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The West End Museum Walking Tours

Project Overview

The West End Museum and the Reckonings Project have worked together on walking tours to highlight this Boston neighborhood’s rich history. In summer 2024, Emma Beckman served as a research intern at the museum, supported by an Angel David Nieves Memorial Mellon Scholarship. She developed and led a walking tour titled Faces & Places: LGBTQ+ History in the West End, and wrote a number of articles on overlooked LGBTQ+ voices in the neighborhood for the museum’s website. In Fall 2022 Northeastern’s Public History Program, under the leadership of Dr. Angel David Nieves, had the privilege of working with The West End Museum and its Museum Director, Sebastian Belfanti, to further develop three of the museum’s tours: The Women’s Tour, The North Slope Black Tour, and Searching for the Old West End.

“Searching for the Old West End”: The Urban Renewal Walking Tour

Co-created by Laurel Schlegel and Ellie Witham

The West End Museum’s “Searching for the Old West End” walking tour will cover the history of urban renewal in the West End neighborhood of Boston. The urban renewal efforts of the 1950’s transformed not only the West End, but many parts of Boston and the United States more generally. Throughout the 1800’s and early 1900’s the West End neighborhood was a residential and commercial space, transitioning from the home of wealthy Bostonians to a home for newly arriving immigrants from across the world. Today, the area is made up of luxury high rise apartments, the Massachusetts General Hospital and borders on the seat of the Massachusetts government.

To understand this drastic change, the “Searching for the Old West End” walking tour will uncover the policies involved in the three urban renewal projects of the West End as well as the policy makers whose decisions had lasting consequences for West End residents. The voices of the “West Enders” highlight the consequences of poor city planning and the disruption it had for daily lives. Today, city planners and historians study the heartless planning practice in the West End as an example of what not to do.

The tour will walk through hundreds of years of history- from the Indigenous inhabitants of the Shawmut Peninsula, to the colonial settlers who transformed the land into what we call Boston today, to the immigrants who cultivated a culturally rich and diverse community, to the residents who eventually received eviction notices and were forced to relocate. Through each stop on the tour, the layers of West End history, community, and culture will be revealed as we discuss the urban renewal efforts of the 1950’s that effectively erased each unique layer to build a new West End. As Boston and many other cities across the country face an ongoing battle of displacement and development, the history of the West End is as relevant today as it was in the 1950’s and 60’s.

The Black Community in 19th Century Boston: Building Community and Resistance

Co-created by Victoria Dey and Alicia Prainito

The tour will begin with a discussion on slavery in Boston. This will give a background, and then, build its way up to discuss the Civil War. Then, there will be a focus on new beginnings for the next generation in the aftermath of the Civil War. By 1890 in the post-civil war stage, African Americans were making progress, but there were still setbacks such as racism, discrimination, and systematic issues; these will be discussed through specific stories and stopping points. Next, there will be a discussion on the effects of urban renewal and black educational achievements. The tour will conclude that African Americans found space within the individual residences, meeting houses, schools, and cultural centers of the West End. The resistance of the African American community in their passions and pursuits during slavery, the Civil War, the Reconstruction era, and beyond is a clear theme within this history. It continues today as issues with racism and discrimination persist, however, it is within these spaces of tribulations they forged community, resistance, and excellence.

Women of the West End: Alternative Economies, Agency, and Activism

Co-created by Samantha Frost

The Women of the West End Walking Tour will seek to highlight the experiences of the women who lived and worked in the West End of Boston. ­­­This tour will showcase the various ways women were able to earn a living and the jobs they could hold, including burlesque theater and exotic dancing. It will also feature the ways women were able to participate in activist and community organizations, including women’s suffrage and abolitionist organizations. The tour will seek to strike a balance between the everyday and the exceptional, so as not to uphold ideals of exceptionalism, though select prominent women will be highlighted- such as Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first black woman in the U.S. to earn an MD, Maria Stewart, abolitionist and women’s rights activist, and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, founder of the West End Women’s Suffrage League. The tour will argue that women were able to use their agency to participate in various forms of work and community activism, some of which aligned with traditional gendered expectations and others less so, and strives to illuminate as many different experiences as possible.