Bus stop beautiful in Everett, Massachusetts

People involved in urban planning are familiar with the City Beautiful movement, an initiative mostly executed in the early part of the 20th Century, utilizing the Beaux Arts architectural form for majestic city buildings such as train stations, auditoriums, and city halls, along with statuary mostly of high ranking military officers on horses.

Washington's Union Station (above) and Post Office and the Civic Center in Cleveland are particularly noteworthy examples.

A few years ago in the Wall Street Journal I came across a mention of "railroad beautiful," which predates City Beautiful, and was pioneered by the Boston & Albany Railroad.

They hired architect Henry Hobson Richardson to design stations--he did nine--and Frederick Law Olmsted to design the grounds, out of the idea that attractive stations would attract riders to their passenger stations.  After Richardson died, the railroad hired other architects to design similarly attractive stations elsewhere in the system.

Wellesley Station, Station Square, designed by H.H. Richardson with grounds by Frederick Law Olmsted

Recently, I found some more writings on this movement, also called "railroad gardening," although mostly they are in my queue to find and read.  Railroad beautiful predates City Beautiful by at least a decade, although it's not likely to have influenced Daniel Burnham, as the Beaux Arts architectural style is decidedly different from Richardsonian Romanesque.

So it's fitting that in Everett, Massachusetts, which while no longer being served by rail but once had a station stop on the Boston & Albany line, the local planning office worked with artist Krissy Price, to temporarily beautify with flowers a bus stop in the city which serves the MBTA bus system ("Everett tried to make a bus stop pretty" Boston Globe).

According to Everett transportation planner Jay Monty, “The idea was to make the bus stop a place you want to spend time, interact with your neighbors at, and bring more people to transportation,” he said. The city is considering other ways to spruce up the stop in the future, including opening an ice cream stand nearby.

Photos by Pat Greenhouse, Boston Globe.