New Salt: Connecting New Bedford to Its Waterfront through Adaptive Reuse

Abstract

This thesis contends that abandoned waterfront industrial buildings can be repurposed as public amenity spaces that can connect a community to its water. While the fishing port of New Bedford, Massachusetts prides itself in its working waterfront, very little of the harbor is accessible to the public. A large highway divides the downtown and residential neighborhoods from the waterfront. Originally built to bolster the fishing industry by providing a direct shipping route to Boston, the highway now acts as a barrier that separates its city from the water, its historic source of well-being and success. Along this antiquated highway, numerous vacant historic buildings sit idle while the city grows around them. This thesis proposes that the role of the highway be redefined as a multi-modal pedestrian corridor to encourage public crossing from downtown to the waterfront. It also posits that these vacant sites be adaptively reused to allow the public to get a closer look into the fishing industry, the main source of the city’s identity. This design proposal uses techniques that preserve the richness and layered history of these abandoned sites, while removing pieces that no longer serve their community. These methods elevate the importance of historic sites as places of shared memory, but also allow them to be repurposed to play active roles in the future. This thesis uses the Cannon Street Power Plant as an example of how these adaptive reuse design techniques can be implemented. This model can be replicated in other abandoned sites in New Bedford and in other port cities that have been disconnected from their working waterfronts.