Several officials recently celebrated a groundbreaking at the Mary Soo Hoo Park in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood.
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino joined members of the Soo Hoo family, the Chinatown community, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, MassDOT, the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy and the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) to celebrate the groundbreaking.
During the ceremony, Menino announced the MFA is partnering with the city to temporarily improve the façade of MassDOT’s Beach Street vent tower by installing an art scroll from its Chinese landscape collection. The scroll, which will include a mountain image, will help the vent blend into the new park as the park’s boundaries will now extend to wrap around the vent structure.
"It’s great to be here in Chinatown today as we break ground on Mary Soo Hoo Park," Menino said. "Mary Soo Hoo was a beloved advocate who worked tirelessly for the Chinatown community and I’m so proud that we’re able to honor her in this way. This new park will be welcoming to residents and visitors of all ages and will be greatly improved with new landscaping, seating and gaming tables, lighting and sculptural elements. I want to thank the MFA for their artistic contribution, MassDOT for committing funds toward the renovations, the BRA for selecting the park designer and running the community design process and the Greenway Conservancy for maintaining the park."
The new design includes the following elements: all new pavements, generous landscaped areas at the park’s street edges, retention of the existing park tree canopy, new park seating and gaming tables for Chinese chess, retention of the existing planting bed and granite seat wall at the northeast corner of the park, refabrication and expansion of the park’s iconic red perimeter fence (funded by the Edward Ingersoll Browne Fund), new park lighting to match Chinatown Park, and sculptural granite mounds meant to evoke the mountainous landscape of homeland China and scaled as an element of interest for children.
The Chinatown Gateway Park was originally built in 1983, on land owned by MassDOT, as a complement to the installation of the adjacent historic Chinatown Gate. MassDOT committed $190,000 toward the renovations. The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy will provide future maintenance of the park. The park is expected to be open this fall.
