Era: Immigrant Neighborhood (~1880-1960)
Immigration, first, second, and third-generation Americans, Settlement Houses, Irish politics, etc.
The West End was a backdrop of national history, in addition to local memory. President John F. Kennedy’s life as a veteran and public servant intersected with the West End community in subtle yet significant ways.
H.H. Holmes, widely considered to be the nation’s first serial killer, was apprehended after being tracked to the West End in 1894.
Sarah Josepha Hale was one of the most successful women in writing and publishing in nineteenth-century America, and her letters and editorials were instrumental to the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Hale is connected to the old West End because one of her poems, “Mary’s Lamb,” was set to music by Lowell Mason at the Bowdoin School.
Veda Borg was born in the old West End, and became “Boston’s own” as an actor in many movies from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Lawrence Berk grew up in the West End, on the north slope of Beacon Hill, and founded the Berklee School of Music after pursuing his passion for music from a young age.
Mary Antin, a Russian Jewish immigrant at the turn of the twentieth century, was a notable author who lived briefly in the tenements shared by immigrants in the old West End.
Hyman Bloom was a Latvian immigrant to the West End who become the first Abstract Expressionist. His work features powerful – often morbid – themes juxtaposed with bright colors to create striking works of art.
