The Secrets of Ridgeway Lane

Easily missed as one trundles down Cambridge Street or behind the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House, Ridgeway Lane in the historic West End is one of Boston’s longest and narrowest streets. Often mistaken for a simple alley, it has served ropewalk workers, residents, Suffolk University students, and the occasional criminal on the run for over 250 years. As one walks the length of this quietly eerie road, surrounded by brick on both sides and heavy paving stones below, it is hard to imagine much life here. Yet, hidden, urban pathways like Ridgeway Lane hold many stories worth telling.

Ridgeway Lane sits on the north slope of Beacon Hill, tucked between Temple Street to the East and Hancock Street to the West, and runs from Derne Street northward to Cambridge Street. Standing at the top of the lane, you have the rear of the Massachusetts State House at your back, and can spy the Old West Church on Cambridge Street below. At first glance, it would be easy to identify the lane as an alley. In the 1920’s, Boston Globe reporter John Hurd Jr. jokingly said of Ridgeway Lane, “it might have been a lane once, but that would be back in the days when the cows wagged their tails on Washington st [sic] and horses sprained their ankles falling into bogholes on Tremont.” Yet this reporter’s own article, mentioned later, proves that even unassuming byways, such as Ridgeway Lane, are full of intriguing stories.

Ridgeway Lane was first laid out by Joseph Ridgway in 1768 across the western part of a rope walk built by the property’s former owner, Colonel Stephen Minot. It was not until thirty years later, in 1798, that the name Ridgway Lane was first used. The lot on which Ridgeway Lane sits was first recorded as a four acre pasture belonging to Joshua Scottow: an early Puritan settler, Captain during King Philip’s War, and a successful businessman with interests throughout New England. The land would pass hands a couple of times before being sold to Minot in 1691. Other than serving as an access to the adjacent ropewalk, not much appears in the record concerning Ridgeway Lane for over a hundred years, until a surprising number of newspaper articles concerning this narrow street and its residents begin to appear.

Its unique characteristics – being fairly hidden, long and only 10 feet wide – have attracted the attention of many photographers over the years. Most often these photographs were used in local interest articles extolling the idiosyncratic nature of Boston’s seemingly unplanned streets. Two early articles concerning resident’s of the lane appear in 1890’s: the first a whimsical report of a police officer recovering the cloak of a Catherine Rafferty of 39 Ridgeway Lane. The other report from 1894 is a more gruesome tale of the discovery of the body of Thomas Carroll at number 58. Carroll, who apparently committed suicide by sealing his room with the gas on, was said to have been suffering from a chronic illness and had “become discouraged” according to neighbors.

In 1923 Boston Globe reporter John Hurd Jr. wrote a charming story about a garden oasis built by Mr. J. Weston Eliot and Mr. G. B. Condit on the roof of their five-story building at 23 Ridgeway Lane. Hurd described the difficulties the men faced in creating a garden on an inner city roof, such as obtaining soil, even though Hurd pointed out that local children playing in the lane had “enough dirt on their faces to start a farm.” He detailed some of the antiquarian pieces set amidst the flora, including a terracotta masque covering the tap filling the pond and “a marble head of Caesar, ”found in the rag market in Rome.” Eliot and Condit would invite local children to visit their garden, such as Rosalie and Vic who were there for the interview, and for whom two of the pond’s fish were named.

It is remarkable that so many residents of one particular building, 25 Ridgeway Lane, made it into the news over the past 100 years. In May of 1931, Mrs. Isabella Perry, a longtime usher and ticket seller at the Old Howard Theatre, died at the age of 59 at the Boston City Hospital after a long illness. Born of old Boston stock, Mrs. Perry was the first person interred at the Old Granary Burial Ground in twenty years, and only the second buried in a downtown Boston cemetery in 75 years. Though her burial was only attended by twenty mourners, onlookers outside the fence numbered in the hundreds. Another resident, 75-year-old retired judge Edward Smith, was rushed to the Haymarket Relief Hospital with head injuries on July 6, 1937 after falling to the pavement in Scollay Square as he fished for money to give to a charity worker. He died two months later in the same hospital, presumably from the results of the accident. On the lighter side, Margaret Evers, a thirteen-year-old resident of 25 Ridgeway Lane, made the papers in 1938 for her efforts in rescuing “a pink-eyed white rat from imminent death at the hands of rush-hour motorists.” After providing the lucky rodent with a meal at home, she was urged by family members to bring it to the Joy Street police station, which Margaret did grudgingly, as she wanted to keep it as a pet.

Part of the street’s nature as a dark, less traveled, but convenient transit way served the needs of some of Boston’s criminal element. The Boston Globe reported on two police chases on Ridgeway Lane that resulted in gunshots being fired. On September 26, 1938, police officers John F. Pettiti and John Walker raided a room at a Beacon Hill hotel where there were reports of “indecent literature and pictures.” Though the room was empty, the officers apprehended a suspicious looking man in the lobby who it turned out had obscene pictures and movie equipment in his car. The suspect, Jack Adler of Omaha, Nebraska, escaped and led the officers on a chase down Ridgeway Lane. The officers fired five shots at the fleeing man before his eventually capturing him. Three years later, Patrolman Leslie Bickford fired five shots at a robbery suspect on Ridgeway Lane. While making his nightly rounds, Bickford spied a man acting suspiciously in the Rendezvous Coffee Shop at 28 Derne St. Assisted by nearby Capitol Police, Bickford attempted to arrest the man, who broke free and ran down Ridgeway Lane. Though the suspect was never found, Bickford thought he may have wounded him.

Unfortunately, two of the last news stories to mention Ridgeway Lane were of tragedies that befell two of its residents. In late October of 1963, Mrs. Margaret Ivusic, 50, of 27 Ridgeway Lane, and her friend Mrs. Helen Mower of Concord, Mass, both employees of the Railway Express Co. in Boston, were caught in a ferocious blizzard while hiking on Mt. Katahdin in Maine. As they sought a way to safety, the women became separated from each other. Mrs. Mower reached a ranger station where she found the assistance of a park ranger, Ralph Heath. Heath risked his own safety to search for Margaret amidst the storm. Hours and days passed without any sign of either Margaret or Ralph, and the news reports became more and more pessimistic. Finally officials presumed the two lost. Six months later, on April 27, 1964, searchers found Margaret Ivusic’s frozen body at the foot of a ledge with a rope tied around her. On May 15th, the body of her valiant rescuer, Ralph Heath, was found 400 hundred feet above her. Today Margaret, and her since departed friend Helen Mower, rest near each other in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA.

On December 30, 1985, Michael A. Ventresca, resident of 21 Ridgeway Lane and political lobbyist, was stopped at a traffic light when his car was struck from behind by another vehicle, driven by an intoxicated driver, at an estimated speed of 75 miles per hour. Two local workers were able to pull Ventresca from his vehicle as it caught on fire, but he died of his injuries at the Massachusetts General Hospital soon after arrival. The thirty-eight-year old Ventresca was the class president of the first graduating class of UMass Boston, a Suffolk Law School graduate, and a campaigner for such politicians as Gary Hart, John Kerry, and members of the Kennedy Family. He was honored a year later at a memorial at the John F. Kennedy Library, and UMass Boston set up a scholarship fund in his name.

In 1954, Ridgeway Lane itself was almost the subject of an obituary. In a Boston Globe editorial, A.C. Webber, former chairman of the Boston Department of Public Works, suggested the resurrection of a plan to extend the Massachusetts State House site as part of the upcoming West End and Government Center urban renewal projects. The plan would have replaced everything within the box of Dern-Hancock-Cambridge-Bowdon Streets, including Ridgeway Lane, with expanded State House offices and parks, in the hope of raising property values and tax income. As it turned out, this was one act of seizure by eminent domain and demolition the West End avoided. To this day Ridgeway Lane and all its secrets, those told and untold, remains a curious byway of the West End and Boston. A city needs its lanes and alleys too.