History of Jamaica Plain (Part III)
The Pond side section of Jamaica Plain became a popular home for Boston politicians. In 1915 when politician James Michael Curley’s house on 350 Jamaica Way was designed with shamrocks carved into the shutters, it was clear that the elite of Jamaica Plain and 
Boston politics would need to make room for the Irish. In the 1950s and 60s, politicians such as John Collins lived in Jamaica Plain, as well as myriad police and city employees. Jamaica Plain was considered the most stable of all of Boston’s neighborhoods. While other neighborhoods rapidly lost their populations between 1950 and 1965, the population of Jamaica Plain was steady at 42,400.
The deterioration of part of Jamaica Plain was driven by the history of the Southwest Corridor, which was slated to become Interstate 95. By the late 1960s, a final design for the highway was well underway. The State had acquired the strip of land — dubbed the southwest corridor — and begun to demolish homes and business to clear the way for the interstate. Between 1960 and 1968, 20% of the housing that remained had moved from sound to the deteriorating or dilapidated categories. In 1968, due in large part to neighborhood resistance, the governor canceled the plans to run I-95 through Jamaica Plain, Roxbury and Roslindale and the cleared land was left alone. The cleared and vacant land along the Southwest Corridor simply languished unused. Sam Bass Warner called the corridor “a wide, unattended scab” through the neighborhoods
During this same period, many of the industries along the Washington Street corridor closed, including the Haffenreffer Brewery in 1965. By 1965, approximately 24% of the 12,600 housing units in Jamaica Plain were unsound. By the 1970s, arson had become a major threat in the neighborhood and the population of Jamaica Plain was declining. Between 1970 and 1980 the total population of the neighborhood declined by 17.7%. It became difficult to sell real estate. A real estate broker with a Jamaica Plain realty firm described the period in this way: “The time from 1973 to ‘77 was a black hole — a void. On some streets you couldn’t give houses away.”
The demand for housing in Jamaica Plain, particularly for affordable housing units, is high. The supply of new housing each year is small in comparison, in part because land for new housing development and new parking is extremely limited. In many cases, residents value small pockets of open space in their community and resist the potential for more congestion and traffic on their streets that they fear new housing development would bring. In other cases, remaining developable land may be located on steep slopes, in awkwardly-sized lots, or near undesirable land uses.
History of Jamaica Plain (part II)
In 1851, West Roxbury, including Roslindale and Jamaica Plain, seceded from the Town of Roxbury. West Roxbury was divided into five precincts: Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, Claredon Hills, West Roxbury Village, and Germantown. The most rural precincts were West Roxbury Village and Germantown (Bacon, Walks and Rides About Boston, 1896). The Town of West Roxbury was at this time developing Forest Hills, a garden cemetery intended for widespread public use. Cemeteries such as these served not only as a place to honor the dead, but also as an arboretum, a place for recreation, an antidote to the environmental ills of the city and a showcase for art. They also paved the way for the establishment of urban parks of the late 19th century.
At this time, the population of Jamaica Plain was growing rapidly and becoming increasingly foreign-born. Between 1865 and 1880, the population grew from 5,450 to 32,750. By 1880, 25% of all households in the area were Irish. Jamaica Plain also became home to a large number of German Americans, Progressive reformers, and mainstream politicians. The remaining upper-middle-class Protestants were the local social elite and included farmers, the wealthy elite, and business commuters. Jamaica Plain finally became annexed to the City of Boston in 1874, after first being part of the Town of Roxbury, and then being a part of the Town of West Roxbury.
Although Jamaica Plain retained some of its identity as a rural retreat, the centrality of industry to the life of the neighborhood increased, and Jamaica Plain became associated with industries such as the Haffenreffer Brewery. Residents of all social levels developed deep attachments to the neighborhood through real estate deals, their proximity to work, and strong local Catholic parishes. Social ties were also fostered through practices such as spigots outside the brewery that allowed workers to fill their containers with free beer.
History of Jamaica Plain, MA
Note: No one is quite sure how Jamaica Plain acquired its unusual name. Some attribute it to the legend that people here had a fondness for Jamaica rum and asked for it “plain.” Others attribute the name to an Indian chief who lived here more than two centuries ago whose name was Kutchamaiken.
Before 1630, the land around Jamaica Pond was a summer home to the Wampanoags , Native Americans who spent their winters nearby in Mattapan. In 1630, Puritan settlers built the first road in the area — which today is called Perkins Street. In the late 1630s, the settlers constructed a road to Dedham as well as the Dedham Turnpike (now Centre Street and Washington Street). The modern Boston neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, and Roslindale were, until 1851, part of the Town of Roxbury. The area that would become Jamaica Plain was settled slowly and was not even mentioned in Roxbury town records until 1683. The rich, fertile land along the Stony Brook Valley was attractive to farmers.
The Jamaica Plain area became a wealthy rural village. One of the next major streets to be laid out was South Street in 1662. In 1689, the local reverend John Eliot donated 75-acres of his land to establish a school for children of all ethnic backgrounds. The school still exists today. The area at the intersection of South Street and Eliot Street was then and continues to be a focus of community life in the Jamaica Plain area.
The first wave of gentrification of Jamaica Plain began in about 1740, when the wealthy elite of Boston built their country summer homes on sprawling rural estates in the Pond side area of Jamaica Plain. One of these was the Loring-Greenough House, which was built in 1740, was later used as a hospital for Washington’s men during the Revolution, and still stands today at the corner of Centre and South Streets.
Public transportation dramatically changed the development pattern of Jamaica Plain. In 1826, Omnibuses (known as “The Hourlies”) ran to Boston each hour for a fee of 25 cents, opening up access to what had been an exclusive rural area. By 1832, the roads in the area had increased dramatically, and included Centre, South, and Walter Streets, the Dedham Turnpike (now Washington Street), and Perkins, Canterbury, Walk Hill, Seaver, Back, Warren, Bourn, Elliot, and Burrough.
In 1834 the Boston and Providence Railroad was completed. The railroad brought settlers to the area in even greater numbers and the first suburban homes were built. With the suburbanization of the neighborhood came industrialization of the Stony Brook corridor. Beginning in the 1840s, and continuing for the next several decades, factories such as textile mills, print shops, foundries, lumber and stone yards, and twelve breweries were built along Stony Brook (roughly parallel to what is now the Southwest Corridor).
A History of Roslindale, Ma.
Roslindale, a community just 6 miles from downtown Boston, was annexed to the city in 1873. At the time, it was an out-of-the-way part of the expansive town of West Roxbury. The area was called South Street Crossing in the 1880’s because the railroad crossed South Street at the street level. However, when the community applied for a post office district of its own, it was told that “South Street Crossing” was an unacceptable name in the Commonwealth. And so, the community renamed itself.
The name, “Roslindale,” was suggested by a well-traveled member of the community who told the assembled citizens that the area reminded him of the beautiful historic town of Rosslyn, Scotland, outside Edinburgh. He thought the area was like a dale because of the hills surrounding it. Thus the combination of “Rosslyn” and “dale” were submitted to the Post Office and the name “Roslindale” was formally established. Roslindale grew residentially as a classic streetcar suburb in the early 20th Century. The railway, which currently serves as the Needham line of the MBTA, was built after the Civil War, and spawned yet another new round of commercial and residential development.
Roslindale saw steady growth in its residential population, beginning in the 1880’s, with the introduction of the horse-drawn street railway service between Forest Hills and Dedham. By the 1920’s Roslindale Village had assumed the configuration it has today. It is beautifully laid out with the well-kept Adams Park at its center. Roslindale is convenient with easy access to bus and rail lines center, and the area continues to grow and offer great opportunity as both a commercial and residential district.
History of West Roxbury: Part III
The West Roxbury Branch of the Boston and Providence Railroad was completed in 1848, fourteen years after the railroad was established, with stations at Central (later known as Bellevue), West Roxbury Village, and Spring Street.
The town was comprised of three sections: West Roxbury Village, or what is now the Centre Street area; Mount Bellevue, which was literally named for the beautiful views afforded by the hill; and Germantown, a section near the junction of Washington and Grove Streets that was settled by Germans from East Dedham. It was said that in “1851, there were two churches, two grocery stores, and one small dry goods store, and for many years after conditions remained unchanged.”
However, it was the West Roxbury Branch of the railroad that brought the middle class to West Roxbury, and initiated the great changes that were to take place between 1860 and 1900. Some of the estates remained well into the twentieth century — most notably the Codman Estate (later the campus of the Roxbury Latin School ) and the Cabot Estate (the site of the present Saint Theresa’s Church ). It would be the real estate developers who subdivided the farms and created new neighborhoods. This transformed the once rural countryside into urban streetscapes that would become known as “Streetcar Suburbs.” The close proximity of West Roxbury to Boston, with travel made easier by the railroad and the West Roxbury and Roslindale Street Railway, proved far too much of a temptation for the developers, and the push for annexation to the city of Boston became the primary topic of discussion.
Boston had already annexed the once independent city of Roxbury (1868) and the town of Dorchester (1870), and the filling in of the marshlands west of Arlington Street in Boston had created the new “Back Bay” neighborhood, but the steadily increasing population continued to demand more space. West Roxbury (along with the city of Charlestown and the town of Brighton ) was annexed to Boston on May 29, 1873. Thus, the town of West Roxbury ceased to exist twenty-three years after it was founded, and now became a neighborhood of the city of Boston.
The resulting change in West Roxbury was swift and decisive. The opponents to the annexation saw their property soar in value and the proponents began the further subdivision of the farms and estates to attract new residents to the neighborhood. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, the population was served by a street railway line operating between Forest Hills and Dedham. The Boston Elevated Railway had completed the elevated railway that connected Dudley Street in Roxbury to Sullivan Square in Charlestown in 1901. This line was extended to Forest Hills in 1909, and created a passenger terminus for the streetcars that connected Dedham along Spring and Grove Streets and Centre Street. With the increased ease of transportation, West Roxbury became a desirable and accessible neighborhood that would continue to increase steadily in population.
With the increase in population came new schools and churches, along with new streets and major roads, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars Parkway. The housing boom took place initially in the 1920s and early 1930s, but would double after World War II, due in part to the automobile and to the Veterans Bill that allowed for low interest mortgages for veterans. Today, West Roxbury is a thriving neighborhood of Boston, with open space along the Charles River and Mount Bellevue. 
With a large number of cemeteries, such as the Saint Joseph’s, Gethsemane, and Mount Benedict Cemeteries, and the Jewish cemeteries of Adath-Jeshurun, Baker Street, and Boston United Hand in Hand, the open green space once so attractive to our ancestors remains, but perceived and utilized in a different manner.
It is a thriving community of people who strive to make it a pleasant and friendly neighborhood that offers the best of qualities of suburban living without leaving the City of Boston.
History of West Roxbury–Part Deux..
West Roxbury in the nineteenth century was a rural section of the countryside, with mostly farmers living on vast tracts of land. This rural aspect is what drew Reverend George Ripley when he established the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education on September 29, 1841.
A Utopian community, Brook Farm’s purpose was: ”more effectually to promote the great purposes of human culture; to establish the external relations of life on a basis of wisdom and purity; to apply the principles of justice and love to our social organization; to establish a system of brotherly cooperation for one of selfish competition; to secure to our children and those who may be entrusted to our care the benefits of the highest physical, intellectual and moral education in the present state of human knowledge that the resources at our command will permit; to institute an attractive, efficient and productive system of industry; to prevent the exercise of worldly anxiety by the competent supply of our necessary wants; to diminish the desire of excessive accumulation by making the acquisition of individual property subservient to upright and disinterested uses; to guarantee to each other the means of physical support and of spiritual progress and thus to impart a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement and moral dignity to our mode of life.” These lofty, and sincere, ideals would make Brook Farm and
History of West Roxbury, MA — Part I
West Roxbury has been a neighborhood of Boston since its annexation to the city in 1874. In the seventeenth century, the town was a part of Roxbury, which had been settled by the Puritans in 1630, and extended from the present town to the border of Dedham, Massachusetts. The area was then referred to as “Spring Street” or as the “Jamaica End” of Roxbury.
In the first years of the American Revolution, residents of the Spring Street area of Roxbury petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to set themselves off from Roxbury and incorporate themselves as the town of “Washington,” in honor of General George Washington (1732-1799) who commanded the American troops. However, the petition felt on deaf ears and the separatists’ voices were not heard again until the early 1850s, when their cries for independence resulted in the granting of their ardent wishes.
On May 24, 1851, the western section of Roxbury was set off and incorporated as the independent town of West Roxbury. The new town included present-day West Roxbury as well as Roslindale and Jamaica Plain, and town meetings alternated between Taft’s Tavern in Roslindale Village and the village hall on Thomas Street, in present-day Jamaica Plain, for “the greatest convenience of the greatest number” of residents.
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