Talk:Forest Hills, Boston

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In an attempt to take this article to GA I am going to make a few proposals regarding layout. Content is great with lots of inline references. Could use another couple of images - I will take a look around at PBL and see if I can find some good historical ones.

Remove Topic headline – this feels like a catchall and create the following
History

Woodbourne is not a National Historic Landmark! Corrected the text to reflect its status as a National Register Historic District.

Places of interest

Subcats

Education - include comments about overall education system

Schools

Transportation
Keep Notes - References - and Bibliography.
Markco1 17:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Making changes

First, I have to question whether the entire area described is withing Forest Hills. I always considered the area south of Walk Hill Street to be White City (as mentioned in the article). The article suggests that Forest Hills is part of Jamaica Plain, and White City (or Woodbourne) is part of Forest Hills. Did the residents of the south end of White City consider themselves residents of Forest Hills? Not that I remember. That's just one more subdivision than I'd make. I'd call Forest Hills and White City/Woodbourne separate sections of Jamaica Plain which would take away much of this article.

Overview setion:

No need of a listing of particular businesses.

Clarified location of types of houses.

Removed "and so forth".

Forest Hills was not "unmistakably middle-class". The area near the station was built up for working class Irish when the train station went in, and settled by other working people in later years. My Grandmother certainly wasn't middle class when she lived there. The Woodbourne area WAS middle-class, which brings up my original question - should Woodbourne be considered part of Forest Hlls?

Forest Hills is not in close proximity to Northeastern (like the Fens or the South End) - it is more correctly accessible by public transportation.

No sense in listing specific parts of downtown as accessible, but not others.

Borders section: There's the problem - if the border is Walk Hill, then the article makes no sense.

"More often, Forest Hills refers to a roughly triangular area lying between Hyde Park Avenue, American Legion Highway and Morton Street,"

Big problem there: not a triangle. I assume that Cummins Hwy. is meant to be the "point" of the triangle in the south. The border is definitely north of Cummins Hwy., and needs to be defined better than leaving it implied.

"White City and Woodbourne are discussed in this article under their own headings."

No need to say this if the reader will see it seconds later.

Forest Hills Station section:

Heath Street is not in Mission Hill - Mission Hill is on the other side of Parker Hill.

I'm getting sleepy now - that's enough for me.

More changes. I removed the following:"An anonymous Jamaica Plain Library chronicler in the 1930's describes Jamaica Plain of that time as follows:

Quite a number of colored families now reside in the less attractive area in the vicinity of the railroad tracks. There are now very few descendants of the original settlers in Jamaica Plain. The more prolific Irish Catholic families have replaced them in numbers as well as influence. The present population of approximately 19,000 is predominantly Catholic of Irish descent.^[1]

"

The passage describes all of Jamaica Plain, and is not specific to White City. There is also something hinky with the date of the passage. The full reference cites the memory of the writer to his childhood in the 1940s, so the 1930 reference must be a typo. The reference to Cubans in the original is a dead giveaway. MarkinBoston 20:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] While I'm at it....

The one to three sentence paragraphs in this article are painful to read. The whole article really needs to be rewritten in coherent paragraphs. MarkinBoston 20:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Paring down

I removed a reference to "one Filipino family" in the White City section, and a reference link that did not support the claim made.MarkinBoston 18:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Also removed the reference to black and Hispanic residents in the Archdale projects. When those projects were built, most if not all of the first residents were white, so the assertion made was more in the imagination of the writer than in fact. The statement seems POV to me, and is not relevant to an article on Forest Hills. MarkinBoston 22:28, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Removed Hyde Park Ave and Wachusett St entries. Noting that "a street goes here, then there" doesn't deserve an entry. MarkinBoston 16:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)