The Old West End of Boston: What Not to Do With Urban Renewal
by Karma Kitaj | Blogging | Dec 16, 2021
A street in Boston's Old West End, c. 1910, before demolition.
The home neighborhood of my protagonist Miriam Levine was the West End of Boston, where she was born to Jewish Russian immigrants in 1900. I was looking for a community that was densely populated, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural.
Having lived in the Boston area since the 1970s, I was familiar with the story of the West End's destruction. In the late 1950s, the city of Boston demolished the entire neighborhood — some 7,000 residents were displaced — to make way for what became the Charles River Park apartment complex.
The West End was a vibrant, working-class neighborhood of immigrants — Jews, Italians, Poles, and others — who had built a tight-knit community over generations. Its destruction is now considered one of the great tragedies of urban renewal in America.
For Miriam, growing up in the West End in the early 1900s shapes everything about who she is — her values, her resilience, her sense of community, and her determination to make something of herself despite the obstacles she faces as a woman and as a Jew in early 20th-century America.
If you're interested in learning more about the old West End, the West End Museum in Boston is a wonderful resource.