The West End Museum in Boston is opening an exhibition about the Big Dig, Boston’s thorough reconstruction of the city’s main arteries below ground carried out between 1991 and 2006, beginning with a free reception Wednesday.
The exhibit was curated by former Big Dig spokesperson David Kruh, who worked in public relations on the project from 1994 to 1997. Kruh, now retired, had boxes of materials left over from his time with the project, some of them directly linked to the West End. He decided to donate them to the museum, which led to a conversation with the museum’s administration about incorporating them into a new exhibit on the Big Dig.
The Big Dig was devised after urban renewal that began in the 1950s led to the demolition of 682 buildings in the West End alone, which resulted in the displacement of about 2,700 households. According to Kruh, frustration with the new aboveground roads and highways grew over the course of the 1960s and 70s, with the project finally being approved by the federal government in 1983. He sees the Big Dig as being, in part, a victory for grassroots activists in neighborhoods that were strongly affected, or even partially destroyed, by mid-20th century urban renewal.
The exhibit “will remind people that they’re not powerless if they fight, as Chinatown, the North End, and other neighborhoods around the country tried to do around the 1960s,” he said.
The project was carried out with the city promising not to close any roads, destroy any homes or close any businesses.
Kruh and Jaydie Halperin, who works with the museum’s cultural preservation department, both described it using a quote with unknown origins: “It was like open-heart surgery on a patient who insisted on going to work and playing tennis.”
The Big Dig’s history is linked to the reasons the West End Museum was founded in the first place. The museum’s first president, Jim Campano, grew up in the area and witnessed its destruction through urban renewal firsthand. He dedicated himself to restoring and preserving what was left of the old neighborhood. Given that the Big Dig has been a way of making amends for the displacement of so many people and the demolition of so many homes, the museum is an appropriate venue for an exhibit on the project.
The Big Dig is also a recent enough event for many Bostonians to remember, including people who remember when it first broke ground. Others, like Campano, saw their neighborhoods transformed first by urban renewal and then by the Big Dig. The fundamental mission of the project was successful: the central artery was successfully moved below ground and made Boston’s surface roads greener and less congested.
“A lot of people who are living in Boston now experienced it,” Halperin said. “It’s really an engineering feat.”
Kruh remembers telling reporters, “Soon, we’ll be getting rid of Boston’s other Green Monster,” in reference to the color of the above-ground central artery’s girders at the time. While that particular Green Monster is gone, there were certainly hurdles. One of many accidents during the project resulted in a person’s death. A promised link between North and South Station, used as a selling point to procure federal funding, never materialized after it proved to be too expensive for a project that was already seriously over budget.
But the Big Dig was completed. With state and federal officials still cognizant of its issues and changes to the federal government in 2016 and again in 2025, Kruh isn’t expecting large-scale investment in Boston infrastructure from the federal government in the near future.
“Big money like that was not likely to come,” he said.
According to Halperin, the exhibit has been in the works for at least five months. Boston’s city government had no involvement in the exhibit’s planning, though she expects its city councilors will be invited to the opening. She sees the Big Dig’s legacy as essentially positive, viewing it as an improvement for the city.
“It’s definitely a very interesting exhibit,” she said. “I can’t wait to see it up on the walls.”
