Kittie Knox
Kittie Knox was a mixed-race cyclist who used her skills as a seamstress and cyclist to challenge gender and racial perceptions taking over the League of American Wheelman in the 1890’s.
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Era: Immigrant Neighborhood (~1880-1960)
Immigration, first, second, and third-generation Americans, Settlement Houses, Irish politics, etc.
John F. Kennedy in the West End
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
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 Buell Hale
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
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
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
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.