City PlanningImmigrant NeighborhoodImmigrationModernNeighborhood Life An aerial photograph of three-story brick buildings facing each other, with a garden walkway in the middle.

Victory Village: The Story of the South End’s Villa Victoria

During the mid-20th century, Boston targeted the South End for urban renewal, alongside the West End and other low-income communities across the city. Responding to impending displacement, the South End’s Puerto Rican residents organized to take control of their community’s destiny, forming the Emergency Tenants’ Council (ETC) and successfully negotiating the right to redevelop the land themselves. The result was Villa Victoria—a community-planned and operated housing development that would become the center of Latino life and culture in the South End. Unlike top-down redevelopment schemes that displaced residents, as happened in the West End, Villa Victoria emerged from the community’s own vision and struggle.

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Immigrant NeighborhoodNeighborhood Life A black and white photograph of a middle-aged man in a coat and hat, standing against a brick wall.

The Legend of Abraham ‘Al’ Tabachnik: A Voice That Echoed Through the West End’s Streets

Abraham “Al” Tabachnik (sometimes spelled Tabachnick, Tabatchnik, or Tabarchnik) was a Russian immigrant, known both for his eccentricities and powerful voice. From the early 1920s to the early 1960s, he roamed the West End’s streets, filling them with music. Recollections of Tabachnik, found throughout West End oral histories and the West Ender Newsletter, illustrate the impact of the West End’s tight-knit community on him, and his impact on the community.

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City PlanningModernReports & Analysis Heat map showing Massachusetts population by town, with most concentration around greater Boston and Worcester.

Population Predictions for Boston and Massachusetts, 2020–2050

Boston, like its West End, is no stranger to marked population changes. Recent studies have predicted further transformations for Boston’s and Massachusetts’ populations that could have meaningful economic and political impacts. Such changes, current and future, are influenced by various interrelated factors: immigration patterns, cost of living, major disruptors, anchor institutions, and global population growth rate.

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HistoryImmigrant NeighborhoodImmigrationNeighborhood LifeSchools & Education Photograph of a group of men and women posing on the steps of a brick and glass building.

The Settlement Movement

The settlement movement was an attempt by scholars and social reformers on both sides of the Atlantic to address the problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, and, in America’s case, the mass immigration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Settlement Houses were important institutions in Boston’s West End, assisting families with a wide range of educational and social services.

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