Location: South End, Boston, MA
Client: Boston Public Works Department
Team: GPI, Inc.

Crite Park, located on Columbus Avenue at the intersection of West Canton Street and Appleton Street in Boston’s historic South End, honors the acclaimed artist and South End resident, Allan Rohan Crite (March 20, 1910 – September 6, 2007). Painting scenes of African American life in Boston, Crite said, “My intention in the neighborhood paintings and some drawings was to show aspects of life in the city with special reference to the use of the terminology ​“black” people and to present them in an ordinary light, persons enjoying the usual pleasures of life with its mixtures of both sorrow and joys … I was an artist-reporter, recording what I saw.” Allan Crite, The Artist Craftsman’s Work on the Church, Commentary on the 1950s, Vertical File, Library, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Brown, Richardson + Rowe working with GPI, Inc. and the Boston Public Works Department furthered a historically sensitive design that honors the late Allan Crite. The project includes new brick sidewalks, irrigated planting beds, new shade trees and shrubs, a pergola with lighting, accessible seating, and a freestanding mosaic art wall showing one of Crite’s many contributions to the art world, in the neighborhood he called home.