Turnpike green strip gets makeover

Art replaces urban eyesore

Harry Mattison led the effort to beautify the Lincoln Street green strip. ''Many of the neighbors wouldn't even walk past this area because ... they felt it wasn't safe,'' he said. (Travis Dove for the Boston Globe)

Last winter it looked like any other neglected urban green strip.

But after a summer of bulldozers and other heavy equipment, $220,000 in foundation and city Department of Neighborhood Development Grassroots funds, and volunteer weed-pulling and trash-collection, it's a different story.

The now-grassy area climbing to the westbound lanes of the Mass. Pike along Lincoln Street boasts North Allston's only nonarchitectural public art.

"I'm sure the neighbors are wondering what the heck happened here," said Jeff Bryan, a volunteer weed-puller from Riverdale Street last month. He surveyed the narrow strip, now sporting steel sculptures and raised beds in the shape of waves or arabesques. "This is the first time I've seen this completed. It's a real inspiration."

The strip was home to 8-foot ailanthus and Norway maple trees that obscured pedestrians' view of the path ahead - when weeds didn't block the path altogether, according to Harry Mattison. In 2005, Mattison started agitating for the strip's beautification after snagging his bike's spokes in branches along the path. With the backing of the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation, Mattison got the New England Arts Foundation interested in financing a public art installation.

The arabesques of raised meadow and steel finials are the work of a three-artist team, Legge Lewis Legge, based in New York and Texas. In 2006, the team won the neighbor-judged competition to design a work for the site, which Mattison and others see as a gateway to the North Allston community. The path from Cambridge Street to Lincoln allows pedestrians and bicyclists to access the shops along Harvard and Cambridge from the mostly residential neighborhood north of the turnpike.

"I used to come down these stairs all the time," said Tamiko Khalid-Khan. "It was so abused. It's good to have it cleaned up and paid attention to."

Mattison agreed.

"Many of the neighbors wouldn't even walk past this area because it was so overgrown that they felt it wasn't safe," he said.

"It was so terrible before," agreed Brent Whelan. "This is a morale booster."

A ribbon-cutting is planned for next spring - to give the grass time to grow.