Longwood Medical and Academic Area

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View over Longwood Medical Area, facing Huntington Avenue, overlooking Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and one building of Brigham and Womens' Hospital.

Longwood Medical and Academic Area (also known as Longwood Medical Area, LMA, or just Longwood) is a section of Boston with a high density of hospitals, colleges, and biomedical research centers. LMA straddles the Fenway-Kenmore and Mission Hill neighborhoods and is centered around Longwood Avenue as it runs between Huntington Avenue and Brookline Avenue. Both intersections have an MBTA Green Line trolley stop: Longwood at Brookline (Green Line "D" Branch) and Longwood Medical Area at Huntington (Green Line "E" Branch).

An organization called MASCO (Medical Academic and Scientific Community Organization, Inc.), made up of the major institutions in the area, provides shared services (telecommunications, parking, shuttle buses, and the like) for its parent organizations. Its 19 members (all Longwood-area institutions) include the following hospitals:

and schools:

Historically, the area was once residential housing with small medical institutions interspersed among the large lots. It wasn't until the 1950's when the surrounding area began a slow decline did most of the instiutions grow by leaps and bounds to what they are today. The institutions often turned their back on the surrounding neighborhoods, often walling off large sections of institutional land with mid-rise buildings without public access. Harvard Medical built a new library in the middle of a connecting street and Harvard School of Public Health built a large auditorium across its Huntington Avenue front that stretched the whole block. Brigham and Women's bought and filled in all of its Francis Street frontage with impenetrable street-wall without exterior doors and windows only above the second floor. Recent years has seen a marked change in institutional planning with an effort to open up the streetwall and add public open space.

References

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