Bartlett Yard - street art, graffiti and murals in Roxbury.

Street art is not forever. It’s time on Earth is limited, unless it’s a piece of Banksy street art that someone slices out of a wall and sells for a million dollars.

The joy of discovering cool street art is knowing that the artwork is in the process of decay, it might even be evolving as additional layers of graffiti and stickers are applied to its surface over time. The mother load of Boston street art and graffiti has been discovered in Roxbury’s Bartlett Yard. Formerly an MBTA bus yard sitting on eight and a half acres right on Washington Street, the yard has been temporarily converted into an outdoor arts and community space.  A large portion of the space where abandoned buildings once laid bare has been converted into an outdoor museum of graffiti, street art and murals. Events have been held here, the neighborhood has come together to support it…wait, is this really Boston?

But like all good street art, it soon will fade away, then be crushed into dust and finally be replaced by development.

Eventually this piece of real estate will hold 313 units of market-rate and affordable housing. In all, 12 buildings will be built at the site to hold 22,153-square-feet of commercial space, 31,322-square-feet of retail space, 369,311-square-feet of residential space, 33,870-square-feet of “structured” parking, and 15,500-square-feet of public space. It will be called Bartlett Place, and you will not see things like this...

As it stands now, summer weeds are filling the cracks in the lot, luster is being lost, but there are are few events on the calendar ( Events Calendar ) including the Floorlords Present - Back to Kool Fashion Fest on August 24th. Demolition is said to be starting in November; time is quickly running out if you want to go check it. I don’t know exactly when the space is open to the public currently, the entrance gate was locked when I visited, so I shimmied under a fence to gain access.  If you do go, keep your wits about you or check the website for more details: http://bartlettevents.org/. 

Soon it will all be a memory, but will surely live on in Facebook and Reddit like a bad cat meme…