History of Jamaica Plain, MA

Posted by: Robert Holley
Posted on: Monday, June 25, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Categories: Lifestyle, History Of..., Neighborhood News, Jamaica Plain

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).

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