I recently received a notification from City Hall on an Article 85 Demolition Delay Application filed for the takedown of the house at 31 Savin Hill Avenue. Demolitions are subject to a delay to determine if a building is “historically significant.” If so, there will be a hearing to determine if the building deserves landmark status, which can make it more difficult to demolish.

The house at 31 Savin Hill Avenue, a 1,700-square-foot single family colonial built in 1900, is not historically significant by conventional criteria. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have “history.” In the 1980s it was part of the “37 Club,” an after-hours establishment club located in a back room behind Venice Pizza at 37 Savin Hill Avenue with a license that allowed it to operate 24 hours a day during the week. As the license did not extend to the weekends, the club moved into the house at 31 Savin Hill Avenue on weekends.

The 37 Club was originally for firefighters, but in the mid-1980s, it was taken over by Charles Matta, who turned the club into a neighborhood nightmare, with cocaine dealing, prostitution, and gambling all night long. The neighbors around that location organized a crime watch, and at nearly every meeting of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association there were reports from the crime watch group and from the police on actions by the police department, including many arrests of Mr. Matta. But he would be back in operation the next day.

For four years, the Treadway Road Crime Watch Group and the Civic Association worked with the Boston Police to no avail, with the result that many residents just gave up and moved. The area around the club had become de-stabilized, a crime zone. Some people living in the neighborhood couldn’t find buyers for their houses so that they could get out. The police seemed mystified, and there was open discussion as to whether Matta had a “sponsor” who was looking out for him.

Then, in August 1988, a police raid found both gambling implements and cocaine, which resulted in an indictment and a trial at which Matta’s defense centered around the fact that he had been an informer for both the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI. These federal agencies were paying Matta to provide information about other criminals. Even more disturbing was the testimony of FBI Special Agent Roderick Kennedy, who acknowledged that he was Matta’s “handler” for nine years, and that he had never visited the club or knew what went on there.

He also admitted that he had never spoken with the Boston Police unit that was working with the community about the Matta situation, nor had he had any knowledge of Matta’s arrests, saying “I didn’t have any … reason to check” despite Matta’s January 1988 cocaine conviction. The FBI even wrote a letter of support to the judge detailing Matta’s work as an informant. (Much of this information comes from a Boston Globe article, “Neighborhood pays high price for presence of FBI informant” by Kevin Cullen, May 13, 1990.)

The neighborhood was aghast. The notion that the FBI would sacrifice a neighborhood in pursuit of information was a shock to most; the Boston Globe’s disclosure that Whitey Bulger was an FBI informant was nine years in the future. The FBI refused to even discuss its actions with the neighborhood, and so the Civic Association called a press conference and demanded an apology and restitution in the form of a neighborhood stabilization fund of $300,000 that would pay for walking police patrols of this now-crime-infested area.

The press event, held on May 15, 1990, included Joe Chaisson, representing the Civic Association, Michael McGinn, who was chair of the Treadway Road Crime Watch, even though he had recently moved, and myself. It attracted the attention of the Globe, the Dorchester Argus-Citizen, and even the New York Times.

For its part, the FBI completely ignored the request. A month later, the Civic Association wrote to US Senator John Kerry with a summary request, which stated:

“The FBI has not responded to our letters or phone calls, even after the press conference. We are therefore asking you to intervene on our behalf. We are very concerned about the implications of FBI-sponsored drug houses, and wonder what other drug houses in our community are supported by the FBI. We wonder if the FBI has criteria for when they sponsor illegal clubs which de-stabilize communities. We are enraged that the FBI saw it fit to write a letter on Mr. Matta’s behalf but is unwilling to write a letter of apology to us. What is the responsibility of the FBI to communities, and what is their responsibility after they have de-stabilized it?”

The questions were met with silence. Perhaps if they had been followed up on, the FBI’s sponsorship of Whitey Bulger’s criminal activities would have come to light much sooner than it did.

At least we tried.