Era: Immigrant Neighborhood (~1880-1960)
Immigration, first, second, and third-generation Americans, Settlement Houses, Irish politics, etc.
Two Italian-American West Enders fought for their legal right to live in the United States during the 1950s, with varying degrees of success. These cases reveal how the “immigrant era” of the West End continued after the 1920s, the traditional ending of that period.
Boston stockbroker Thomas W. Lawson owned a racehorse, Boralma, who won $5000 in Kentucky’s Transylvania Stakes in 1900. The earnings were donated to the West End Nursery and Infants’ Hospital, with an amusing letter exchange between “Boralma” and “The Babies.”
Pedestrianism, or competitive walking, was a nationally popular sport in the 1870s and 1880s. The old West End was captivated by local competitions and news of world record-breaking pedestrians such as Boston’s Frank Hart, the most successful African-American pedestrian in the 1880s.
Dr. Thomas Jenks, one of Boston’s leading figures in medicine, business, and politics during the late-eighteenth century, lived in the West End for most of his life. In 1893, when Jenks chaired the Board of Public Institutions, his refusal to accept a donation of rocking chairs to the Rainsford Island hospital put him at odds with Alice Lincoln, an advocate for the poor in Boston, and Martin Lomasney, the political boss of the West End.
Our Lady of Ostrobrama, the Polish Catholic Church on Chambers St. in the West End, was founded in 1920 and demolished in 1958 on account of the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s urban renewal plan.
James Barton was an actor whose career began in the vaudeville era, moved on to Broadway, and ended in television and film. He was born in 1890 in New Jersey and died in 1962 in New York at 72.
Leon Bishop lived in the West End in 1902 when he became one of the first amateur radio pioneers in Boston and the United States, broadcasting wireless radio concerts to listeners throughout the city.
Henry Whitney was the president and founder of the West End Street Railway Company during the Gilded Age. He led the company to expand across Boston, and was integral to Boston completing North America’s first subway lines, the precursor to today’s MBTA.
