‘Jamaica Plain Through Time’ Takes Readers on Historical Tour of Neighborhood

Historian Anthony Sammarco's newest book Jamaica Plain Through Time chronicles the neighborhood from the late 19th century through to the 21st century. The following is from Sammarco's book with contemporary photographs by Peter B. Kingman. Known in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the Jamaica End of Roxbury, the neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, evolved from agrarian farmland for over 200 years into one of the more dynamic and inclusive neighborhoods of twenty-first century Boston. Jamaica Plain became one of the earliest streetcar suburbs of Boston with various forms of transportation linking it to downtown Boston. With horse drawn streetcars, the Boston & Providence Railroad as well as the Boston Elevated Railway, by the turn of the twentieth century, the ease of transportation allowed a thriving nexus of cultures to move to a community that not only saw tremendous residential and commercial development, especially with the numerous breweries along the Stony Brook, but also green space and open lands that were laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted as a part of the "Emerald Necklace" of Boston.

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Throwback Thursday Photo of the Day: Casey and the El

As a train travels towards downtown Boston along the Boston Elevated Railway at Forest Hills, a portion of the new Monsignor William J. Casey Overpass (Morton St.) is being constructed above. A commuter train on the former Boston & Providence Railroad route can be seen between the columns at the lower left. Notice the Metropolitan Police traffic booth on the sidewalk to the right. The booth was used by police who directed traffic during the morning and evening rush hours. Courtesy of Anthony Sammarco, via the JP Historical Society.

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