Churches also sprouted up all over the neighborhood as the population grew. Clubs such as the Jamaica Club and the Tuesday Club were once more prominent than today. Pictures of the early years of the Boston Children’s Museum illustrate the valuable educational role it played in the community.Īt one time German groups, clubs, and churches served immigrants working in the neighborhood. ![]() Topics covered in the chapters of these books include churches, schools, natural features, community service organizations, transportation, early settlers and their estates and houses. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1997. The Making of the Modern City: The Development of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 1632-1920. Ph. While Jamaica Plain has continued to change significantly in the last twenty years, this book is still essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the neighborhood. ![]() Hoffman explains and documents how “the most important voluntary institutions in any late nineteenth-century American community, and especially in the historic land of the Puritan, were those connected with religion” (122). Its historical perspective “traces the dramatic transformation of Jamaica Plain into a modern urban neighborhood” (xxii). The book mines many primary sources including church records to develop a full picture of the social networks and civic spirit that composed a strong sense of local community and public culture in this neighborhood. ![]() The author concludes, “if ever we are going to cope with the problems of our cities, we need to understand better the historic neighborhood and how it functioned within the urban system of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries” (248). No other book presents such a detailed historical and social analysis of any Boston neighborhood as Hoffman’s Local Attachments does for Jamaica Plain. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994. Local Attachments: The Making of an Urban American Neighborhood, 1850-1920. To what, here and now, am I to be faithful” (79)? And this vision forces me to contemplate not what I am meant to do with my days in this place on earth, but what I am meant to be. To be at rest is to see with clarified vision. She writes, “When I moved here, I didn’t expect that my quest for community would lead me to craftsmen, much less drug dealers or humble Xerox-shop managers, or that a world of Mondays would come to echo the wisdom of the Psalms” (86).Īfter getting a coffee on Sunday morning at Sorella’s café, she reflects on the meaning of Sabbath rest, “To be at rest is to observe the bones of God’s work through man in the world laid bare. Some of her writing explores the spiritual dimension of community, at least in a general way. The author writes about finding and building community in an urban neighborhood, as well as many perennial concerns like balancing career and parenting.Īlthough Hirsch encounters and writes about the diverse aspects of Jamaica Plain, her perspective is basically that of a professional from the Back Bay who is trying to connect with the everyday life of a gentrifying neighborhood. Kathleen Hirsch's first-hand account of Jamaica Plain in the 1990s is well-written. A Home in the Heart of the City: A Woman’s Search for Community. Boston 200 Neighborhood Series (Boston: Boston 200 Corp., 1976), 7.Įarly Infrastructure: Water Supply & Transportation Systems ![]() The home was later used by Washington's troops as a hospital during the Revolutionary War. In 1774 after opposition from his neighbors, Loring fled from his house to join with the British in Boston. The Loring-Greenough House was built in 1760 for Joshua Loring, a British Naval Commodore and loyalist appointed to the governor’s council. William Gordon, its first pastor, served as chaplain in the Provincial Congress in 1775. The first church in Jamaica Plain, the Third Parish in Roxbury, was established in 1769. John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians. The donors “stipulated that the school be open to all children, white, black, and Indian.” The current Eliot School building dates to 1832. The Eliot School was established in 1676 with a grant of land from the Thomas and Ruggles families and later an endowment from Rev. Early settlers, like William Curtis who built his house in 1639, were mostly farmers and fruit growers. Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood was a part of the separate town of Roxbury from 1630 until 1851. An influential center of West Roxbury, the town was annexed in 1874 to the city of Boston.
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