LGBTQ+ figures and history.
This is a self-guided version of our Faces & Places: LGBTQ+ History in the West End walking tour. From the late nineteenth century onward, this neighborhood was a hub for LGBTQ+ people in Boston, even when much of their history and activities flew under the radar. This area featured speakeasies, raids, Boston marriages, early publication of queer literature, famous gay bars, and AIDS epidemic protests. This tour will focus on the faces and places of the queer community in the West End and how they shifted over time.
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.
At the turn of the century, “Boston marriages” enabled women to live independently from men. These relationships were common among educated female employees of settlement houses in Boston and in the greater United States. In the West End, evidence for these relationships can be found among the literary women of the period.
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.
Prescott Townsend (1894-1973) was a gay activist who lived on the North Slope of Beacon Hill from the early 1920s until his death in 1973. He was outspoken and proud of his identity, from boasting about his pilgrim ancestors to organizing early LGBTQ+-oriented groups in Boston.
