Topic
Organizational category for historical articles

Art & LiteratureImmigrant NeighborhoodWomen Sarah Josepha Hale

Sarah Josepha Buell Hale

Sarah Josepha Hale was one of the most successful women in writing and publishing in nineteenth-century America, and her letters and editorials were instrumental to the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Hale is connected to the old West End because one of her poems, “Mary’s Lamb,” was set to music by Lowell Mason at the Bowdoin School.

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New BostonUrban Renewal Victor Gruen lighting his pipe

Victor Gruen

Victor Gruen was the Austrian-born architect whom Jerome Rappaport, Sr. hired to design Charles River Park, the development that replaced the demolished West End in the 1960s. But Gruen’s work also had national significance as “the father of the shopping mall.”

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Neighborhood LifeNew BostonUrban Renewal Portrait of Herb Gans

Herbert Gans

Herbert Gans lived in the West End for eight months prior to the start of its demolition, conducting sociological research on the culture and lifestyles of the Italian-American residents of the neighborhood. His findings in “The Urban Villagers” presented a significant criticism of Boston’s urban renewal process as inhumane, and Gans notably concluded that planners were incorrect to define the West End, a vibrant community despite widespread poverty, as a slum.

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