One Potato, Two Potato, a Million Potatoes

From Dave Brigham:

According to Spud Webb, this is the best monument in Boston. Spuds MacKenzie agrees. The Potato Shed Memorial along what's left of the Millers River in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood is something you have to seek out. I was willing to get fried in the sun one recent summer day in order to make a photo for y'all.

Sited near the end of a Route 1 off-ramp near New Rutherford Avenue, the memorial -- a stack of potato bags made of cast stone -- isn't something you happen upon. You have to know it's there, you have to have the starch to persevere and you have to care about this obscure bit of tuber history.

Many years ago, I was in this vicinity, checking out the North Bank Pedestrian Bridge with my son, and tried to find this monument. But I gave up, because my son wasn't into the hunt and we had other places to explore (see December 21, 2018, "The Under / Over from Cambridge to Charlestown").

But once I get a place like this -- obscure, a bit goofy and dedicated to a staple food -- in my head, I don't forget it. So I recently came at the monument from the other direction, and found it with ease. So Dave, I can hear you asking, what's the deal with the Potato Shed Memorial?

Ore-Ida, I'll tell you.

"In this area between the mid-1800's and the 1930's millions and millions of potatoes were off-loaded into storage sheds along the sidings of the Boston and Maine Railroad," the plaque begins. This area southeast of Bunker Hill Community College and next to the Charles River was once lousy with railroad tracks. The college is located on the former site of Charlestown State Prison, in the area known as Prison Point (see October 17, 2017, "Set Yourself Free on Prison Point").

The plaque continues: "Many residents of the Charlestown neighborhood regularly came to the Miller's River (Millers / Miller's, po-tay-to / po-tah-to) potato sheds to purchase their weekly supplies. Long-standing community members have first hand (sic) memories of their trips to the sheds. The potato storage sheds burned in the mid-1930's and were not replaced."

According to this Boston.com article, one man, artist Ross Miller, is "perhaps most responsible for the statue."

A visual artist who worked on the Big Dig’s Central Artery Arts Program in the 1990s, Miller "says he encountered Charlestown residents with vivid memories of the potato sheds and was amused by the idea of memorializing them," per the article. “'I sort of spearheaded the idea,' Miller said, adding that the pedestrian aspects of the massive infrastructure project were relatively 'overlooked.'"

He took charge. “There was a lot of freedom,” he said.

I hope you don't think this post was half-baked.