Archive for the ‘The South End’ Category
March 7, 2008
This Tuesday, March 11, over forty restaurants will participate in the South End’s most significant culinary event of the year, Taste of the South End 2008. Guests will sample dishes from many of the neighborhood’s best chefs and enjoy wines from around the world. Proceeds assist the AIDS Action Committee in the fight against new cases of AIDS and the care of those living with AIDS.
Doors open at 6:30 at the Boston Center for the Arts. General Admission tickets are $95. The AAC also offers VIP tickets for only $250. Your VIP donation supports a great cause and gives you admission to the 6:00pm Chef’s reception, where you can meet the chefs while enjoying champagne and other treats not available to the general admission crowd. In addition, you gain access to the VIP lounge, the silent auction, and admission to the 9:00pm VIP after-party at the South End’s hottest night spot, the Beehive.
Purchase your tickets from the Taste of the South End 2008 website.
February 29, 2008
We recently touched on how the lack of decent mass transit hurt the South End. Boston’s mass transit needs to expand, and this guy created a fantasy subway plan that benefits the South End. Seven Green Line stops between New England Medical Center and Dudley Square is genius!
I’d like to see it follow Washington Street, turning south at Columbia Square, to the Boston Medical Center. Then it could head out to South Bay before turning west to Dudley Square.
My plan is not the most direct route, but it connects Boston Medical Center to New England Medical Center. It also hits a bunch of big employment centers in South Bay- not just retail, but also the light industry in the area.
Does anyone have suggestions for other South End or Boston train lines? Where else could we put stations to benefit the city and the neighborhood?
Mass transit could be a great help to the South End and South Bay, but after the Big Dig, the city probably isn’t ready for more big-digging.
February 24, 2008
This isn’t about a bunch of Colonial revolutionaries dumping tea into the harbor; this is far more significant. It’s about the hallowed grounds of 53 Berkeley Street (also know as 9 Appleton Street).
53 Berkeley Street once housed a Unitarian church, but in 1967, a couple of guys turned it into the Boston Tea Party, creating one of the most important music halls in Rock and Roll history. Based on Boston’s proximity to England, most British Invasion bands played their earliest American gigs at the Tea Party. A good show meant the band could see the rest of America; a bad show sent the boys back to England.
Almost everyone played the legendary hall, including Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, and Fleetwood Mac (back when they were British!) The massively-influential Velvet Underground shot an album cover in front of the marquee, and the equally-influential, but long-forgotten MC5 tore the place up.
In 1969, the club moved to Lansdowne Street, where Avalon made its home. The empty space on Berkeley was converted into apartments, and later sold as condos. Only a small plaque on the side of 7-Eleven hints at the building’s former greatness.
9 Appleton Street, #M-2
$459,000
Beds: 1/Baths: 1
SQ. FT.: 830
$/SQ. FT.: 553
February 23, 2008
South End real estate seems to follow a standard: homes closer to Back Bay cost more than their remote counterparts. I have no research to support this point, but it appears proximity to mass transit, large employers, and retail shopping sustain higher prices on the northwest side, while a homeless shelter, a small warehouse district, and the junction of two interstates detract from the less-expensive southeast side. And we have a hospital that hosts the area’s best methadone clinic.
Perhaps something else made the southeast less desirable for residential building and more attractive to light industry. I’d love to hear what the pros have to say… John K, Anthony, any thoughts? Sunshine & Lollipops?
The following price reductions follow my theory:
40 Lawrence Street, #3
New Price: $439,900
Original Price: $449,900
Beds: 2/ Baths: 1
SQ. FT.: 556
$/SQ. FT.: $791
567 Tremont Street, #14
New Price: $439,000
Original Price: $445,000
Beds: 1/ Baths: 1
SQ. FT.: 670
$/SQ. FT.: $655
700 Harrison Avenue, #513
New Price: $449,000
Original Price: $499,900
Beds: 1/ Baths: 1
SQ. FT.: 752
$/SQ. FT.: $597
Photo Source
February 16, 2008
Charles Bulfinch, architect of many of Americs’a great historical sites, designed South End’s Columbia Square as one large park, but a city planner nixed the idea, concluding two smaller parks better served the city. How he reached this conclusion, I’ll never know, but the resulting Franklin Square and Blackstone Square mirror each other, separated by the ruinous traffic of Washington Street. By 1901, the Elevated Railway, rising thirty feet above Washington Street, further wounded the park(s) with horrendous noise and a heavy blanket of soot from each passing train.
In the 1980′s, the trains disappeared and the elevated tracks vanished, but South End’s main thoroughfare still slices this stately park into two identical pieces.
The following homes have park views and, more significantly, sit within two blocks of the sweet, yeasty cinnamon rolls offered by Flour:
411 Shawmut Avenue, #1
Beds: 1/Baths: 1.5
SQ.FT.: 1116
$/SQ.FT.: 390
$434,900
42 West Newton Street, #3-19
Beds: 1/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 563
$/SQ.FT.: 691
$389,000
34 East Newton Street, #5
Beds: 1/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 440
$/SQ.FT.: 657
$287,000
And, as a bonus, this one has a view of Cathedral housing development:
11 George Street, #15A
Beds: 2/Baths: 2
SQ.FT.: 1109
$/SQ.FT.: 585
649,000
February 10, 2008
Within two weeks of the Church of Scientology acquiring the Alexandra Hotel, asking prices of neighboring homes dropped dramatically. Ten homes within a few hundred yards of their new, high profile Boston headquarters dropped in price an average of $55,000, with two homeowners slashing $100,000 from the original asking price.
Is it Tom Cruise, or is it coincidence? I need to defer to my LA crew on this one…
The biggest price reductions:
499 Shawmut Avenue, #4
New Price: $849,000
Original Price: $949,000
Beds: 2/Baths: 2
SQ.FT.: 1772
$/SQ.FT.: $479
19 Worcester Street, #3
New Price: $1,325,000
Original Price: $1,425,000
Beds: 3/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.: 2078
$/SQ.FT.: $638
57 E. Concord, #5
New Price: $649,900
Original Price:$719,900
Beds: 1/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 1312
$/SQ.FT.:495
February 8, 2008
Most of Boston’s neighborhoods posses a defining quality usually summed up in a word or two: Beacon Hill, money; Back Bay, fashion; North End, food. Bay Village, however, lacks any simple word-association. Moreover, most couldn’t begin to describe Bay Village because nobody knows it exists, not even most Boston residents.
Those who mention Bay Village often mistakenly refer to Bay Village and the South End as one entity; however, since the Sixties, a 300 foot chasm created for the Mass Pike separates these former neighbors. Although the Pike now separates the two, they never should have been considered a single unit. They don’t fit together in any way; craftsmen built them in different styles during different periods. Several better-known neighborhoods, including Beacon Hill, could claim ownership of the Village, but I suspect the seven hundred Bay Village residents would throw a fit, arguing its half-dozen streets make up an area with its own resident association, its own resident parking permits, and its own neighborhood identity.
A single, difficult-to-find entrance keeps the neighborhood well-hidden and quiet. The close-knit community keeps the streets clean of trash and illegal activity. Nearby Combat Zone dwellers found the quiet, gas-lit neighborhood perfect for all kinds of illegal activity, notably prostitution, but proud residents tracked license plates, writing johns at home to discourage their return. The effort paid off, giving Bay Village a small-town feel in the middle of a big city.
16 Melrose Street,#3
$619,000
Beds: 2/Baths: 2
SQ.FT.: 1050
$/SQ.FT.: $590
18 Melrose Street, #2
$799,000
Beds: 2/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.: 1351
$/SQ.FT.: $591
38 Melrose Street, #2
$1,160,000
Beds: 2/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.: 1732
$/SQ.FT.: $670
28 Fayette Street
$1,399,000
Beds: 3/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.: 2669
$/SQ.FT.: $524
February 4, 2008
The long-neglected Alexandra Hotel, straddling Roxbury and the South End at Mass Ave and Washington Street, finally found a new owner: the Church of Scientolgy. The church, looking to increase it’s Boston presence, purchased the 22,000 square foot structure for renovation
Following a South End tradition, the Alexandra fell into disrepair shortly after its construction in 1875. Owners converted the hotel into a rooming-house, then abandon the building in the early sixties. Investors battled the City of Boston and the Boston Redevelopment Authority over development issues for years before accepting an offer from the Church of Scientology. A church representative declined to discuss the sale price, but recently, the building carried a $3.5 million asking price.
The good news for us: the sale means Boston is now officially safe from Xenu’s grasps.
February 1, 2008
“By 1900, with 37,000 lodgers, the South End was the nation’s largest rooming-house district–a drab, dismal quarter which one social worker called ‘the city wilderness.’ Its once peaceful squares were now hemmed in by sooty factories, noisy machine shops, dusty brickyards, grim warehouses, and the incessant rumble of trucks and steam engines.”
J Anthony Lucas reviewed the South End in less-than-glowing terms in his Pulitzer Prize winning assessment of Boston’s mid-Seventies racial struggle, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. One of the three families, the Diver family, purchased 118 W. Newton in 1970 for only $27,000. As they moved into the decrepit bow front that August, Joan Diver wondered what she got herself into:
“It was a total disaster, she thought, beyond all hope. The old spruce floors were rotting, the window sashes were splintered, the plaster ornaments had fallen from much of the parlor ceiling. The bottom two floors were livable, but the top two looked as if they barely survived a hurricane–wooden lath showing through the walls, wire and cables trailing along the halls, two bathrooms with exposed plumbing and uncovered plasterboard.”
I recently visited the home, trying to imagine the chaotic street of thirty years ago: a sharp contrast to the quiet, tree-lined street it appeared in 2008. In a 1975 letter to Mayor White, Joan bitterly complained of the neighborhood:
“In the last week, there have been six muggings on our block of West Newton Street alone, three within a 24-hour period within ten yards of our house. Colin himself apprehended a mugger last night”
Actually, Colin brained the guy with a Louisville Slugger, breaking the bat over dude’s head…
I’m confident nobody in 1970 pictured the South End a beautiful residential neighborhood. I’m equally confident nobody imagined a South End real estate transaction breaking six figures. Make no mistake: it’s not Hingham. It’s an inner city neighborhood with inner city problems, but the stunning Victorian architecture makes the homes of the South End some of the most desirable in the city.
118 W. Newton Street
$2,495,000
Beds: 4/ Baths: 2.5
SQ. FT.: 3755
$/SQ.FT.: 664
Also on the Diver’s block:
135 W. Newton, #2
$1,395,000
Beds: 3/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.:1954
$/SQ.FT.: 714
154 W. Newton, #1&2
$1,095,000
Beds: 3/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.: 2487
$/SQ.FT.: 440
Recent Sweet Digs Posts:
South Salem Opportunities Near Salem State
How the Other Half Can Almost Live
A Family Affair
January 29, 2008
Ten weeks ago, three baby condos sold near Columbus Avenue and Worcester Street. They range in price from $264,000 to $400,000, making size the most notable feature; the largest barely breaks 600 square feet. In most apartments, 500 square feet makes for a decent bedroom; in the South End, you get to squeeze everything you own into one room.
36 Greenwich Park, #2
Beds: 1/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 620
$/SQ.FT.: 645
Price: $400,000
547 Columbus Avenue, #3F
Beds: 1/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 494
$/SQ.FT.: 666
Price: $329,000
16 Garrison Street, #510
Beds: 1/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 410
$/SQ.FT.: 645
Price: $264,500
These three condos have the added benefit of a great location: all sit near Boston House of Pizza (open until 1 am weekends) and New York Pizza (open until 3am weekends.) Puritanical Boston makes amenities like this invaluable to the late-night-munchies crowd.
Header image: “Rainy Day, Columbus Avenue, Boston,” by Childe Hassam, 1885
