West End Museum and Walking Tour

Sunday, October 20 at 11 am

If you love history, museums and want to see an example of how urban renewal can drastically change a neighborhood, this trip is for you. The West End Museum recently reopened and it is a gem that most people have not visited. Look at old maps and see exhibits about this formerly close-knit neighborhood of immigrants, particularly Jews and Italians, who made their home in Boston. Remember Charlie and the MTA song and its referance to Scollay Square? That's the old West End. We now know it as Government Center and frequent it for sporting events at the Garden. Here's your chance to see and understand its history.

Participants can choose the full trip -- a one-hour walking trip of the former West End beginning at 11, lunch at a nearby restaurant from 12-1:30 and a docent-led tour of the museum from 1:30-2:30. If you prefer, you may choose the walking trip or the museum tour, with lunch before or afterwards. The cost for the walking tour and museum private tour is $20; lunch is separately paid. Please contact Mark Seliber mseliber1@gmail.comto make your reservation and payment.

More about the Museum

The West End Museum is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing the history and culture of Boston’s West End Neighborhood.

The history of the West End is one of continual change, American firsts, Boston innovations, and modern icons. The West End Museum celebrates the story of the neighborhood that led the way in Boston’s immigrant era, supporting thousands of the world’s “huddled masses” as they found their way from North End slums to the American Dream. By then, the West End had already produced America’s first native-born architect, provided a home for free Black citizens after the Revolution, and led the way in the construction of railroads, electric street cars, and so much more. The neighborhood changed dramatically after 1950. Two decades of Urban Renewal led to the clearing of more than half the neighborhood, and reinvention in its modern form.

The Museum continues to collect West End artifacts, investigate stories of West End community and culture, and share those stories with the public through programs and exhibitions.

To preview some of the exhibitions we will see, click here.

For driving and transportation directions, click here.

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