Hyde Park, Boston

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Hyde Park is the southernmost neighborhood of the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Hyde Park is home to a diverse range of people, housing types and social groups. It is an urban location with suburban characteristics.

The George Wright Golf Course, named for baseball Hall of Famer and Cincinnati Reds shortstop George Wright, is in Hyde Park. The golf course is a Donald Ross-designed course and is considered one of his finest designs.

Contents 1 History 2 Demographics 3 Historic architecture 4 Schools 5 Transportation 6 Notable residents 7 References 8 External links

[edit] History

Alpheus Perley Blake is considered the founder of Hyde Park and the organizer of the Twenty Associates who developed the town. The Twenty Associates, in addition to Blake, included William E. Abbot, Amos Angell, Ira L. Benton, Enoch Blake, John Newton Brown, George W. Currier, Hypolitus Fisk, John C. French, David Higgins, John S. Hobbs, Samuel Salmon Mooney, William Nightingale, J. Wentworth Payson, Dwight B. Rich, Alphonso Robinson, William H. Seavey, Daniel Warren, and John Williams. It was formed from parts of Dorchester, Milton, and Dedham and was incorporated April 26, 1868. Hyde Park was a separate town in Norfolk County until 1912^[1] when it was annexed by the city of Boston and became part of Suffolk County.

The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which was one of the first official African-American units in the United States Army and was commanded by Col. Robert G. Shaw, was assembled and trained at Camp Meigs in Readville (now a neighborhood within Hyde Park), Massachusetts.

In the 1960s, Hyde Park threatened to secede from Boston over the city's plans to build its planned Southwest Expressway through the town, with interchanges at Gordon Avenue and Neponset Valley Parkway, displacing many residents in the process as it had in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. Hyde Park has also faced other challenges along with its fellow Boston neighborhoods, such as the busing crisis of the 1970s.

Hyde Park has had an active industrial history. For nearly 130 years, it was the main base of the Westinghouse Sturtevant Corporation.^[2] The Readville area was home to the Stop & Shop warehouse until it moved to Assonet in the early 2000s. One of their original stores still stands on Truman Parkway STORE 47, in Hyde Park.

Hyde Park is home to many churches, most notably the Most Precious Blood, Saint Adalbert's and Saint Anne's Catholic Churches, and the Episcopal Parish of Christ Church (now Iglesia de San Juan) designed by Ralph Adams Cram and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^[3]

[edit] Demographics

Historically, Hyde Park's residents were people from Polish, Italian, and Irish ethnicities similar to South Boston, Charlestown, and Dorchester, Massachusetts. Hyde Park is a briskly diversifying neighborhood; as of 2000 the ethnic breakup roughly is 59 % Non-Hispanic White, 39% Haitian or African-American, 17% Hispanic or Latino and 11% Asian-American

[edit] Historic architecture

Hyde Park's Fairmount Hill has many architecturally notable Victorian period houses, including historic Victorian, Queen Anne and Georgian revival designs (photos).

Hyde Park has quite an inventory of warehouses and factory buildings from the nineteenth and early twentieth century in the Readville neighborhood and along the Neponset River and Mother Brook.^[4]

Hyde Park's central business district at Cleary and Logan Squares features a variety of historic buildings, including the town's municipal building, built by the city of Boston after annexation. The English Gothic Church of the Most Precious Blood was built in 1885 (its spire was removed in 1954), and Ralph Adams Cram's Parish of Christ Church in 1895. The town library (a branch of the Boston Public Library since 1912) was built in 1899, and a contemporary addition by Schwartz/Silver Architects doubled the library's size in 2000. An opera house built by Leroy J. French in 1897 stands on Fairmount Avenue, and serves as the current home of Hyde Park's Riverside Theatre Works.

[edit] Schools

Local schools include Academy of the Pacific Rim, Boston Trinity Academy,^[5] Henry Grew Elementary, William Ellery Channing Elementary, William Barton Rogers Middle School, Hyde Park High School, St. Anne's, and Hyde Park Academy.^{[citation needed]} Hyde Park is also home to the private Boston Baptist College, located on Fairmount Hill. Former schools include the Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Memorial School, Most Precious Blood Elementary School, and New Beginnings Academy.

[edit] Transportation

The MBTA Commuter Rail's Fairmount shuttle to Readville is Hyde Park's most direct connection with downtown Boston, servicing both the Fairmount and Readville stations. The Providence/Stoughton branch also stops at Hyde Park station in Cleary Square, and the Franklin branch has scheduled stops among all three station, while servicing mainly the one at Readville. Additionally, several MBTA bus routes through Cleary and Logan Squares provide connections to the Orange and Red Lines, at Forest Hills station in Jamaica Plain and Mattapan station in Dorchester respectively.

[edit] Notable residents

• Rob Consalvo, Boston City Councilor- District 5^[6]
• Felix D. Arroyo, first ever Latino Boston City Councillor^[7]
• Msgr. John D. Day, priest and historian (1912-2007)
• Manny Delcarmen, relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox
• CSM Joseph Fitzpatrick United States Army, Command Sergeant Major, 182nd Cavalry Regiment "The Nation's First"
• Michael DiMare, CFO Boston Financial Data Services, The world's largest mutual fund transfer agency
• John Joseph Enneking, American Impressionist painter (1841-1911)^[8]
• Steven F. Gaughan, Prince George's County, MD Police Officer killed in the line of duty in 2005
• Angelina Emily Grimké, abolitionist and suffragist
• Jason Luisi, 2nd all-time leading scorer in Suffolk University basketball history
• Thomas Menino, current mayor of Boston
• Charles Senior, founder of the Hyde Park Jr. Athletics Association, who was honored by having a baseball diamond named after him at Kelly Field
• Elizabeth Short, actress and murder victim in 1947, who came to be known as "the Black Dahlia"; born in Hyde Park
• Maura Tierney, actress, famous for her roles in NewsRadio and ER

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Google Map of Hyde Park
• City of Boston map of Hyde Park
• Hyde Park Main Streets, first urban Main Streets program in the United States
• Hyde Park Branch of the Boston Public Library
• Most Precious Blood Parish
• Parish of Christ Church/Iglesia San Juan
• Riverside Theatre Works

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Coordinates: 42°15′20″N 71°07′28″W / 42.25556°N 71.12444°W / 42.25556; -71.12444