FOR NEARLY six decades, Savin Hill and Columbia Point have helped make The Boston Globe the institution it is. So as the Globe leaves the corner of Dorchester that the paper has called home since 1958, now seems the right time to say to our neighbors: Thank you.
Thanks for putting up with delivery trucks late at night. Thanks for the coffee at McKenna’s that kept reporters sharp, and the beer at the Harp & Bard that kept sources blunt. Thanks for providing man-on-the-street quotes to all the Globe writers who always somehow seemed to end up at the JFK Red Line station looking for them.
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The last issue of the Globe printed in Dorchester rolled off the presses at 135 Morrissey Boulevard over the weekend, as printing operations move to a new facility in Taunton. Meanwhile, reporters and editors are in the process of relocating to the paper’s new newsroom downtown. It’s an exciting new chapter in the Globe’s history — but a bittersweet one, too.
The Globe’s years in Dorchester have coincided with some of its proudest journalistic accomplishments. The paper moving from Dorchester is much more formidable than the one that arrived here from the Globe’s original location downtown, where it was founded in 1872. If one believes that location helps mold a newspaper’s sensibilities, the Globe has obviously been very lucky.
What next? The 16.5-acre Globe site is now for sale, and it could become a big redevelopment opportunity in the not-too-distant future. The area is on the upswing: A new apartment complex opened recently next to the Red Line station, and UMass Boston is expanding. Sure, we’re biased, but the Globe site would seem to be a prime location for new housing in a city that needs it.
The Globe’s return to downtown could be interpreted as the paper returning to its roots, or even a signal of the long-term resurgence in urban downtowns more generally. Maybe so. But the paper will also be shaped, for years to come, by the neighborhood it’s leaving — and will be better for it.
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