History
Organizational category for all historical articles
St. Joseph’s Church was established in 1862 on Chambers Street in the West End, near the site of the first public Catholic mass in Boston. In the early 1900s, the St. Joseph’s Association, an organization of parishioners, hosted an annual party at the church which also held many notable funerals, marriages, and worship services. Decades after urban renewal, West Enders reunited at annual masses at St. Joseph’s to honor deceased fellow residents.
Urban renewal projects, like that in the the West End, have long promised to revitalize aging urban areas, create economic opportunities, and improve living conditions for residents. Despite these positive intentions, urban renewal has also resulted in false promises, the physical destruction of neighborhoods, and forced removal of residents. Such negative impacts have resulted in social isolation, lost social connections, and loneliness.
As emancipated men, women, and children migrated north after the Civil War, the need for Black boarding houses increased greatly. In the West End a large concentration of Black, women-operated boarding houses became home for many of these newly-freed people.
Michael Powars carefully planned the murder of his cousin, Timothy Kennedy, but his fatal mistake was thinking that the law required an eyewitness to convict someone of a crime.
Boarding Houses played an important role in the housing system during the age of industrialization and immigration in Boston and the West End. Along with lodging and rooming houses, they were the only alternative for those in need of affordable and transitional living space in the neighborhood until the arrival of tenements and apartment buildings. Boarding houses also offered women of the period one of the few ways to earn a decent income.
In September 1886, an unofficial boxing match took place on Staniford Street between two young girls, Lizzie and Mollie. The bout involved a makeshift ring, drawn-up terms, a referee, and two-hundred young people in a crowd. When a police officer arrived, the fight quickly ended, but the event made front-page news, and linked the West End to a century-old tradition of women and girls’ boxing in 1700s Britain.
For months, in 1885 and 1886, newspapers reported on a murder conspiracy which rocked the cities of Boston and Baltimore. West End locations played host to both the hatching of the plan to murder Mary (Somerset) Mellen in Baltimore, and the subsequent acts of justice in Boston.
Charles River Park is an apartment complex built on 45 acres of the historic West End, soon after its demolition. Jerome Rappaport, Sr., attorney for Charles River Park, Inc. and one of the corporation’s early investors, was politically connected to Mayor John Hynes, whose platform for a “New Boston” was the pretext for urban renewal. The vast majority of West Enders could not afford the luxury apartments that replaced their homes. The first tenants of Charles River Park were offered many modern, communal amenities – intended to attract young professionals and suburban families alike.
