BOSTON: THE WEST END

“The way the West End was destroyed—that was dreadful,” said anti-highway activist Father Paul McManus in 1965. “[The West End] was a great community. That was a unified community, and it was a diverse community. You had Polish people, you had Jewish people, you had Black people, you had Irish people, the whole thing—[urban renewal] was devastating to so many.”

Using urban renewal (financed by the Federal Housing Act of 1949) and freeway construction (financed by the Federal Highway Act of 1956), the gov’t wiped out entire neighborhoods on a scale previously only seen in either natural disasters or war. The historic West End—one of those neighborhoods where the hope of America’s “melting pot” perhaps came the closest to fruition as it ever would—was entirely razed; its dense, winding streets replaced with parking lots for suburban commuters.

West End residents received their eviction letters on April 25, 1958. Working-class families were displaced, and superblocks replaced the original street layout. Under the auspices of the Boston Redevelopment Agency (BRA), the government had assured tenants that affordable housing would be found for them, and many were led to believe that they would be able to move back to the West End after the project was complete.

The BRA was lying.

2,700 families (approximately 12,000 people) were displaced from thousands of apartments in hundreds of buildings across the neighborhood. Exactly 5 residential high rise complexes were constructed to replace these buildings, containing only 477 apartments. More on the West End to come.

Photo source: @thewestendmuseum
Quote: “People Before Highways” @karilyncrockett