Tribute to a Fallen Hero
Funeral procession of fallen firefighter Paul Cahill along Centre steet in West Roxbury. May God bless these brave men and their families. They are truly Boston’s unsung heroes…
Real Estate Video by - Real Estate Blogger
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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