The look of Boston, thanks to Curley

AN ECONOMIC crisis, corruption-plagued politics, crumbling infrastructure, and a debt-burdened and deficit-ridden transportation system are a troubling but not unprecedented set of circumstances confronting the Bay State today. These conditions also prevailed three-quarters of a century ago, during the heyday of James Michael Curley, the most colorful and controversial chief executive in Boston's history.

Curley, who died 50 years ago this month, was an unparalleled political phenomenon. His career spanned six decades. He first ran for Boston Common Council (the lower house of a then-bicameral city council) in 1897. He last ran for mayor in 1955. Between 1914 and 1950, he served four terms as mayor of Boston (and may have served longer had his Republican enemies in the Legislature not term-limited the mayor's office). He served one term as governor and was elected four times to Congress. In all, he served 35 years in elective office, and one year in appointed office (1957-1958) as a state labor relations commissioner during the Foster Furcolo administration.

Curley ran for office 32 times. Counting state and federal primary and general elections, and municipal preliminary and final races, he contested 47 elections for office, along with six caucuses before that Progressive Era innovation, the primary, was established.

His 16 years as mayor was equaled only by Kevin White. In July, their record will be broken by Thomas Menino.

Longevity is not unknown in politics. What made Curley unique, however, was his seemingly inexhaustible ability to resuscitate himself from apparent political death. When he was reelected to Congress in 1942 at age 67, he made a comeback after four failed campaigns for senator, governor, and mayor.

The conventional story of James Michael Curley is a tale of vivid personalities, heartrending tragedies (seven of his nine children predeceased him), vexing scandals (he went to jail twice), and turbulent bare-knuckle politics. Lost in all of this drama, however, is Curley's substantive and strikingly progressive record on a host of social justice issues including the rights of labor, access to healthcare (Boston City Hospital was the object of his untiring devotion), and equal pay for women.

Curley not only merited the title that adorns his headstone, "Mayor of the Poor," but deserves another, that of Boston's master builder. Curley was the city's most indefatigable constructor of great public works. Historian Charles Trout wrote that Curley rivaled Caesar Augustus as a monumental builder. Curley widened Charles Street and Cambridge Street downtown, built the Sumner Tunnel, and replaced the mud flats of South Boston with a splendid three-mile-long strandway to Castle Island.

Nowhere is his legacy more apparent, however, than in the expansion of the city's public transportation system, where Curley's achievements are unequaled. The extension of the Red Line from South Boston to Dorchester; the Red Line's Charles Street Station; the Huntington Avenue subway from Copley Square to Northeastern University; and the extension of the Green Line's Boylston Street subway under Kenmore Square to new tunnel portals on Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue were Curley accomplishments. The conversion of the Blue Line from light rail to rapid transit, the construction of Maverick Square station and the extension of the Blue Line to Orient Heights are also part of his legacy. The removal of the Orange Line's elevated structures in Roxbury and Charlestown was accomplished decades after he first proposed it, as was the extension of the Red Line beyond Harvard Square to Alewife.

In Edwin O'Connor's novel of Boston politics, "The Last Hurrah," Charlie Hennessey, referring to Curley's fictional alter ego, Frank Skeffington, tells Festus Garvey, "You could live to be a hundred and twenty-five . . . and still they wouldn't think of you as often as they will of Frank Skeffington when he's been dead fifty years."

With the passage of those 50 years, perhaps it is time to resist the temptation of defining Curley by the controversies that enveloped him and reexamine him in light of the accomplishments of his long career, many of which continue to benefit the citizens of Boston today.

C. J. Doyle and Larry Overlan are writing a book about James Michael Curley.