South End/ Lower Roxbury Overview:

The history of the South End doesn’t begin with the brick townhouses and parks we see today. This land was inhabited by the Indigenous People: the Massachusetts, the Wampanoag, the Pawtuckets, the Nipmuc, and hundreds of other tribes for over 10,000 years. We acknowledge lives lost during the brutal battles for land in the 1600-1700s, and in the years since. There are still around 6,000 Indigenous People living in the Greater Boston area, and their culture has survived despite genocide, colonization, and enduring legal battles for legitimacy to this day.

Well known for being one of Boston’s most diverse neighborhoods, South End’s story begins as just an area of tidal marsh. Although urban planning for the neighborhood began in the early 1800s, prior to the 1840s the area consisted of just a few mansions sitting in empty fields. Mid 19th century, landfill projects began with earth being brought in from Needham, MA to create a vision laid out by architect Charles Bulfinch (the architect of the Massachusetts Statehouse and many other prominent Boston landmarks). Bulfinch planned the neighborhood out as a series of brick townhouses, organized with square parks with fountains in the middle of them. The 19th century South End was mainly populated by well-off families, however a strong immigrant presence can be found as early as the 1840s, with a large community of central European Jews building 14 synagogues by the turn of the century.  

The financial crisis of 1875 signaled the first big change in the neighborhood, with wealthy families moving to Beacon Hill or the suburbs and rapidly reducing property values. This brought in a new wave of immigrants, Irish, Canadians from Nova Scotia and some British moved to the area, while the Jews and Italians lived along Dover Street and the New York Streets while working at factories, along the docks, and the railroads that bordered the South End. Houses were replaced by tenements and boarding houses that attracted male immigrants from Mediterranean countries such as Syria, Greece, and Armenia, who worked as peddlers then later brought their families over after World War I. Some of these early boarding houses include Porter Houses, Allen House, and Deacon House.

The South End also became home to African Americans fleeing the deep South, and helped the abolitionist movement take flight in Boston. They were joined by immigrants from Barbados and Jamaica, who in the early 20th century settled along the Crosstown area around Massachusetts and Columbus Ave. Excluded from the existing Episcopal church, they built St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church on Tremont Street in 1920. As the 20th century progressed, these Black residents led to the South End becoming famous for its jazz clubs and music scene.

During the 1940s, there began to be a strong gay presence in the South End as men and women came to live in same-sex boarding houses. The mid 1900s brought a new era as urban renewal took over the South End. The New York Streets were demolished in the 1950s, displacing Jewish, Italian, and West Indian families. Black and Hispanic activists continued the fight for affordable housing, and they are credited with much of the economic diversity in the South End today. The LGBTQIA+ community played an active part in the gentrification of the South End in the 1970-80s, with the neighborhood even being nicknamed the “gay ghetto.” 

Villa Victoria & IBA:

Post WWII, in the 1940-1950s, Puerto Rican immigrants settled in the South End, finding affordable housing and establishing a community of over 2,000 residents by 1960. Yet this was also the time period when gentrification was hitting the South End and Parcel 19, home to this community, was set to be demolished, with no solution to the displacement of hundreds of families. Thus, activists organized the Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), or the Puerto Rican Tenants Association. Their battle for fair housing led to their input being used to plan the new Parcel 19, Villa Victoria. Villa Victoria was a collaboration between the residents, community activists, and architect John Sharratt, who visited Puerto Rico to help inform his design and planning. Villa Victoria has been praised across the country as a model for collaborative urban development, and the IBA is still around as a “dynamic community development corporation,” currently operating 667 units. 

Blackstone and Franklin Square Parks:

These two parks were originally designed as one in 1913 by the Olmsted Brothers. Although now they are separated by Washington Street, they still retain their 1850s appearance with the two fountains, diagonal walkways, and tree lined lawn. The Friends of BlackStone Franklin Squares Neighborhood Association is responsible for the upkeep of the parks, as well as renovations of the two iconic central fountains.

The Joshua Bates School:

The Joshua Bates School was built in 1885, in the 19th-century Romanesque Revival-style, scholastic architecture style, designed by Arthur Vinal. It’s namesake, Joshua Bates, was a well known master of the Winthrop School in Charleston, and is credited with the abolition of corporal punishment in Boston public schools. Bates had a teaching approach that relied on positive reinforcement rather than corporal punishment, and his system of requiring a report from his teachers naming the student involved in the incident, the reason for the type of punishment, and its consiquential effect on the student’s behavior, Bates succeeded in reducing the number of physically punitive punishments by 70% in one month at his school. The school was incredibly ahead of its time in terms of pedology, and it served as a K-3 school until its closing in 1975. In 2003, the city bought it and renovated the building, and now it is used as affordable studio space for artists of all kinds. ArtBlock East and ArtBlock West were constructed on either side of the building, meant to provide affordable housing to those artists using the studio space at the Joshua Bates School.

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