Era
Organizational category for historical articles

City PlanningImmigrant NeighborhoodNew BostonUrban Renewal An aerial plan of the neighborhood of Charlestown, showing a large number of buildings colored in, coded with needing "serious" or "major" repairs.

Urban Renewal in Boston’s Charlestown Neighborhood and Lessons Learned from the West End

Boston’s urban landscape has been dramatically shaped by urban renewal initiatives of the mid-20th century. Among the most notable examples are the West End and Charlestown—two historic neighborhoods with starkly divergent urban renewal results. While the West End became the poster child for urban renewal’s destructive potential, Charlestown had a very different outcome only a few years later. This article examines these contrasting urban renewal experiences, highlighting their implementation approaches, community responses, and lasting impacts on Boston’s urban fabric.

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African AmericansBusinessSocial & Religious InstitutionsWest Boston Fragments of pearlware ceramics against a black backdrop. They are cream-colored with blue flowers.

Domingo Williams

Domingo Williams was an attendant and caterer who lived with his family in an apartment in the African Meeting House from 1819 to 1830. A 2005 archaeological dig behind the African Meeting House, in conjunction with mentions of Williams in local and national newspapers, help to illuminate Williams’ prosperous catering career, his activist involvement in Boston’s Black community, and his time living in one of the city’s most important Black social-religious centers.

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Art & LiteratureImmigrant NeighborhoodModernNew BostonSocial & Religious InstitutionsWest Boston A black and white drawing of cruciform-layout building, filled with large arched windows and topped with a central rotunda.

The Charles Street Jail

Charles Street Jail stands as a landmark of major national significance, both as a key example of the Boston Granite Style of architecture and as the embodiment of mid-nineteenth-century penal reform movements. The jail’s history was marked by dramatic shifts: initially celebrated as an architectural and reformist triumph at its opening in 1851; later decried for its “cruel and unusual” conditions in the 20th century, prompting its closure; before being reinvented as a luxury hotel in the 21st century.

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City PlanningImmigrant NeighborhoodImmigrationModernNeighborhood Life An aerial photograph of three-story brick buildings facing each other, with a garden walkway in the middle.

Victory Village: The Story of the South End’s Villa Victoria

During the mid-20th century, Boston targeted the South End for urban renewal, alongside the West End and other low-income communities across the city. Responding to impending displacement, the South End’s Puerto Rican residents organized to take control of their community’s destiny, forming the Emergency Tenants’ Council (ETC) and successfully negotiating the right to redevelop the land themselves. The result was Villa Victoria—a community-planned and operated housing development that would become the center of Latino life and culture in the South End. Unlike top-down redevelopment schemes that displaced residents, as happened in the West End, Villa Victoria emerged from the community’s own vision and struggle.

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AbolitionAfrican AmericansSocial & Religious InstitutionsWest Boston An engraving a a three story church buildings. People in long dresses walk and stand outside.

The Fugitive Slave Church: The Twelfth Baptist Church, Leonard Grimes, and Abolitionism in the West End

Established in 1840, Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church was located on the North Slope of Beacon Hill (in the historic West End) until its move to Roxbury in 1906. In the 1850s and ‘60s, the Church defiantly mobilized in response to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Under the leadership of Leonard Grimes, the congregation raised funds to aid freedom seekers and became known as the “Fugitive Slave Church.” This active political, cultural, and religious meeting place had many prominent members and visitors from the Black abolitionist community, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Lewis and Harriet Hayden, Shadrach Minkins, Anthony Burns, Thomas Sims, Christiana Carteaux and Edward Mitchell Bannister, and Peter Randolph.

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