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...this paper is intended to provide information and context in which to seek grants and other financial assistance to help provide appropriate housing for the many former residents who continue to hope and work to return to their old neighborhood...
Within these pages, author Anthony Mitchell Sammarco brings to life the history of Boston's West End--the area of the city bound by the Charles River and Storrow Drive as well as North Station, City Hall Plaza, and Myrtle Street. Once a thriving, energetic, and diverse neighborhood, the West End was slated for complete removal following World War II. In over 200 marvelous photographs, this collection recaptures fond memories for former residents and shows newcomers the history of the West End. Now the site of luxury, high-rise apartment buildings, condominiums, and stores, Boston's West End was once the site of many Bulfinch-designed townhouses owned by prominent families. In later years, the neighborhood was home to a diverse ethnic and religious community of families who arrived in Boston from all parts of the world. Today, three decades after the West End was virtually leveled, it is still fondly remembered by many who once called it home.
"Here is one of the great stories in American urban history told by a great historian. In 1949, Boston was 'a hopeless backwater' . . . by 1970, a 'New Boston' had been created . . . Thomas O'Connor, the dean of Boston historians, brings to this tale of transformation rich learning, intimate familiarity with his subject, and a lucid sometimes witty pen." -- Jack Beatty, Senior Editor, Atlantic Monthly
Winner of the Bancroft Prize In twenty-first-century America, some cities are flourishing and others are struggling, but they all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. Cities have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good. It wasn’t always this way. For almost three decades after World War II, even as national policies promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents into the suburbs. In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal. He worked to revive a declining New Haven, became the architect of the “New Boston” of the 1960s, and, later, led New York State’s Urban Development Corporation, which built entire new towns, including Roosevelt Island in New York City. Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy: Neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes and progressive goals. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness, opening up possibilities for our own time.
Just as stately trees in Forest Park were coming down to make way for the 1904 World's Fair, elegant homes -- designed by the city's best architects and occupied by its elite-- were springing up on surrounding streets, as a vast building boom began. And that was the start of the St. Louis neighborhood called the Central West End, which quickly grew from a sleepy rural outpost to an address for fashionable people and shops, fine cultural institutions and congregations, high-class hotels and hospitals.That halcyon period did not last, however. Through the years, various factors -- the growth of the suburbs, white flight, the cost of maintaining huge homes, the rise of rooming houses, the disheartening effect of smoke and urban smells -- drove some of the well-to-do farther west, and the Central West End foundered. Though residents, religious groups, and some politicians tried to stop the slide, fine homes disappeared and hospitals fled. At this point, the Washington University Medical Center also faced a choice: stay or go? They decided to hold their ground and mounted a revitalization effort that succeeded, with the support of the resilient community.Today, the Central West End is again undergoing a boom as condominiums go up, businesses come to life, and historic streets find new vitality. To the east, an exciting biotechnology district, Cortex Innovation Community, is building upon its success. Renaissance: A History of the Central West End traces the Central West End's cycle over the past century and more: from its stylish start through its dangerous days to its present strength -- an urban renewal significant enough that it has earned the name "renaissance."