Immigrant NeighborhoodSocial & Religious InstitutionsWomen A black and white photo that has been colorized of a woman sitting in the grass in front of a brick building.

Ruth Roman

Ruth Roman (1922-1999) was raised in the West End, her Jewish-Lithuanian family moving from tenement to tenement. Her fledgling interest in acting was nurtured at the Elizabeth Peabody Settlement House in the West End, where Ruth’s flare for the dramatics led to leading roles at its playhouse. While she is today remembered as a Hollywood film star – with standout roles in Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), Strangers on a Train (1951), and Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951) – the roots of her career can be found in the West End neighborhood.

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Immigrant NeighborhoodLGBTQ+Women In a black and white photo, two women blend into a busy living room filled with a piano, chairs, sculptures, and art hanging on the walls.

Boston Marriages

At the turn of the century, “Boston marriages” enabled women to live independently from men. These relationships were common among educated female employees of settlement houses in Boston and in the greater United States. In the West End, evidence for these relationships can be found among the literary women of the period.

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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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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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