“By 1900, with 37,000 lodgers, the South End was the nation’s largest rooming-house district–a drab, dismal quarter which one social worker called ‘the city wilderness.’ Its once peaceful squares were now hemmed in by sooty factories, noisy machine shops, dusty brickyards, grim warehouses, and the incessant rumble of trucks and steam engines.”
J Anthony Lucas reviewed the South End in less-than-glowing terms in his Pulitzer Prize winning assessment of Boston’s mid-Seventies racial struggle, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. One of the three families, the Diver family, purchased 118 W. Newton in 1970 for only $27,000. As they moved into the decrepit bow front that August, Joan Diver wondered what she got herself into:
“It was a total disaster, she thought, beyond all hope. The old spruce floors were rotting, the window sashes were splintered, the plaster ornaments had fallen from much of the parlor ceiling. The bottom two floors were livable, but the top two looked as if they barely survived a hurricane–wooden lath showing through the walls, wire and cables trailing along the halls, two bathrooms with exposed plumbing and uncovered plasterboard.”
I recently visited the home, trying to imagine the chaotic street of thirty years ago: a sharp contrast to the quiet, tree-lined street it appeared in 2008. In a 1975 letter to Mayor White, Joan bitterly complained of the neighborhood:
“In the last week, there have been six muggings on our block of West Newton Street alone, three within a 24-hour period within ten yards of our house. Colin himself apprehended a mugger last night”
Actually, Colin brained the guy with a Louisville Slugger, breaking the bat over dude’s head…
I’m confident nobody in 1970 pictured the South End a beautiful residential neighborhood. I’m equally confident nobody imagined a South End real estate transaction breaking six figures. Make no mistake: it’s not Hingham. It’s an inner city neighborhood with inner city problems, but the stunning Victorian architecture makes the homes of the South End some of the most desirable in the city.
118 W. Newton Street
$2,495,000
Beds: 4/ Baths: 2.5
SQ. FT.: 3755
$/SQ.FT.: 664
Also on the Diver’s block:
135 W. Newton, #2
$1,395,000
Beds: 3/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.:1954
$/SQ.FT.: 714
154 W. Newton, #1&2
$1,095,000
Beds: 3/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.: 2487
$/SQ.FT.: 440
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