Topic: Transportation & Industry
Bridges, trains, train stations, public transportation, motor vehicles, factories, light industry, mills, ropewalks
The Boston-1915 Committee was formed in 1909 to improve conditions in Boston and to make it “the finest city in the world” by 1915. For many West Enders, Boston-1915 represented the promise of a brighter future, but none of them could have foreseen that some of the movement’s ideas would inspire city leaders to demolish the West End half a century later.
For tens of thousands of daily commuters, North Station is a final destination to work and a starting point for home. For many others, it is a stop along the way to somewhere else. But few of today’s commuters know that over the past two centuries, there have actually been several train stations in the West End– built in grand style – that predated the North Station we know today.
Urban renewal in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, over the past few decades has prioritized “slum clearance” with uneven results, and failed to ensure affordable housing for all of the city’s poor. Comparing urban renewal in Cairo to the West End suggests shared global challenges for urban redevelopment which remain with us today.
The story of the fabled Boston Garden is nearly as winding as the 10 tracks that snake from beneath its modern-day successor on Causeway Street. The intersection of frontier entrepreneurship and New England business interests, the arena came to represent the crosswinds of the rapidly changing American public and the economic forces that shaped it during the Roaring Twenties.
A digital reframing of “Ropewalks of the West End and Beyond”, an 2012 exhibit designed and written by Duane Lucia and Tom Burgess.
The West End played a key role in defining the U.S. jurisprudence surrounding the execution and maintenance of contracts set out in the U.S. Constitution in two major cases: Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge & Fletcher v. Peck.
Before the City of Boston widened Chardon Street in the 1930s to develop the area around Haymarket Square, West Enders voiced their support for widening the street on a grassroots level.
Augustus Mantia and his family owned the West End parking lot Staniford Street during the 1960s. Cars parked on an unpaved field where vibrant tenements once stood before their demolition by the Boston Redevelopment Authority in the late 1950s. Public backlash against the Mantias’ monopoly over the lot – with high profits, abnormally low rent, and no competitive bidding process – led the City to close the parking lot in January 1971.
