Mary Byrne
The home at 404 Common Street looks like a typical Boston suburb, with neat homes on fairly small lots set close together.
But the home at 404 Common St. makes the neighborhood more of a conversation piece because it was owned by Dr. Vannevar Bush, a key figure in scientific research and development that led to the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. Later in life, Bush would be instrumental in founding the National Science Foundation.
Interest in the Manhattan Project and the people who ran it was piqued in 2023 with the release of “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour biopic of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the atomic bomb project.
“Oppenheimer” earned a shelf full of accolades this award season, including the coveted Best Picture at the Academy Awards earlier this month. The film also won several Academy Awards and Golden Globes, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award, and a Critics’ Choice Award. Released in 2023, it became a billion-dollar box-office sensation.
Mathew Modine portrayed Bush, the Everett-born scientist whose career included founding a company that would grow into Raytheon, heading the engineering department at MIT, and developing the National Defense Research Committee, which organized and supported research of military interest.
The NDRC was followed by the creation of the Office for Scientific Research and Development, which received greater support and funding from the White House than the NDRC, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Once again at the helm, Bush oversaw much of the country’s wartime scientific research.
By 1940, Bush received permission from President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the office to move from the research stage to the development stage, paving the way for the Manhattan Project. Viewers of the acclaimed movie will recognize this as the stage being set for Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, who was tapped as the project’s lead physicist. With Bush continuing to advise the program, research centers were established all throughout the country, including in Los Alamos, New Mexico—the site of the first atomic blast.
Eighteen years after that first blast in New Mexico, Bush, speaking from his home in Belmont, met with MIT science reporter John Fitch to reflect on his role in the Manhattan Project.
“My first reaction was one of great relief that the program had been successful, and the bomb had gone off on schedule,” he said, describing his reaction to that first blast in 1945.
Asked whether he had any regrets, Bush said no.
“Of course, [President Harry] Truman made the decision to use the bomb,” he continued, referencing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. “But I thought then, and I think now, he was right. By ending the war abruptly, it saved 100,000 or more American casualties. It saved the lives of Japanese, for that matter. The bomb was bound to appear, and I think it was well it appeared in a dramatic fashion so that civilization would face up to it. …. The world has to live with and learn with it.”
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, an estimated 70,000 people died as a result of the initial blast in Hiroshima. By the end of 1945, however, the death toll climbed to over 100,000 as a result of radioactive fallout and other after-effects. Within five years, an estimated 200,000 were believed to have died as a result of the bombing.
Bush and his wife Phoebe owned the property for several decades, though town records show they rented it out for periods of time when they lived in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.
Bush died in June 1974 in Belmont, according to his obituary.
