Era
Organizational category for historical articles
In 2015, Brian Golden, director of the BPDA, gave the City of Boston’s formal apology for the destruction of the old West End. He delivered the apology in a speech at The West End Museum, and his words continue to hold meaning for current debates about urban renewal powers in the city.
The history of urban renewal in the West End is well-known, and locals are familiar with names of the “last West Enders” who refused to leave their neighborhood. As the aftermath of urban renewal lives with us today, there are a few ways to look at “the last” of the old neighborhood.
Augustus Mantia and his family owned the West End parking lot Staniford Street during the 1960s. Cars parked on an unpaved field where vibrant tenements once stood before their demolition by the Boston Redevelopment Authority in the late 1950s. Public backlash against the Mantias’ monopoly over the lot – with high profits, abnormally low rent, and no competitive bidding process – led the City to close the parking lot in January 1971.
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.
James Barton was the owner of a rope walk in the West End, on the land of descendants of Sir John Leverett.
Charles Chambers was a West End landowner and a judge on the Court of Common Pleas from 1719 to 1739.
Reverend James Allen Reverend James Allen was the Congregationalist pastor of First Church in Boston from 1668 to 1710. The church is now located on 66 Marlborough Street. Allen was born in Hampshire, England in 1632 to the town’s minister. He graduated from Emmanuel College (BA) and Oxford University (Masters) and held religious and academic…
