Topic: Art & Literature
Art, fine arts, artists, books, film, authors, actors, other creative forms
Charles Bulfinch is regarded as the first American-born architect. He rose to prominence designing public buildings, including the Boston State House and US Capitol Building, and was a West Boston native whose designs still dominate the historic portions of the West End today.
One night in the summer of 1911, West Enders enjoyed a free concert on the Esplanade by the American Waltham Watch Company Band, one of the many in-house corporate bands performing at the turn of the twentieth century.
One of the West End’s most prominent settlement houses, the EPH served as a community center, education space, and more for more than half a century in the West End, and continues its work today in Somerville.
James Barton was an actor whose career began in the vaudeville era, moved on to Broadway, and ended in television and film. He was born in 1890 in New Jersey and died in 1962 in New York at 72.
Leon Bishop lived in the West End in 1902 when he became one of the first amateur radio pioneers in Boston and the United States, broadcasting wireless radio concerts to listeners throughout the city.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and George Ruffin were eminent African-American residents of the West End in the late nineteenth-century. Josephine’s newspaper, The Woman’s Era, was published from her home and instrumental to the founding of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She was its first vice president.
Richard H. Recchia, an Italian-American sculptor, achieved early artistic success growing up in the West End before achieving fame at major exhibitions.
Elizabeth Peabody was a teacher, publisher, and writer, who introduced kindergarten in the United States on Pickney Street.
