Current Efforts

Community Meetings, First Meeting Sunday 3 March 2013



The Crosstown Foundation for the Arts, Inc. is a 501(c) non-profit corporation established in 1999 for the advancement of the fine and applied arts in Boston and to try to bring art to the North End. We outline here an idea, which started as a dedication park bench to our dear friend Phyllis Rugnetta, and has evolved into a program for greatly enhancing our enjoyment of North Square.


On Sunday 3 March 2013 at a meeting of the St. Mark's Society at Sacred Heart Church, on the request of Richard and Ben Molinari, Elizabeth Ghiseline and Sandro Carella, unveiled this idea to a group of abutters and presented a slide show illustrating a series of ideas for improving the accessibility, enjoyment and use of North Square by all residents.


The meeting was our first introduction of these ideas to the neighborhood. A dozen or so abutters were in attendance.


We hope through subsequent meetings to gather support for such a project, determine its potential for the area, but most of all for the community to participate in the ideas that we propose and to provide their own criticisms and contributions as well. A slideshow of the ideas we presented at this meeting, may viewed at the home page of this website. http://northSquareCircle.org


We have encouraged everyone interested to join in our discussions at neighborhood meetings which will be publicized in advance.


The ideas we propose are non-exclusive, deliberately neutral, though there are several major gestures that are significant:

to make the church and school side of the square a protected pedestrian passage, restricting vehicular traffic for deliveries, school buses and church functions during prescribed hours.

integrating the space of the Rachel Revere Park with the rest of North Square by removing the divide between them.

creating gently sloping and accessible surfaces along the contours of North Square.


We wish for everyone to have a voice in it and contribute to this effort, as it is for all of us. Elizabeth and I are architects and teachers, with longstanding ties to this neighborhood. This is not an idea that we wish to impose on the community, but one in which we would like the community to share in its design. There is much work to do, but this is a first step.