The West End neighborhood of Boston can be categorized today by Massachusetts General Hospital, TD Garden and its towering highrises. The streets are busy and the buildings are shiny and new. A now popular neighborhood for young professionals, the West End was once the home of Boston elites, immigrants with diverse backgrounds and the catalyst of abolition in the Commonwealth. 

The once bustling borough was demolished by the city in the 1960s as part of an Urban Renewal initiative, displacing thousands of community members. Some believe the project skyrocketed Boston’s metropolitan success while others were left homeless as a result. How could an initiative aimed at neighborhood improvement fail so catastrophically? The answer is complicated.

The historical West End

The origins of the West End neighborhood date back to the arrival of the Puritans in the 15th century. A couple of years after the English settled in Plymouth and the Greater Boston Area, William Blaxton settled on a plot of land that would later be recognized as Beacon Hill and the West End. Others quickly followed suit.

The land was originally a swampy peninsula best suited for farm land, but Boston’s quickly growing population pushed the city to grant permission for the marshland to be filled.

The newly created landmass in the West End proved to be useful for the British during the American Revolution, acting as a vantage point against the Continental Army in conflicts such as the Battle of Bunker Hill.

After George Washington allowed Black soldiers into the Continental Army in 1775, Boston became known for its growing population of free Black Americans. The West End saw the highest settlement of this population, and the populous Black neighborhood became an elite community. Fostering the success of abolitionists such as William Cooper Nell and Lewis Hayden, the roots of the abolitionist movement run deep throughout the city of Boston. West Boston’s Black population was a major part of the Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War.

In the decades following, the railroad became a major industrial advantage. A train depot was erected on Causeway Street as part of the Boston and Lowell Railroad, connecting the West End to the greater Northeast and beyond. The original train station is now North Station.

The city’s demand for workers grew alongside its rapid industrialization and the city attracted immigrants from all over the world. Most notably, the Irish flocked to the South End and the Italians were drawn to the North End. As these communities began to quickly populate in the 1800s, the overflow population settled in the West End. In the 100 years following the Civil War, the West End fostered a prospering multi-ethnic community until the demolition of the neighborhood in 1959.

Tom Hynes, the nephew of Mayor Hynes, worked with construction crews during the demolition as his summer job while enrolled at Boston College during June of 1959. He told Boston Magazine in 2018, “I had no real good frame of reference for [the demolition]. Urban renewal was new. It was the hope of the future for cities in the country.” He continued, “Today you have much more mitigation and much more sensitivity to the whole process.”

Hynes didn’t necessarily know what he was signing up for. Over the past couple of decades, his frame of reference has changed. In his Boston Magazine reflection he explained, “I have no reason to feel remorse. I didn’t start the project. I didn’t die.” He said, “Looking at it from a different perspective, could it have been done differently? Sure. Sixty years later and there are still very, very strong feelings from the residents. It was bad. It took their homes. How could they have positive feelings about that?”

The impact of city planning and urban renewal

At the turn of the 20th century, the population of the West End was mainly Jewish and Eastern European. In the latter half of the 19th century, outsiders began calling the neighborhood a “slum” for its aging architecture, large working class population and concerns over its hazardous, dense infrastructure. The “slum” perception of the community led to the city of Boston taking over the neighborhood as part of eminent domain.

According to the city of Boston, the West End was deemed unlivable by a series of studies which ruled that “63 percent of dwelling units were substandard quality” and that “many of these dwelling units had poor lighting and air quality, which could make people sick, and were unsafe in emergency situations, such as fires.” The only solution: a complete demolition.

The West End quickly became the major target of Boston’s Urban Renewal initiative beginning in 1951, when the city announced their intention to level most of the community. The decision was controversial. The project would offer opportunities for modernized infrastructure, but would displace Boston’s fastest growing community.

John Hynes, the mayor at the time, found the West End to be prime real estate with its access to the Charles River and proximity to the growing commercial industries. Following through with the renewal plan, Mayor Hynes displaced the entire community that inhabited the West End over the course of eight years.

According to the West End Museum Archives, “More than 12,000 West Enders are forced to move out of their homes and community. Supplied with inadequate relocation support, most see their future rents more than double.” 

Residents received eviction notices in 1958 as the Boston Development Authority began their renewal project soon after. The demolition would take nearly 15 years to complete. To replace the leveled homes, the city constructed a series of six luxury apartments, all of which would have been unaffordable to original residents.

Despite the city’s promise to move West Enders back into the new-and-improved community, the plan never came into fruition and the thousands of individuals made homeless by the city were forced to relocate themselves.

Living to tell the tale

On a November evening in 2004, the weekend after Thanksgiving, Bruce Gaurino attended a movie at what is now the AMC Theater on Tremont Street in Downtown Boston. That night when he left the show, a voice would tell him to take a stroll through his old stomping grounds. Gaurino hadn’t been back since 1996.

When Gaurino arrived in the West End that evening, he stumbled upon the West End Museum. Since that fateful day in 2004, Gaurino has worked at the museum as a tour guide. This year, he celebrates his 21st year at WEM. Gaurino was born and raised in the North Slope of Beacon Hill and is a major advocate for remembering his neighborhood's roots.

Gaurino’s involvement at the museum comes from a place of pride and the need to keep his story and others like it alive. Gaurino told The Justice on April 25, “I’m still embittered today by the demolition of the West End.” To him, the bulldozing of the community is the prime example of “urban renewal gone wrong.”

At the back of the museum in an area meant for staff only, Gaurino explained a series of photos: The Jewish deli where mothers would shop for Sunday dinner, the old cigar shop and bumper to bumper traffic in the city square. “Each street corner had a bar room, a restaurant, a deli,” said Gaurino.

The photostories did not only detail fond memories. At the center of the collage there was a photo of a man sitting on a crate, overlooking a house turned to rubble. Gaurino pointed at the image and shook his head. He said, “he’s looking at a house that they took down, it very well could’ve been his home that’s destroyed and gone.”

This is not an uncommon tale for the former residents of the West End. Like the man who witnessed a home being destroyed, Elizabeth Kearney Blood protested the removal of her West End home. According to archives at the West End Museum, “they attempted to block entry into their well-maintained home after movers took the front door from its hinges, and otherwise made their presence felt: Elizabeth Blood would eventually sit on the hood of her car and watch as movers carted away her possessions.” Blood was later remembered for her bravery and resistance in the local newspaper published in 1985.

Keeping the spirit alive

The West End Museum is located across from what is now North Station. The museum was created as a way to raise awareness about the series of displacements and to honor the community that was lost in the midst. The two rooms of the museum are small, but their impact is mighty. The exhibits include timelines of the evolving population, details about legislative changes that forced community members out and pieces that memorialize the historic lively neighborhood.

Most museums in the United States are run as non-profit organizations, and WEM is no different. The museum’s executive director, Sebastian Belfanti, was a volunteer for 6 months before taking over as the organization's first full time employee. 

With the help of Belfanti, the museum has been able to expand in areas such as location, museum outreach and fundraising. In an April 25 interview he told The Justice, “There wasn’t a clear picture of exactly what it was going to be. The board had an idea and I understood that idea but there was a lot of learning to happen on both sides.” 

Once Belfanti took charge, he was able to quickly gain traction for the museum's funding. He told The Justice, “We started a big negotiation with Mass General because they were going to, and now have, torn down the two remaining of 12 original buildings in the West End project area. There’s obviously a lot of caveats there.”

Belfanti explained that the negotiation led to WEM earning nearly 3 million dollars in compensation over a period of time. The negotiation was part of the city’s largest mitigation project in history and allowed Belfanti to hire a few more full-time staffers.

As the first full-time employee, Balfanti has seen the museum through plenty of ups and downs. Not only has the museum survived a series of negotiations, but it also survived a flood in 2022 after a pipe burst and left the walls and floors water-damaged. The flood forced a museum closure for a couple of months while fixes were made. 

Thanks to Belfanti’s quick thinking, many of the museum's artifacts survived the flood. As the water seeped in, staff members were able to move gallery pieces out of harm's way. Unfortunately, some of the photographs were lost in the process. Belfanti told the Beacon Hill Times, “Because it’s so hot in here, some of the large images in our permanent exhibit are going to have to go. Because the exhibit is from the Bostonian Society, we don’t have the originals of those images, so if we want to reproduce them, it would be quite a bit of work.”

Despite these difficulties, Belfanti remains hopeful for the future of the museum. Belfanti explained to The Justice that there is potential for expanding the museum into a larger space. WEM is the only urban planning focused museum in the United States and is one of two English speaking ones worldwide. He said, “we have this niche that we’re really trying to figure out. It’s grown a lot from its roots and has had this interesting journey of trying to hold onto those things while also becoming a more established organization.”

The museum’s reach goes far beyond its physical exhibit. WEM’s website details the origins of the West End, tells stories of former residents and offers links to archival pieces of the former West End Newsletter that allowed the community to stay engaged.

Although the vibrant and multicultural West End that was once thriving is gone, its stories are more alive than ever.