Mission Hill, Boston


Mission Hill is a ¾ square mile, primarily residential neighborhood of Boston that lies between Roxbury and Dorchester. It is home to several hospitals and universities, including Brigham and Women's Hospital and New England Baptist Hospital. Mission Hill is known for its brick row houses and triple decker homes of the late 19th century. The population was estimated at 15,883 in 2011.

Location

The neighborhood is roughly bounded by Columbus Avenue and the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury to the east, Ruggles Street to the northeast and the Olmsted designed Riverway/Jamaicaway, and the town of Brookline to the west. The Historic District was designated by the Boston Landmarks Commission in 1985 and is roughly bounded by Smith Street, Worthington Street, Tremont Street, and Huntington Avenue. The Mission Hill neighborhood is immediately north of the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. It is served by the MBTA Green Line E branch and the Orange Line, and is within walking distance of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Gardner Museum. "The Hill" overlaps with about half of the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, home to 21 health care, research, and educational institutions which together provides the largest employment area in the City of Boston outside of downtown Boston. Due to these adjacencies, the neighborhood is often struggling with institutional growth taking residential buildings and occupying storefront commercial space. Recent years have seen new retail stores, restaurants, and residential development giving the neighborhood a stronger political voice and identity, as some of the educational institutions have made commitments to house all or most of their about 2000 undergraduate students in newly erected campus housing, including several new high-rise dormitories. People aged 20 to 24 account for 32% of the population currently living in Mission Hill.
The Mission Hill Triangle is an architectural conservation district with a combination of freestanding houses built by early wealthy landowners, blocks of traditional brick rowhouses, and many triple-deckers. Many are now condominiums, but there are also several two-family and some single-family homes.
The neighborhood was named in March 2008 as one of 25 "Best ZIP Codes in Massachusetts" by The Boston Globe, citing increased value in single-family homes, plentiful restaurants and shopping, a marked racial diversity, and the behavioral fact that 65% of residents walk, bike, or take public transit to their work.

Geography

The neighborhood has two main commercial streets: Tremont Street and Huntington Avenue. Both have several small restaurants and shops. Mission Hill is at the far western end of Tremont Street, with Government Center at the far eastern end. Mission Hill’s main zip code is 02120. Additionally, a very small portion of the southeastern edge uses the code 02130, areas adjacent to the Longwood Medical Area use 02115 and two streets on the far western edge use 02215.
Parker Hill, Roxbury Crossing, the Triangle District, Back of The Hill, and Calumet Square are areas within the Mission Hill, an officially designated neighborhood in Boston.
Brigham Circle, located at the corner of Tremont and Huntington is the neighborhood's commercial center, with a grocery store, drug stores, bistros, banks, and taverns. Additionally, two other smaller commercial areas are in the neighborhood: Roxbury Crossing and the corner of Huntington and South Huntington next to the Brookline line.
One block up the hill from Brigham Circle is Boston's newest park, Kevin W. Fitzgerald Park created when a new $60-million mixed use building was completed in 2002.
On Tremont Street is Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, an eponymous landmark building that dominates the skyline of the area. The church was chosen as the location for the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy on Saturday, August 29, 2009.
Also nearby is the recently restored Parker Hill Library, the neighborhood branch of the Boston Public Library, and designed by architect Ralph Adams Cram in 1929. The city used eminent domain to acquire the land for both the library and the adjacent Mission Hill playground.
Atop the hill are the New England Baptist Hospital and the Parker Hill Playground, which extends from the hospital grounds down Parker Hill Avenue. Parker Hill Playground, originally proposed in 1915 by then Boston Mayor James Curley, is also one of the highest points in the city where one can enjoy a panoramic view of downtown Boston, Boston Harbor, and the Blue Hills.
Always considered a part of Roxbury until a generation ago, Mission Hill is now most often regarded as a conceptually distinct section of the city. However, neighborhood boundaries in Boston are inherently ambiguous, and whether or not Mission Hill is adjacent to Roxbury or remains a section of Roxbury is sometimes a subject of vigorous debate.

Green space

There is a park in Mission Hill that is a walking, sitting park for the community, called the Kevin W. Fitzgerald Park. Formerly named Puddingstone Park because of the local rock sources, the park includes lawn space and asphalt walkways for people to walk on. The walkway is lined with benches for people to rest and enjoy the various views such as Lower Roxbury, the Fenway, and Back Bay. This park was previously one of the five quarries in Boston. This park was known as the Harvard Quarry. The operation of the quarry was ceased around 1910 and this left a 65-foot-high quarry wall. In 1964 Harvard University filled the land in. In the 1990s, the open space planning committee worked on preserving public access to the quarry. The community and the developer decided together that the walls of the old quarry would be preserved and they would create a new 6-acre open space for the community at the top of the puddingstone bowl. Harvard Quarry Urban Wild was then named Puddingstone Park. In November 2006, the park was renamed Kevin Fitzgerald Park in honor of the former Massachusetts State Representative.
Most of the open space in Mission Hill is privately or institutionally owned. It will be hard to protect this land from being developed on. Most of the land is already being developed on for more housing and institutional purposes. Only 6.2 acres of land are protected for preservation of public access.
McLaughlin Park is another park located in Mission Hill. An article posted in the Mission Hill Gazette on April 3 talked about the park being renovated on a $430,000 budget. A direct quote taken from the article states the plan for the renovations, "The City presented a plan for the renovation in September that would lay a loop path around the upper terrace; build an overlook area along the southeastern portion of the terrace; repair Ben's Tower; add a new set of stairs from the upper terrace to the lower terrace; and address other maintenance issues." Ben's tower is a memorial for a child named Ben who was from Mission Hill and enjoyed playing in the McLaughlin Park. Ben died of cancer.

Demographics

According to the American Community Survey, Mission Hill's population was 15,883 in 2011. It listed 47.8% of the people in the community as white, 18.0% as Black or African American, 17.5% as Hispanic or Latino, 14.1% as Asian, 1.2% as "two or more races", and 1.4% as "other". Given its proximity to many colleges and universities, and because it houses several dormitories, ages in the neighborhood centered near the early to mid-20s. The ACS estimated residents between the ages 20–24 make up most of the population of Mission Hill, Boston.
AgePercentAgePercent
Under 5 years3.1%45 to 49 years3.9%
5 to 9 years3.2%50 to 54 years2.7%
10 to 14 years4.3%55 to 59 years3.1%
15 to 17 years2.2%60 to 64 years3.2%
18 and 19 years7.9%65 to 69 years1.8%
20 to 24 years32.3%70 to 74 years2.9%
25 to 29 years9.4%75 to 79 years2.0%
30 to 34 years6.0%80 to 84 years1.4%
35 to 39 years4.4%85 years and over2.4%
40 to 44 years3.9%

The 2011 ACS listed median household income in Mission Hill as $33,432 during a 12-month span. 21.1% of the households made less than $10,000 yearly. The median family income during a 12-month span was $36,237. The highest percent of family income accounts for 12.0% and they make between $75,000 to $99,999 yearly. Out of 6,230 households, 1,300 received food stamps/SNAP over a 12-month span. However, Mission Hill Neighborhood Housing Services claims that "Mission Hill's population of 18,722 people is racially and economically diverse" on its website. Seeming disparities in statistics might recurringly result from the very large number of short-term undergraduates and visiting international faculty, postdocs, researchers, and professional degree candidates who may or may not appear in statistical data sets that are cited for publication.

History

Like the adjacent neighborhood of Jamaica Plain to the south, Mission Hill was once a neighborhood of adjacent Roxbury before Roxbury's annexation by Boston. According to maps from the period, it was often referenced as Parker Hill. After annexation the area slowly came to be considered a separate neighborhood of its own right. The majority of government, commercial, and institutional entities list "Mission Hill" in the breakdown of Boston neighborhoods and its boundaries generally agreed upon.
Until the American Revolution, Mission Hill supported large country estates of wealthy Boston families. Much of the area was an orchard farm, originally owned by the Parker family in the 18th century. Peter Parker married Sarah Ruggles, whose family owned large areas of land including most of what became known as Parker Hill. Parker's life ended when a barrel of his own cider fell on him. An annual 'cider press' neighborhood event is held in the 'top of the hill' park adjacent to New England Baptist Hospital, commemorating this neighborhood narrative.
The orchard continued for some time thereafter, but gradually pieces of the land were sold and developed. Boston's reservoir was once located at the top of the hill. Many of the older apple trees along Fisher Avenue and in an undeveloped area of the playground are probably descendants of the Parker family's original trees. The lower portion of the eastern hill was a puddingstone quarry with large swaths owned by merchants Franklin G. Dexter, Warren Fisher, and Fredrick Ames.
Maps of the area indicate Mission Hill development began before the Fenway and Longwood Medical Area. Huntington Avenue, now one of the main connections to the rest of Boston, once stopped at the intersection of Parker Street, near the present-day site of the Museum of Fine Arts. Up until that time, Mission Hill was connected via Parker Street all the way to Boylston Street in the Back Bay. Part of what was once Parker Street is now called Hemenway Street. The once main intersection of Parker Street and Huntington Avenue has been traffic-engineered, cutting the straight-line road in two and forcing traffic to first turn onto Forsyth Way to make the connection. Many other streets leading into Mission Hill were also realigned and/or renamed at Huntington Avenue, limiting both pedestrian and vehicular access.
After the 1880s and the re-routing of the Muddy River by Frederick Law Olmsted, Huntington Avenue was joined from Parker Street to Brigham Circle, creating the Triangle District.
Development began in earnest in the mid-19th century. In 1870, the Redemptorist Fathers built a humble wooden mission church that was replaced by an impressive Roxbury puddingstone structure in 1876. In 1910, dual-spires were added that now dominate the skyline. The church was elevated to basilica in 1954 by Pope Pius XII and is one of less than 100 in the United States. Officially named Our Lady of Perpetual Help after the icon of the same name, it is uniformly referred to as "Mission Church", even by its own parishioners. Due to a sloping foundation of this landmark, the west cross tops its tower at ; the other spire is two feet shorter. The length of the church is also, presenting a perfect proportion.
At one time, the Basilica was a campus of buildings; the Queen Anne style Sister's Convent and Grammar School and the Romanesque Revival St. Alphonsus Hall administered by the parish. The church closed Mission Church High School in 1992, but a parochial elementary school still remains. The sale of these buildings at 80–100 Smith Street allowed much of the church to be restored. The sold buildings are currently planned to be used for 'Basilica Court,' a 229-unit residential complex, developed by Weston Associates, Inc. The Hall was the club headquarters for the St. Alphonsus Association founded in 1900. It was the preeminent social and athletic Catholic men's organization for nearly 50 years and its 1000-seat theatre held many community, political, and theatrical events.
Another example of high religious architecture is the Byzantine-style Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral at 514 Parker Street at the eastern edge of the neighborhood. Referred to as the "mother church" of the Greek Orthodox Church in New England, it is the cathedral of the Diocese of Boston and the seat of its Bishop Methodios Tournas. Built between 1892 and 1927, it is one of the oldest Greek churches in the United States, a Boston landmark, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1927 a Greek artist was commissioned to decorate the cathedral with Byzantine iconography. The radiant stained glass windows and large crystal chandeliers also contribute to the visual majesty of the cathedral's interior.
Puddingstone plays a historic role in the area. The large puddingstone quarry that ran between Tremont Street and Allegany Street produced the stone foundations of most of the late-19th-century houses in the neighborhood. This locally sourced material made quick construction of working-class housing possible. Some structures around the Tremont Street/Parker Street intersection are made entirely of the material, including 682–688 Parker Street, 2–5 Sewall Street and 1472–74 Tremont Street.
Most of the houses in the neighborhood are stone foundations and wood construction, but the Triangle Historic District along Huntington Avenue is stone and brick, and one of only eight such districts in Boston given landmark status by the city. These seventy-one buildings bordered by Huntington Avenue, Tremont Street, and Worthington Street exemplify the development of the neighborhood from the 1870s through the 1910s. Construction of this area was begun in 1871. The Helvetia, a distinctive apartment hotel, was built at 706–708 Huntington Avenue in 1884–1885; a Georgian revival apartment building known as The Esther was built at 683 Huntington/142–148 Smith Street in 1912. Both buildings continue have retail on the ground floor and apartments above. Similar row houses line one side of Delle Avenue a few blocks away from the Triangle District. Taller and larger brick row houses also line Huntington Avenue, Wait Street, and South Huntington.
By 1894, the electric streetcar was in operation on Huntington Avenue. Builder-developers began cutting streets through the hillside farmland and building homes for commuters on Parker Hill Avenue, Hillside Street, and Alleghany Street. An excellent example from this era is the Timothy Hoxie House at 135 Hillside Street. A freestanding Italianate villa, it was built in 1854 across from its present location. The Hoxie family left Beacon Hill for pastoral Mission Hill. Single-family houses of this size are rare today in the area. Demand for housing went up and builders turned to building multifamily dwellings, generally constructed on smaller lots.
The carpenter-contractor John Cantwell lived in the Gothic Revival cottage at 139 Hillside Street, and purchased the Hoxie House after Timothy's death. He moved the house to its present site so that upper Sachem Street could be cut through. Cantwell also developed triple deckers on adjacent lots on Darling and Sachem Streets. In 1890, he subdivided the lot on which the Hoxie House stood and built triple-deckers at 17 and 19 Sachem Street.
By the 1890s, there was a more urban feel to the neighborhood and the hill was covered in triple-deckers. Calumet, Iroquois and other streets with Native American names were built up within ten years into a dense neighborhood of triple deckers in the Queen Anne style. The Queen Anne style is prevalent in Mission Hill because this building boom coincided with the popularity of this style. A restoration of this style of houses along Parker Street is becoming something of a Polychrome Row.
Before 1900, the Georgian Revival New England Baptist Hospital at 125 Parker Hill Ave was one of the few institutions in the neighborhood. Other soon followed, moving from their downtown locations to the Mission Hill/Longwood area for more space and less expensive land. In 1906, the Harvard Medical School moved into five buildings on Longwood Avenue. Wentworth Institute at 360 Ruggles Street began building in 1911. In 1912, the then Peter Bent Brigham Hospital opened on Brigham Circle. In 1914, Children's Hospital also moved to Longwood Avenue. Beth Israel Deaconess was constructed a short time later.
In the late 19th century through the 1970s, the neighborhood was once home to large numbers of families of recent immigrant descent: mostly Irish, but also Germans, Italians, and others. After the 1950s, the combined effects of urban renewal, white flight, and institutional growth caused many to flee the neighborhood. In the early 1960s, the Boston Redevelopment Authority razed several homes in the Triangle District section of the neighborhood to make way for the Whitney Redevelopment Project, which are three high-rise towers along St. Alphonsus Street. They include Charlesbank Apartments, Back Bay Manor, and Franklin Square Apartments. This project was one of Boston's earliest redevelopment projects not funded by federal renewal monies. Eastward across St. Alphonsus Street is Mission Main, one of the nation's oldest public housing developments. The original thirty-eight 3-story brick structures built between 1938 and 1940 were demolished in the mid-1990s and replaced with 535 new apartments with a mix of subsidized and market-rate units.
Industry began in the area as early as the 17th century. The first brewery was established at the foot of Parker Hill in the 1820s. By the 1870s beer production was the main industry in Mission Hill, and many breweries lined the Stony Brook. Most of Boston's breweries were once located in Mission Hill, but three periods of Prohibition and the nation's transition from local breweries to national mass-produced brands took their toll on business. Many of the remaining buildings are now being converted into loft condominia.
Breweries included A.J. Houghton at 37 Station Street, American Brewing Co. at 251 Heath Street—now American Brewery Lofts, Union Brewing Co. on Terrace Street, Roxbury Brewing Co. at 31 Heath Street —the building is now home to the Family Service of Greater Boston, Croft Brewing Co., Burkhardt Brewing Co., Alley Brewing Co. at 117 Heath Street and the Highland Springs Brewery/Reuter & Co. on Terrace Street—the building is often referred to as The Pickle Factory and is in planning for conversion to housing.
From 1916 through the early 1950s, Gordon College, related to the Ruggles Street Baptist Church formerly on Ruggles Street, was on Evans Way in the Fenway on the edge of Mission Hill. When Gordon moved out of the neighborhood near the Museum of Fine Arts and relocated to Wenham, Massachusetts, Wentworth Institute of Technology bought the land. The 7-story Alice Heyward Taylor Apartments were completed in 1951; since that time, they have been completely renovated.
In the late 1960s, Harvard University, through straws, thus concealing the purchases from the neighborhood, bought the wood frame and brick houses along Francis, Fenwood, St. Alban's, Kempton Streets, and part of Huntington Avenue, and announced plans to demolish the buildings. Most were replaced with the Mission Park residential complex of towers and townhomes in 1978 after neighborhood residents organized the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard Association to convince Harvard to rebuild. The tower sits on the site of the House of the Good Shepard, once a large and prominent orphanage. The gates to the complex and the brick wall along Huntington survive from this era.
Also in the 1960s the federal government proposed to extend Interstate 95 into the center of Boston and began buying property and demolishing houses in the Roxbury Crossing section of the neighborhood along the Boston and Providence Rail Road. Roxbury Crossing, once known as Pierpoint Village after the Pierpoint family and their mills, was a stop along the Boston & Providence Railroad in the 1840s, and was once a vibrant commercial area with the 749-seat Criterion Theatre, a Woolworth's, and some restaurants catering to market tastes.
In 1962, the Mission Hill public housing development had 1,024 families, while the Mission Hill Extension project across the street had 580 families, and in 1967 when the Boston city government under Mayor John F. Collins agreed to desegregate the developments, the projects were still 97 percent white and 98 percent black respectively.
Though the Interstate project was shelved by the governor in 1971 after freeway revolts, Roxbury Crossing had been leveled. Ten years later saw the creation of the Southwest Corridor, a park system with bike and pedestrian trails that lead into the center of Boston. In November 2007, the MBTA awarded Mission Hill Housing Services rights to develop a new 10-story mixed-use building on what is known to the Boston Redevelopment Authority as "Parcel 25", across from the Roxbury Crossing station.
By the early 1970s, the area was deemed dangerous and most White people and affluent Black people had moved away. The 1989 incident involving Charles Stuart further intensified this view. With property values low, many of the homes were bought by slum lords and converted into rental housing. The inexpensive rents brought many students from nearby colleges and universities, especially MassArt, Northeastern University, Wentworth Institute of Technology and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, which has a large studio building in the neighborhood. The Mission Hill Artists Collective now hosts Open Studios in the fall of each year.
As past fears faded by the mid-1990s, the area began to change as homeowners moved into newly converted condominia to take advantage of the fantastic views of the city and proximity to the Longwood Area, the MBTA and downtown Boston.
Today, the neighborhood is briskly gentrifying and diversifying in favor of a mix of new luxury condominia and lofts, triple-deckers converted to condominia, surviving student rental units, newly rebuilt public housing, and strong remnants of long-time residents. Racially, Mission Hill is one of the most diverse in the city, with a balance of white, Asian, Hispanic, and African-Americans having little conflict along race lines.
Much of the early history of Mission Hill through 1978 is covered in a 65-minute documentary video, Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston, a widely used documentary which was directed by Richard Broadman of the Museum of Fine Arts and released in 1978. The film recounts the events that led to the Urban Renewal Program in Boston and its aftermath by showing how these events unfolded in Mission Hill.
The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the largest mosque in New England, is in Roxbury Crossing near the Roxbury Community College.

Community organizations

World class teaching hospitals are found in the adjacent Longwood Medical Area, which is sometimes treated administratively by the City as part of the Mission Hill neighborhood. Some of their buildings have been built inside the residential portion of Mission Hill.
A community relations function of Brigham and Women's hospital supports the Mission Hill community, addressing issues of health care, employment, social programs, and services through outreach to schools, housing developments, youth-serving organizations, and other service groups in Mission Hill and elsewhere in Boston.
Residents may also find their medical home in one of the neighborhood health centers, such as the Whittier Street Health Center.
The Mission Hill Health Movement is a community-based organization addressing an array of health conditions and other issues of residents of the Mission Hill community and surrounding neighborhoods, such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness and depression, exercise and energy levels, personal and social responsibility for health, and access to health care. They sponsor the twice-weekly Mission Hill Farmers markets throughout the months of June to November, the annual community health fair and a summer food fair in September, and low-cost fresh produce and bread distribution, the $2 bag program, with Fair Foods of Dorchester. At the Tuesday and Thursday farmers' markets, local farmers sell their freshly picked produce. MHHM sponsors several self-help health programs, including a walking group, a Women's Health Group, and a Diabetes Self-Management Group to educate newly diagnosed and current diabetics and pre-diabetics about how to live responsibly with it, to improve overall health and ease the responsibilities of living day-to-day with chronic diabetes. In 2011, the Mission Hill Main Streets, Tobin Community Center, Mission Hill Health Movement, and Sociedad Latina sponsored the first Mission Hill healthy food festival. Longwood-based hospitals, such as Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Boston Children's Hospital, and schools such as MCPHS University, and the Whittier Street Health Center, tabled at this festival to field questions and distribute informative literature. The Boston Collaborative for Food & Fitness, Boston Vegetarian Society, Cooking Matters, and Sociedad Latina also offered helpful information. Each Spring, the Mission Hill Health Movement sponsors a community health fair, convening 20-40 local institutions, organizations, and neighborhood businesses during 2011, and now 66 such exhibitors in 2015, providing health information, screening tests, and health-supporting food. They also provide a "FEET FIRST" walk on Thursdays at 10 am, rain or shine, at 1534 Tremont Street, exploring the colorful and visually interesting Mission Hill neighborhood and contiguous areas, walking through the Fens, the Rose Garden, Jamaica Plain, and back. "Walks will terminate at the Brigham Circle Farmers Market from mid-June until the end of October."

Green energy

Several small and medium-sized developers, architects, and contractors have presented to the Community Alliance of Mission Hill their plans for zero carbon, zero net energy, passive energy, or other green-oriented construction.

Visual appearance

Historically, Mission Hill Main Streets, a neighborhood affiliation of Boston Main Streets, has worked to neaten and improve the 'main streets' where small businesses operate. Business operators with cashflow restraints can apply for business mentoring, and loans and/or grants for awnings and structural improvements.
The Community Alliance of Mission Hill, currently led by engineer Chad Rosner and an elected Board, is an unincorporated network of neighbors, largely property owners, who have combined to review trends and developments in Mission Hill, specifically zoning and building requests. The Mission Hill Beautification Task Force is a CAMH sub-network focused upon cleanup and preservation, beautification, and public outreach and education and concerning well-being and the quality of life in Mission Hill.

Education

The Mission Hill School serves grades Kindergarten through eighth grade. It is a Boston public pilot school. The children range from 3 years old to 14 years old and the school serves around 250 students. This school is located at 20 Child Street in Jamaica Plain. The mission of this school as written on their website is, "The task of public education is to help parents raise youngsters who will maintain and nurture the best habits of a democratic society be smart, caring, strong, resilient, imaginative and thoughtful. It aims at producing youngsters who can live productive, socially useful and personally satisfying lives, while also respecting the rights of all others. The school, as we see it, will help strengthen our commitment to diversity, equity and mutual respect." This school is a public school.
Educational attainment, ages 25+Total%Male%Female%
Total population7,441100%3,360100%4,081100%
Less than high school diploma1,24016.7%45513.5%78519.2%
High school graduate/GED/equivalent1,78724.0%72621.6%1,06126.0%
Some college1,12615.1%56916.9%55713.6%
Associate degree4185.6%1715.1%2476.1%
Bachelor's degree or higher2,87038.6%1,43942.8%1,43135.1%

The table above is an estimation from the American Community Survey during the years of 2007–2011.
Inside the adjacent Longwood Medical Area are the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, MCPHS University, and educational programs run by the Harvard teaching hospitals. Also adjacent to Mission Hill/Longwood are the Colleges of the Fenway, Wentworth Institute, Northeastern University, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Newspapers

The neighborhood is also served by MBTA bus route 39 running from Forest Hills in Jamaica Plain past Copley Square to Back Bay Station, and MBTA bus route 66 running from Dudley Square in Roxbury, through Brookline to Harvard Square in Cambridge. The Urban Ring crosstown route passes through the far eastern corner of the neighborhood along Longwood Avenue and Huntington Avenue.