Jane’s Walk West End Tour
This tour will focus on what happened to the West End under urban renewal and coincides with the Jane’s Walk global festival of citizen-led walking tours inspired by urbanist and activist Jane Jacobs. Historian and West End resident Duane Lucia will lead the tour.
The event will begin with a Museum tour of the exhibit titled, Boston’s First Urban Renewal: The New York Streets. That will be followed by a walking tour through the West End urban renewal project area, including Charles River Park, the outskirts of Government Center, North Station and the North slope of Beacon Hill. In the late 1950s an early 60s, thousands of West Enders were driven from their tenement homes to make way for gleaming, high-rise apartments rented at a premium.
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) is renowned for her theories and writings advocating a fresh, community-based approach to urban development and for organizing grassroots campaigns to save neighborhoods like the West End and New York Streets from urban renewal. After her passing, a group of Jacobs’ friends and colleagues founded Jane’s Walk to honor her ideas and legacy.