Savin Hill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the neighborhood of Dorchester, Massachusetts. For the album by the Street Dogs, see Savin Hill (album).
Savin Hill is a neighborhood of Dorchester, Massachusetts, (which is the largest neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts). It is about one square mile in area, and has a population of about 15,000 people. Savin Hill and Malibu Beaches serve the Savin Hill/Dorchester neighborhoods and surrounding communities. Rail and bus routes give access to and from Savin Hill, especially the Savin Hill (MBTA station).
[edit] History
Savin Hill was settled and founded in June, 1630, just a few months before Boston was settled.
The first people arriving in the area were Puritans who came on the "Mary and John" from England. They had formerly settled further south on the coast, in the Hull area, before moving north to a hill overlooking a protected harbor, now called Dorchester Bay.
They landed in boats and built a settlement for approximately 140 people near what is today the intersection of Grampian Way and Savin Hill Avenue. Originally, the area was named Rock Hill.
By the 1780s, the name changed to Old Hill, a time when the United States was in its infancy.
The original boundary of Dorchester extended almost to the Rhode Island border. As time went on, settlements broke away and the geographical size of the town continued to shrink until 1870, when it disappeared on paper. In that year, the town of Dorchester was incorporated into the city of Boston, and the name became the designation of a neighborhood. By then, the rocky hill where the Puritans first settled had changed its name again, this time to Savin Hill.
Joseph Tuttle, a local innkeeper, who had opened a luxurious hotel at what is today the intersection of Savin Hill Avenue and Tuttle Street, invented the new title "Savin Hill" in 1819, which he named after the red juniper trees (Savin trees) that grew abundantly in the area.
After the American Civil War, the Worthington family, who owned most of the land in present-day Savin Hill, started selling house lots. At that time, most of the Victorian homes that line the slope of the hill were constructed.
By the 1800s transportation had arrived (railroad, subway, and later, highways) changed the situation of Savin Hill. The arteries first connected the area to Boston and it was one of the its first suburbs. Especially important was the Old Colony Railroad.
When it was separated from the ocean by Morrissey Boulevard in the early 1930s, Savin Hill became an clearly identifiable neighborhood.
Its separation and isolation was made more evident by the trench of the Southeast Expressway in the late 1950s.
[edit] Bibliography
- Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell, "Boston's South End", Images of America series, Arcadia Publishing, 1998.
- Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell, "Dorchester", Images of America series, Arcadia Publishing, 2000.
- Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell, "Dorchester: Then & Now", Arcadia Publishing, 2005.
[edit] External links
- Map of Savin Hill neighborhood
- Savin Hill Yacht Club
- Dorchester Atheneum - Dorchester history
