As the memories from the Cold War fade away, one reminder of the tension-filled era remains in Boston, and if you look just in the right places, the city’s longstanding fallout shelters serve as a history lesson.
During the late 1950s, widespread support for fallout shelters waned, said Boston University doctoral student Keely Orgeman, who recently published an article on U.S. domestic policy in the mid-20th century.
“There was a class divide between the people who could afford the shelters. . . and then those who couldn’t afford the necessary construction materials,” Orgeman said, adding poor residents often constructed refuges out of common household items.
“The federal government shifted to evacuation plans because they were cheaper,” Orgeman said.
Bright rooms and trunk-like columns ascending from polished tile floors at the Boston Public Library stand in stark contrast to the dark, dungeon-like basement that Orgeman said would typically house a fallout shelter. Analysis of the building’s blueprints and renovation records revealed no hint that the shelter existed, though.
Orgeman said shelters in Boston landmarks like the John Hancock building, the Boston Public Library and the First National Bank — and in residences — were useless.
“Most of the fallout shelters wouldn’t work,” she said. “They’d have to be a certain distance outside Boston to survive the blast.”
Just outside the city, Needham Police and Fire Department deputy chief Al DeIulio said though departments regulate emergency shelters at some schools in the town to use in case of severe storms, they are ill-equipped to handle any sort of attack.
While signs that still cling to city structures remain as clues to shelters, some say the signature yellow-and-black symbols remain solely through pure neglect and indifference.
“They’re fallout shelters only because no one bothered to take the signs down,” said Peter Judge, a Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman. “I’m not aware of anyone in the community that maintains [them].”
According to Waymarket.com, a fallout shelter is rumored to be in the basement of the Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care in Massachusetts General Hospital.
“I can’t locate anyone who knows anything about the shelter, and I’ve done it due diligence,” said MGH administrative manager for emergency preparedness Craig Cochran.
Students walking along the Charles River Campus may notice shelter signs on the College of Communication, the School of Theology, Shelton Hall and apartments across Bay State Road, but BU spokesman Colin Riley said they serve no purpose.
“There’s nothing different about a regular campus basement and a basement designated as a fallout shelter, other than the fallout symbol attached to the outside,” Riley told The Daily Free Press in September 2006.