Topic: Art & Literature
Art, fine arts, artists, books, film, authors, actors, other creative forms
Bostonians familiar with the demolition of the West End may not know how another once-prominent location in the city disappeared from the map. This spot, located on Beacon Hill, was designed for the homes of wealthy Boston families, and was established at about the same time as another famous residential location further down “the Hill.” But, unlike Louisburg Square, which is today synonymous with old Brahmin Boston, Pemberton Square remains largely forgotten, its remnants barely visible.
Raymond Reddick, a lifelong Boston resident who is now 74 years old, has spent decades collecting, documenting, and speaking to different audiences about his extensive African-American family history with deep ties to the historic West End. After his grandmother, Ruthena Felton King Reddick, passed away in 1985, Ray began his ongoing genealogical research, which started with stories from family members and countless boxes of family artifacts in his possession. Ray Reddick approached The West End Museum to collaborate on a project that highlights his nineteenth-century ancestors — West Enders and Black Bostonians — captivating lives. Northeastern University’s Reckonings project has collaborated with Reddick and The West End Museum to produce, after a series of oral history interviews, a two-part, co-created report that spotlights Ray Reddick’s family history.
Between 1845 and 1961, the Howard Anthenaeum served as a center of performances for a wide variery of clientele. Beginning its life as an upper-class theater, it became a legendary venue for minstrel shows and burlesque until it was demolished as part of the Government Center urban renewal project.
Asher Benjamin designed the Old West Church (1806) and Charles Street Meetinghouse (1807) in the West End, based upon the Federal style of architecture most commonly associated with Charles Bulfinch and many New England homes and churches. The Old West Church has survived multiple waves of redevelopment in the West End due to its historical significance.
The Hotel Waterston, built in 1874 through a remodeling and expansion of the Charles Bulfinch House on 8 Bulfinch Place in the West End, maintained Bulfinch’s facade while adding additional stories. The Waterston had many prominent guests, including Walt Whitman, during the late nineteenth century, and the hotel stayed in business until it was demolished by urban renewal in 1961.
Abbott Lowell Cummings, once the leading expert on early New England architecture, spoke out and took action in response to the indiscriminate clearance of the West End during the urban renewal period.
Dr. Joseph Stevens (J.S.) Jones, who lived most of his life in the West End, was a successful actor, playwright, theater manager, and physician in the nineteenth century. Jones graduated from Harvard Medical School and wrote between 150 and 200 plays in his lifetime. In 1924, the City of Boston tore down Dr. Jones’s home on Bowdoin Street, and other historic West End sites, in order to widen Court and Cambridge Streets.
Chloe Russell, a Black woman who owned property on Belknap Street in the West End during the nineteenth century, was the attributed author of The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book in an era when fortune telling and dream interpretation was popular and entertaining.
