Alexandra Hotel Renovation | 1769 Washington St | Roxbury

bakgwailo said:
Cause I find the erosion of Roxbury interesting. As gentrification pushes South, the South End magically grows, and Roxbury magically shrinks. Same with Savin Hill: I've seen real estate agents push that all the way out to Upham's corner.

So, yeah, Roxbury ends at Mass Ave, and the South End starts on the other side.
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What's so interesting about it?
 
Suffolk 83 said:
What's so interesting about it?
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That developers and real estate agents pretend to rewrite official neighborhood boundaries so they can pretend to their prospective clients they aren't in neighborhoods that they perceive as African American, poor, and dangerous.

The postal address is Roxbury, they buy and redevelop a property they know is Roxbury, then pretend it isn't at the end because they think wealthy people wouldn't buy in Roxbury. It's a process that has been going on for a long time, and it is quite interesting, to be at least. Rather reverse block busting & red lining in a way.
 
obvious_bicycle said:
Could someone explain how an approved project like this falls through? I find it mind boggling that at today's prices you couldn't more or less make the math work out for any residential project in downtown Boston.
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It's a shame that building can't get redeveloped. At this point if it's more feasible to just tear it down and rebuild it might be a better option. That corner and area is quite dicey, Mass Ave is dirty and there are a lot of unsavory characters hanging around. I had some hope it might start to get better when the Bar Lyon on the corner was there but they closed a few years ago. And of course it's quite close to Mass & Cass so you have that spillover.
 
Newbie here with a factoid that won't matter to most folks: for what it's worth, the longtime municipal boundary between the town of Roxbury and the town/city of Boston ran a few blocks SW of this current junction, IIRC between Hammond and Kendall Streets; also, economically at present, this commercial district is a bit more tied to the South End than to Nubian Square.

Of course, this prosthetic insert is pathetic visually, though not quite as much of a carbuncle as the Lucas in the former Holy Trinity Church near the top end of Shawmut Avenue.
 
I'd like to see BU buy it and use it as a dorm for medica/dental students. I know in the past they rented units directly across the street where the Bank America ghost office is.
 
bakgwailo said:
Cause I find the erosion of Roxbury interesting…. Roxbury magically shrinks.
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+1. My aunt grew up on Mission Hill and will say in the same breathe that she spent her childhood in Roxbury. Her family would go to Dudley for shopping. However at some point Mission Hill became its own thing presumably as a branding/PR move post-orange line realignment.
 
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BostonObserver said:
I'd like to see BU buy it and use it as a dorm for medica/dental students. I know in the past they rented units directly across the street where the Bank America ghost office is.
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If BU wanted to build out more medical campus student housing (as they should) they could do so on the land they own behind their existing med student residence at 815 Albany.
 
Heres a pretty interesting article about Roxburys boundaries.


“The settlement dictated that the land southeast of where Massachusetts Avenue. meets the Charles River would remain as part of Roxbury. Run a line from the boundary marker by Ramsey Park to that point on the Charles, and it’s clear that Northeastern University, the Museum of Fine Arts and much of the Fenway sit well within the historical boundaries of Roxbury. The Longwood Medical area and Harvard’s Medical School and School of Public Health also sit in Roxbury.

But ever since Roxbury was incorporated into Boston in 1868, perceptions of the neighborhood’s boundaries have been in flux.

The Parker Hill section of Roxbury became dominated by Irish immigrants who began calling the area Mission Hill, after the Roman Catholic basilica that was built there.

Mission Hill residents did not begin to reclaim the Roxbury name until the 1970s when tenants facing displacement by a Harvard University land-grab on South Huntington Avenue adopted the name Roxbury Tenants of Harvard…”

https://www.baystatebanner.com/2014/02/19/roxburys-boundaries-buried-in-town-history/
 
I have posted this before, as it shows a border drawn in 1855 whereby the South End extends past Mass Ave to half-way to modern day Melnea Cass.
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There is no official border. By some measures, (zip code and parking rights) this area is South End. By others, it is Roxbury.

I propose calling this area Transmassavia.
 
stick n move said:
Heres a pretty interesting article about Roxburys boundaries.


“The settlement dictated that the land southeast of where Massachusetts Avenue. meets the Charles River would remain as part of Roxbury. Run a line from the boundary marker by Ramsey Park to that point on the Charles, and it’s clear that Northeastern University, the Museum of Fine Arts and much of the Fenway sit well within the historical boundaries of Roxbury. The Longwood Medical area and Harvard’s Medical School and School of Public Health also sit in Roxbury.

But ever since Roxbury was incorporated into Boston in 1868, perceptions of the neighborhood’s boundaries have been in flux.

The Parker Hill section of Roxbury became dominated by Irish immigrants who began calling the area Mission Hill, after the Roman Catholic basilica that was built there.

Mission Hill residents did not begin to reclaim the Roxbury name until the 1970s when tenants facing displacement by a Harvard University land-grab on South Huntington Avenue adopted the name Roxbury Tenants of Harvard…”

https://www.baystatebanner.com/2014/02/19/roxburys-boundaries-buried-in-town-history/
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So... going off topic, apologies, but, having went to a high school (and college) in the area, that makes a bit of sense on the time line - had a few buddies from Mission Hill and there was definitely a framing of the medical district/longwood has renamed Mission Hill into its own thing from Roxbury. That said, the City of Boston, and BPDA (and post office?) put the Roxbury vs. South End at Mass Ave, and I think parking permits are being changed.

Personally I'd go with Lower Roxbury for the area (LoRo? Please Don't Kill me). Either way the area is in need of rejuvenation, and, the right development at the Alexandra could corner stone that.
 
I would use caution basing anything neighborhood related on zip codes. In a city with several post offices and neighborhoods, zip codes were created based on route efficiency and some history, not necessarily neighborhood borders. This mattered more when routes would initiate mostly from the local post offices themselves (instead of let's say the huge facility on Malcolm X Blvd), but they don't really care about redoing things for the sake of neighborhood identity when or if routes and post offices move. That's not relevant to delivering mail.

It's also why there was a big sigh from the post office about that Hyde Park/Mattapan zip code complaint years ago. Folks complaining that the 'incorrect' zip code changed their neighborhood and affected their land value (probably did). But from the post office's perspective it's like damn now we need to cannibalize someone's delivery route and move staff around because people (real estate agents?) are using zip codes for things they weren't created for.
 
Mass ave becoming an arterial (automobile) and later, the clearance for Melnea Cass Blvd, seems to have provided boundaries for demarcation that hadn't existed before. In this 1938 aerial Roxbury and the South End blurred together. My impression is that their distinction was more subtle historically, but has been elevated over time due to demographic and socioeconomic disparities.

Screenshot 2023-08-06 at 23.18.36.png
 
stick n move said:
But ever since Roxbury was incorporated into Boston in 1868, perceptions of the neighborhood’s boundaries have been in flux.
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I'm not sure how relevant the old municipal boundary is to any determination of what constitutes Roxbury today. Nobody, for example, is out there claiming that Roslindale is really part of Roxbury, just because it was at one time. I do think, though, that there is a difference between the Mission Hill example, and what's happening on the South End/Roxbury delineation question. Mission Hill, for a variety of reasons emerged as its own neighborhood, much like JP, Roslindale, and West Roxbury did (all formerly part of Roxbury). That seems like a natural progression as an area becomes more populated and more distinct. But taking two already populated abutting neighborhoods and shifting the boundaries between them definitely seems kind of suspect.
 
bakgwailo said:
That developers and real estate agents pretend to rewrite official neighborhood boundaries so they can pretend to their prospective clients they aren't in neighborhoods that they perceive as African American, poor, and dangerous.

The postal address is Roxbury, they buy and redevelop a property they know is Roxbury, then pretend it isn't at the end because they think wealthy people wouldn't buy in Roxbury. It's a process that has been going on for a long time, and it is quite interesting, to be at least. Rather reverse block busting & red lining in a way.
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I am with you, I have posted about this more than once on here. More generally, it’s interesting simply to behold how people view a certain neighborhood. We get very hung up on “official” neighborhood maps but borders ultimately are what people on the street say they are. Worth noting as I have before that people think “Mission Hill is part of jp” when it’s part of Roxbury and it wasn’t long ago that LMA was, too (the battles waged against Harvard Medical School and BWH were by Roxbury Tenants of Harvard). Few people today would say Fenwood Road is Roxbury. But there it is. And real estate companies wield more influence on this than may be obvious. Google absolutely takes money from them and that explains the totally made up neighborhoods you see only on Google… or in realtors offices. So while it’s unfortunate to observe real estate companies expanding the south end for obvious racist reasons, what’s more concerning is that over time, that does become the new reality with enough money behind it. Sell it as the south end, the maps start showing it as the south end, and there you go.
 
How do parking passes work on these marginal zones? I presume if you have a South End pass you can’t park across Mass Ave in Roxbury and vice versa. Won’t be an issue if this project has on-site parking of course, but if the South End prices cross into larger parts of the Roxbury parking zone will there be an actual boundary that car owners can’t pass?
 
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