1950s Fort Hill Pics, a set on Flickr.
Here’s a set of pictures on Flickr submitted by Barb Driscoll and Art Carmen of our neighborhood 60 years ago. There’s a great shot of the old Jackson Square Citgo station in 1948, when gas was 22 cents.
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Note our very own Henry Dearborn, about whom I’ll eventually manage a bio post.
Whig Ticket, 1848, (Collection # 0100.001, Item #1848_0153_G_15
This work is free of known copyright restrictions.Please attribute to City of Boston Archives
The Millennium Trail /
A while back I heard about a ‘zine that covered historical Roxbury sites as a self-guided tour. Intrigued, I tracked down the principal author, local artist and an instructor at the RCC Upward Bound program Neil Horsky. Neil is allowing me to post PDFs of his project here for wider distribution.
Here’s Neil’s description of the project, which he completed with the help of four local youths as part of his work with Upward Bound:
The Millennium Trail was a 1990s failed federal program to create historic trails through US cities and towns, including in Roxbury where only one plaque was installed.
Four high school students in RCC’s Upward Bound 2012 summer program investigated historic sites in Roxbury through community exploration, online research, and collaborative arts exercises. We considered how these sites and stories are relevant today in the New Millennium, how they resonate with our own experiences, and what we could do to continue the struggle for social progress. We are sharing our findings through this arts publication: a self-guided tour of our own Roxbury Millennium Trail.
A PDF of the full project ready for printing is at this link. Since that PDF has a layout optimized for printing and stapling into a booklet, the individual pages are also available here:
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Map and History
Thanks, Neil!
Help Historic Boston restore the Kittredge House! /
Many of my readers know that Historic Boston, Inc (HBI), which recently moved into the Torrent 6 firehouse in Dudley Square, is planning a careful renovation of the Kittredge house into mixed-income condos. The restoration is on track, but it will take major funding and they are also trying to fund two other projects in Boston.
To help get these 3 projects off the ground, HBI is working with Mayor Menino and Richard Druker on a special fundraising initiative called the Trilogy Fund. Their goal is to raise $1 million, most of which will go towards the Kittredge House. Every dollar counts, so as you think about your year-end giving, why not put some money towards this renovation right here in our neighborhood?
Jacob Izenstatt and the Jay Shoe Factory on Fulda Street /
Every once in a while, life throws you a historical bone. Today is one of those occasions. I went to the main branch of the BPL to see the Orange Line Exhibit, only to find that it was closed for unspecified reasons. Since I had some time to kill, I headed over to the newspaper archives to take advantage of the Globe archives that are digitized but only available onsite.
On a whim, I searched for Fulda Street. The second of the 400+ results was an obituary for Jacob Izenstatt, who had owned a shoe factory on Fulda Street from the 1920s until the 1950s. Could this be the shoe factory that Barb mentioned to me this summer? A quick look at the maps suggests that there was only one factory on Fulda, and although it was owned by Louis Buff as late as 1931 (the date of the last historic Ward Map available for our neighborhood), it seems quite plausible that Buff leased it to Mr. Izenblatt.
The obituary, dated July 1, 1975, notes that Izenstatt had moved to Roxbury in the early 1920s from Lynn, where he already owned a women’s dress shoe factory, and that he later owned additional factories on Tremont Street in Boston and Potter Street in Cambridge. The obituary cites his son, Norman, who reported that at its peak the firm was manufacturing about 4500 pairs of shoes a day and employed 900 workers. In 1958, he closed all of his Massachusetts operations and set up shop in Norway, Maine, where the business remained until he shuttered it in 1971.
Izenstatt even patented a shoe design in 1935:
So now we finally know a bit about the old factory on Fulda. But what about Mr. Izenstatt? Fortunately, he has both a unique name and an excellent trail of digital breadcrumbs. Half an hour of sleuthing turns up the following info:
He was born about 1894 in the town of Vileyka, Russia, in what is now Belarus near the Polish border. The townspeople, known as Vileiker, sent over a group of 5 emigrants in 1890. Three of the five moved to Lynn, and the Lynn group brought over many more friends and family over the next few decades. Among these was Basevke Callnens (aka Bessie), who arrived sometime around 1913. Bessie’s fiance, Jacob Izenstatt, came over just days before the start of WWI, when he would have been 19 or 20. He worked in Lynn’s famous shoe factories for 6 years before he started Jay Shoe in 1919 or 1920, living at 124 Shepherd St. We know this early history thanks to a letter written in 1971 that was transcribed onto a website detailing the history of Jewish Vileiker in the US.
The factory appears to have been successful, as he was able to start his manufacturing operation in Roxbury in 1922 and move his family to the large Jewish area then flourishing in our neighborhood. They first lived at 69 Lawrence Street, between Blue Hill Ave and Columbia Road, but later settled closer to Fulda Street in a very tony house at 159 Ruthven Street.
According to the 1940 census, he lived there with Bessie, Norman (then 23), Norman’s 18-year-old sister Frances, and a maid, chauffeur, and the chauffer’s 17-year-old wife. Apparently he weathered the depression in style.
There is a sad note to this story, though. Although the Jewish Vileiker who made it over to the US prospered, those who stayed behind were slaughtered in a ghastly massacre at the end of June, 1941, when Hitler’s forces captured the area from the Soviets. Not to be outdone, the Soviets killed several hundred Polish political prisoners before they retreated. The American Vileiker had been sending money home for decades and Bessie had even paid a visit home in 1929. The news that 15,000 of their townspeople, including more than 6,000 Jews, had been killed in one day must have been beyond devastating.
Mr. Izenstatt, however, lived out the American dream. Next time you walk by Fulda Street, tip your cap to the boss of the factory that was once there.
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BPL recently posted this pic of the “old Thornton Street School.” This is the first time I’ve heard of the school, but it’s there on the 1852 map, when Thornton Street was Edinboro St. The 1849 map doesn’t show any buildings on that part of Edinboro St., but an 1893 Boston Schools document lists the building as having been built in 1847 and having two school rooms. In 1893, the building was an elementary school in the Dillaway School District, which taught only girls (boys were in the Dudley District Schools). It was located just south of the blue house on Thornton that is currently undergoing renovation.
Here it is on the 1931 map at the ripe old age of 84, across the street from the newer, larger Abby May School built in 1893. That’s where the trail runs cold - I can’t find any maps between 1931 and the relative present and don’t know when it was destroyed. If you’ve got any info about this mysteriously small yet long-lived school, please share!
Coincidentally, I just ran across a description of the Abby May School from the 1893 City Archives in Google Books. The Abby May school also gets a brief mention as “the new primary schoolhouse” in the other 1893 document I cited above.
Old Thornton Street School, Roxbury, ca. 1920-1960, School building photographs circa 1920-1960 (Collection # 0403.002)
This work is free of known copyright restrictions. Please attribute to City of Boston Archives. For more photos from this collection, click here
Boston Public Library Opens Orange Line Exhibition "An Elevated View" | City of Boston /
For all you Orange Line lovers, there’s an exhibit worth checking out at the Copley Library until January 19. Here are the details, straight from the website. Enjoy!
The newest exhibition to open at the Boston Public Library’s Copley Square location is An Elevated View: the Orange Line. The exhibition features 65 photographs from a 1985 project that documented Boston’s elevated rail system prior to its 1987 dismantling. The elevated Orange Line, known simply as the El, served as fast and dependable transportation above Washington Street, from Chinatown to Dudley Square, between 1901 and 1987. An Elevated View is open through January 19, 2013.
Two years before the El was dismantled, the nonprofit organization URBANARTS organized a program called “Arts in Transit” on behalf of the MBTA. One component of the program paired four photographers with photography students to document the transition of the Orange Line. The students and their teachers photographed the line and its architectural and social surroundings.
Arranged in order of MBTA Orange Line stops, from Forest Hills to Dover Station, An Elevated View is on display in the Wiggin Gallery at the Central Library in Copley Square, located at 700 Boylston Street. The gallery is open Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday, 9 a.m.-7 p.m.; and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. Boston Public Library staff member Jane Winton curated the exhibition, using photographs from the library’s print collection.
Additional Boston Public Library programs related to the Orange Line include film screenings and a panel discussion featuring photographers who documented the rail system.
Screenings of Tim Wright’s 30-minute documentary film The Conservation of Matter: The Rise and Fall of Boston’s Elevated will take place on Thursday, October 25, at 6 p.m. at the Central Library in Copley Square and Monday, November 19, at 6 p.m. at the Connolly Branch, located at 433 Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. The film traces the fate of 100,000 tons of steel from the Boston elevated rail system, which was shipped eight thousand miles away to Japan, melted, and reformed into steel bars. The steel was ultimately used to create a structure in the middle of Apache country in central Arizona. Wright, a Boston-based filmmaker, will attend both screenings and will discuss his work. The screening at the Connolly Branch is presented by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society.
A panel discussion featuring photographers who documented Boston’s elevated rail system prior to its demolition takes place on Thursday, November 1, at 6 p.m. at the Central Library in Copley Square. Photographers David Akiba and Lou Jones will discuss their photos and their experiences capturing neighborhoods in transition.
This exhibition and related programs are part of the Boston Public Library’s Building Boston initiative, a citywide celebration of Boston’s public spaces. An Elevated View is the third of five exhibitions planned at the Central Library in Copley Square in conjunction with the initiative. More information about Building Boston is available atwww.bpl.org/buildingboston.
1950s Pictures from around Marcella Park /
As I mentioned in my last post, Barb Driscoll and her many childhood friends from around Marcella Park are planning a reunion next year. It’s been 50-60 years since most of them were here. Barb was kind enough to share these personal photos of Fort Hill from the 1950s, and I am happy to share them with my readers. Thanks Barb!
Picture 1: 3 unidentified boys in front of Marcella Park, “when they only had the basketball court,” according to Barb. Behind the boys are houses on Marcella Street, and in the far background are the backs of the houses on Beech Glen St, with the top of the standpipe just visible. So much has changed since this picture was taken that it’s hard to pin down the exact location of this picture, but it looks like it was taken very near Marcella Market. Edit: Mark did some sleuthing and has provided the suggestion on the map underneath this photo as to where the photo was taken.
Picture 2: Russo’s Store, at Jackson Square on Centre Street. Remember that before the failed I-95 project Jackson Square was configured very differently. It’s likely that this building didn’t survive, but I need to go down there to double check.
Picture 3: The lunch counter inside Russo’s. It’s tough to make out all the prices and menu items, but coffee and tea were 10 cents and it looks like a slice of pie a la mode was 35 cents.
Picture 4: The Materazzo family, owners of Russo’s store. John Sr., John Jr., and Tommy. If I understand Barb’s description correctly, the store actually belonged to Mary (Russo) Materazzo, the wife of John Sr.
A Marcella Street Reunion /
A couple of months ago, I ran into Barb “Midge” Driscoll and her friend Artie Carmen at the standpipe. It was Barb’s first time back to Fort Hill in 5 decades and she was marveling at how things have changed. Barb shared some stories of her childhood growing up on Marcella near the corner of Highland. She told me of the dozens of neighborhood children who played together throughout the neighborhood, the many small corner stores that have sadly long since closed, and her mother’s employment at a shoe factory in what is now the vacant lot on Fulda Street.
Barb now lives in San Antonio, but through the magic of email, Facebook, and Google she’s been able to track down dozens of the children she used to play with and she is searching for more. She asked me to share this note:
We are working on a reunion for Marcella Street Park; this will include all areas surrounding the park. The reunion will be held in West Roxbury area in May of 2013.
At this time it looks like we will have close to 100 people attending we hope that all our old friends will join us. There will be fun, food and entertainment. When we get a firm commitment of the date, location, time and cost we will get back to you. Please tell all your friends!! Please RVSP if you will be interested in coming, we need to get a rough count. Please contact us if you have any question.
Thank you all,
Midge and Bob
Marcellareunion@yahoo.com / robertpcutris@yahoo.con
Midge 210-250-0140 / Bob 508-297-0106 (for people who don’t do computers)
Barb shared this picture of the Abby W. May school on Thornton Street, which she says was the school that all of the neighborhood kids went to. The 1931 Bromley Atlas has both the school and the factory. I’ve got it on my list to dig up more info about the school and factory for future posts. If you have any info please share it in the comments.
If you would like to attend the reunion, please do NOT use the comments, get in touch with Midge and Bob directly as I am not involved in the reunion planning.
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Faded Corporate Signage, Boston, MA.
I own a wrench made by this company, but I’ve never seen the sign on the building.
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Roxbury Deconstructed (Taken with Instagram)
An outstanding shot of the Ferdinands Building
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Roxbury, Massachusetts
One of my favorite buildings in Fort Hill, incomparably captured by Justin Hamel.
Conservation of Matter: The Fall & Rise of Boston's Elevated Subway /
Conservation of Matter: The Fall and Rise of Boston’s Elevated Subway from Tim K Wright on Vimeo.
I got the text below from the JPHS newsletter. If you can’t make the showing at the library next month, you can watch this charming film about the old elevated Orange Line and the fate of its steel on Vimeo. The soundtrack by Yusef Sharif, presumably a former Boston resident, is a treat, too.
The Fall & Rise of Boston’s Elevated Subway
On November 19 at 6:00 p.m. the Jamaica Plain Historical Society will show the movie, “Conservation of Matter: The Fall and Rise of Boston’s Elevated Subway,” at the Connolly Branch Library. This is a repeat showing of the film which was shown at the Loring-Greenough House previously. This documentary follows the journey of 100,000 tons of steel from the Boston Elevated Subway, which was erected in 1898, demolished in 1987, and then shipped eight thousand miles away to Japan to be melted and made into steel beams. These beams then cross the ocean again, where they are fabricated into a remarkable new structure in a surprising location. Free and open to the public.
Don't Miss Heart of the Hub next week - win a private history tour! /
Next week, Discover Roxbury will be hosting its annual gala, Heart of the Hub. I’m proud to be on the board of directors of this great organization and am excited about one of my favorite annual events. Get tickets here.
In addition to food from local eateries, music, awards, and the opportunity to meet and greet Roxbury’s movers and shakers, there will also be a silent auction. I’ve donated a “history pack” consisting of an 1880’s era bottle of Dr. Kennedy’s Medical Discovery and two classic turn-of-the-century postcards from Roxbury. Dr. Kennedy, subject of a future post, was a snake oil salesman of the first degree and having one of his bottles is a must for the Roxbury historian.
I’m also donating a private history tour for up to 10 people. The winning bidder will gather their friends, pick a date, and we’ll walk around Fort Hill talking about whatever kind of history you’d like! That can be social history, the industrial revolution, or (my personal favorite) the history of beer brewing along the Stony Brook.
Need another reason to go? Reply to this post and I’ll give you a code for a 20% discount ($15 off of $75)!
The Ladies Helping Hand Society Temporary Home for Destitute Jewish Children /
Edit: Updated with additional info about the proposed JP location 10-14.
We’re used to thinking of Fort Hill, especially the area around the standpipe, as a sleepy residential area. But 100 years ago, this part of Roxbury was an integral part of the Boston landscape. And the landscape of the day included all kinds of social services, usually with amazingly descriptive names.
One of those names that is now lost to Roxbury is the Ladies Helping Hand Society Temporary Home for Destitute Jewish Children. This mouthful of an orphanage was the second major Jewish charitable institution in Boston. The first, the Leopold Morse Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and Orphans, had been operating in Mattapan for 10 years by the time the Helping Hand Home opened in 1899 on the corner of Beech Glen and Fort Avenue in the old St. Elizabeth’s Hospital building (subject of a future post).
Then as now, disputes over heritage caused friction even among people of the same religion living thousands of miles from home. As a result, the Morse Home catered to a mainly German Jewish orphan population at a time when the Jewish immigrants to Boston - those more likely to have children who might be so destitute as to need a home dedicated to them - were increasingly Russian. The Helping Hand Home, therefore, was a home not only intended for destitute Jewish children, but more specifically for destitute Russian Jewish children. Perhaps they thought that adding one more adjective to the name was overkill. Here’s a list of the “inmates” in 1910, entirely Russian except for two Austrian children.
Founded by the Russian-born lawyer and politician Samuel Borofsky and run by Louis “Papa” Cohen, the Helping Hand Home was located directly across the street from the Boston Nursery for Blind Babies. This wasn’t Borofsky’s first choice for a location. That was at a spot in Jamaica Plain, in what is now the parking lot behind Blanchard’s. But anti-semitism reared its head in a meeting of about 50 neighbors, who managed to get the JP location nixed on the grounds that it would “ruin values in the vicinity.”
The Fort Hill location, with its large German and Eastern European population anchored by the breweries and the German church, probably made more sense. And the hospital seems to have been a good fit. It had a capacity of 65 boys and girls, many of whom belonged to single parents who placed the children there temporarily until they were remarried or otherwise back on their feet.
But as Eastern European immigration continued to balloon during the first decade of the 1900’s, the demand for the services of the orphanage quickly outstripped its capacity. By 1907, the home’s directors had purchased an 80,000 square foot lot at the corner of Canterbury and Austin in Dorchester, and 4 years later the construction of a much larger facility was complete and the home had left our neighborhood. It continued providing services to Jewish orphans at that location until 1934, when it moved again to 35 Chestnut Hill Ave. in Brighton. From there, the story grows cold.
By the way, although I knew that Roxbury had once been one of the hubs of Jewish life in Boston, it wasn’t until I ran across this list of activities in the social pages of the July 13, 1902 Boston Daily Globe that I really got a sense of what that meant:
The site of the home is now one of the quieter parts of Highland Park. It’s hard to conceive of either a hospital or an orphanage on that hilly, secluded slope, but chances are that there are children or grandchildren of the inmates who spent time there still alive today.
1940s efforts to tear down the elevated Orange Line /
Over at the always-excellent Remember Jamaica Plain, Mark put up a post last month on the long struggle to tear down the elevated Orange Line and move it to its current location. I hadn’t realized that the efforts to demolish the train had begun in World War II. The rationale was a reuse of the steel for the war effort, but the underlying cause was undoubtedly to rid Washington Street of the noisy, ugly train line.
Click through for the full story including a post from the April 14, 1942 Boston Globe.
Historic Boston Inc. working on an assessment of the First Church /
I’m a bit late with this one, but here is some good news from Historic Boston (HBI). They will be working with an architect to assess the condition of the First Church, one of our neighborhood’s most important landmarks. The relevant text is below the picture if you don’t want to click through.
I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that after 4 years on the hill I still haven’t been inside the church, although I did get into one of the rear buildings for Roxbury Open Studios (coming up in 2 weeks!) a couple of years ago. Hopefully I’ll be able to change that soon.
First Church in Roxbury dates to 1804 and is the fifth meetinghouse built on this site. It is now under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Boston which centers its Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry here, a very active use of the complex’s supporting buildings for educational and social services to area children and families. The UUUM would like to improve the historic meetinghouse to support weddings, and community lectures, concerts, and celebrations.
HBI hired architect Don Mills of the firm Mills Whittaker Architects to comprehensively assess current conditions, establish cost estimates, and prioritize repairs…. While money is hard to come by for projects like these, assessments bring expert guidance to congregations so that treasures like First Church Roxbury …. appear less financially burdensome and more the inspirational landmarks they were meant to be.
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A couple of months ago I ran into a couple outside my front door on Beech Glen St. Turns out that the woman in the couple had lived in Fort Hill back in the early 70s and this was her first trip back in 40 years. She’d been a hippie who at the young age of 18 or 19 had gone in on the purchase of a house together with her boyfriend and a couple of their friends (imagine a day when a group of 18 year olds could buy a house for cash?). She’d married young, had a child on the hill, divorced, and eventually moved back to the suburbs.
She was kind enough to email this scan of 3 pictures and the following description of what it was like to be here 40 years ago. I’ve redacted the names and a couple of other details but left pretty much everything else the same. If you lived here long ago and have stories to share, please send them my way!
I only have these three photos from 1970 on the Hill. You can only see a bit of the tower in one of them. The inside photos are from 51 Beech Glen St. The people in the photo are [author, her ex-husband, and their daughter]. Yes, we were hippies and named her after a flower.
I actually lived in 4 different locations during my time there. The first location was 51 Beech Glen, the second was 49 Fort Ave, the third was Thwing St (which was owned by my friends) and then the last place was another address on Beech Glen but don’t know the number. Who knows, it could have been yours. My then husband and I moved to Fort Ave after our relationship with our partners in number 51 fell apart. When my daughter turned one, my husband and I split up and I moved in with my friends on Thwing St and then got my own apartment back on Beech Glen.
I have recollections of walking down to the Dudley Station area with my daughter in a stroller where there was a Woolworths store. Went grocery shopping at a Stop & Shop in Jamaica Plain on a bus and took a cab home. I know what it feels like to be in the minority.
Even though I did experience a violent crime against myself on the ‘Hill’ (Highland St) those were some of the best and most memorable days of my life. I was young, brave, foolish and naive. My then,husband and I were of the ‘peace and love’ generation and practiced some of the principles we stood for back then. We and the other young suburban people who moved onto the Hill had many activites such as whiffle ball games weekly on the Hill before it was quite so grown up with shrubs and trees (42 years ago). We took turns buying food with the group from a cooperative and we took turns cooking dinners so that everyone didn’t have to cook everyday. And, yes, there was drugs as we partied together. We made lots of sangria and “brownies”. I remember the time when I ventured out onto the hill on a cold night as the ‘pink snow’ came down all around me.
[Author’s husband] and I took part in many anti-war demonstrations. One of those was in Cambridge. As the police came towards us in full riot gear, I heard someone say,”they’ve got tear gas”. I headed for the nearest subway to avoid the gas as I was pregnant with my daughter. It was rather ironic that even though I was a peace loving young person, I was the victim of a couple of more acts of violence that caused me to have to move back to my parents’ house in the burbs with my daughter! My ex husband continued on at Fort Ave for awhile then moved to Canada to get into the music business and he was a musician. Since his draft number could have come up at any time it may have been a two-fold reason to go there.
Well, if I have any more interesting memories, I will share them with you. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything. I feel like I had many experiences during those four years in various parts of Boston (also lived in the North End) that most everyone I know out here in the burbs will never have.
Get your tickets to Heart of the Hub soon! /
Fall is in the air, which means that it’s time to start getting excited about Discover Roxbury’s annual gala, Heart of the Hub. Tickets are $60 until 9/30, $75 after. If you’ve ever wanted to meet more people from around the neighborhood or take a peek into the gorgeous ballroom at Hibernian Hall, here’s your chance!
Join over 200 guests from the arts, cultural, education, medical, historic preservation, and culinary communities in Roxbury and around Greater Boston at the fifth annual Heart of the Hub to celebrate Roxbury’s physical and cultural, and the people who work tirelessly to strengthen them. This annual event includes a silent auction featuring art and gift packages and A Taste of Roxbury dinner catered by area restaurants. Our mistress of ceremonies is WCVB’s Karen Holmes Ward. The E-Water Band will return to perform live, including a tribute to Roxbury’s own Donna Summer.
Heart of the Hub is attended by dozens of local artists who donate items to the silent auction, such as fine art photography, paintings, jewelry, and mixed media work. Guests have the opportunity to learn more about Roxbury’s thriving arts community while networking with peers, enjoying a sampling of food and beverages, and dancing to great music.
Before the close of the evening, we honor individuals with the Roxbury Puddingstone Awards for their extraordinary and tireless efforts to highlight and preserve Roxbury’s physical and cultural assets. Previous award recipients include State Representative Byron Rushing, E. Barry Gaither, Klare Shaw, Bing Broderick, Melvin Miller, Rev. Michael Haynes, Candelaria Silva-Collins, and John Wilson.
The 2012 Roxbury Puddingstone Awardees are Glynn Lloyd, Clarence “Jeep” Jones, and Paul Goodnight & Color Circle Art.
We hope you will join us to celebrate Roxbury’s assets and to enjoy the festivities!