Life in the West End 1947-1953: the Photography of Jules Aarons Jules Aarons is an important figure in documenting the West End of Boston before the ravages of Urban Renewal. His photography bears witness to the vibrant, close-knit old neighborhood—the people, their lives and their relationships. Where city planners saw the West End as a…
Street Names: Lost and Found Street Names: Lost and Found focuses on the changes to Boston’s Old West End brought on by the Urban Renewal period of the mid-20th Century. Both the physical geography and the names of streets changed significantly between 1955 and the present day. For example, Green, Chambers and Allen Streets were reconfigured…
150 Years of Saint Joseph’s Church St. Joseph’s Church displays the history of the West End Project Area’s only surviving Roman Catholic Church, which served generations of West Enders, and continues to serve both displaced and current residents of the neighborhood.
From the mid-17th century to the end of the 19th century, the rope-making industry thrived in Boston. Ropewalks—long, narrow plots with covered walks and sheds that housed rope-making facilities—dotted the landscape of West Boston and supplied rope primarily for seafaring vessels. One of the city’s earliest ropewalks lay less than 100 yards from today’s West End Museum.
Ward Boss Lomasney, commemorates the legendary status of Martin Lomasney, the undisputed boss of Boston’s Ward 8 (later Ward 5, then Ward 3 under redistricting) from about 1885 until his death in 1933. Reproductions of W. Norman Ritchie’s political cartoons from the Boston Post and others from the Boston Globe are display together with graphic panels featuring related articles and Lomasney’s most renowned quotes, including “Don’t write when you can talk. Don’t talk when you can nod your head.”
25 Years of “The West Ender” Since 1985, “The West Ender” has been the voice of a lost neighborhood. The paper became a catharsis; a way for people, who had no other medium to express themselves about their one time beloved neighborhood. They could share their stories from when they lived in the West End.…
The Last Tenement “The Last Tenement” exhibition, originally set up in 1992 at the Old State House by the Bostonian Society through a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities and relocated to the West End Museum in 2006, was permanently housed in its own dedicated 1100 square foot space until it was destroyed…