Lower South Roxbury End

From Dave Brigham:

Wouldn't it be funny if neighborhood boundaries, and city and town borders, existed in the three-dimensional world, rather than just on maps and in people's minds? Imagine walking on the Massachusetts Avenue bridge from Boston to Cambridge, across the Charles River, and half-way along you have to duck under a rope or pass through a door or step over a raised line of bricks to gain entry to the People's Republic.

Sometimes I feel this type of marker would be helpful when I'm out exploring. But what, ultimately, does it matter whether I'm making photos in Boston's South End neighborhood, or its Lower Roxbury area? I faced this same issue many years ago when walking along the Somerville/Cambridge line (see March 16, 2019, "Where Am I? Somertown? Charlesville?").

After walking through Boston's Nubian Square (see March 4, 2025, "Nubian Square: New Name, Old Buildings"), I continued north into more of Roxbury and then the South End. After checking out the murals honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, featured at the end of the Nubian Square post, I continued past Ramsay Park.

On the side of Pizza Talia, I saw a great mural painted by artist Alex Cook in 2009.

Called "She Sees More Than The World Will Show Her," the mural features a woman standing in a kitchen, staring out a window at a galaxy of stars. Cook has painted hundreds of murals all over the world. I've featured him a few times on the blog: September 21, 2024, "Franklin Park is Ruin-ed" and August 10, 2021, "A Lovely Walk Through Roslindale Village."

A few doors down is the Roxbury Men's Club, which the Internet tells me is permanently closed.

I bet this was a fun place to hang out back in the day.

Next door is the Shawmut Community Church of God.

On the opposite side of Shawmut Avenue, across from the Eritrean Community Center, is a storefront church.

Iglesias de Dios Pentecostal is located in the J.B. Prescod Building. Regular readers of the blog know I have an interest in these types of houses of worship. While I'm not religious, I respect this type of effort to carve out places for congregation.

I continued on for a short time, enjoying the brownstone apartment buildings and street-level activity of the neighborhood. At the corner of Worcester and Washington streets, I spied a classic old sign.

Andy's Cleaners was located in this beautiful brick building for many years. I made a photo of the sign because I'm guessing it won't be around much longer. The cleaning business was located in what's known as the Pope Block, which was "built by James E. Potter in 1884 from designs provided by Frederick A. Pope for George A. Pope," per MACRIS. "A member of the family for whom the Pope's Hill area of Dorchester is named, Boston Directories indicate that Frederick A. Pope was active as an architect from the early 1870s until the mid 1890s....Frederick A. Pope designed numerous residences in the Back Bay, including" many on Newbury Street and Marlborough Street.

I headed southwest along Washington Street, where I was inspired to make a photo of the gorgeous Smith Block.

"The Smith Block is a rare surviving Boston example of a mansard-roofed commercial block," according to MACRIS. "Numerous examples of this building type were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire o 1872...After this fire, the mansard roof was less widely utilized in residential as well as commercial construction. Over time, examples of this building type have disappeared as the result of demolition and neglect. The Smith Block ranks among Washington Street's most architecturally significant properties by virtue of its prominent siting and intact form and elements, if not its original brownstone facing. After many years of precarious existence as a vacant building, the Smith Block [was] adapted for reuse as an antiques cooperative."

Built in 1866 for Stephen Smith, a leading Boston dealer of office furniture, this block "was evidently intended as a satellite store of a business whose main office was located at 51 and 53 Cornhill, Boston," per MACRIS. Today it is occupied by Yunnan Kitchen, as well as several condos.

I knew that Mike's City Diner was in this area, but I wasn't inspired to make a photo.

Not far away stands one of the most photographed buildings in the South End, a former beauty that has sat unloved and neglected for many years.

I refer to this High Victorian slab as Tom Cruise's Place. Located on the corner of Washington Street and Massachusetts Avenue, the former Hotel Alexandra was built in 1875 and for a time several years ago was owned by the Church of Scientology (see April 8, 2018, "Tom Cruise Slept Here...Well, Maybe"). The cult hoped to make this historic property its New England headquarters.

"That project proved expensive, and ultimately the Scientologists put the property back on the market for sale in late 2014," per this Boston Globe article from April 2025. "It spent nearly five years on the market, and at least one sale agreement fell through before [developer Tom] Calus and [business partner Jas] Bhogal spent $11 million to buy the site in 2019."

That Globe article indicates that Calus and Bhogal in April filed a revised redevelopment plan with the city "that calls for restoring the historic Alexandra and building a five-story expansion on the vacant lot next door. The 68-room hotel would include retail or restaurant on the ground floor."

Here's wishing them all the luck in the world.

Next to Tom Cruise's Place, heading southwest on Washington Street, back in the direction of Nubian Square, is the very handsome Chester Block.

Built in 1857, this Italianate building mixes residential and retail uses. Completing a loop, I ended up admiring the gorgeous Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin on Lenox Street, just around the corner from the Shawmut Community Church of God mentioned above.

The combined congregations trace their respective histories to the late 19th century. "What is now the Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin began as two different missions of the Society of St. John the Evangelist," per the church's web site. "St. Martin’s Mission had its beginnings in the home of Sarah Jackson at 17 Westminster Street in the South End in 1899. The congregation soon outgrew Mrs. Jackson’s living room and moved first to a storefront on Camden Street and then to a small chapel on Lenox Street. In the West End, Church of St. Augustine was formally organized. In 1886 a building was purchased on Anderson Street and 1892 a new church was built on Phillips Street."

The web site continues: "In 1908 the Society of St. John the Evangelist purchased the land next to St. Martin’s Chapel on Lenox Street and began construction of the present building. Later that year St. Augustine’s Church in the West End was closed and many of its furnishing were incorporated into the new building. Father Field was the first pastor of the combined community. On St. Martin’s Day, November 11, 1908 the Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin was formally opened with a ten-day preaching mission led by a black priest, The Rev. John A. Williams, Rector of St. Phillips Church in Omaha, Nebraska."

A long fly ball away from the beautiful house of worship with the bright red doors is Jim Rice Field at Ramsay Park. The field was being upgraded back in January when I happened by.

The baseball field is named for Jim Rice, the Hall of Fame left-fielder who played for the Red Sox for 16 seasons in the 1970s and 1980s. The field was named in his honor due to his involvement with Major League Baseball's Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, per Wikipedia.

Jim Rice Field was the last stop on this journey. But in May 2024 I had done some exploring nearby, with the intention of one day adding more material for a post. So below are several spots I checked out on the adventure.

On Whittier Street, which sits across Tremont Street from the Boston Police headquarters, and which dead-ends at Madison Park High School's football field, sits a relic from times gone by.

The old Health Unit of the George Robert White Fund is likely to be redeveloped before too long, much like its neighbor properties across Whittier Street, which include several new apartment buildings. The GRW Fund was established in 1922 to fund "works of public utility for residents of Boston, to hold and manage the facilities constructed by the Fund and oversee its investments," according to the City of Boston web site. Its namesake was a pharmaceutical executive who lived most of his life in Boston.

White is also the namesake of the stadium in Boston's Franklin Park that has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy as it undergoes a massive redevelopment. I wrote about the stadium in May 2024.

The Health Fund building sits just south of a lot labeled on Google Maps as "Embrace Center Project Site." Embrace Boston is the organization behind the The Embrace, a memorial on Boston Common to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King. The group plans to develop the project site with a 31,000-square-foot community center offering performance, gallery and work spaces.

Heading east-northeast on Tremont Street, I passed many great old buildings. The one that caught my eye the most was at #1023.

This Classical Revival beauty, which is located in the Lower Roxbury Historic District, dates to 1894, and features decorative friezes and cornices covered with pressed metal, per MACRIS.

At Tremont and Cabot streets is an interesting mix of four buildings cheek by jowl.

Separated from Tremont Street by a small cobblestone parking lot and street, these buildings read this way to me, left to right: either new construction or completely renovated apartment building; a probably late-19th century Mansard building with a barber shop that may or may not be endorsed by Major League Baseball; a 19th-century apartment building that may have been a firehouse at one point, judging by the large opening in the middle of the ground floor; and another great residential structure that may have been the inspiration for the newer building.

Steps away is a legendary joint.

In business since 1935, Slade's Bar & Grill calls itself the "Soul of Boston." Here's the bullet list for this restaurant/nightclub's history:

• Original owner Renner Slade may have been a bootlegger.
• Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell once owned this place.
• Malcolm X was a server.
• It was listed in "The Negro Motorist Green Book."
• Famous patrons over the years include Martin Luther King, Jr., Ted Kennedy and Muhammad Ali.

I'd heard of this place, and would have made a photo for sure, even if I wasn't in a musical outfit called the Slade Wiggins Band.

I considered turning around at this point, but I looked up ahead and saw a massive mural that I had to capture.

Located at the corner of Camden and Tremont streets, "Breathe Life" is a fantastic work by Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs, who I also featured in my Nubian Square post. Gibbs grew up in Roxbury and is a co-founder of Artists for Humanity, an arts non-profit that hires and teaches creative skills to youth.

Directly across Tremont Street from "Breathe Life" is, well, perfection.

The Chickering and Sons Piano Factory (aka the Spencer Repeating Rifle Co. building) is a five-story brick behemoth that fills nearly a full city block between Northampton and Camden streets. Built in 1853, this Italianate stunner was a year later called the second-largest building in the country following the U.S. Capitol.

At the time of the factory's opening, the Chickering company was the largest piano manufacturer in the United States, according to Wikipedia. From 1860 to 1868, the Spencer Rifle outfit was also located here, making weaponry for the U.S. Army and sportsmen, Wikipedia indicates.

In 1972, the building was converted to artist studios. Today known as the Piano Craft Guild, the building has been modernized with amenities including an indoor pool and a fitness center. I'm unclear on whether there are still artist spaces here.

I meandered the side streets between Tremont Street and Columbus Avenue for a while. There are loads of great buildings here, but the light was tough. For some reason -- well, I know the reason and I'll explain below -- I made a photo of the Stanhope Garage at 277 Northampton Street.

Built in 1916, according to the Boston assessor's office, it located a two-minute walk from the apartment building where Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King first lived after their 1953 wedding.

So what was the reason I made that photo above?

I was a fan of the TV show "Taxi," which aired for five seasons in the late '70s and early '80s. Whenever I see a garage like the one above, I think of the garage where the show mostly took place, and imagine that Louie DePalma is in there yelling at his drivers.

The last thing I saw on this journey was the most surprising. It required some detective work to figure out just what I was looking at.

This is the rear of 8 Coventry St / 1035-1039 Tremont Street. Using my photo editing software to manipulate the contrast and light, I was able to read the words "THE WORLD'S BREAKFAST" at the top. Doing a quick online search of that phrase, I discovered that the American Cereal Company used that slogan beginning in 1902 for its Quaker Oats cereal. Once I learned that, I looked at the image again and was able to make out the outline of the Quaker Oats "mascot" underneath.

Pretty cool find, I must say.

A Slow Jog Around the Bases of My Memory

From Dave "Scoop" Brigham:

Approaching age 40, many years ago, I decided to ditch the softball team I'd played on the previous few years and return to my true sports love: baseball. In the early months of 2005 leading up to my April birthday, I went to a local batting cage to take some cuts against 60, 70 and even 90 m.p.h. automated pitches. I managed a few decent swings, and managed to foul tip one of the top-speed pitches. I also researched some over-40 leagues in the Boston area. I don't recall why I chose the Boston Men's Baseball League, but on the first weekend in April I drove to Clifford Field in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. It was a beautiful spring day with plenty of sunshine and just enough warmth. I hadn't played baseball in 25 years, when I was on the Barons in my town's Babe Ruth League my sophomore year in high school. I was nervous as hell as I waited my turn for the hitting and defense tryouts. Afterward, there would be a draft, with notifications of whether or not you'd been picked coming a day or two later.

As I walked toward the field, doubts filled my mind. "What if I'm not good enough and don't get drafted? What if I hurt myself? What if I get picked by a team filled with guys I don't like?" There were definitely guys better than me, which worried me. "Am I a fool for coming out here?" I thought. "Is this just a pipe dream?" There were also, however, guys worse than I was. That made me feel good. I knew I could handle myself defensively, as that was my strong suit going back to my Little League days. Above-average fielder, so-so hitter. That's how the scouting report on me would read. "Soft hands," the scouts might write. "Light hitter."

That's OK. As a kid I made it to two all-star teams with that skill set. When my turn came, I went out to second base, as I'd indicated in my online application that I was a middle infielder. I played a fair amount of second in Little League and Babe Ruth, before moving to short and, eventually third. I felt comfortable at second, but also enjoyed playing the other positions. I handled the batted balls and made good, accurate throws. I was feeling pretty damn good. Sure, I'd been playing softball in recent years, so I wasn't rusty. But baseball involves more speed and agility to track the ball, and more control in throwing the ball a longer distance.

For some reason that I can't recall, I didn't take any swings. Maybe the guys running it were low on time and needed to turn the field over to somebody else. Maybe the assembled managers and players had seen what they needed to see with my play in the field. Either way, I was more than happy to not have to take cuts against live pitching for the first time in more than two decades.

After the tryout I was approached by a few guys who told me they wanted to draft me. They were from a team called the Quincy Sons, which was sponsored by the Sons of Italy, a social club in Quincy, Mass. (side note: during one of the five seasons I played for this team I went to the club just once for a few beers. I met a guy named Crusher.) I was excited and honored and humbled. They seemed excited at the prospect of my joining their team, which made me feel really good. I had just turned 40 -- that day, as a matter of fact -- and they felt they could use some younger, more active blood on their team. I believe a day or two later I received an email making it official: I was a Quincy Son.

(This is me in October 2009, just before my final game as a baseball player. I played with some of my fellow Sons and some other guys in a tournament at the Baseball Hall of Fame. I only played a few innings, as I was nursing an injury, as often was the case over my five-year renewed baseball career. I did return to softball a few years ago, but once again suffered some injuries, including one that resulted in my finally hanging up my glove and cleats for good.)

We held practices for the next several weeks, and on June 2 I played my first baseball game in 25 years. Here's how I described it on my personal blog: "My first at bat in 25 years was surreal. I led off the 2nd inning. I wasn't nervous, but I felt strange standing in against live pitching. I ran the count to 3-1 before swinging at a high fastball and popping to short. My second at bat I felt more comfortable, even though I was the first guy to face their relief pitcher. Again, I led off the inning, and ran the count to 2-1 before grounding to first. I wasn't thrilled, but felt OK about the at-bats."

We lost the game, continuing the winless streak the team had the entire previous season. But as the summer wore on, we won a fair amount of games and finished in second place. Along the way, I handled myself capably at second, short and third base, got more hits than I figured I would, and even took a fastball to the ribcage and lived to tell about it. I got along well with my teammates and still remember most of their names: Bill F., Angel, Bill R., Geoff, Clay, Joe, Jimmy, Paul, Ralph, one of whom nicknamed me "Scoop" for my slick infielding. We made it to the playoffs, but didn't win the championship. During the course of the season I traveled to Hyde Park, Quincy, Burlington, Norwood, Dedham and other towns around Boston to play games. Hands down the strangest field I played on was in Jamaica Plain. Located behind the VA Medical Center and squeezed in between a school, a row of houses and some other institutional buildings, Jefferson Playground is the lyric little bandbox of the Boston amateur baseball world.

I recently visited the field again and took this picture:

So what are we looking at here?

To orient you: at the left of the photo is the left field foul pole. Moving to the right, we see a stone wall with a fence on top. I was never involved in discussions with the crew chief as to the ground rules for this field, but obviously a ball hit over that is a home run. The next thing we see is the base of a light stanchion. To the far right of the photo is the back of a building. Again, I'm not sure what the ground rules are, but if you're juicing, you might be able to pop one over this for a home run. Otherwise, anything off the wall is in play, I assume. It's the space between the light post and the building, however, where things got interesting. I wish now that I'd taken a better picture, but my words will just have to paint the picture for you.

This space is basically an urban canyon. The stone wall shown in the photo cuts a 90-degree angle behind the light post and shoots straight back for roughly 200 feet; the building on the right of the picture starts about 50 feet after the wall, and continues the same distance, up to Heath Street. There is a 20-foot gap in between the stone wall and side of the building, and it is filled with trees, bushes and God knows what else. I played two or three games on this field over the course of my five-year stint as a Quincy Son, and saw a few balls get to the front edge of this anomaly. I'm guessing the distance to the back of the building is about 300 feet, so while it's not unreachable for a bunch of over-40 guys, it's not an everyday occurrence.

So I'm sure you're wondering: how did you do when you played on this field? Well, I'm glad you asked. In one game I had two doubles, one each to left center and right center. The opposing pitcher was mixing his pitches pretty well, but his bender was pretty slow, so I just sat on it and when it came in, looking as big as Frank Thomas's head, I let loose.

No Yachts, No Mansions

From Dave Brigham:

What's the first thing you think of when I say Newport? Mansions built by 19th century robber barons that they referred to as summer cottages? The America's Cup yacht race? The International Tennis Hall of Fame? Loads of windburned preps with names like Muffy and Skip wearing Nantucket Reds and spilling white wine while howling with laughter over tales of cheating on exams at Hahvahd?

On a recent family mini-vacation to Rhode Island's toniest address, we managed to miss all of that. But we saw plenty, on both the front and back sides of this wonderful, historic city on Narragansett Bay.

As regular readers of this blog know, whenever I'm on vacation, I make time to find the backside of whatever city I'm in. I spent part of one early morning doing just that, but a lot of my discoveries were made while just walking through Newport's commercial and restaurant areas, as well as on a tour of a fort just a few miles from downtown.

(Fort Adams)

(View across the front yard of the fort, with housing in the background.)

Built between 1824 and 1857, the current Fort Adams replaced a predecessor established in 1799. It was an active Army post until 1950. We toured part of fort (there was a reenactment going on taking up a lot of the interior space), including some of the listening tunnels.

(Our tour guide took us on a short walk through some low listening tunnels, in which soldiers garrisoned at the fort could station themselves so they could hear attempts by the enemy to dig under the fort.)

We had lunch one day at Buskers Pub, a quiet respite from the overflow crowds at so many other eateries. Amid all the memorabilia, both real items and knockoff ones peddled by restaurant decor companies to give diners that oh-so-important cozy feeling of fake nostalgia, my wife spied this beaut.

Know what it is? I'll give you a hint: it's used in a game that few Americans have seen, and even fewer understand, a game that originated in the Basque region of Spain. Give up? It's a jai-alai cesta! Newport used to have a fronton -- what you call the enclosed court where jai-alai is played -- but it's been closed for years. Now the building holds a casino. My friends and I frequented the Hartford fronton back in the '80s.

There are loads of cool historic buildings along the main drags and in the neighborhoods of Newport.

(Now housing retail and office space, this circa-1894 music hall looks great, and surely must have been the cat's pajamas in the 20th century.)

(Home to the Newport Blues Cafe, the former Kinsley Building started life in 1892 as a Aquidneck National Bank, hence the "SAFE DEPOSIT" etched into its facade.)

(The Seamen's Church Institute provides "education, hospitality and a safe haven for those who work, live and play on or by the sea." This building was erected in 1930.)

Driving up to our hotel, I looked across the street and my heart skipped a beat.

The park had a similar feel to Doubleday Field at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, which I had the pleasure of playing on a number of years ago. So I knew it was old.

Bernardo Cardines Memorial Field is indeed long in the tooth, and is considered one of the oldest baseball fields in the good ol' US of A. Home to the Newport Gulls of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a summer league sanctioned by the NCAA and Major League Baseball, the field isn't anything fancy, but I really wanted to get inside to watch a few innings.

Alas, there were no tickets to be had, as the season had ended earlier in August.

Meandering just a little ways from the hotel and ballpark, I came across The Point neighborhood (also known as Easton's Point), one of the oldest in Newport.

(The Callender School in The Point. Built in 1862, closed in 1974 and renovated into apartments in 1979-81, it was named for John Callender Jr., pastor of First Baptist Church in Newport, who lived from 1706 to 1748.)

(The Point is filled with so many amazing old houses that have been beautifully restored. The neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of Colonial homes in in the U.S., per Wikipedia.)

(The Sarah Kendall House in The Point dates to 1871, when it was built for the wife of a wealthy shipping merchant, according to the inn's web site.)

(On the outskirts of The Point sits Ten Speed Spokes, a bike store with a cool retro sign.)

Inevitably, I stumbled across some railroad tracks.

Once part of the Old Colony & Newport Railway that connected to Boston, these tracks have been abandoned for quite some time. But there's a small, restored station just up the railbed.

About 20 minutes out of town you can ride the rails. Not on a train, mind you, but on a rail cart. No, not a handcar like you've seen in old-timey movies. You pedal along for about six miles, hands-free, while you enjoy views of Narragansett Bay and the quaint surrounding towns. Here's some video of the trip my wife, kids and I took with Rail Explorers:

Pretty cool, eh?

Finally, while we didn't hit any mansions or board any yachts, we did check out one of Newport's major tourist attractions: the Cliff Walk. Sandwiched between the Newport shoreline and the backyards of Gilded Age mansions, the walk extends 3.5 miles, although we only walked a small portion of it because my kids are kinda lame.

(Mystery box located along the Cliff Walk, at Salve Regina University.)

We had a great time in Newport. There were so many great restaurants, shops and museums that we only strolled past, because again, our kids were with us. I'd love to get there with my wife and take advantage of more of what this great little city has to offer.

Finding Hope, But Losing a Mainstay, in Clinton

From Dave Brigham:

Man, that's a bad pun in the title. Is it a pun? Either way, I'm not sure why I ended up with a vague Bill Clinton reference up there. On to the post....

My initial attraction to Clinton, Mass., was the long-abandoned train tunnel. The site is pretty famous among urbex photography people, and graffiti-loving teenagers and those who like to get spooked walking through an 1,100-foot, nearly pitch-black tunnel. The day I was there last fall, I ran into a younger version of myself, a bearded guy with glasses taking pictures of the place after having spied the words "Abandoned train tunnel" on Google Maps or some other online navigational aide.

So let's get those photos out of the way. I'm not trying to minimize how cool this place is, but there's so much more in this former mill town that was incorporated in 1850 (separating from Lancaster) thanks to the efforts of Erastus Brigham Bigelow.

(This was my first view of the tunnel, after crossing a very busy road and scrambling up a short hill.)

(Naturally there is a LOT of graffiti; this work is the most elaborate.)

(The eastern end of the tunnel is much more serene, and has been vandalized very little.)

(I lingered for a few minutes talking with my fellow photographer. Then it was time to head back through, flashlight in hand.)

(Central Massachusetts Railroad trains once came out of the tunnel and continued on a bridge across the Nashua River. This is what's left of the bridge.)

While researching Clinton before my visit, I learned that the town of 13,600 lays claim to the world's oldest continuously used baseball field: Fuller Field. Around since 1878, the field doesn't look historic, but rather just like any other place where America's Pastime is played. There are two sorta cool ticket booths there.

Alas, in 2008, just one year after the Guinness Book of World Records recognized Fuller Field with its superlative, the title was taken away and handed to Labatt Park in London, Ontario, Canada.

(Clinton is the home to one of three North American manufacturing facilities for UK-based cereal maker Weetabix. I love their colors. This part of their facility is just behind the historic Lancaster Mills, which is being developed into condos.)

(Just down the street from the Weetabix entrance is an abandoned store.)

(And a little further down the street I found this old trestle, part of an old rail system that once served the factory and mill.)

(On that same stretch I found this place. I'm fascinated by houses with storefronts tacked on. I rarely see one that's an active retailer or small office. Wonder what used to be here.)

Clinton's got a nice downtown, with lots of stores, restaurants, offices, churches and a really big mill complex.

(I love this simple mural.)

(Such a cool sign. The Old Timer - "A touch of Ireland in New England since 1929." Unfortunately, according to this column in the Boston Globe today, the place is slated to close in two weeks.)

(St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, built in 1900.)

(Smoke stack behind Saint John the Guardian of Our Lady Parish. Incinerator? Crematory?)

(This smokestack looms over the former Bigelow Carpet Mill, a massive complex featuring multiple buildings.)

(Another former Bigelow mill building, which evidently was also used as a distillery.)