Boston’s Ropewalks
A digital reframing of “Ropewalks of the West End and Beyond”, an 2012 exhibit designed and written by Duane Lucia and Tom Burgess.
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Era: Immigrant Neighborhood (~1880-1960)
Immigration, first, second, and third-generation Americans, Settlement Houses, Irish politics, etc.
Chemical Man & the 1939 World’s Fair
At New York’s 1939-40 World’s Fair, a young man from the West End presented the Chemical Man, a working model of the human digestive system.
Chinese Laundries in the West End
Chinese immigrants owned and operated laundries in the West End during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an under-emphasized aspect of the historic neighborhood’s multi-racial and multi-ethnic diversity.
The West End Land League
The West End branch of the Land League made political and financial contributions to the original Land League in Ireland, an organization of tenant farmers and Irish nationalists that resisted high rents and evictions in the 1880s.
Senda Berenson
Senda Berenson, the “Mother of Women’s Basketball” in the United States, grew up in the West End after her Lithuanian family moved to the neighborhood in 1875.
Alonzo Meserve
Alonzo Meserve, principal of the Bowdoin School on Myrtle St. from 1886 to 1914, made significant contributions to Bowdoin’s student body and Boston’s ongoing struggle against racism.
The West End House’s Debate Clubs
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.
Ukrainians of the West End
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.