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BOSTON LANDMARKS COMMISSION
Exploring Boston's Neighborhoods
Founded by English colonists in 1630, Roxbury began as an independent community, connected to Boston only by a narrow neck
of land along Washington Street. Today, after massive landfill and annexation to Boston, Roxbury is at the city's geographical
center. It contains buildings and landmarks that tell the story of three centuries. Even with dense urban development, Roxbury
has much open, green space, a legacy of its days as a farming town and as an early suburb.
ROXBURY AS A COUNTRY
TOWN
The English settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Company established a group of six villages, including Boston on
the Shawmut Peninsula. Three miles south of Boston along the only land route to the peninsula, they founded Roxbury. The original
boundaries of the town included the neighborhoods of Mission Hill, West Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain as well as present-day
Roxbury. Roxbury had many resources the colonists were looking for: open farmland, timber and stone for building, and the
Stony Brook for water power. Additionally, its location on the only road to Boston gave the town an advantage in transportation
and trade and a stategic military position. Roxbury was defined by its rocky hills, drumlins left by a prehistoric glacier.
In the area of Roxbury Highlands are many outcroppings of native Roxbury puddingstone, a kind of composite rock used over
the centuries in buildings throughout the Boston area.
The colonists soon began constructing buildings and roads that
still define the neighborhood today. Washington, Dudley, Centre, Roxbury, and Warren streets were all laid out in the first
years of settlement. The town center was located at John Eliot Square, where the first meetinghouse was built in 1632, with
its burying ground nearby at the corner of Eustis and Washington streets. Other landmarks from early Roxbury are the three
milestones that still mark Centre Street in Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and West Roxbury, recording the distance to downtown Boston.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, farming was the basis of Roxbury's economy. The town was locally famous for its fruit trees,
and noted varieties were developed on local farms-including the Roxbury Russet apple, particularly prized for cider. As the
town grew, some fine residences were built that are now among the few 18th century houses remaining in Boston.
An 18th-century
marker, known as the parting stone, is still embedded at the fork of Roxbury and Centre streeets, pointing the ways to Brookline
and Dedham.
The Dillaway-Thomas House (183 Roxbury Street) was built about 1750 as parsonage for the first Church,
just across John Eliot Square. Surviving a series of fires, the house has been restored as part of Roxbury Heritage State
Park. (Open to the public; 445-3399)
Roxbury also has a pre-Revolutionary mansion, the Shirley-Eustis House (31 Shirley
Street). Built around 1747 for William Shirley, the royal governor of Massachusetts from 1741 to 1756, the house was confiscated
by the colonists during the Revolution for use as a barracks and hospital. It was later purchased by Dr. William Eustis, a
surgeon who was governor of Massachusetts in the 1820s. This National Historic Landmark is designed in the Georgian style
of its time. (Open to the public; 442-2275.)
Roxbury's location and high hills made the town strategically important
during the Revolutionary War. The colonists constructed a fort in the Roxbury Highlands in 1775 to help secure land access
to Boston, and troops camped on the lawn of the First Church.
After the American victory, Roxury's citizens faced the
task of rebuilding much of their war-damaged community. One important project was the construction of the present First Church
in Roxbury, built in 1804 on the site of the original 1632 meetinghouse in John Eliot Square.
ROXBURY BECOMES A
SUBURB
In the first generations after the Revolution, American society went through many changes as cities grew and
industries developed. This process included a new ideal of "the good life." Instead of living near their work in the city,
people wanted to live in free-standing, single-family houses with yards and trees. The front facade of the Georgian-style
Shirley-Eustis House features giant pilasters, or flattened columns. Inside is a two-story salon for formal entertaining.
Changes
in the economy and developments in transportation made it possible for many families to pursue this suburban ideal, and Roxbury
was close enough to Boston to be a good choice. The first developments took place in the 1820s, when a horsedrawn bus line
was established along Washington Street, linking Roxbury to Boston for commuters, and in 1835, when the railroad from Boston
to Providence was sited along the Stony Brook Valley.
Soon Farmland began to be subdivided for single-family dwellings.
Many of these handsome early frame houses were built in a style called the Greek Revival, modeled after columned Greek temples.
This style caught the imagination of Americans because ancient Greece, like their new nation, was a republic rather than a
monarchy. Many of these Greek Revival houses still line Highland Park and Mount Pleasant.
As the century went on, other
times and places appealed to Americans, and various revival styles took root, with inspirations from Italy and France and
from the Middle Ages. Many of the revival-style houses in Roxbury's early suburban days ere quite grand, the homes of wealthy
industrialists who chose the tops of the hills in the Roxbury Highlands because of their views and breezes.
The pointed
arches on Abbotsford's windows and main entrance are characteristics of the High Victorian Gothic style, inspired by the architecture
of the Middle Ages.
One of the best examples of these early suburban houses is Abbotsford, now the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American
Artists, at 300 Walnut Avenue. (Open to the public; 442-8614) This building is significant to Roxbury for several reasons.
The most obvious is its beauty-it is a stately mansion that commands its site, and continues to be important to the community
as the setting for the museum. In addition, it is built entirely of Roxbury puddingstone, a local building material. Finally,
this building tells much about how people thought about their houses and their lives.
Designed by Boston architect
Alden Frink for the prominent industrialist Aaron Davis Williams, Jr., Abbotsford was built in 1872 in the High Victorian
Gothic style. Just as the American economy was becoming industrialized, many people looked with nostalgia to times before
machines and factories. Ironically, Aaron Davis Williams, Jr., used his profits from industry to build a house that could
remind him of a medieval castle.
BOSTON LANDMARK: Eustis Street Architectural Conservation District
This
historic district, near Dudley Station, contains sites from the earliest period of Roxbury's history to the late 19th century.
John
Eliot Burying Ground, at the corner of Washington and Eustis streets, was established by the English colonists in 1630, and
was used until the middle of the 19th century.
The Eustis Street Fire Station (20 Eustis Street) was built on the edge
of the burying ground in 1859 to improve fire protection service. Designed by local architect John Rouestone Hall, it is built
of brick with granite-trimmed windows in the Italianate style.
On the opposite side of the burying ground, at 2080
Washington Street, is the Owen Nawn Shop. This site had been used for manufacturing since 1815, housing a soap factory and
later a tannery, one of Roxbury's most important industries. The existing brick Italianate building was built about 1880 by
contractor
Owen Nawn, one of the builders of the elevated railway at Dudley Station.
As an official Boston Landmark, this district
is protected from changes that would adversely affect its historic character. For information on designating local landmark
buildings and districts, please contact the Boston Landmarks Commission at 635-3850.
The architect of Harriswood Crescent
created the picturesque effect that marks the Queen Anne style through a carefully designed variety of materials and shapes
Abbotsford also provides a link to Roxbury's early farming economy. The property on which Williams built his suburban mansion
was part
of a large farm that had been in his family for over 150 years and was known for its orchards. In fact, the Williams
apple, like the Roxbury Russet, was famous local variety.
Following setbacks in his business, Williams was forced to
sell Abbotsford. By 1923, the mansion was too large for private use, and the City of Boston purchased it as a disciplinary
school for boys. In 1976, the National Center for Afro-American Artists bought the property and turned it into a museum. This
new use has made it possible for community residents to enjoy Abbotsford today.
LATER SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT
Not
all suburban development in Roxbury was as grand as Abbotsford. In the later years of the 19th century, the old farms in the
highlands were subdivided for housing. When electric trolley service began in 1887, more and more families poured into the
neighborhood, creating a market for rowhouses and three deckers as well as single-family homes. An excellent example of later
suburban development is Harriswood Crescent, a group of 15 rowhouses located at 60-88 Harold Street, between Townsend and
Monroe streets. The land was part of the estate of Horatio Harris, whose heirs commissioned Boston architect J. Williams Beal
to design the rowhouses for sale on speculation in 1890, Roxbury's suburban heyday. The site was especially desirable because
of Fountain Square (now Horatio Harris Park), located across the street.
The design and setting of Harriswood Crescent
reveal what appealed to Roxbury's later suburbanites. Like Abbotsford, this development looks back to an earlier, pre-industrial
time. Built in the Queen Anne Revival style, it recalls rural England 200 years before with its wood and stucco half-timbering
combined with brick and rough-hewn stone. The architect carefully designed the 15 rowhouses, reflecting the suburban ideal
of the late 1800s. Although the rowhouses are on small lots, they face the park, creating the feel of more land.
INDUSTRY
AND COMMERCE
Even in colonial days, Lower Roxbury, located along Roxbury's border with the South End, had an industrial
character with mills and tanneries. As the marshes were filled in, factories and warehouses took their place. Workers' Ho
using was also constructed in Lower Roxbury, usually wooden tenements and rowhouses. The neighborhood also contains an example
of model workers' housing at Frederick Douglas Square (Greenwich, Warwick, and Sussex streets), small brick rowhouses built
in the 1880s. From Roxbury's earliest days, commerce centered at Dudley Station, where Washinton, Warren, and Dudley
streets cross. By the turn of the 20th century, the area was a bustling mix of department stores, residential hotels,
silent movie theaters, banks-even a bowling alley- designed by prominent Boston architects in a rich mixture of revival styles.
Dudley Station itself opened in 1901 as the southern terminus of the Boston Elevated Railway, which ran to Sullivan Square
in Charlestown and later became part of the Orange Line of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. Adapted for use as a bus
station after the removal of the old elevated Orange Line in 1989, the elegant, copperclad Dudley Station is still a major
link in the city's public transit network.
Ferdinand's Blue Store features prominent display windows on the first two
floors. They are framed by the classically inspired decoration of the Renaissance Revival style.
Dominating the intersection
of Washington and Warren streets is Ferdinand's Blue Store, a retailer once famous throughout New England. Designed by local
architect John Lyman Faxon in a mixture of Baroque and Renaissance Revival styles, the five-story limestone and yellow brick
building was completed in 1895, replacing a smaller, wood frame store on the same site. By the 1920s, Ferdinand's had grown
to occupy four buildings, including the area's tallest, Ferdinand's Blue Store Addition, at 17-19 Warren Street.
URBANIZATION
Growth
created the need for more municipal services, so the citizens of Roxbury voted first to incorporate as a city in 1846 and
then to become annexed to boston in 1868. The demand for services was responsible for public works projects such as the Eustis
Street Fire Station (see Boston Landmark panel) and the Cochituate Stand Pipe. In addition to the small parks that dot the
neighborhood, like the one opposite Harriswood Crescent, Roxbury had land available in 1885 to build the city's largest park.
With its 527 acres, Franklin Park represents the ideal of a "country park," a place where city dwellers can find relief from
the urban environment.
Designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Franklin Park is the final jewel, of
the Emerald Necklace, as the seven-mile stretch of public parks land that begins at Boston Common has become known.
ROXBURY
IN THE 20TH CENTURY
Until about 1900, Roxbury was a community of English, Iris, and German immigrants and their descendants.
In the early 20th century, Roxbury became more diverse with the establishment of a Jewish community in the Grove Hall are
along Blue Hill Avenue. Following a massive migration from the South to northern cities in the 1940s and 1950s, Roxbury became
the center of the African-American community in Boston. Social issues and the resulting urban renewal activities of the 1960s
and 1970s contributed to a decline in the neighborhood. More recently, grassroots efforts by residents have been the force
behind revitalizing historic areas and creating Roxbury Heritage State Park. The relocation of the Orange Line and development
of the Southwest Corridor Park spurred major investment, including Roxbury Community College at Roxbury Crossing and Ruggles
Center at Columbus Avenue and Ruggles Street. Commercial development now promises reinvestment in the form of shopping and
related consumer services.
The Cochituate Standpipe, designed by architect Nathaniel J. Bradlee and built in 1869,
modernized Roxbury's water system. It is located on the site of the Revolutionary War fort in Highland Park.
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THE EXPLORING BOSTON'S NEIGHBORHOODS SERIES IS PUBLISHED BY THE BOSTON
LANDMARKS COMMISSION
Official Boston Landmarks are protected from changes that would adversely affect their historic character. For information
on designating local landmark buildings and districts, please contact the Boston Landmarks Commission at 635-3850.
The
Exploring Boston's Neighborhoods Series has been financed in part by a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation
and in part with funds from the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, through the Massachusetts Historical
Commission, Secretary of State Michael Joseph Connolly, Chairman. However, the contents and opinions do not necessarily reflect
the views or policies of the Department of the Interior. This program receives federal financial assistance for the identification
and protection of historic properties. The U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race,
color, national origin, age, gender, or handicap in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated
against in any program, activity or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to:
Office
for Equal Opportunity
1849 C Street NW, Room 1324
U.S. Department of the Interior
Washington, DC 20240.
BOSTON LANDMARKS COMMISSION,
1994
THE ENVIRONMENT DEPARTMENT
CITY OF BOSTON
THOMAS M. MENINO, MAYOR
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