Where is the West End?
Executive Director Sebastian Belfanti explains the many answers to a common question: where, geographically, is the West End?
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Chloe Russell
Chloe Russell, a Black woman who owned property on Belknap Street in the West End during the nineteenth century, was the attributed author of The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book in an era when fortune telling and dream interpretation was popular and entertaining.
Adelaide Cromwell: Mapping Community in the Black West End
Adelaide Cromwell, the late sociologist who taught at Boston University and founded BU’s African American Studies program in 1969, documented and visualized the West End’s historic Black community in the 1800s.
Robert Fairbanks
The Early Settlers of the West End (1630 – 1645): Robert Fairbanks, Public House Keeper
Sarah C. Roberts
At the age of five, Sarah Roberts was at the center of a lawsuit against racially segregated public schools in Boston in 1847. Roberts, a Black girl, was denied the equal right to attend the public school of her choice, forced instead to walk past five public schools to the Black-only Abiel Smith School in the old West End.
The Committee to Save the West End
In the late 1950s, the Committee to Save the West End brought residents and political leaders together to vigorously oppose the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s plan to raze 50 acres of the neighborhood.
Mapping Amateur Radio Stations in the 1920s West End
Mapping Amateur Radio Stations in the 1920s West End Overlaying historic maps of the West End over a map of present-day Boston can contextualize the locations of amateur radio stations in the West End during the 1920s. Leon W. Bishop, an early pioneer of amateur radio broadcasting, moved to 18 Irving Street in the West…
Joseph Lee, Jr. and the Founding of Community Boating
Joseph Lee, Jr. founded the “Community Boat Club” in 1937 so that West End youth could sail out from the Charles River Esplanade. Community Boating, Inc. was officially incorporated in 1946, and remains the oldest continuously operated public boating organization in the United States.