West End Museum Keeps Beloved Boston Neighborhood Alive

Actor Leonard Nimoy, media magnate Sumner Redstone, singer Buddy Clark, and film icon Joseph E. Levine, whose involvements as a producer, distributor or financier included The Lion in Winter, The Night Porter, The Producers, The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge, hailed from the same, near mythological, once-upon-a-time Boston neighborhood.

“We weren’t Jews, we weren’t Italians, we weren’t Irish or any of the 20 other nationalities who lived in the neighborhood,” said Bob Andrews. “We were all West Enders.”

It was indeed a vibrant and uniquely harmonious center of immigrant life in Boston until the late 1950s, when the West End, its multi-ethnic…