The Golden Thread sheds light on little known East Boston history — and its present

By the shipyard on East Boston’s Marginal Street, there are 58 concrete stairs jutting imposingly upward. Nowadays, local runners see it as a challenge. But a hundred years ago, the Golden Stairs were a gateway for thousands of immigrants taking their first steps onto American soil from the piers below.

This lesser-known piece of history is now being acknowledged with a gold-hued, metal archway atop the ascent in a small park, the first of five steel arches placed around East Boston to celebrate the area’s cultural, infrastructure and maritime roots.

The series of arches, named “The Golden Thread,” are the starting point for what creator David Lank hopes will be a longterm commemoration of East Boston’s history and contributions to the region.

“It’s actually a neighborhood story and how that story does already exist, but it’s still being written,” Lank said.

The site hosts for the “thresholds” — as the arches are referred to — are Massport, the City of Boston and East Boston Community Development Corporation.

Lank, who works in real estate, is a more recent transplant and an enthusiastic history buff. Last year, he and Rep. Adrian Madaro spent hours discussing local lore at a brewery event.

“We were just kind of talking about how it’s sad that we don’t do a better job uplifting and celebrating the really rich, incredible history,” said Madaro, who helped secure $10,000 in state funding for the project, which sits in his district.

“On Ellis Island, they celebrate that with a beautiful museum. Here, they demolished our immigration station,” said Madaro of the local station built in 1919 along the piers as a detention facility. It was demolished in 2011.

Lank launched the nonprofit Project Starboard, which will unveil its Golden Threads project at a ticketed event on Saturday, Oct. 24 at The Tall Ship, complete with a local history tour, food and more. Tickets are $75, with discounted community ticket options.

One of the steel arch installations is titled “Crossing,” celebrating connections to the rest of Boston and the world. It’s the first undersea subway tunnel of its kind in the United States, opened in 1904 for streetcars to cut travel time down to seven minutes from downtown to Maverick Square. The MBTA Blue Line currently runs through it.

The third threshold, “Making,” is by the Atlantic Works Dry Docks, once the site of renowned shipbuilding. It was there the famous clipperships were built by Donald McKay and his contemporaries from the 1830s to 1850s. One of those piers gave birth to the Flying Cloud, the clippership that set the World’s sailing record for fastest travel between New York and San Francisco.

The next threshold, “Neighbors,” celebrates the impact of the area’s activists.

Madaro’s mother, Debra Cave, 75, is the chair of the East Boston Museum and Historical Society, and a local resident. She favors that arch because it highlights the activism surrounding the inception of Logan Airport.

“I think to really know East Boston, you have to know that after the loss of Wood Island Park — that really created activists in this community. When your neighbor is an airport, you need to be active. You need to protect your homeland, so to speak,” said Cave. She walked through the archway that is temporarily near Airport MBTA Station, and thought of Mary Ellen Welch, the park’s namesake.

“We had this horrible, ugly black-tarred area from one end of East Boston to the other — it was a horrible eyesore. She advocated and worked with others until we had this beautiful Greenway,” Cave said.

The “Adaptation” arch hasn’t been installed yet in Central Square, in East Boston, but it’s supposed to highlight a future flood path. Lank is also hoping to tie in Indigenous history for the Wampanoag and other tribes that considered the land their home, and were forced out with European occupation.

“We thought it might be an opportunity to weave the tale of adaptation starting from the Indigenous peoples of the Boston Harbor Islands — then bring it all the way to the future, which is coastal resilience,” he said.

GBH News took a tour of several of the archways with local historian Daniel Berger-Jones, founder of the Boston History Company Tour. He’s partnering with Lank to offer tours through part of the Golden Thread, with additional maritime, immigration, and even political history (including Joe Kennedy — father of former President John F. Kennedy — born on Meridian Street).

Residents can also walk though the thresholds and scan QR codes at four of the five thresholds for more information.

At the Golden Stairs threshold, called “Arrival,” Berger-Jones spoke about the significance of its location near the former immigration center.

“If you make it up these stairs, you have not been stopped by immigration agents,” said Berger-Jones of the new arrivals. “You have not been detained at the immigration detention center, which is kind of a scary place. That’s kind of the deportation center.”

Historical records show immigrants were held for health and document issues, and under scrutiny due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which wasn’t repealed until 1943.

East Boston, he said, is known for having welcomed waves of immigrants for nearly 200 years. The first large wave came in the 1830s with Canadians; then German sugar-baking immigrants who worked in a local factory; and Irish during the potato famine. Also arriving here were Scandinavians, Italians, Eastern Europeans and Russian Jews and Latin Americans in the 20th century and today.

Lank knows residents of East Boston are well-versed in the area’s immigration history. Still, he hopes they will explore it all, and tourists who didn’t have the neighborhood on their list of places to check out will cross the river. “Everybody wants to tell you their family’s arrival story right out the gate,” he said.

B. Amore, 83, an artist born in East Boston, documented her family’s immigration history through collages that will be on display at the Atlantic Works Gallery soon.

Her grandmother, Maria Grazia Catalano, came into East Boston in 1909 on the SS Canopic — a White Star Line ship, the same company as the Titanic. Catalano came looking for her brother who had immigrated earlier. There was no official immigration station yet; immigration officers would show up and ask questions when each ship arrived.

“It was very different than Ellis Island. And they processed people right at the docks and then let them go,” she said.

Boston City Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata is a fourth-generation East Bostonian. She still has stamped documents from her great-grandmother, Alessandra Severino, who immigrated from Italy in the early 1900s.

“What I have is just folklore that’s been passed down — they made their way down the gangway after a long journey in search of the American Dream, and were really looking for prosperity that was promised to them while they were in Italy. They made their way up the Golden Stairs in Jeffries Point and ultimately settled on Cottage Street for many years,” she said.

As she watched her gurgling five-month old baby Joaquín — a fifth-generation East Bostonian — she reminisced.