East Boston's New Steel Arches Tell the Story of the Ground Under Them

At dusk on the waterfront, a weathered-steel arch lined with golden light frames Boston Harbor and the downtown skyline. Project Starboard released a photo of it earlier this month. It is the Crossing Threshold, one of five walk-through arches being installed in phases across East Boston at the Golden Stairs, Lewis Mall, Border Street, Central Square and the Mary Ellen Welch Greenway.

Together they make up the first stage of The Golden Thread, a cultural trail from Project Starboard, an East Boston nonprofit. Each arch has a QR code that opens a multilingual story. The four stories published so far tie their history to the setting of their arch: a terrace above the old immigrant piers, a ferry wharf above a subway tunnel, a shipyard shoreline, and a former rail yard. Taken in order, the five arches cover arrival, crossing, making, adaptation and neighbors, and they trace how East Boston kept getting reconnected to the rest of the world.

Five sites, five chapters

Four of the five stories are posted in full at thread.boston, so you can read ahead or catch up later. They are written for someone standing at the arch, and the published ones close with a section called "Today" that places the reader at that site.

Start where people stepped off the ships

The Arrival Threshold at the Golden Stairs comes first in the sequence. Its story starts with the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which set immigration limits by nationality. Ships raced to arrive before each month's quota filled, and people who arrived too late could be sent back.

Then the story turns to what's in front of you. From the top of the stairs you look down on the waterfront where immigrants landed at piers including Cunard Wharf. Anyone held for more examination or detention could be taken to the East Boston Immigration Station, which opened in the shipyard below in 1920. The station is gone. The story says the stairs became a symbol of the climb toward "golden opportunity," and that the promise turned into daily work for the people who settled here: finding jobs, raising children, opening shops.

That makes it a sensible first stop. Arrival is the reason the four later chapters matter.

Lewis Mall Wharf, where the story goes under the water

The Crossing Threshold picks up a problem the arrivals story leaves open. The harbor connected East Boston to the world, but it also cut the neighborhood off from the rest of its own city.

The story moves through each attempt to close that gap:

• U.S. Army engineer John G. Foster proposed a street under the water, with carriages below and ships sailing overhead, so the port would stay open while Boston considered a bridge.
• In 1904 the East Boston Tunnel opened as the nation's first underwater subway tunnel. It carries the Blue Line today.
• In 1961 workers were building the Callahan Tunnel, as trains filled up and road traffic grew.
• In 1995 the Ted Williams Tunnel added another route under the harbor to East Boston and Logan Airport.
• The historic South Ferry served this waterfront from the 1830s until 1952. In 2022 the MBTA East Boston ferry brought back the link between this wharf and downtown.

The "Today" section puts you at Lewis Mall Wharf next to the ferry dock, with the Blue Line running under your feet. Few places in the neighborhood let you stand on top of two centuries of harbor crossings at once. If you take the ferry, you can check the stop details on the MBTA's Lewis Mall Wharf page.

Atlantic Works, where the arch is part of the story

The Making Threshold stands at the historic Atlantic Works Shipyard on Border Street. Its story opens with Donald McKay in a black top hat before the launch of his last clipper ship, Glory of the Seas. McKay was an immigrant from Nova Scotia who became one of history's great shipbuilders. That same year the Transcontinental Railroad was finished and the Suez Canal opened, and the clipper era that made him famous was starting to end.

The second chapter jumps to 1928. The ferry Nantasket is sitting on Marine Railway No. 2 at Atlantic Works, and the story says the railway's remains can still be seen under the bridge. By then the yard's main work was repairing steam vessels. A year later the Nantasket was destroyed by fire.

The arch at this stop was fabricated nearby by Blue Atlantic Fabricators. The story presents that as marine work continuing on the same shoreline. Of the five stops, this is the one where the installation is itself evidence for its own story.

The last two stops are still being written

The first three chapters are about the past. The last two connect to work that is happening now.

The Adaptation Threshold in Central Square covers a long history of adapting to the harbor, from Indigenous migratory survival to land reclamation to coastal resilience. The Golden Thread site shows the arch framing the sunflower mural on the East Boston Social Centers building. As of this writing, the story page still says "Coming soon! This Golden Thread is still being made."

The Neighbors Threshold sits on the Greenway in front of Airport station. Its story goes back to when the land was one of East Boston's big working rail yards, moving coal, lumber, grain and oil between the harbor shipyards and the rest of the continent. When the tracks were abandoned, neighbors pushed to reuse the land. The central figure is Mary Ellen Welch, an East Boston teacher. A 1969 photo shows her pointing at a map of an expanding Logan Airport. She spent the next fifty years organizing residents and later helped found the East Boston Greenway Council, which reclaimed the abandoned rail corridor for the public.

The greenway named for her is under construction right now. According to the City of Boston's project page, the Greenway is closed from Marginal Street to Porter Street during construction, including the Gove Street crossing. The work adds lighting, amenities, rain gardens and trees. The City's October 16 update says the contractor closed the site on April 2, 2026, and expects the project to take 9 to 12 months. Boardwalks and asphalt paving should be in by late November. Check the City's page for the current closure limits before you plan a Greenway walk to this arch. The corridor that neighbors reclaimed decades ago is being rebuilt right next to the arch that tells their story.

Why this fall is the time to walk it

The arches are not permanent fixtures. The ONWARD! ticket page says the Thresholds are not permanently permitted at their current sites. They may become permanent or have their terms extended. If not, they will move to other prominent locations around East Boston when each site residency ends. The five-stop route described here is the current version of the trail, and it may change.

The project has strong local backing. EastBoston.com reported that Massport, the City of Boston and East Boston Community Development Corporation are site hosts for the first five Thresholds, and that State Representative Adrian Madaro supported the trail with an earmark in this year's state budget. In the same article, Project Starboard founder David Lank described the goal:

"We are building a civic institution out of the neighborhood itself."

Starboard set its first annual celebration, ONWARD!, for October 24 at The Tall Ship, with Golden Thread previews led by The Boston History Company in the first hour. The East Boston Times-Free Press reported that Starboard plans more installations, walking tours and cultural programs with community partners. Its longer-term goal is a harbor museum and innovation center. Updates are posted at starboard.boston.

If you want more East Boston art after the walk, two events are coming up at the ICA Watershed. Day of the Dead runs October 31 through November 2. Harboring Creativity follows on November 7 and 8, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. It's a free exhibition and art sale with more than 20 local artists, plus a meet-the-artists reception on November 7 from 4 to 6 p.m.

At Lynn D'Avolio, we love seeing East Boston's history show up on streets people walk every day, from the Golden Stairs down to the wharf where the ferry docks. If you walk the Golden Thread this fall and want to talk about the neighborhood around these stops, I'm happy to share what I know. Let's Connect.