

The triple-decker is a unique symbol of Boston and its diverse neighborhoods, a lasting reminder of when housing was developed from the bottom up. In the late 1800s, as the city experienced industrialization, urbanization, and a population boom with massive immigration, the triple-decker provided an easy way to house these communities. Rural outer neighborhoods provided a blank canvas for large concentrations of new homes, and created affordable paths to ownership, by keeping rents low, fostering mobility, and allowing families to build generational wealth. Anti-immigration and racist backlash grew at the turn of the 1900s, and wealthy housing reformers worked to ban the construction of three deckers, and advocated for public housing as an alternative to house the poor. Part of a legacy of racist and anti-poor housing policy, the consequences of these actions helped build the framework of Boston’s current housing crisis.

Nearly a century later, the Seaport provided Boston a blank canvas, and an opportunity to address these problems.

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LOCATION

109 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA 02210