| Hyde Park | |
|---|---|
| — Neighborhood of Boston — | |
| The First Congregational Church of Hyde Park | |
| Motto: A Small Town in the City | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Massachusetts |
| County | Suffolk |
| Neighborhood of | Boston |
| Incorporated | April 22, 1868 |
| Annexed by Boston | January 1, 1913 |
| Time zone | Eastern (UTC-5) |
| Zip Code | 02136 |
| Area code(s) | 617 / 857 |
| Website | http://www.cityofboston.gov/neighborhoods/hydepark.asp |
Hyde Park is a dissolved municipality and currently the southernmost neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States.[1] Hyde Park is home to a diverse range of people, housing types and social groups. It is an urban location with suburban characteristics. Hyde Park is covered by Boston Police Department District E-18 located in Cleary Square, and the Boston Fire Department station on Fairmount Avenue is the quarters of Ladder Company 28 & Engine Company 48. Boston EMS Ambulance Station 18 is located on Dana Avenue. Hyde Park also has a branch of the Boston Public Library.
The George Wright Golf Course, named for baseball Hall of Famer and Cincinnati Reds shortstop George Wright, is in Hyde Park and Roslindale. The golf course is a Donald Ross-designed course and is considered one of his finest designs.
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In 1845, retired businessman Henry Grew took his family on holiday south of the City of Boston into what was then the western section of Dorchester, and came to a spot near the Neponset River valley with an unexpectedly pleasant view of the Blue Hills. He purchased several hundred acres of land (which later became known as "Grew's Woods," partially preserved today as the Stony Brook Reservation and the George Wright Golf Course) and moved to the area in 1847. (Grew later served as chairman of the new Town of Hyde Park's first Board of Selectmen, and became one of its most prominent citizens.)[2] In the next few years, a group called the Hyde Park Land Company bought some 200 acres of land in the area and began building houses around a small unofficial passenger stop on the Boston and Providence Railroad that had developed at Kenny's Bridge on the road from Dedham to Milton Lower Mills (the road was River Street, and the station today is Hyde Park Station). At that time, the closest actual station was in the manufacturing district of Readville (formerly Low Plains) in Dedham.
Alpheus Perley Blake is considered the founder of Hyde Park. He was the organizer in 1856 of the Fairmount Land Company and Twenty Associates that developed the Fairmount Hill on the western side of Brush Hill Road in Milton, which led to the establishment of a bridge over the Neponset River and a station on the New York and New England Railroad (today Fairmount Station). The Twenty Associates, in addition to Blake, included William E. Abbot, Amos Angell, Ira L. Benton, Enoch Blake, John Newton Brown, George W. Currier, Hypolitus Fisk, John C. French, David Higgins, John S. Hobbs, Samuel Salmon Mooney, William Nightingale, J. Wentworth Payson, Dwight B. Rich, Alphonso Robinson, William H. Seavey, Daniel Warren, and John Williams. Within a few years, the two land companies merged and growth accelerated. By 1867, the settlements had grown to the point that there were 6 railroad stations in the area.[3] Formal petition was made to the General Court of the Commonwealth and, after settling land and boundary disputes with Dedham and Milton, the Town of Hyde Park was incorporated on April 22, 1868 in Norfolk County from the settled land in Dorchester (Grew's Woods and the Hyde Park Land Company development), Milton (Fairmount) and Dedham (Readville).[4] It remained a part of Norfolk County until 1912,[5] when the town voted in favor of annexation to City of Boston in Suffolk County.
The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which was one of the first official African-American units in the United States Army and was commanded by Col. Robert G. Shaw, was assembled and trained at Camp Meigs in Readville.
In the 1960s, Hyde Park threatened to secede from Boston over plans to build a Southwest Expressway through the town along the route of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, bifurcating the neighborhood and displacing many residents in the process as it had in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.[6] Hyde Park has also faced other challenges along with its fellow Boston neighborhoods, such as the busing crisis of the 1970s.
Hyde Park has had an active industrial history. For nearly 130 years, it was the main base of the Westinghouse Sturtevant Corporation.[7] The Readville area was also home to the Stop & Shop warehouse until it moved to Assonet in the early 2000s. One of their original stores still stands on Truman Parkway STORE 47.
Hyde Park is home to many churches, most notably the Most Precious Blood, Saint Adalbert's and Saint Anne's Catholic Churches, and the Episcopal Parish of Christ Church (the oldest parish in Hyde Park, now Iglesia de San Juan) designed by Cram Wentworth & Goodhue and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[8]
Hyde Park is also the original home of the Boston Crusaders, a World Class drum and bugle corps founded in 1940 at the Most Precious Blood Parish.[9]
Historically, Hyde Park's residents were people from Polish, Italian, and Irish ethnicities similar to South Boston, Charlestown, and Dorchester, Massachusetts. Hyde Park is a briskly diversifying neighborhood; as of 2000 the ethnic breakup roughly is 39 % Non-Hispanic White, 43% Black or African-American, 13% Hispanic or Latino and 2% Asian-American[10]
Hyde Park's central business district at Cleary and Logan Squares features a variety of historic buildings, including the neighborhood's municipal building built by the City of Boston after annexation. The Hyde Park YMCA was built in 1902, and a major renovation of the original facility was completed in 2010.[11] The English Gothic Church of the Most Precious Blood was completed in 1885 (its spire was removed in 1954), and the Parish of Christ Church by Cram Wentworth & Goodhue in 1895. The neighborhood library (a branch of the Boston Public Library since 1912) was built in 1899, and a contemporary addition by Schwartz/Silver Architects doubled the library's size in 2000.[12] An opera house built by Leroy J. French in 1897 stands on Fairmount Avenue, and serves as the current home of Hyde Park's Riverside Theatre Works.[13]
Hyde Park has quite an inventory of warehouses and factory buildings from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Readville neighborhood and along the Neponset River and Mother Brook.[14] Also, Fairmount Hill has many architecturally notable house styles, including Italiante, Gothic Revival and Victorian.[15]
The United States Postal Service operates the Hyde Park Post Office in Cleary Square as well as the Readville Post Office in Wolcott Square.[16]
The Boston Public School system operates the public schools in Hyde Park. Public elementary schools include the Henry S. Grew, the William E. Channing[17] and the Elihu Greenwood.[18] Other public schools in Hyde Park are the William Barton Rogers Middle School[19] and the Franklin D. Roosevelt K-8 School.[20]
Local public charter schools include Academy of the Pacific Rim,[21] Boston Preparatory Charter Public School,[22] Boston Trinity Academy,[23] and the Boston Renaissance Charter School.[24]
Hyde Park has had a public high school since the early days of its township, housed in various locations, but the first proper high school building was completed in 1902 at Harvard Avenue and Everett Street; the building has since been expanded and now houses the Rogers Middle School. The high school became part of the Boston Public School system following the town's annexation, and a new building was built in the 1920s at Central and Metropolitan Avenues. In 2005 the high school was re-designated the Hyde Park Education Complex, which housed three smaller high schools: the Community Academy of Science and Health (CASH),[25] The Engineering School,[26] and the Social Justice Academy.[27] The complex was shut down in 2011; both the Engineering School and the Social Justice Academy closed, and CASH was relocated to Dorchester. However, Boston Public School officials have advanced a proposal to relocate the Boston Latin Academy to the Hyde Park High School building from its current location in Roxbury.[28]
Hyde Park is home to the private Boston Baptist College, located on Fairmount Hill.[29]
The Engineering School
Fairmount School (building now houses Boston Police Academy)
Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Memorial School (building now houses Boston Trinity Academy)
Most Precious Blood Elementary School (building now houses Boston Preparatory Charter Public School)
Social Justice Academy
St. Anne's School (Closed)
St. Pius X School
Boston Public Library operates the Hyde Park Branch Library, which won an AIA architectural prize. Groundbreaking for the Hyde Park Town Library occurred on December 1898, and the building opened in September 1899. In 1912 the library became a part of the Boston Public Library when Hyde Park joined Boston. In 1997 ground was broken for an addition and renovation of the original portion of the facility. A grand reopening ceremony, which included Mayor of Boston Thomas M. Menino, occurred in January 2000. The library received the 2006 Best Accessible Design Award in May of that year.[30]
The MBTA Commuter Rail's Fairmount shuttle to Readville is Hyde Park's most direct connection with downtown Boston, servicing both the Fairmount and Readville stations. The Providence/Stoughton branch also stops at Hyde Park station in Cleary Square, and the Franklin branch has scheduled stops among all three station, while servicing mainly the one at Readville. Additionally, several MBTA bus routes through Cleary and Logan Squares provide connections to the Orange and Red Lines, at Forest Hills station in Jamaica Plain and Mattapan station in Mattapan respectively.
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