A Place We Could All Call Home, by Toni Reavis, note by Larry Eder

The Hub

Among its other nicknames Boston is known as “The Hub of the Universe” – often shortened to The Hub – a title first conferred by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1858.  While the designation might seem a tad presumptuous given the size and scope of at least one other burg some 220 miles to the southwest which contains five boroughs and seven million inhabitants, it is safe enough to say that the Hub of the Running Universe in the decade from 1977 to 1986 existed at 372-A Chestnut Hill Avenue in Boston’sCleveland Circle.

That was the address of the original Bill Rodgers Running Center, or the Mother Ship, as those of us who called it a second home liked to call it after two more locations were established in Faneuil Hall downtown and out in Worcester, Mass. some 50 miles west in the years to follow.

For those too young to remember, even after the Running Boom hit in the wake of Frank Shorter‘s Olympic Marathon gold medal in Munich 1972, we still bought our running shoes at regular shoe stores or general sporting goods shops.  Back then there were no such things as running specialty stores.   I remember buying my first pair – I think they were ProSpecs – at a little hole-in-the-wall shoe store on Harvard Avenue in Brighton, Mass. for $9.00.  Since I was just quitting smoking, I didn’t want to spend too much in case I didn’t like running.

But as the running wave continued to mount, and Bill Rodgers appeared as a legitimate rival to Shorter, the sport of foot-racing began to extend into the mainstream of American culture and finally business, too.  There was a booming new market to service. A generation which had assembled for ‘sit-ins” of protest was now gathering for runs after work.

“Ready, Set, Sweat!” announced the cover of Time Magazine in the summer of 1977.

Following his victories in the Boston Mara
thon in 1975 & 1977, then the first two (of four straight) five-borough New York City Marathon titles – when the five-borough course was still brand new – Bill landed on the cover the Sports Illustrated.  Running had truly come of age.  With his fame growing Bill and older brother Charlie opened the first Bill Rodgers Running Center in the fall of 1977.

Cleveland Circle was an ideal location.  Resting on the western edge of the city, just one mile from the leafy Boston College campus, and terminus for the MBTA’s Green Line “C” trains, the Circle was a bustling urban neighborhood.  It also happened to be just passed the 22-mile mark of the Boston Marathon route where the course turned onto Beacon Street for the final four mile stretch into town.

I had moved to Cleveland Circle in February of 1976, and by the following spring had begun Runner’s Digest, the first radio talk show devoted to the sport of running. When Bill and Charlie opened the store just two blocks from my apartment, it all but became my production studio. Read more of this post