Roxbury Infill and Small Developments

Scott said:
Notice the municipal boundary between Roxbury and Boston in the Back Bay

A new & complete map of the city of Boston, with part of Charlestown, Cambridge & Roxbury - Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center

collections.leventhalmap.org collections.leventhalmap.org

In colonial times the South End went from the neck to the Townhouse

Edit: https://www.southendhistoricalsociety.org/south-end-history-part-i-the-new-south-end/

This map^ puts Northampton Street in Boston
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Yeah no I knew Roxbury had the back bay, I just never really thought of the south end as being a name in use pre landfill and more so I’m a bit confused about Brookline street being the border of colonial era south end—isn’t that well into 19th century landfill territory?
 

Permit Issued for Roxbury Multifamily​

“A permit valued at $9.8M has been issued to begin construction on an approved multifamily project set for 273 Highland Street in Roxbury. The phased permit allows for rough in only for the 4-story, 23-unit building…..”

273 highland

https://www.bldup.com/posts/permit-issued-for-roxbury-multifamily
 
stick n move said:

Permit Issued for Roxbury Multifamily​

“A permit valued at $9.8M has been issued to begin construction on an approved multifamily project set for 273 Highland Street in Roxbury. The phased permit allows for rough in only for the 4-story, 23-unit building…..”
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This is currently an empty lot close to the Orange Line at Jackson Square. I'm very glad to see this one go forward.
 
themissinglink said:
This is currently an empty lot close to the Orange Line at Jackson Square. I'm very glad to see this one go forward.
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Speaking of near Jackson Square, has there ever been any word of Roxbury Community College selling/developing those lots across Columbus? That seems like the next low-hanging fruit to build up that area, especially once Columbus gets its bus lane extension that will make it at least a little less highway-like. I’ve basically never seen the two smaller ones used and I used to walk by there a lot.
 
thepianoperson said:
Speaking of near Jackson Square, has there ever been any word of Roxbury Community College selling/developing those lots across Columbus? That seems like the next low-hanging fruit to build up that area, especially once Columbus gets its bus lane extension that will make it at least a little less highway-like. I’ve basically never seen the two smaller ones used and I used to walk by there a lot.
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RCC is landbanking them according to my friend who was in leadership there. It's a travesty
 
Scott said:
And if you are really old school, anything west of Arlington Street to Brookline is Roxbury and anything east to the ocean is the Old South End.
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Which kind of illustrates the futility of determining an official demarcation. Some of the current South End, all of JP/Roslindale/West Roxbury were once part of Roxbury. I'm not sure it's ever clear what precisely constitutes modern Roxbury.
 
HenryAlan said:
Which kind of illustrates the futility of determining an official demarcation. Some of the current South End, all of JP/Roslindale/West Roxbury were once part of Roxbury. I'm not sure it's ever clear what precisely constitutes modern Roxbury.
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I've ranted about this frequently on here, but the modern era has seen an unprecedented ossification of spatial reality. That is, every square inch of land is defined, ordered on some "level" (sub-neighborhood, neighborhood, city, etc) and stays that way for eternity. The idea of even national borders is only the product of imperial regimes, for the most part. And it wasn't until very recently in history, with few exceptions, that cities or towns had any "official" borders (except for the borough towns and city states). Then, only within the last century, you have the rise of formalization of boundaries of areas that once had not "official" border beyond whatever the commonly held opinion was of the people who lived there.

Jamaica Plain is a great example: there never was a "town" of Jamaica Plain; it was just an area of West Roxbury, previously of Roxbury. And of course areas surrounding major, named intersections also used to be their own thing—Forest Hills, Cleveland Circle... are these "neighborhoods" of JP or Brighton? Not really, since they straddle different neighborhood and moreover they kind of have an identity (to a local) that transcends "ranking" them in the "neighborhood > town > state"ordering system that encompasses every piece of land today.

And areas and identities do shift over time. Modernity keeps everything "stuck"; neither (formal, at least) national nor neighborhood borders ever change, which has positive and negative aspects. Jamaica Plain is never going to grow bigger than it is, no matter how many JP expats move just over its borders. As for Roxbury, you might make the case that "Roxbury" as an identity is a lot smaller now than it once was. This gets tricky, however, because the forces behind the fact that people now identify Lower Roxbury as "the South End" (ditto for people thinking Mission Hill is part of JP, not Roxbury) are reflective in large part of racial and economic implicit biases. Roxbury is associated with black people and crime, and the South End is associated with gentrification and white people. Realtors know this; back in my apartment-hunting days it was comical (if not depressing) to see how far realtor ads would go to avoid saying the advertised building was in Roxbury. So this is the aspect of neighborhood name flexibility that should give us pause, since the main valid argument against just going with the flow and letting people's local, if technically inaccurate, perceptions of neighborhoods is that this basically allows a 'colonization of territory by naming" to happen, where the inevitable pattern is that wealthy or gentrified (and usually white) neighborhoods expand into territories associated with minorities and poverty.

Interesting to also note here that Longwood Medical Area is all Roxbury and that's not even a particularly historical designation—the housing group that fought Harvard Medical School and BWH's expansions in the 60s was and remains the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard. I do wonder what someone would have called the LMA "proper" back in, eg, 1960—anyone know? LMA wasn't a term back then, so eg, if someone asked the principal of Windsor School in 1960 what neighborhood it was in, what would they say? My guess is the response would be yet another example of fluidity of geography: "it's on the border with Brookline". Sometimes, the best way to describe something is by describing what it's close to, rather than defining what it is.

Anyway, I think the naming stuff is really interesting and agree with @HenryAlan that people get too hung up on what things technically are or are not, but still, there are other factors that are hidden away in what we choose to call our urban territories and they are important to consider as well.
 
stick n move said:
Dudley crossing is complete:

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View attachment 59316https://davissquarearchitects.com/projects/dudley-crossing
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I always liked this intersection—it has the feeling of what it probably is or was, which is a notable crossroads of important roads. I hope this project can add some activation via street level retail, but the buildings themselves already look like the enclose the intersection nicely.
 

Roxbury Development Site Acquired for $3M​

“Shanti Acqusition LLC has acquired 66 Geneva Avenue in Roxbury from New Faith Missionary Church for $3,000,000. In November 2022, the developer won approval to replace the existing one-story building on the site with a 5-story residential project. The building will feature 50 condos ranging in size from studios to 3 bedrooms.”

66 geneva


https://www.bldup.com/posts/roxbury-development-site-acquired-for-3m
 
-Phase 1 is complete, phase 2 which was originally 44 units of elderly housibg is now 48 units of affordable multi family housing. Approved.

280-290 Warren Street​

1739979791177.jpeg

“The Phase 2 portion of the project, to be known as One Waverly, which was originally approved for 44 units of elderly multi-family residential housing is now being proposed for a total of 48 units of affordable multi-family rental housing for households with incomes below 30% of average median income (AMI) and up to 120% of AMI. There will be 3,483 sf of available commercial space at the ground floor, and 24 garage parking spaces. In addition, the Phase 2 building will meet Passive House sustainability requirements.”

https://www.bostonplans.org/projects/development-projects/280-290-warren-street
 
#bancars said:
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Im really happy to see nubian developing, but man this really sucks from that article.
  • The country's racial wealth gaps are projected to worsen by then, with Black Americans' wealth dropping to zero by 2053, per a report by Prosperity Nowand the Institute for Policy Studies.
  • The stakes may be particularly high in Boston, which in 2021 had one of the largest racial homeownership gaps in the nation.
 
stick n move said:
Im really happy to see nubian developing, but man this really sucks from that article.
  • The country's racial wealth gaps are projected to worsen by then, with Black Americans' wealth dropping to zero by 2053, per a report by Prosperity Nowand the Institute for Policy Studies.
  • The stakes may be particularly high in Boston, which in 2021 had one of the largest racial homeownership gaps in the nation.
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You might find the most recent episode of the UCLA Housing Voice podcast interesting, as it covers research on trends affecting majority-Black neighborhoods nationwide:

 
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