In August 1823, Mayor Josiah Quincy organized a group of law-abiding volunteers to raid the West End’s notorious center of vice, called The Hill. Two years later, North End residents formed their own posse to tear down houses of ill repute in the neighborhood, leading to what became known as The Beehive Riot.
In 1931, Mayor James Michael Curley planned to sell 50,000 square feet of city land, on North Grove Street in the West End, to Massachusetts General Hospital. Because this land was used by the Public Works Department for sanitation in the West End, residents – and city councilor John I. Fitzgerald – strongly opposed the sale. Fitzgerald, associated with West End boss Martin Lomasney, successfully advocated for the proceeds of the sale to be allocated for continued sanitation services in the West End.
A talk on the history of urban development in Boston’s West End.
The Lost Streets of the West End: Minot Street was one of the dozens of narrow, residential, West End streets razed by redevelopment in the 1950s. While the two street blocks on the northern side of the redevelopment zone were changed profoundly by urban renewal, the site’s rich history represents the constantly shifting geography of the Boston cityscape over the past two centuries.
Charles Bulfinch and his architecture transformed Boston during the Federalist era. Many of his works, such as the Massachusetts State House, still grace the city today. One of his now lost and lesser known buildings, the Parkman Market, served the West End as a public market, a factory, and an early home of St. Joseph’s congregation. Despite its historic significance, it did not survive Urban Renewal.
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, educator, publisher, reformer, and namesake of the West End’s Elizabeth Peabody House, was one of the most important figures in Boston’s 19th-century intellectual community. Of all her achievements, perhaps her most impactful was the introduction of English-language kindergartens to the United States.
Hyman Bloom is remembered as a key figure from the Boston Expressionist movement, praised for his mystical and vibrant paintings. Bloom, in addition to being a visionary artist, offers us a window into Boston’s settlement houses in the 1920s and ‘30s. The West End Community Center, and its artist-teacher Harold Zimmerman, nurtured the creativity of a generation of future artists, from Bloom to Jack Levine.
St. Joseph’s Church was established in 1862 on Chambers Street in the West End, near the site of the first public Catholic mass in Boston. In the early 1900s, the St. Joseph’s Association, an organization of parishioners, hosted an annual party at the church which also held many notable funerals, marriages, and worship services. Decades after urban renewal, West Enders reunited at annual masses at St. Joseph’s to honor deceased fellow residents.
