Did You Know? Home For Aged Couples Has Plot at Forest Hills Cemetery

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Richard Heath

Home for Aged Couple lot at Forest Hills Cemetery Near the Walk Hill Street gate

Home for Aged Couple lot at Forest Hills Cemetery Near the Walk Hill Street gate

Richard Heath

Home for Aged Couple lot at Forest Hills Cemetery. Near the Walk Hill Street gate

One of the joys of living in JP is taking walks in Forest Hills Cemetery and discovering something new. While many residents visit the graves of the famous — perhaps most notably poet e.e. cummings — the cemetery also honors the forgotten.

For instance, there's a plot for the Home for Aged Couples. It was founded in  1884 to care and provide housing for poor married couples. The campus, now operated by Rogerson Homes, still stands at Columbus and Walnut avenues.

It began in a row house at 431 Shawmut Avenue in the South End, with the name "New England Society for the Aged and Friendless." In 1887 it bought the Edward Rice estate on Walnut Avenue and School Street.  About the same time it bought a lot at Forest Hills Cemetery for couples, widows and widowers who had no families and could not afford their own burials.

Home for Aged  Couples Columbus Avenue.This wing was completed  in  May 1929. Coolidge. Shepley,Richardson + Abbott architects.

Richard Heath

Home for Aged Couples Columbus Avenue.This wing was completed in May 1929.  Coolidge, Shepley,Richardson + Abbott architects.

About 1850 Thomas Lord built the first house in Egleston Square on this three-acre lot, which he purchased from the Roxbury Latin School. Lord called the area Egliston (sic) Square.

If you'd like to pay your respects, the marker for the Home for Aged Couples is near the Walk Hill Street gate.

For more on the Home for Aged Couples, please see this post from the indispensable "Do You Remember Jamaica Plain?" blog.

[Editor's note: We've fixed an error about the current use of the campus.]

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