Era: West Boston(~1780-1880)
Black Community on Beacon Hill, Brahmins on the flat
Domingo Williams was an attendant and caterer who lived with his family in an apartment in the African Meeting House from 1819 to 1830. A 2005 archaeological dig behind the African Meeting House, in conjunction with mentions of Williams in local and national newspapers, help to illuminate Williams’ prosperous catering career, his activist involvement in Boston’s Black community, and his time living in one of the city’s most important Black social-religious centers.
Charles Street Jail stands as a landmark of major national significance, both as a key example of the Boston Granite Style of architecture and as the embodiment of mid-nineteenth-century penal reform movements. The jail’s history was marked by dramatic shifts: initially celebrated as an architectural and reformist triumph at its opening in 1851; later decried for its “cruel and unusual” conditions in the 20th century, prompting its closure; before being reinvented as a luxury hotel in the 21st century.
Established in 1840, Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church was located on the North Slope of Beacon Hill (in the historic West End) until its move to Roxbury in 1906. In the 1850s and ‘60s, the Church defiantly mobilized in response to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Under the leadership of Leonard Grimes, the congregation raised funds to aid freedom seekers and became known as the “Fugitive Slave Church.” This active political, cultural, and religious meeting place had many prominent members and visitors from the Black abolitionist community, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Lewis and Harriet Hayden, Shadrach Minkins, Anthony Burns, Thomas Sims, Christiana Carteaux and Edward Mitchell Bannister, and Peter Randolph.
Bowdoin Square has gone through many phases, including rapid development, growing population, changing fortunes, urban renewal, and attempts at revitalization. Today the name survives mainly in the name of an MBTA station, but examination of Bowdoin Square provides insight into two and a half centuries of Boston history. This article, the first part of two, covers the history of the square in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Samuel Parkman (1751-1824) and George Parkman (1790-1849) both left an enduring mark on the West End. Samuel was a Bowdoin Square real estate magnate and Charles Bulfinch patron. Like his father, George also worked in real estate, and used his fortune to donate land on North Grove Street for the site of Harvard Medical College – the building he would later be murdered in.
Architect Alexander Parris (1780-1852) designed some of Boston’s most enduring neoclassical architectural landmarks, from Quincy Market to St. Paul’s Church. Parris also played a role in three notable projects in the West End: Massachusetts General Hospital’s Bulfinch Building, the Leverett Street Jail, and St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.
The Leverett Street Jail in Boston’s West End held several freedom seekers whose cases tested the U.S.’s Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, including the cases of Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates (1836), and George Latimer (1842).
This is a self-guided version of our Faces & Places: LGBTQ+ History in the West End walking tour. From the late nineteenth century onward, this neighborhood was a hub for LGBTQ+ people in Boston, even when much of their history and activities flew under the radar. This area featured speakeasies, raids, Boston marriages, early publication of queer literature, famous gay bars, and AIDS epidemic protests. This tour will focus on the faces and places of the queer community in the West End and how they shifted over time.
