Living in Mattapan, Boston, MA

About Mattapan

Where it is

Mattapan is in the south of Boston, centered on Mattapan Square at the meeting of Blue Hill Avenue, River Street and Cummins Highway. Harambee Park in Dorchester's Franklin Field lies beside it, and the Boston Nature Center and Forest Hills Cemetery, in the adjoining Forest Hills area, are sometimes counted as its green space.

Mattapan takes its name from the Massachusett name for the Dorchester area, recorded as 'Matampan' in 1634. Paths that became Adams Street and River Street led to fishing weirs at Lower Mills, and Mattapan and Lower Mills were the main fords of the Neponset River. On December 1, 1847, the Dorchester and Milton Branch Railroad began service to a station at Upper Mills that was later renamed Mattapan, and on December 18, 1849, the Mattapan Library Association opened. Mattapan was part of Dorchester when Boston annexed that town in 1870, and it grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as railroads and streetcars brought downtown within reach. The present Mattapan station building opened on July 4, 1902, after Blue Hill Avenue was widened.

In 1929 the Milton branch railroad became the Mattapan Line, a trolley that opened from Ashmont to Milton on August 26 and on to Mattapan on December 21; it runs beside the Neponset River and still uses PCC streetcars built in 1945 and 1946. The housing around the square includes triple-deckers, two- and three-family houses and single-family houses, with apartment buildings on parts of River Street. Boston State Hospital, in Mattapan and Dorchester, expanded onto the former Austin Farm in 1887 and closed in 1979; part of the grounds became Mass Audubon's Boston Nature Center, and 40 acres were redeveloped as Olmsted Green, 497 homes built in phases over 18 years, whose last phase, The Preserve, was sold out by February 2026.

The Fairmount Line's Morton Street station, a stop originally called Forest Avenue, reopened in October 1987 and was rebuilt to be accessible in 2007, and a new station at Blue Hill Avenue and Woodhaven Street opened on February 25, 2019. In April 2023 The Loop at Mattapan Station opened on the station's former parking lot, with 135 rental apartments and ground-floor retail. The Boston Planning & Development Agency board adopted PLAN: Mattapan on May 11, 2023; residential zoning allowing two- and three-unit infill and accessory dwelling units followed on February 7, 2024, and on May 30, 2024 Mattapan Square became the first place in the city mapped with Squares + Streets zoning, which allows mixed-use buildings and multifamily housing.

Homes in Mattapan

The Boston Planning Department describes Mattapan's housing mix as small apartment buildings, single-family homes, public housing and Boston's traditional triple-deckers; two- and three-family houses are also part of the stock, and there are apartment buildings on parts of River Street. The Boston Planning & Development Agency's tabulation of the 2016-2020 American Community Survey counts 9,214 occupied housing units in Mattapan, 40.4% of them owner-occupied, compared with 35.3% citywide.