July 2019 Newsletter

Sure, you can grip the heavy iron ice tongs or study the beauty of gelatin-silver-backed photos of neighborhood street life. But if you really want to know about Boston’s old West End – vanquished and vanished at the hands of urban renewal – you need to meet Bruce Guarino.

Guarino is in his 15th year as a senior docent at The West End Museum. A descendant of Jewish-Belarusian and Italian immigrants, he is an incarnate artifact of the ethnic diversity that was a hallmark of the old neighborhood.

“It was a great place to grow up in,” said Guarino. “It was one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the entire country – 23 different ethnic groups, including …

The hope of Boston’s immigrants – and the heartache of those left behind – came through loud and clear at The West End Museum through the dramatic reading of a series of letters written in the 1890s. Specifically, the reading featured select correspondence from Katie McCarthy of Ballinlough, County Cork, Ireland, to her sister Nora in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The performance served as the centerpiece of the Museum’s 2019 Irish Heritage Night on March 28, which also honored Dr. Patricia Trainor O’Malley.

Live music from Irish immigrants Tony Keegan on bodhran and Sean Connor on fiddle greeted attendees and provided interludes during the reading. It reflected traditional tunes one might have heard …

Hyman Bloom (1913-2009) is one of Boston’s most renowned painters and a true West End gem. Born in Lithuania (now Latvia), Bloom and his family immigrated to the U.S. in 1920 and settled at 8 Auburn Street in Boston’s West End (pictured above). Raised Jewish Orthodox, he planned to become a rabbi before finding his calling in the arts. He first studied painting under Harold Zimmerman at the West End Settlement House and, at just 28, his work debuted at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning dubbed Bloom “the first Abstract Expressionist.” His career spanned more than six decades, and his paintings hang in the MoMA, MFA, and Smithsonian. The MFA opens Hyman Bloom: Matters of Life and Death in July featuring more than 40 works. A book, Modern Mystic: The Art of Hyman Bloom, has just been released. Learn more at hymanbloom.com.

As part of our “Share Your Story” video series, former West Ender Barbara (Pasqua) LoVoulo shared her memories and feelings about growing up in Boston’s West End. Of Irish and Italian descent, Barbara recalls the schools, the homes, how she met her husband, how difficult it was when “urban renewal” destroyed the community, her disdain for the “‘If you live here, you’d be home now” sign, and the many different ethnic groups in the old neighborhood.

“You learned to eat all different kinds of food,” Barbara says. In particular, she remembers a Chinese family “on the hill” who used to cook and bring over their native food, which Barbara’s mother strongly disliked, but always told them was wonderful.

“The people all helped each other, I think, and that’s what I remember about the West End.”

See Barbara’s video here and subscribe to our YouTube channel.