Era: Immigrant Neighborhood (~1880-1960)
Immigration, first, second, and third-generation Americans, Settlement Houses, Irish politics, etc.
In the early twentieth century, the West End House hosted debates between high school literary societies on controversial and important issues. The debates were judged by lawyers and educators in Boston and adopted the format of competitions at the collegiate level.
Far from their country of origin, Ukrainian immigrants and their descendants in the West End maintained connections and advocated for justice in their mother country.
Executive Director Sebastian Belfanti explains the many answers to a common question: where, geographically, is the 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.
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. 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.
Ten-thousand West Enders received a creative New Year’s greeting card demanding improvements in children’s recreational opportunities, from William F. Brophy, a lawyer who worked in the West End, and James Lee, Jr., the son of the “Father of the Playground Movement” in America.
Historic New Year’s Celebrations in the West End The West End was home to many New Year’s celebrations at sites of community for the neighborhood’s Black residents, Polish Catholic residents, and Jewish residents. Like all neighborhoods of Boston, and the entire country, the West End has been home to many distinct celebrations of the new…
