Living in North End, Boston, MA

About North End

Where it is

The North End lies northeast of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, with Cross Street and North Washington Street along its western edge, the mouth of the Charles and Mystic Rivers to the north, and Commercial Street and Atlantic Avenue along Boston Harbor; Hanover Street runs through its middle.

The North End has been lived in since it was colonized in the 1630s. The North Meeting House went up in 1649, and North Square grew around it. On November 27, 1676, a fire destroyed Increase Mather's house, the meeting house and 45 other buildings, and the Paul Revere House was built on the Mather site no later than 1680. The town bought land on Copp's Hill for a burying ground in 1659. Christ Church, known as Old North, was established in 1723, and on the night of April 18, 1775, Robert Newman and John Pulling hung two lanterns in its steeple to signal that British troops were crossing the Charles River.

Most of what stands today is later. From the 1880s, wooden houses were replaced by four- and five-story brick apartment buildings, most of which remain, while a handful of colonial brick houses survive, including the Pierce-Hichborn House (1711) and the Clough House (1712). Twelve sites in the neighborhood are on the National Register of Historic Places. On January 15, 1919, a 2.3-million-gallon tank of the Purity Distilling Company at 529 Commercial Street burst, and the Great Molasses Flood killed 21 people and injured 150. In 1933 the Paul Revere Mall, or Prado, was cut through to connect Hanover Street with Old North Church.

In the 1950s the elevated Central Artery was built along the neighborhood's western side, demolishing hundreds of buildings below Cross Street and walling the North End off from downtown. From the mid-1970s the industrial waterfront along Commercial Street and Atlantic Avenue was converted to housing and business uses. The Big Dig put the highway underground, the elevated artery came down in 2003, and the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, opened in October 2008, now runs on its site, with its North End Parks on either side of Hanover Street. On the harbor, the City of Boston has rebuilt the 4.5-acre Langone Park and Puopolo Playground with a seawall and a harborwalk raised four feet.

Homes in North End

The North End's housing is mostly four- and five-story brick apartment buildings built from the 1880s on narrow streets, along with a few surviving colonial-era brick houses and housing in former wharf and industrial buildings along the waterfront converted from the mid-1970s. The Boston Planning & Development Agency's tabulation of the 2016-2020 American Community Survey counts 5,883 occupied housing units, 25.5% of them owner-occupied and 74.5% renter-occupied.