The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 15

THE BOSTON GLOBE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1995 Historic loss at Harvard decried Study says Mass. lags in women officials Duxbuiy plan on homes attacked Neighbors battle commercialization Si 'V 1 vi ft 5 "twsw 1 Handout photo (above) shows how Carey Cage, which was built in 1897, looked before it was demolished Friday to make way for a new racquet sports facility next to Harvard Stadium (below). University razes 1897 pavilion GLOBE STAFF One of the city's leading architectural historians said yesterday that Harvard University failed to heed pleas from alumni and architects to postpone tearing down the oldest steel-frame building on its campus. The Carey Cage, built in 1897 and torn down Friday morning, was Greater Boston's "most prominent remaining example of a number of garden pavilions from the 1890s," said Margaret Henderson Floyd, an architecture history professor at Tufts University. "Everything else, like the Orange Line stations, has been destroyed." The university received a waiver from the Boston Landmarks Commission on Sept.

27 and received a demolition permit the next day, Floyd said. The demolition, she said, is an indication of "a complete breakdown in the preservation community and a lack of interest of Boston landmarks officials in Allston. They are much more interested in downtown than this corner of the city next to Cambridge." Officials from the Landmarks Commission could not be reached. Floyd said the Carey Cage designed by H. Langford Warren, a chief draftsman in the architectural firm of H.

H. Richardson, the Boston architect who designed Trinity Church was the only remaining building in the area documenting the link between Richardson's office and the American style that followed, the Chicago-based Prairie School, which emerged most prominently in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. "The definition of a tragedy is that it is something that didn't have to happen, that could have been avoided. And that is what happened here," Floyd said. Harvard spokeswoman Debra Ruder said the demolition of Carey Cage for a new racquet sports facility "has been on the books for a long time.

Harvard did extensive research on the building and presented that to the Landmarks Commission at a public hearing and there was no opposition. Of rr1 "Harvard does not tear down buildings lightly and without a great deal of thought and research and reluctance. We believed this was necessary for the education and support of current and future students, staff and faculty." However, in a letter to the Landmarks Commission, Floyd said Harvard's application to the commission for a waiver of a demolition delay was rife with errors. "By claiming that extensive research has been undertaken, Har- Junior Nevins doubts his son would have risked his life for his possessions. "I could not believe such a thing," he said.

Police sources said they are still trying to nail down a motive in the case, but the theft of his jacket and shoes is among their theories. Mayor Menino, who said he was saddened by the killing, said the city needs to invest more resources in youths and gun control to stop the gratuitous violence. "We have to teach young people to respect each other," Menino said in a telephone interview. "We can put all the police officers on the street but we have to invest more on people early on." Junior Nevins spoke to reporters yesterday in his home in Dorchester, flanked by Alicia and his son Kafer, 17. They struggled to accept the unacceptable and cope with their anger IS 4 CJ a vard suggests that relevant historical documents have been examined and that current literature has been consulted by Harvard, the application is misleading," she wrote.

"New information of Carey Cage is available to the Commission, especially its highly significant position in the evolution of steel structure design following the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Furthermore, its national significance, leading to Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Prairie and sadness. Nevins said his son Barrington followed him to Boston in 1992 hoping to become an engineer and return as a successful professional to Jamaica, where he would be near his mother. Nevins pointed to a plaque showing his son on the merit roll at Brighton High. Kafer Nevins, who shared his room with his half brother, said he was angry at the police because if they had been there, they could have prevented the encounter.

He said his brother liked music and expensive clothes and had just gotten his driver's license the day of his death. "He didn't depend on anybody," Kafer Nevins said. Alicia Nevins, a first-year student at Mount Ida College in Newton, said her younger brother was calm and hard-working and liked to congestion when the trains let out." Congestion also occurs at the Route 128 station, which straddles three towns Dedham, Canton and Westwood and which also serves as a stop on Amtrak's East Coast route. The station, located about a mile from the junction with Interstate 95, draws 1,600 cars daily, double the number it can handle. Hundreds of drivers park on remote side streets, where the vehicles' become targets for thieves and vandals, police said.

Often motorists unfamiliar with the area cannot even find those side streets. "If you do not arrive early, you are in trouble," said David P. Mahn, director of the Neponset Valley Chamber of Commerce and a member of an MBTA task force studying the station's problems. "To get a legal parking soace, you have to get there by quarter of 7." To make room for more cars, the ASSOCIATED PRESS Despite Massachusetts' reputation as one of the most liberal states in the nation, women here still haven't come close to catching up to men in many corners of the political arena, a new study by the McCor-mack Institute shows. More than 100 of the cities and towns in Massachusetts had no women selectmen, city council members or mayors in 1994.

Of 1,738 offices, only 330, or about 19 percent, were held by wonv-en, said Carol Cardozo, a researcher at the McCormack Institute's Cen- -ter for Women in Politics anc Pubji Policy at the University of MassJ; achusetts at Boston. Cardozo ppin; ed out that 20 years ago a similar I study found only 70 women pfficej holders. The disparity also is apparent aj the State House, where women ai count for one-fifth of the Senate and one-fourth of the House. There; are-; no women among the state's conet-J tutional officers, nor in the 'state'-; congressional delegation. Vl I Mary Beth Cahill, executive rector of Emily's List, an tion that supports pro-choice Democrats around the county; i5 their campaigns for governor oJJt Congress, said Massachusetts in the bottom half of the states fofjj; representation of women ambpg'eon; stitutional officers and the tare.

"Massachusetts is a placa '-that has had relatively little turnover Jx-5 litically and a lot of people R-eJ5 elected and reelected and reelttledy Cahill said. "And they started he5 most elected officials were "States like California have ifaorjJ turnover and they have a higher centage of she said. Mary Ford, mayor of Northampton, said that women running for political office find the bar set a little higher. There's no resistance to women running for School Committee, but when a woman runs for City Council, "there's a checkpoint," she said. "Then, when you step up to run for executive office, that's worlds different.

People's comfort level of dealing with a woman in the executive office was clearly more threatened." Rosaria Salerno, a former Boston city councilor who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1993, said it is "shameful" there aren't more women in office. "It's a very liberal place. It's just very odd we have no one at the congressional level and haven't had one for years," she said. Salerno, aDDointed bv the Citv Council to be city clerk, said men- feel women threaten politics as usuf' al. "I remember people saying about me, 'Godj all the fun will be gone if 1 she becomes mayor and all the deals' 0 will be done out in the said.

i I- "Women themselves have to ixer.i.- wiinng to really bite the bullet ano get into that arena," she 'It' -I" isn't a fun place to be. Getting I 1 i. 1 1. A li. j.

chin and certainly everyone who's gotten there has." is to prevent people from other towns from parking in the said Slater, the MBTA planning director. "Too many towns seem to think a-. parking facility is only for the use of their residents." 1 For the Route 128 station, -MBTA officials hope to find a developer to build a garage that would serve both the train station and a new private office building. In the late 1980s, neighborhood opposition killed a similar plan that would have -1 included a hotel near the station. In some communities, such as 1 Medford and Winchester, physical constraints are leaving MBTA officials as frustrated as the commuters; circling the parking lots.

"In West Medford, there's a neighborhood on one side, a super-' market on the other and an athletic field across the tracks," Slater said "With some of ti'im, there is nothing we can do." Jamaican immigratnt mourns son ByJohnEllement GLOBE STAFF DUXBURY Bob and Audrey Burgess once looked upon their house at the end of a small cul-de-sac here as the linchpin of their retirement financial plan. But the schoolteacher and real estate agent now fear that plan is endangered. In an unusual step, some of their neighbors propose to invite commercial development into the Burgess' neighborhood of single-family homes. "It's a terrible blow," said Audrey Burgess, who along with others, is mustering opposition to the proposal. "It really is." Residents on Lincoln Street and Hilltop Lane have bundled the six lots containing their homes into a 13.4-acre parcel they plan to sell to a commercial developer.

The residents hope to earn more money from the package deal than they would if they sold their homes individually. The area is north of the Congress Street (Route 139) and Lincoln Street intersection just yards from Exit 11 on Route 3, which is used by thousands of commuters daily and thousands of vacationers en route to Cape Cod in summer. Jerome B. Dewing, a Duxbury real estate agent hired by the pro-development neighbors, said the combined parcel could be used to build a gas station or a convenience store. Dewing said the parcel is one of the few areas in Duxbury, which has numerous wetlands, that could support commercial activity.

He said the town that he has lived in for more than 60 years needs to boost commercial development so that the tax rate of $18.10 per $1,000 no longer rests solely on the homeowner. Dewing said the parcel idea has drawn "feelers" but no one has signed a contract to purchase the property, which has yet to receive regulatory approval. The pro-development group first must convince the town's Planning Board to change zoning from residential to commercial. Opponents of the change, including Thomas Landers, a Globe photographer, are planning to voice their objections this evening. The board also will review a request by a Duxbury man to rezone a lot on Lincoln Street, just south of Congress Street, from residential to commercial to accommodate his construction vehicles.

Although the two proposals to change zoning on pieces of Lincoln Street are not legally linked, opponents are tying them because they fear that rezoning one part of Lincoln will lead to commercial development in the rest of the neighborhood. Steve Sarro, a commercial pilot, spent yesterday collecting signatures for a petition asking the Planning Board to reject the idea. He and his wife bought a house on Old Barn Road, down the street from the Burgess', about three years ago. He said he is willing to pay higher property taxes to maintain the town's character of tree-lined, narrow streets. He also said that no amount of development on the 13-acre parcel would be sufficient to dramatically affect tax rates anyway.

"I don't care what they want to do with that land," Sarro said. "We just don't want it" Added Bob Burgess: "We like it the way it is. It's residential and that's what we pay our taxes for, to maintain the residential character of the town. Otherwise, we would live Marshfield." 1 GLOBE PHOTO EVAN RICHMAN has now been established." The building was the oldest steel-frame structure on Harvard's campus and could have been moved without much difficulty, Floyd said. After the Landmarks Commission meeting, Floyd and others attempted to get a new hearing, but because a demolition permit had already been issued, there was nothing the Landmarks Commission could do, Floyd said.

be by himself. Junior Nevins said that although he wishes he had never moved his family to the Northeast, he does not blame the city for his son's death. "I don't blame Boston, I don't blame Dorchester, I blame whoever did it," Nevins said. Despite his hardships here, Nevins said, he has no plans to return to the Jamaica. Like those before him who touted the benefits of the United States, he said he is afraid to return home with as little as when he left.

"You can't go back home without something. People would think you have failed," Nevins said. Yet he pines for what he calls the easy-going and less materialistic atmosphere of his native country. "It was stupid to leave a nice environment to come to a cold, miserable one." MBTA plans to spend tens of millions of dollars over the next five years. Projects range from a $300,000 expansion of the Concord lot to the construction of a $20 million garage at Route 128.

Expanded lots also are being considered for Billerica, Wilmington, Beverly, Salem, Natick, Attleboro and Canton. But officials said money alone will not clear up the congestion. Some parking lots are surrounded by homes artd businesses, and thus cannot be enlarged. And in some towns Mansfield and Norfolk, for example local officials oppose expanding the lots, saying they do not want to attract more cars to their already crowded streets. For nearly a year now, Mansfield police have been ticketing cars without resident stickers when they find them parked on streets or in town-owned lots nei.tr the station.

"The solution a lot of towns want HNEVTNS Continued from Page 13 death. "You think someone is playing a game with you," Nevins said. "You have no plans that your kid would die at this age." Barrington Nevins, a senior at Brighton High School, was fatally shot just before 8 p.m. Friday as he and two friends walked along Browning Avenue in Dorchester on the way to the movies, police said. The friends apparently ran for cover.

Police say Nevins, who was quiet and ambitious, was shot by three assailants for clothes and shoes he had bought with savings from a part-time job. Jerry Vanderwood, Boston Police spokesman, said the police were still investigating the killing and looking for the three assailants. Times are COMMUTERS Continued from Page 1 Along with showering and shaving, scrambling for parking at commuter rail stations has become part of the morning routine for tens of thousands of suburbanites. The cold only makes the crunch worse, as snow-leery drivers play it safe and take the train to work. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority estimates that half of its 101 suburban parking lots are too small, many of them filling up well before 7 a.m.

There are about 23,000 spaces; officials say they need thousands more. "The biggest constraint on our growth is not trains or tracks," said Geoff Slater, the MBTA's director of planning. "It's parking." Commuter rail ridership has doubled in the past decade to 92,000 people eath weekday, and is growing at the rate of 8 percent a year. The tight at suburban commuter rail parking lots? main reasons for the surge, MBTA officials said, are better service and marketing, an improved economy, the growth of the suburbs, and Boston's traffic and parking problems. While the commuter rail's popularity is helping with Boston's traffic and parking problems, it is causing similar problems in suburban town centers, where many of the stations are located.

In Mansfield, for instance, the downtown area becomes impassable after a train arrives in the evening, as riders get into their cars for the last leg of their commute home. The town, a community of 18,000 about 40 miles south of Boston, has a parking lot that can accommodate about 800 cars. But on a typical weekday, 1,600 commuters use the station. "We're still sort of a rural town, with a small downtown and two-lane roads," jaid Douglas M. Ronald, a Mansfield selectman.

"It's major.