Era
Organizational category for historical articles
Harriet Hayden was born enslaved, fought for her freedom, and aided hundreds of southern escapees by housing, feeding, and protecting them. She did this all while raising a family, running a boarding house, learning to read and write, and becoming an activist and community leader. Without her efforts, the many accomplishments of her husband, Lewis Hayden, would not have been possible.
While the demolition of the West End began in 1958, the momentum for its destruction and for the federal urban renewal program itself began 20 years earlier, in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The Housing Act of 1949 would later mark the official birth of the federal Urban Renewal Program. Although it aimed to revitalize struggling inner cities, it often did so at the expense of established communities and displaced residents.
The settlement movement was an attempt by scholars and social reformers on both sides of the Atlantic to address the problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, and, in America’s case, the mass immigration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Settlement Houses were important institutions in Boston’s West End, assisting families with a wide range of educational and social services.
Joseph D. Portanova was the child of Italian immigrants who settled in the West End. He was introduced to art by Eva Whiting White at the Elizabeth Peabody House and went on to become a prolific, nationally known sculptor.
The 1830s was a transformative decade for Boston’s Black community, characterized by the intersecting forces of burgeoning abolitionist activism and escalating urban segregation. This resulted in the growth and consolidation of the Black population in the West End on the North Slope of Beacon Hill.
When professional rowing was the biggest sport going, Frenchy Johnson burst out of the West End to become the fastest oarsman in Boston, and among the first African-American athletes to achieve national recognition. And rowing wasn’t even his best sport.
In 1847, sixty-six former slaves arrived at Boston’s Long Wharf. One of the group’s members, Peter Randolph, was instrumental in securing the former slaves’ freedom and the compensation promised to them. Randolph and others from the sixty-six became active members of the West End community.
The Mattapan Project was first mentioned by the Boston Housing Authority in 1952 and later by the Boston Redevelopment Authority in 1962 as a possible urban renewal project. Despite the preliminary planning funding being granted in 1963 and the urban renewal application prepared in 1964, the project was dropped by the City of Boston. The delays in the Mattapan Project’s site development and the eventual abandonment of the plan helps to demonstrate the changes in public opinion on urban renewal projects of the time.
