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I skipped karate last week to attend a community meeting regarding historic preservation of the neighborhood. It was sponsored by the local community center up the street, and in addition to being attended by a good representation of neighbors, also present were representatives from several local and state wide historic preservation organizations. The purpose of the meeting was twofold; to give the residents tools to help preserving their own homes, but also to look to preserving some historic structures in the neighborhood that are in danger.
This part of Roxbury known now as Highland Park has a unique place in Boston and architectural history. First settled in 1630, at the same time as Boston, it was the next stop on the road out of Boston which was then a narrow peninsula. Roxbury was the first high ground and a commerce center and cross roads to points north, south and west. By both luck and effort it now contains houses from every period from the mid 18th century on.
The neighborhood has had an interesting history. It spent its first hundred years as a quite farming village located at a cross roads for the main roads out Boston to places like New York and points north. Briefly during the revolution it held an important position as the location of two military earthwork forts overlooking Boston during the British Occupation, some of which you can read about in William McCullough’s book 1776. From the late 18th and into the early 19th century it was mostly farmland, orchards actually. Both the Bartlett Pear and the Roxbury Russet Apple are claimed to have been developed here. The soil wasn’t really good for vegetable farming the salient feature to the land in ‘rocks bury’ is the abundance of Roxbury Puddingstone that is just below a thin layer of soil and makes up most of the highlands. In the 1830’s and 40s’ a number of estates erected in the area by prominent Bostonians, notably Alvah Kittredge, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and author and chaplain of the US Senate, Edward Everett Hale. Their houses still exist today.
After the Civil War, the neighborhood began to change dramatically; the large estates were broken up and divided for housing. The construction of the Cochituate Standpipe in 1869 brought abundant water to the area, along with annexation into the city of Boston, brought services and utilities to the neighborhood that the lack of had hindered growth before.
A building boom took place in the 1870’s when numerous brick brownstones were constructed along with other forms of single and multi-family houses. The growth and economic stability maintained into the early part of the 20th century. Around the time of WW- Roxbury started to become the center of the African American community in Boston adding to the already broad mixture of Irish, German and Jewish population. The neighborhood continued to thrive until the 1960s, when demographic changes and white flight hit Boston like many other cities, and the affluent middle-class left the cities for the suburbs. The neighborhood suffered the same blight of many inner-city neighborhoods across the country. It was ignored by the city and redlined by banks and Roxbury became the de facto black ghetto in Boston, notorious to the degree that it earned a mention in Randy Newman 1974 song ‘Rednecks.’ Plagued by drugs and gangs at it’s low point the neighborhood had a occupation rate of barely 30%, every block was lined by abandoned buildings and the night was often illuminated by fires and the abandoned house burned. The sense of abandonment by the City of Boston the residents of Roxbury reached its zenith in 1986 when the residents petitioned to incorporate as a separate city named Mandela. The petition was defeated, but in the early 90’s a coalition of ministers, police and city officials formed to fight the drug and gang problem, and amazingly were successful to the degree that it was called the Boston Miracle. That, the economic boom of the 90’s, and a general movement of populations back to the cities help bring people back to the area.
When we moved here in the spring of 2001, the neighborhood had begun to stabilized and had begun to grow again. We didn’t know the history of the neighborhood at the time; our choice of places to live was based on character, convenience and price. But for me it was a wonderful surprise when I began to learn the history of the surrounding neighborhood.
So going to this meeting was a one more stop on learning about the local history, and giving me a chance to invest in preserving some of that history as well. The various preservation organization, offered a variety of information and tools for saving some of the more endangered buildings in the neighborhood. And it was enlightening to hear the stories of some of the neighbors who had lived their whole lives here and how the neighborhood had changed and how the residents had survived over the years.
A lot of time was spent discussing what we as a neighborhood could do for some specific properties that are privately owned, but are neglected and in immediate danger. Someone brought out copies of a study that had been done 10 years before on the neighborhood outlining the efforts that had been taken up to that time and designating the 10 most endangered dwellings in the neighborhood. Much to my surprise our house had been one of them. In the intervening time one of the structures have been lost, 6 have been restored or rehabilitated, and 3 remain in danger. The one that everyone was most concerned about is the Alvah Kittredge House. Built about 1836 by one of the individuals who were instrumental in the development of the Highland Park neighborhood.
The neoclassical centerpiece of what was once a large estate, it later belonged to Nathaniel J. Bradlee, renowned architect known and the ‘Builder of Boston’ and was responsible for a variety of important buildings through out Boston. That the house has survived nearly 200 years in itself is amazing. The estate was broken up and sold after Bradlee's death in 1888 and the house was reduced in size and moved to face a side street were it has served as a private residence, a rooming house, and most recently the headquarters of Roxbury Action Program, a community organization that was instrumental in preventing the neighborhood from being torn down in the 70’s for Urban renewal. Unfortunately the house proved to be too expensive for them to maintain and has been vacant for about 15 years. 
And so it sits, decaying even though it is on the National Register Historic places since 1973. We came to no conclusions in the meeting, and no specific plans of action were arrived at, but a renewed energy and focus was found. We will be meeting again in a few weeks to take the next step in generating those plans and focus.
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