Come out of Malden Center station after dark this week and look at the glass wall of the tall apartment building facing Commercial Street. Rows of lit tubes there hold pieces of one photograph. From most angles they look like stripes of light. From the right spot they come together into a street scene from the early 1900s, with a tram and several men in period clothes standing beside the tracks.
The piece is called "Connector," and it is one of six artworks installed around Malden Center this summer and early fall. Look at where they all ended up and a pattern shows. Nearly every one sits on the path between the train and Pleasant Street: under the bridges, in a window facing the platforms, and on the walls of the blocks the city now calls the Malden Gaming District. The plan puts art where people already walk, and the clocks falling back on November 1 make that walk worth slowing down for.
A plan that asked for one installation got six
In August 2025, the City of Malden announced a Public Art Strategy. It was paid for with a Massachusetts Downtown Initiative grant, developed with the consulting firm Innes, and overseen by the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development. The city said it was looking for funding to build at least one installation in the coming year. When people were asked what they wanted, they named interactive art, lighting and sound installations, rotating gallery spaces, and hedge sculptures.
Fourteen months later, the count was six. Neighborhood View reported that Zachery LeMel, the city's Deputy Director for Business and Economic Development, led the project. Calls for artists went out in March, and the scoring was developed under the supervision of the New England Foundation for the Arts. "We had a decent amount of submissions," LeMel told Neighborhood View.
The jump from one to six came from spreading the cost around. According to the City of Malden's announcement, a state earmark secured by State Rep. Steve Ultrino paid for the two station murals and "Connector," with the MBTA and J. Malden Center as partners. Other funders paid for the other three. The work also supports a bigger goal. Malden's designation under MassDevelopment's Transformative Development Initiative, a three-year program that started July 1, lists art among its economic development goals.
| Work | Artist | Where | Paid for by |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Bloom Here" | Priyanka Manicka Vasagam | Under the Pleasant Street bridge at Malden Center Station | State earmark |
| "Hearth of Malden" | Nicolas Orellana | Under the Centre Street bridge at Malden Center Station | State earmark |
| "Connector" | Clint Baclawski | J. Malden Center storefront facing the station | State earmark |
| "The Next Adventure" | Michael Talbot | Boda Borg's Pleasant Street building | Boda Borg and the artist |
| "Game Night" | Madeline Deiters | Exchange Street, between Boda Borg and the Exchange Street restaurant | New England Foundation for the Arts, with Boda Borg support |
| Untitled | Andres Duarte | Malden Senior/Teen Center, 7 Washington Street | Mystic River Watershed Association |
Creative Malden's October 3 tour of all six met at Summer and Pleasant Streets. It's still a good place to start on your own.
The underpasses got the color first
Two of the three state-funded works went onto bare concrete under the railroad bridges, which were the darkest spots on the route. Neighborhood View described how "Bloom Here" turns the Pleasant Street underpass into a lit green street, with bright red and green leaves set against a sunny background. Vasagam is a Malden resident, and the city's description links the mural to her own experience of raising a young family here.
To the right of the mural is an older piece worth stopping for. It's a painted switchbox by the artist @maxcortesusa, sponsored by Creative Malden, and it shows William Shiloh. According to Neighborhood View, Shiloh was a free man who came north to Malden at the end of the 1850s and ran a popular barbershop on Pleasant Street across from the First National Bank of Malden. It comes from Creative Malden's Switchbox Program, which puts Malden artists' work on city streets and keeps yearly records from 2023 through 2026, along with a map.
Under the Centre Street bridge is "Hearth of Malden" by Nicolas Orellana, another Malden resident. The Advocate describes Orellana as a Chilean architectural designer and public artist whose work combines muralism, architecture, human experience, and advanced geometry. Some photo captions call it "Heart of Malden." The city and the Advocate both use "Hearth."
"Connector" looks best after 5 p.m.
MassArt calls it particularly striking after sunset, a lit glimpse of Malden's past for commuters and people passing by. Now that standard time is back, plenty of evening trips home happen after dark, which is when the piece is at its best.
Clint Baclawski told Neighborhood View he has lived in Malden for 14 years. He found his source image in the Malden Public Library's archives: a 1908 glass plate negative showing an elevated train running along a dirt road. MassArt explains that he rolls archival inkjet prints inside clear tubes and lights them with four-foot LED bulbs. He came up with the method by accident as a graduate student, when a print fell across a rack of bulbs in his studio. He told Neighborhood View he built the piece around the city's motto, "Strong Past, Proud Future."
The library's caption said the scene showed an elevated trolley in Malden. Baclawski told Neighborhood View he found no record of those trolleys running here, and the nearest was in Revere. So exactly where the street in the picture is remains an open question.
The installation is also designed to be portable. The city commissioned it to sit in a vacant J. Malden Center storefront, with the idea that it could move to other locations later. It was on view in early October, so check the window before planning a trip just to see it.
Pleasant and Exchange, where a business paid for its own walls
Up on Pleasant Street, the funding changes. Boda Borg paid for "The Next Adventure" on its own building, and the company managed and designed it with the artist, Street Theory Collective artist-in-residence Michael Talbot. The city describes the mural as inspired by curiosity, exploration, and discovery.
Around the corner on Exchange Street, "Game Night" by Madeline Deiters sits between Boda Borg and the Exchange Street restaurant. It celebrates the Malden Gaming District and was funded by the New England Foundation for the Arts with support from Boda Borg. The Advocate describes Deiters's mural work as a blend of realism and whimsy.
These two walls show why the city got to six instead of one. A downtown business decided its own facade was a good place to spend money, and it also put money toward the mural next door. Sandy Felder, president of Creative Malden, told Neighborhood View that the value goes beyond foot traffic. "We are emerging as an art city, an outdoor gallery," she said.
The mural seniors and teens helped design, and a workshop in the same building on November 7
The last stop is the only one where residents helped make the design. Andres Duarte, the Mystic River Watershed Association's artist-in-residence, designed the mural on the Malden Senior/Teen Center with an intergenerational group of Malden seniors and teens. The association paid for it, picked the artist, and coordinated with the Mayor's Office and the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development.
That building at 7 Washington Street hosts the next public conversation about downtown. Malden Together's planning workshop runs Saturday, November 7, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and covers housing, transportation, parks, jobs, and businesses, according to the City of Malden. If you liked the walk, you can tell the city so in person.
Commercial Street is the next stretch of the same route
"Connector" faces Commercial Street, and that street is the next one getting attention. In October the city began collecting public input on a Commercial Street redesign, backed by a $460,000 MassWorks Infrastructure Program grant. Neighborhood View reported that the corridor runs from Pleasant Street to the Medford line. It links Malden Center with Wellington and the Mystic River by way of the new Malden River Works park. Marcella Cannatti, the city's new transportation planner, told Neighborhood View the city wants to hear from "all users, whether they're residents, employees, employers, property owners or just passersby."
The next weekend gives you a reason to walk that way. The Merry Makers Market fills the Idle Hands Craft Ales parking lot at 89 Commercial Street on Saturday, November 14, from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Gallery@57 is hosting local makers, and there will be beer, coffee, and food trucks, according to the Idle Hands event page. Starting at the station gets you past "Bloom Here" and "Hearth of Malden" before you reach the stalls. If you're heading home after dark, "Connector" will be lit up across the street.
At Flow Realty, we keep track of how places like Malden Center are changing, one wall and one block at a time. If you'd like to talk about how projects like the Commercial Street redesign might affect a home you own or one you're considering, contact us. We're happy to have that conversation whenever you're ready.
