Exterior House Painter
South End MA

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South End District
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location in Boston Show map of Boston Location in Boston metro area Show map of Greater Boston area Location in Massachusetts Show map of Massachusetts Location in United States Show map of the United States
Location	Boston, Massachusetts
Architect	Multiple
Architectural style	Greek Revival, Late Victorian, Italianate
Website	www.south-end-boston.com
NRHP reference No.	73000324
Added to NRHP	May 8, 1973

The South End is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is bordered by Back Bay, Chinatown, and Roxbury. It is distinguished from other neighborhoods by its Victorian style houses and the many parks in and around the area. The South End is the largest intact Victorian row house district in the country, as it is made up of over 300 acres. Eleven residential parks are contained within the South End. In 1973, the South End was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Much of the South End was originally marshlands in Boston’s South Bay. After being filled in, construction of the neighborhood began in 1849.

It is home to many diverse groups, including immigrants, young families, and professionals, and it is very popular with the gay and lesbian community of Boston. Since the 1880s the South End has been characterized by its diversity, with substantial Irish, Jewish, African-American, Puerto Rican (in the San Juan Street area), Chinese, and Greek populations. In 2010, the population was 55.2% white, 13.3% Hispanic, 12.5% Black or African American, 16.2% Asian, and 2.7% other; 55.2% of its residents had a bachelor’s degree or higher; the median household income was $57,699; the median age was 36; 65.6% were primarily English speakers; and 12.9% were primarily Spanish speakers.

The South End has five primary and secondary schools that offer education from kindergarten to grade 12.^{[citation needed]}

History

Residential history

As the South End geographically grew from filling in land north and west of “the Neck”, the city of Boston envisioned a large inner city residential neighborhood to relieve the crowded downtown and Beacon Hill neighborhoods. The city also hoped for a large and stable tax base. Architect Charles Bulfinch laid out some of the first filled land. He designed a large residential park called Columbia Square located at the present Franklin and Blackstone Squares. Bulfinch’s plan was to route traffic around the square, not through it. Eventually his plan was abandoned and Washington street was allowed to once more divide the square creating today’s separate squares.

Many rooming houses on the Back Bay side of the South End had no bathing facilities; roomers went to public showers to bathe. Filled land in the South End was originally eight feet above sea level, but is now four feet, as fill settles. The original shore line of Boston Neck crosses in front of 40 St. George Street, and tapers to the narrowest point on the Neck at Dover Street. Blackstone and Franklin Square are solid land on the original neck, but clam and snail shells are just beneath its surface, as high seas would occasionally overrun the Neck. Massive granite blocks of original sea wall can be seen on the Harrison Avenue side of the Joshua Bates School.^{[citation needed]}

A burgeoning middle class moved to the South End including business owners, two mayors, bankers, and industrialists. Though the neighborhood’s status as a wealthy neighborhood was relatively short-lived, myths of a dramatic white flight in the 1880s are not entirely true. A series of national financial panics (see e.g., Panic of 1884, Economic history of the United States), combined with the emergence of new residential housing in Back Bay and Roxbury fed a steady decline of whites of English Protestant ancestry. Whites remained in the neighborhood, but increasingly they were Irish Catholic and recent immigrants.^{[citation needed]}

By the close of the nineteenth century the South End was becoming a tenement district, first attracting new immigrants and, in the 1940s, single gay men. The South End also became a center of black middle class Boston life and culture. The largest concentration of Pullman Porters in the country lived in the South End, mostly between Columbus Avenue and the railroad bed. As the decades progressed, more buildings became tenements and by the 1960s absentee landlordism was rampant and the neighborhood was one of the poorest of the city.^{[citation needed]}

The first settlement houses in Boston were in the South End: the South End House, Haley House, Lincoln House, the Harriet Tubman House, and the Children’s Art Centre. In 1960 these settlement houses merged to form United South End Settlements.

Urban renewal

The South End was one of many large-scale landfill projects in Boston to create new residential districts. Construction started in 1849, it was built on tidal marshes that surrounded Boston Neck. The street plan for the South End was to pattern the 18th-century English models, it would have blocks of townhouses overlook small parks in the centers of the residential streets. The parks were built to make the South End more beautiful and make it feel like a community. These townhouses quickly became the predominant form of housing, builders produced blocks of houses for the middle-class families. From 1850 to 1880, these townhouses started to get built, with the typical townhouse having a mix of architectural styles. The South End also became a popular hospital district with the first being the Boston City Hospital which attracted other hospitals to the area. One of the hospitals that came into the South End was the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital that was built in 1875. It used fresh air cures and home remedies to heal their patients but if one of the patients needed surgery they were sent to the Boston University School of Medicine. The Boston University School of Medicine first came into the South End in 1874 accompanied by the New England Female College, which was the first college in the region that accepted women. By the late 19th century the South End was becoming increasingly populated by African Americans who were coming from the South. Even though City Hospital admitted black patients, they didn’t allow them into their training programs or hire black professionals. By 1908 a black physician from Alabama named Dr. Cornelius Garland opened his own hospital called Plymouth Hospital and the Nurse’s Training School. By 1929, Plymouth Hospital closed down because City Hospital started to accept people of color into their medical and nursing programs.

The connection of Boston and Albany, New York by railroad (by some of the various companies that would later merge into the Boston and Albany Railroad) was celebrated in 1841 as a way to keep Boston competitive with New York City as an Atlantic port. Just south of the Boston and Worcester Railroad (where the Massachusetts Turnpike is now) in the next decade arose the New York Streets district, a residential area of the South End where the streets were named after cities on the route to Albany. Albany Street still exists (though it now ends at the Turnpike rather than Kneeland); connecting Albany Street with Harrison Street from north to south were Seneca, Oneida, Oswego, Genesee, Rochester and Troy Streets (Troy became the modern Traveler Street).