Join Jamaica Plain History Society on Zoom for a reading of the play Sophia Hayden Deserves Better by Stephanie Alison Walker. In 1891 a brilliant 23-year-old woman from Jamaica Plain won an architecture contest to design the Woman’s Building for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. What should have been the start to a flourishing career in architecture became career-ending. Throughout the two-year process of building The Woman’s Building, the architect quietly endured bullying, micromanaging…

Over the last two decades, JPNDC, Urban Edge and The Community Builders have developed hundreds of affordable homes in the Jackson Sq. neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. Part of this work includes the creation of a new Greenway and a new plaza that will improve the quality of life of thousands of residents across the city. Please join us on Thursday, August 11, at 6pm, for a follow-up community meeting for the Jackson Sq. Greenway. This is…

Once a district that only included the houses of Boston’s elite, the Pond later was put to industrial use as tons of ice were harvested there each winter. Learn about the movers and shakers such as Francis Parkman and James Michael Curley who made their homes on the Pond’s shores. Discover how the Pond was transformed from private estates and warehouses into the parkland we know today. Leaves from the Bandstand, Pond St. and Jamaicaway.…

Date: August 14 Time: 4:00-5:30pm Venue: Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, 24 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain Jazz pianist Miguel Landestoy is part of a generation of Boston musicians whose aim is to strengthen the interconnectivity of music to the community. He is a music educator, arts administrator, and band leader. This is part of the Eliot Schoolyard Concert Series, 15 live events, Sundays at 4pm, June through September at the Eliot Schoolyard.

Tour a residential area that includes a National Historic District. View architecture that spans three centuries; the oldest community theater company in the United States; and an elegant 18th-century mansion that once served as the country’s first military hospital. Learn about the monument that commemorates fallen Civil War soldiers from West Roxbury and about Pauline Agassiz Shaw who established the class that became the model for free, public kindergarten education. We will visit a house…

Date: August 21 Time: 4:00-5:30pm Venue: Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, 24 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain Guitarist Phil Sargent joins pianist Brian Friedland for jazz improvisation with a “boundary-pushing,” “modernist” bent. Jazz Review says, "Sargent’s musicality is asymmetrical parts beauty and power. He also incorporates melodic hooks into the mix, where superior technique, cunning interactions, memorable song-forms and seething solo jaunts attain a near-flawless symmetrical presence.” Friedland's music has been described as "inspirationally crafted,…

Close out the summer with a beautiful night of music and dancing! Guitarist and vocalist Willie J. Laws and pianist Bruce Mattson bring a unique blend of funk, blues, and jazz to Minton Stable Garden in JP on Thursday, August 25 from 5-7PM. Local beer and wine will also be available for purchase. This is a family event, and kids are free! Tickets & more info at https://thetrustees.org/event/78782/. Walk-ins also welcome. BYO chairs, blankets, picnics,…

Developed as a suburb by General William Hyslop Sumner in the mid-nineteenth century, this National Historic District includes one of the finest collections of Victorian houses in the area. The tour includes the ancestral home of the Dole Pineapple Company founder as well as the homes of progressives who were active as abolitionists and women suffragists. Leaves from Loring-Greenough House, 12 South St. Click here to see photographs for the Sumner Hill tour. Developed as…

Date: August 28 Time: 4:00-5:30pm Venue: Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, 24 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain Trio Let’s Vamos is a unique Brazilian-American musical collaboration playing Forró Pé-de-Serra, featuring rhythms such as baião, xaxado and samba. Forró became famous in the 1940s and ‘50s with tunes steeped in the stories and culture of Brazil’s arid Northeast, the Sertão. Accordion, voice and percussion play melodies influenced by the vocal calls sung by cowboys herding cattle…