Art & LiteratureImmigrant NeighborhoodLGBTQ+ A photograph of a man in three-quarter profile. Nearly everything is in darkness except his face, turned to look at the camera, and his hands in the bottom right corner.

F. Holland Day

F. Holland Day was a publisher and photographer who lived in the historic West End around the turn of the 20th century. Though he never described himself in so many words, he may have had same-sex relationships with other men and is generally seen as traveling in LGBTQ+ circles during his life. In addition to his significance as an artist, he also had a close relationship with an Italian immigrant family, the Costanzas, from the Upper End of the West End while he lived on the north slope of Beacon Hill.

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Art & LiteratureImmigrant NeighborhoodLGBTQ+ A painting of a young man, seated and visible from the knees upward, in profile, wearing a brown jacket, blue shirt, and yellow tie. He has one hand on the orange and white cat in his lap. There is a coastal scene with trees and distant buildings visible through the open window behind him.

F. O. Matthiessen

F. O. Matthiessen was a literary critic and Harvard professor who lived in the historic West End from 1939 until his death in 1950. His life and work were heavily influenced by his identity as a gay man and his twenty-year relationship with the artist Russell Cheney, even though they were, for all intents and purposes, secret. Matthiessen is credited with founding the discipline of American Studies, and his major works explore key figures of nineteenth-century American literature through the historical context that shaped their writings.

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