Topic: City Planning
City planning and design, built environments, urban planners, parks, roads

City PlanningImmigrant NeighborhoodPolitics & Law Photograph showing a two story brick building with two garage doors next to a sign stating "Sewer Dept. District 8".

Mass General Hospital and a Controversial West End Land Sale in 1931

In 1931, Mayor James Michael Curley planned to sell 50,000 square feet of city land, on North Grove Street in the West End, to Massachusetts General Hospital. Because this land was used by the Public Works Department for sanitation in the West End, residents – and city councilor John I. Fitzgerald – strongly opposed the sale. Fitzgerald, associated with West End boss Martin Lomasney, successfully advocated for the proceeds of the sale to be allocated for continued sanitation services in the West End.

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City PlanningNeighborhood LifeNew BostonUrban Renewal Photograph of a city block of three story brick buildings with cars parked along the curb

Minot Street

The Lost Streets of the West End: Minot Street was one of the dozens of narrow, residential, West End streets razed by redevelopment in the 1950s. While the two street blocks on the northern side of the redevelopment zone were changed profoundly by urban renewal, the site’s rich history represents the constantly shifting geography of the Boston cityscape over the past two centuries.

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BusinessCity PlanningImmigrant NeighborhoodNeighborhood Life Photograph the front and side of a four-story brick building with a cupola. People horse drawn carts can be seen in the street in front.

The Parkman Market

Charles Bulfinch and his architecture transformed Boston during the Federalist era. Many of his works, such as the Massachusetts State House, still grace the city today. One of his now lost and lesser known buildings, the Parkman Market, served the West End as a public market, a factory, and an early home of St. Joseph’s congregation. Despite its historic significance, it did not survive Urban Renewal.

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City PlanningModernUrban Renewal Photograph of the front of a U-shaped, 10-story, brick and masonry building with windows lining each floor. The building is at a city intersection and surrounded by lamp posts.

West End Place

West End Place, the mixed-income condominium complex on Staniford Street, is the home of The West End Museum. West End Place, like the Museum, owes its existence to the dedicated activism of displaced former residents who hoped to right the wrongs of urban renewal.

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African AmericansCity PlanningNew BostonUrban Renewal Image from a newspaper articles showing a man with short hair and a beard wearing a jacket. He is standing in a wooded area with a two-story wooden house in the background.

John Moore’s North Slope Story

John Moore understood himself to be a West Ender when he grew up on Grove Street on the north slope of present-day Beacon Hill. The demolition of fifty acres of the historic West End and the preservation of the Beacon Hill Architectural District were simultaneous, influencing popular perceptions of the boundaries not just of Boston’s contemporary neighborhoods, but its historic ones as well.

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