Topic: Neighborhood Life
Street corner society, urban villagers, peer group society, life in the immigrant era
Richie Nedd was one of the historic West End’s Black residents and a board member of The West End Museum before his passing in 2011. Nedd’s article for the June 1998 issue of The West Ender, “A Black Man’s View of the West End,” features he and other Black residents coming together in reunions of hundreds of West Enders after urban renewal.
The first of three homes built for politician and land developer Harrison Gray Otis by architect Charles Bulfinch still stands proudly today as one of the only surviving buildings of the West End’s urban renewal.
Summer in Boston is a celebrated, if too short, season for residents and visitors alike. In recent years, however, more frequent heat waves and extended periods of above-average temperatures have sometimes created dangerous conditions for many city residents…but not all.
Publishing magnate Edwin Ginn put his wealth and energies to use by establishing the World Peace Foundation and constructing housing for 500 residents at the Charlesbank Homes in the West End.
Arguably the most famous arts facility in the world, Lincoln Center is a present-day, glittering example of American urban renewal gone wrong.
James “Jim” Campano dedicated his life to preserving the memory of his beloved West End as a protester, journalist, and historian.
Public baths are generally an unknown phenomenon in the United States today, but in the 19th and early 20th century, the public bath movement brought with it the creation of hundreds of outdoor and year-round bathing establishments in the country’s large cities, including Boston and the West End.
In the later half of the 19th century, Boston’s downtown residents required more immediate access to acute medical care as industrialization brought with it additional hazards to safety and health. For over thirty years the Haymarket Relief Station, which sat at the eastern gateway of the West End, filled that gap by providing much needed treatment for acute illnesses and injuries for urban residents.
