Legendary Locals of Boston's South End

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INTRODUCTION

Until the early 19th century, the South End that we know today was largely uninhabited—a mostly empty stretch of land between the main part of Boston on the Shawmut Peninsula and the town of Roxbury on the mainland. Locals called this area the Boston Neck. The term South End referred to the southern part of town, and before the early 19th century, the southernmost residential portion of Boston was the area near Franklin, Summer, and Milk Streets. As the city’s geographic boundaries changed, so did the idea of what area constituted the South End neighborhood.

In 1801, the town selectmen, including Charles Bulfinch, presented a plan to develop some of the land around the Boston Neck. The newly laid-out area was meant to attract freestanding construction and houses surrounded by gardens and grounds. Some families built homes on the Neck during this time, including the Porter family (on the corner of East Springfield and Washington Streets), the Deacon family (on Washington Street between West Concord and Worcester Streets), and the Weld and Everett families (near where the Cathedral of the Holy Cross stands today). As more people settled here, the area became known as the new South End.

By the 1840s, faced with population increases, the city decided to develop the South End’s remaining land into a brick row house district. City engineers laid out three residential-style squares in 1850 and 1851: Chester Square (on Massachusetts Avenue between Tremont Street and Shawmut Avenue), Worcester Square, and Union Park. Builders constructed single-family row houses around these parks and on the streets in between. Upper- and middle-class families began settling in these large and modern houses and enjoyed new amenities like gas lighting and indoor plumbing.

Most of the row houses in the South End did not remain single-family homes for long. While the South End was novel for its time and filled a need for housing in the mid-19th century, by the late 19th century, many other housing options had become available to Boston residents. Families could move to the Back Bay, filled and finished just a few decades after the South End, or to one of the residential suburbs that transportation companies had connected to Boston by new rail lines. Many families remained in their South End homes, but many others moved out.

The rising vacancy level in the South End led to decreased property values and to increased housing opportunities for Boston’s working-class and immigrant populations. They moved in to the South End in huge numbers, and by the early 20th century, immigrants from dozens of nations, black families migrating from the South, working-class Yankee families, and single workers from surrounding towns lived side by side in row houses converted to rooming houses and apartments. Eastern Europeans, Poles, Americans, Irishmen, Lebanese, Britons, Greeks, and representatives from many other countries lived, worked, and played in this neighborhood until the mid-20th century.

Community-building and charitable-assistance organizations proliferated in the South End during this time. Settlement houses helped immigrants navigate life in the United States by assisting with jobs, education, language, and childcare and worked to create a sense of community among their constituents. Rescue societies like the Union Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army ensured that no child went hungry, and nursery organizations were founded to help working mothers take care of children. Perhaps most importantly, many formed strong bonds with their neighbors and developed lasting family friendships that have endured to this day.

South Enders from all periods never lacked entertainment. They visited one of several theaters, like the Columbia on the corner of Washington and Herald (then Motte) Streets, Castle Square Theater (where the Animal Rescue League is today), the National Theater (where the Calderwood Pavilion stands now), or the Puritan Theater (also gone) near the corner of Washington Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Children went to art exhibits at the Children’s Art Center on Rutland Street, played with their friends in the Blackstone Park fountain, or ice skated on a temporary rink made for them by the fire department during winter in a local park. Adults visited clubs near the corner of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues—including the Hi-Hat, Wally’s Paradise, or the Savoy Club—and enjoyed locally and nationally famous musicians.

In the mid-20th century, the city of Boston began to investigate the possibility of using urban renewal to try and make the city more economically viable. With federal funds secured, city officials looked at several Boston neighborhoods, including the South End, for potential projects. In the late 1950s, the South End’s New York Streets residents were evicted, and their neighborhood was razed to make way for light industrial and commercial use. When Castle Square, another South End neighborhood, was slated for a similar project, the residents began to fight the plans and demanded that the city build new housing on the site instead. The city acquiesced, and the residents set an important precedent in agitating for a voice in urban renewal project plans.

Urban renewal, housing, and the demand for more and improved city services defined much of the period from the mid-20th century to today. Activists fought for affordable housing at famous sites like Tent City and Villa Victoria, and others opened shelters or soup kitchens like Rosie’s Place and Haley House to help the city’s poor and homeless populations. Preservationists argued for adaptive reuse of the thousands of historic 19th-century buildings, realtors helped to fill vacant apartments and houses, and neighbors molded the green and public spaces to suit community needs.

These efforts and the labors of doctors and nurses, lawyers, good neighbors, activists, pastors, teachers, architects, authors, business owners, artists, and countless others over the last two centuries have left indelible impacts on the community and shaped the South End of today.

Blackstone and Franklin Square Residents

Blackstone and Franklin Square neighborhood residents enjoy supper together in the mid-1950s. (Image courtesy of the South End Historical Society.)

CHAPTER ONE

Lives of Service

Since the mid-19th century, the South End has been home to people and institutions dedicated to the well-being of others. These people help South Enders navigate momentous changes in their lives—whether in home or family life, employment, or housing—and offer a sense of constancy and reassurance to those confronted by uncertainty or change.

Organizations like Boston City Hospital trained doctors and nurses who pioneered fields, pushed boundaries, and addressed the health care needs of the people in their communities. Several of their doctors, including Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller and Dr. Mary Jane Safford, led their respective fields of psychiatry and gynecology and carved paths in a medical world traditionally dominated by white men. Other doctors took advantage of the large amount of available housing in the South End in the late 19th century to open smaller hospitals that treated patients that larger hospitals could or would not assist. Dr. Cornelius Garland opened Plymouth Hospital on East Springfield Street and made it available to the black community that was often denied care elsewhere.

Social workers established settlement houses to foster a sense of community and to offer education, employment skills, and extracurricular activities to the immigrants and poor and working-class families that flocked to the South End. Hundreds have childhood memories of attending settlement programs at South End House, Children’s Art Center, and South Bay Union, among many others, and forming lifelong friendships. Settlement workers like Robert Woods worked to connect neighbors with each other and with social and civic services to help ensure that they had support if and when they needed it.

In the mid-20th century, activists like Mel King, Helen Morton, and Christopher Hayes advocated for greater community participation in the city’s urban renewal plans and fought for the retention and creation of affordable housing. Others helped those with no homes at all—like Kathe McKenna, who opened a soup kitchen called Haley House, and Kip Tiernan, who opened Rosie’s Place, the first shelter in the United States dedicated exclusively to the needs of women.

These institutions and their staffs work to meet the needs of others, often in the face of adversity and shortages of funds, to ensure that the South End community remains a vibrant urban neighborhood. Some help for no reason other than a strong belief in the spirit of giving.

Lt. Alan Borgal and the Animal Rescue League

Lt. Alan Borgal began working at the Animal Rescue League (ARL) almost 40 years ago as a shelter kennel worker. He became a Massachusetts Special State Police officer in 1981 and began investigating incidents of animal cruelty and abuse. Today, Lieutenant Borgal is the director of the Center for Animal Protection at the ARL. He manages the activities of the ARL’s law-enforcement division and advocates regularly for stronger animal-cruelty laws at the Massachusetts State House. He has received awards from the Animal Control Officers Association of Massachusetts, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the Massachusetts Environmental Health Association for his work. He also won the Boston Celtics’ Heroes Among Us Award in 2007. (Image courtesy of the Animal Rescue League of Boston.)

Alexander Hamilton Rice

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