Topic: Art & Literature
Art, fine arts, artists, books, film, authors, actors, other creative forms
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.
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.
From 1958 to 1960, Claudia Kelty and Stephen Edgell systematically photographed the demolition of the West End neighborhood, street by street. The Edgells continued their involvement in post-demolition West End activities, creating an (unpublished) book on the West End and becoming members of the West End Historical Committee, and later its successor, the West End Historical Association. In March of 2023, their son, Stephen Edgell Jr., donated their extensive collection to The West End Museum, including records, art, ephemera, and, most significantly, the 1,700 photographs that his parents took during the West End Project.
Charles J. “Frani” Zanfani (1922-2001), born in Boston to Italian immigrant parents, first moved to the West End with his family in the 1950s. Displaced by the West End urban renewal project to the North Slope of Beacon Hill, Frani devoted the 1960s to meticulously photographing the destruction of the neighborhood. His photographic collection, preserved at The West End Museum, offers a poignant view into Urban Renewal and its devastating effects on the community.
The partnership of Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes revolutionized early photography in the United States, particularly through their exceptional portrait daguerreotypes. Operating from 1843 to 1861, their renowned Scollay Square studio attracted elite clientele, including prominent political, intellectual, and artistic figures, as well as many notable West Enders. Their streetscapes of Scollay Square, the West End, and other Boston neighborhoods, and their commissioned works on historic events, documented Boston during a period of physical and cultural change.
F. Holland Day was a publisher and photographer who lived in the historic West End around the turn of the 20th century. Though he never described himself in so many words, he may have had same-sex relationships with other men and is generally seen as traveling in LGBTQ+ circles during his life. In addition to his significance as an artist, he also had a close relationship with an Italian immigrant family, the Costanzas, from the Upper End of the West End while he lived on the north slope of Beacon Hill.
F. O. Matthiessen was a literary critic and Harvard professor who lived in the historic West End from 1939 until his death in 1950. His life and work were heavily influenced by his identity as a gay man and his twenty-year relationship with the artist Russell Cheney, even though they were, for all intents and purposes, secret. Matthiessen is credited with founding the discipline of American Studies, and his major works explore key figures of nineteenth-century American literature through the historical context that shaped their writings.
Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) was a Lithuanian-born, West-End-raised art historian and commercial art dealer specializing in the Italian Renaissance. His knowledge and expert connoisseurship greatly impacted the art world of the 19th and 20th centuries, and his dealings with wealthy Americans bolstered the flow of Old Masters into the country. His publications on Italian Renaissance artists were hugely successful and are still used in classrooms today.
