Boston University’s campus along the Charles River was mutilated over the years by various road-building projects. It lost its waterfront to Storrow Drive in 1950, and then got sliced on the other side by the Massachusetts Turnpike in 1965. The construction left some odd remnants of land, including a triangular path of hillside next to the Boston University Bridge. Land is precious to any urban university and it was (and probably still is) pretty frustrating to BU officials to have a parcel that, wedged among major roadways, was completely inaccessible. I remember the expansion-eager headmaster of the BU Academy proposing that we tunnel our way to the site.
— Peter Wood, formerly of the Department of Anthropology at BU, writing for the Innovations blog at The Chronicle Review.
