Forest Hills (Boston)

These three-story houses, typical of Forest Hills, are located on Tower Street near the MBTA Forest Hills station .

Forest Hills is part of the officially designated district Jamaica Plain the town of Boston in the state of Massachusetts of the United States .

overview

As the name suggests, the district is essentially characterized by hills and wooded areas that are within or in the immediate vicinity of the district boundaries. It goes uphill from Hyde Park Avenue and downhill again from Walk Hill Street .

The neighborhood is primarily residential, but there are a number of smaller businesses along Hyde Park Avenue . To the south of Walk Hill Street, there are predominantly single-family houses , while the three-storey houses typical of the district dominate near the train station. As in the rest of Jamaica Plain , many of the apartment buildings have been converted into condominiums .

South of Walk Hill Street , Forest Hills consists largely of curvy, tree-lined streets that do not follow any particular pattern and thus indicate the development of the district from a rural area to a tram suburb.

The relatively narrow houses are generally in good condition and have lush gardens and interesting architectural details to offer. There is a wide variety of architectural styles including Arts and Crafts Movement , Cape Cod , Colonial Revival , Queen Anne Style , Tudor Revival, and Victorian architecture .

In the 20th century it was mostly workers who lived in the streets near the train station, while the middle class lived in the south, where there was no social housing , but also no areas with greater affluence . This area has recently been subject to a certain degree of gentrification and is known for the good integration of all people living there.

The district benefits from its proximity to the Longwood Medical and Academic Area and to the educational institutions School of the Museum of Fine Arts , Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Northeastern University, as well as good public transport connections to the city center.

Expansion of the district

Forest Hills is not an official area of ​​Boston and its boundaries were never set, yet Forest Hills is perceived as a separate area of ​​the city. The name refers roughly to the area directly around the Forest Hills train station and the residential areas on the east side of Hyde Park Avenue to Walk Hill Street or to the Cummins Highway . Many other areas and neighborhoods in Boston are not clearly defined until now - so the green strip is Canterbury south of Forest Hills Cemetery between the Canterbury Street and the American Legion Highway times Roslindale , sometimes Jamaica Plain and times Mattapan attributed.

Another definition of Forest Hills describes the area as the triangle between Hyde Park Avenue , the American Legion Highway, and Morton Street . Walk Hill Street divides this triangle in two. The areas south of this street were formerly known as the White City , today they are called Woodbourne .

The White City

In 1914, four apartment buildings were built on Hyde Park Avenue far south of the station, which were decorated with stucco . The complex was named White City based on the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition .

This name was later the White City Food Store and the White City Cleansers adapted [sic] that the name White City inscribed on large signs that even by passers-by on the Hyde Park Avenue could still be read. In this way, White City was viewed over time as a separate area within Jamaica Plain or, more rarely, as a part of Forest Hills , whose borders ran along Walk Hill Street , Hyde Park Avenue and St. Michael's Cemetery . The area now known as Woodbourne was also in this area.

The described actual origins of the name White City faded into the background in the 1970s, when the name took on a special meaning in connection with racist tensions in Boston. The White City was one of the last areas in Jamaica Plain to be exclusively white. The White City location was explicitly stated for houses up for sale , which regularly resulted in a higher selling price compared to the rest of Forest Hills.

After the Woodbourne district was registered in the NRHP , the new name gradually replaced the name White City . With the renaming of the White City Cleansers in 2003, the last reference to the old name disappeared with the street sign, so that this is more and more forgotten.

Woodbourne

The Woodbourne National Register Historic District is an area of ​​120,000 square meters roughly bounded by Walk Hill Street , Goodway Road and Wachusett Street . The residential area was settled in the early 20th century and partly by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. designed.

The name component "Bourne" of the area and some streets such as Southbourne or Bournedale comes from Bourne Street , a street built around 1820 that begins on Walk Hill Street and ends on Canterbury Street at Mt. Hope Cemetery . The most distinctive houses in Woodbourne were designed to imitate gabled English cottages and built around a common courtyard.

The district was registered in the NRHP in 1999. Since then, apartments and houses located there have been offered with the location Woodbourne instead of Forest Hills , which underlines the importance of the district. However, the proximity to the train station is the preferred argument of the residential area.

history

The first European known to live in Forest Hills was Joseph Weld , an ancestor of former Massachusetts Governor William Weld and the youngest of three immigrant brothers and a veteran of the Pequot War of 1637. For his efforts in this one Conflict and subsequent negotiations, the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony gave him 278 acres (1.1 km² ) of untouched land where Forest Hills is now in Jamaica Plain .

His descendant Eleazer Weld , one of seven members of the family who fought in the American Revolutionary War, bequeathed part of his land to Benjamin Bussey , who fought with him in the war. Later, both properties were transferred to Harvard University and formed the basis of today's Arnold Arboretum .

In 1845 the Welds sold much of their land, later known as Woodbourne , to Yankee farmer William Minot . As the basis of the New England economy shifted away from agriculture and towards maritime trade , the family divided their land into smaller plots and sold them to befriended Brahmins from Boston and relatives. Some lived here year round, others only retired here during hot Boston summer days or during seasonal cholera outbreaks .

The Welds family had influential friends, including the Guild , Minot , Perkins , Olney , Peters, and Rodman families . Richard Olney probably had the first tennis court built in Boston and chose a location on Patten Street . George Minot was awarded a Nobel Prize. William Fletcher Weld , whose mother's family Minot came, left a legacy of 20 million US dollars . Stephen Minot Weld, Jr. and George H. Perkins were heroes in the Civil War . Andrew James Peters married a Minot and was Mayor of Boston from 1918 to 1922 .

In the early 20th century, public transport brought increasing numbers of workers to the neighborhood and most wealthy Yankee families left Forest Hills . Some settled in Beacon Hill or Brookline , others moved further south to Dedham or Westwood . However, some families also moved to another state.

Buildings

The Forest Hills Station

The Forest Hills Station (2007)

In the Forest Hills district is the MBTA Forest Hills Station of the same name , which forms the southern end of the Orange Line that leads to Malden . The Needham Line commuter trains also stop here . The station used to be a stop on Green Line E , until it was shortened to Heath Street station and replaced by bus route 39. A total of 15 different bus routes stop at Forest Hills Station .

Since the opening of the Boston and Providence Railroad in 1834, the development of the area started from this station . Both the district itself and the train station were named after the eponymous cemetery .

The original train station was a very large brick building from the 19th century. In the early 20th century, the ground level rails in the north were replaced by an elevated railway leading into the city center and connecting Forrest Hills to the city's subway network . The elevated rails and the station itself were demolished in the late 1980s and replaced with the current modern building with its clock tower , designed by Cambridge Seven Associates and completed in 1987.

Directly north of the station is Monsignor William J. Casey Overpass (also Morton Street Overpass ), which was built as a bypass in the late 1950s and connects the Arborway with Morton Street .

The Toll Gate Bridge

Before Forest Hills Station was built in the 1830s, Toll Gate was the name of what is now Forest Hills . In 1803 the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike was built, creating a main link between Boston and Providence in Rhode Island . The Hartford and Dedham Turnpike was inaugurated a year later and served as the main route to Hartford , Connecticut .

At the place where Forest Hills Station stands today, vehicles from Roxbury and the surrounding area were weighed at that time , from which the toll for driving on the privately owned road was calculated. However, the turnpike soon became unprofitable and became a public road in 1857. It was renamed Washington Street in 1874 and is still one of the longest streets in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts .

Long after the station the name Forest Hills got, the older identity of the area in the form of a metal was footbridge called Toll Gate Bridge maintains that the rail tracks to Washington Street crossed at the point where the Walk Hill Street to Hyde Park Avenue meets . The scaffolding of the bridge is still in place today, but the steps on both sides were removed in the 1990s after the Ukraine Way , which is closer to the station, provided a level crossing option for both pedestrians and road traffic.

Right next to the access to the bridge is the narrow entrance to Tollgate Catholic Graveyard , which contains gravestones from the 19th and early 20th centuries. A memorial to Irish Americans who died in the war was erected there in the 1980s.

Green spaces

The entrance to Forest Hills Cemetery

Forest Hills is surrounded by three sections of the Emerald Necklace park system designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 19th century : Arnold Arboretum , Arborway and Franklin Park . While he was on the Schoolmaster's Hill in Franklin Park taught, lived Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Morton Street in the same building as the feminist Margaret Fuller .

There is a baseball field on Wachusett Street that is surrounded by trees and is adjacent to the well-manicured Parkman Playground . There are also several smaller, nameless forest areas.

Much of Forest Hills is occupied by Forest Hills Cemetery , a 1.1 km² park and arboretum that is recognized as one of the best preserved and maintained park cemeteries of the 19th century. Accordingly, it is also entered on the National Register of Historic Places . Among the personalities buried there are Eugene O'Neill , EE Cummings and William Lloyd Garrison , among others .

The St. Michael's Cemetery & Crematory on the other side of Walk Hill Street is smaller but has the same garden-like atmosphere like its bigger neighbor.

The cemeteries of Calvary Cemetery , Mt. Hope Cemetery and New Calvary Cemetery on the other side of the American Legion Highway also have a large area, but are more "traditional" in design. that is, they are level and only sparsely overgrown. All of these cemeteries form an unusable zone separating Forest Hills from the neighboring regions of Mattapan and Roxbury .

Education

Parkman School

In 1896, the City of Boston bought an acre of land from Andrew James Peters to build a school on the corner of Wachusett Street and Walk Hill Street . It was named after the local historian Francis Parkman , who owned a summer home on Jamaica Pond . In the building of the Francis Parkman School is located today by the Boston Public Schools operated Boston Teachers Union School .

Seaver School

In the late 1920s, the City of Boston bought land for another school to be built between Eldridge Road and Northbourne . The city leveled the land and erected a brick building in Georgian architecture , which was completed in 1930. The side wings were added the following year.

The school was named after Edwin P. Seaver , who was superintendent of the Boston Schools from 1880 to 1904. In 1983 the city sold the building to private investors who built condominiums there. The building is now one of the largest residential buildings in Forest Hills .

Religions and churches

St. Andrew's Parish

The St. Andrew the Apostle Church in 1918 by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston built. The building is on the corner of Walk Hill Street and Wachusett Street, diagonally across from Parkman School .

In 1942, the St. Andrew the Apostle School was opened in the immediate vicinity , the teachers of which lived in a monastery nearby. Most recently, the students were taught by the Sisters of Charity . Four, sometimes more, priests lived in a rectory next to the church at the same time.

In the 1940s, Forest Hills was predominantly inhabited by Irish Catholics . Catholics of other ethnic groups (especially Italian-Americans , but also French , Poles , Portuguese , Scots and others) were also there, but only in significantly smaller numbers compared to the Irish . Although there were also a small number of non-Catholics in the area, by the second half of the 20th century the Forrest Hills neighborhood and St. Andrew's Ward were practically synonymous .

There was much racial violence in Boston in the 1970s , particularly in Dorchester and South Boston . However, these had hardly any visible effects in parishes on Jamaica Plain such as St. Andrew's or the neighboring church of St. Thomas Aquinas . Most of the white families in Jamaica Plain could and did afford to send their children to denominational schools. In doing so, they largely escaped the legally prescribed abolition of racial segregation.

The St. Andrew's Church was closed in 2000, but were after that date there have funeral services held. The St. Andrew's School closed the school year of 2005.

In 2008 the church, school, rectory and monastery were purchased by the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church .

Upham Church

The Upham Memorial Church is a small Methodist church on the corner of Wachusett and Patten Streets from 1901. In 1925 some additions followed.

After World War II , the area where the church stands became increasingly Catholic and interest in the Upham Memorial Church declined sharply. The church had to close in 1969 and remained unused and locked until it was sold to the Knights of Columbus in 1977. The new owners added aluminum cladding that obscures most of the architectural details of the original building. The building was initially used as a school and now houses condominiums.

Transport and traffic

Walk Hill Street

The Walk Hill Street is a major thoroughfare in Forest Hills and was created in the 17th century. There is a small business park at the start of the route on Hyde Park Avenue . From there the street climbs up to the intersection of Wachusett Street , where the Francis Parkman School and St. Andrew's Church are located.

The Walk Hill Street continues westward across the American Legion Highway until after Mattapan and Roxbury . For a large part of its route, the road runs along cemeteries, which are separated from it by high wrought iron fences.

The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council defines the area north of Walk Hill Street as Weld Hill District and the area south of it as Woodbourne District .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Richard Heath: Woodbourne and the Boston 1915 Movement. (No longer available online.) Jamaica Plain Historical Society, February 23, 1998, archived from the original on June 3, 2012 ; accessed on April 30, 2012 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Woodbourne Historic District. Jamaica Plain Historical Society, accessed May 2, 2012 . 
3. ↑ A Guide to Jamaica Plain. Jamaica Plain Historical Society, archived from the original on March 6, 2009 ; accessed on May 3, 2012 . 
4. ^ Boston Teachers Union School K-8. Boston Public Schools, accessed May 3, 2012 . 
5. ^ Michael Paulson: Catholic school set for closing. St. Andrew saw low enrollment. In: Boston Globe . June 7, 2005, accessed May 6, 2012 . 
6. ^ Website of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church . Retrieved May 6, 2012 . 

literature

• Boston Dwelling House Company (Ed.): Woodbourne: a description of single and semi-detached houses offered at this attractive site by the Boston Dwelling House Company, with terms of sale . Jamaica Plain, Mass. 1912, OCLC 82097241 .
• Richard M. Candee, Greer Hardwicke: Early Twentieth-Century Reform Housing by Kilham and Hopkins, Architects of Boston . In: Winterthur Portfolio . tape 22 , no. 1 (Spring), 1987, ISSN  0084-0416 , OCLC 479794116 , p. 47-80 .
• Katharine Minot Channing: Minot family letters, 1773-1871 . Self-published, Sherborn, Mass. 1957, OCLC 11739739 .
• Gerald G. Eggert: Richard Olney . evolution of a statesman. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 1974, ISBN 0-271-01162-9 .
• Richard Heath: Summer house to garden suburb . a history of Woodbourne in the Forest Hills section of Jamaica Plain. Boston, Mass. 1997, OCLC 45192229 .
• Thomas H. O'Connor: Boston Catholics . a history of the church and its people. Northeastern University Press, Boston, MA 1998, ISBN 1-55553-359-0 .

Coordinates: 42 ° 18 ′  N , 71 ° 6 ′  W