CONDITIONS
CONTEXT
HISTORY
SOCIAL ISSUES
PLANNING PROCESSES
TESTIMONIES

Click here for map and orthophoto

Click here for data from census tract 820.

Click here for data from census tract 821.

Click here for data from census tract 902.
(From U.S. 2000 Census).

CONDITIONS:
Grove Hall lies at the boundary of Roxbury and Dorchester -- an ancient crossroads that evolved into a business district and has come to define a large and diverse community of people. Like many sections of Boston, Grove Hall refers to both a specific commercial intersection and the larger neighborhood that surrounds it. The intersection lies at the nexus of Blue Hill Avenue, Washington Street, and Warren Street. The area is a city-designated Main Street and the site of the Grove Hall Mecca Mall, which opened in 2000 at a cost of $13.5 million, including about $7 million of public financing, including funds from the federal empowerment zone program, ('Blue Hill Upgrade,” The Boston Globe, March 31, 2003). 

(Click here for the full entry regarding the Grove Hall Mecca Mall area).

Boundaries and neighborhood identity:
There are no hard and fast boundaries to the Grove Hall neighborhood. Roughly, the neighborhood extends north from the Grove Hall Mecca Mall to the intersection with Quincy Street and south to Franklin Park. The boundary between Dorchester and Roxbury is also ambiguous. A City sign on Blue Hill Avenue announces the Grove Hall Main Street as being in Roxbury, although some long-term residents argue that Grove Hall has always been considered part of Dorchester. Grove Hall has what is considered a Dorchester zipcode.

Local institutions have shifted their neighborhood identity over the years. Over the course of the 1980s, the William Monroe Trotter Elementary School had three letterheads. One listed the school as being in Roxbury, another read Dorchester, and a third read simply "Grove Hall" (Bill Walczak, from an article by Sam Allis, The Boston Globe, June 23, 2002). Local organizations such as Project Rebuild and Improve Grove Hall Together avoid this issue by using "Grove Hall" as their neighborhood address, rather than being forced to choose between Roxbury and Dorchester. City officials also say that Grove Hall is actually located in both Dorchester and Roxbury.

Blue Hill Avenue:
Blue Hill Avenue is the commercial backbone of the neighborhoods immediately east of Franklin Park and the spine of Grove Hall. The Grove Hall Main Streets Association has dubbed the main commercial center of Grove Hall on Blue Hill Avenue as the "International Avenue of Color." Wrought-iron street lamps line the Avenue. The median is paved with bricks. The Main Street area offers views northward to downtown Boston.

Access by public transportation:
Grove Hall is served by multiple bus routes, but not by rail. Buses 14, 44, 28, 23, and 19 run through Grove Hall. Warren Street, which empties out into the Grove Hall Main Street area from the north, is another major bus corridor through the area. Warren Street is served by buses 14, 44, 28, 23, and 19. Two of the five Roxbury bus routes that travel through Grove Hall on Warren Street receive very high daily use relative to other routes, with 11,700 riders each day (Routes #23 and #28) (Access Boston 2000 - 2010, Boston Transportation Department).

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CONTEXT:
Franklin Park:
Grove Hall is in close proximity to Franklin Park. However, the park is not accessible to Grove Hall residents between Elm Park Avenue and Blue Hill Avenue. A zoo fence separates people from their park along these three, long, densely populated city blocks. Sidewalks along this edge of the park are either non-existent or in poor condition. Finally, crossing Seaver Street or Blue Hill Avenue along this stretch is intimidating for many potential park users. And, with the exception of Puddingstone Park, there are very few smaller parks, tot-lots, and community gardens in the Grove Hall area.

Demographics:
Several census tracts fall within Grove Hall, three of which are in the Heart of the City (901, 902, and 821). In 2000, between 68% and 82.3% of residents were black or African American – including a large Cape Verdean population. The largest Hispanic population (31.3% of the total population) lived in the census tract north of Washington Street and east of Blue Hill Avenue. The smallest Hispanic population (15.2% of the total population) lived south of Washington Street in Dorchester.

Renters occupied between 74.7% and 89.4% of residences in these Grove Hall census tracts. This high percentage of renters indicates that a large number of residents may be at risk of displacement if housing prices continue to increase. Median household income in these three census tracts ranged from $18,571 to $29,696, with residents south of Washington Street earning the highest income and with the lowest number of individuals living below the poverty line (19.6%). Almost 33% of Roxbury households living east of Humboldt Avenue live below the poverty line.

Many Grove Hall residents - between 38% and 40% - depend on public transportation to get to work. Finally, the Grove Hall community is young. In these three census tracts, between 34% and 61% of residents were under 18 years old in 2000. In contrast, in several Heart of the City census tracts to the west of Franklin Park, fewer than 15% of residents are under the age of 18 in 2000. The Grove Hall census tract with the largest percentage of young people is located north of Washington Street, east of Blue Hill Avenue, and west of the railroad tracts in the vicinity of Jeremiah Burke High School.

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HISTORY:
Early history:
Grove Hall began as a crossroads. Wherever 17th century travelers ventured, they needed to cross the slender neck of land that connected Boston to the towns to the south. Grove Hall became the connecting point between Roxbury and Dorchester. Beginning in 1804, Grove Hall was accessible via the Washington turnpike.

Normandy Street in Grove Hall was the original boundary between Roxbury and Dorchester. Two men built their country estates on either side of this line. Boston auctioneer Thomas Kilby Jones built the first estate on the Roxbury side northwest of Normandy in the mid-1700s, on land originally owned by Samuel Payson. The Jones estate included Puddingstone Park (David M. Balfour, "Taverns of Boston in Ye Olden Time,"The Bay State monthly, Volume 2, Issue 2, November 1884).

Marshal Wilder built his estate known as Hawthorne Grove on the Dorchester side (southeast of Normandy). He moved there in 1831. Wilder was dedicated to horticulture. At various times over the course of his later years, Wilder was the president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the Massachusetts Agricultural Club, and the Massachusetts Agricultural College. He built his home at the intersection of Washington and Columbia Road, as well as multiple 20- to 40-foot greenhouses where he grew a range of fruits for domestic use (Richard Heath (pers. com. 2002; Smithsonian Institution Library). After Wilder died in 1886, his property was divided up into multiple plots.

Grove Hall acquired its name from a popular hotel that operated just east of the intersection of Warren and Blue Hill Avenue in the early 1800s. The hotel was so named because of the cultivated groves of trees that surrounded it (Bill Walczak, local historian and director of the Codman Square Health Center).

Growth and the Jewish community:
The growth of Grove Hall as a residential and commercial district took off beginning in 1870, after the town of Dorchester was annexed to Boston and the new streetcar transport network was established (Warner, S.B., Streetcar Suburbs, 1978). Franklin Park became a major draw to the Grove Hall area even before it was completed.

During the first half of the 20th century, Grove Hall was the northern border of the Jewish community in Boston and a busy residential and commercial center with a variety of housing styles. In 1950, a brick apartment might be next to a delicate Victorian single family home, which might be next to a wooden triple-decker. A few blocks further north of Grove Hall’s center at the intersection of Warren and Blue Hill Avenue, the quality of the housing decreased. Grove Hall served as a buffer between the deteriorating neighborhoods of lower Roxbury and the thriving, largely Jewish neighborhoods to the south (Levine & Harmon, Death of an American Jewish Community, 1992).

In-migration of African Americans:
Following a massive migration African-Americans from the southern states to northern cities in the 1940s and 1950s, Roxbury became the center of the African-American community in Boston. Beginning in 1954, the Nation of Islam at Grove Hall, which was founded by Malcolm X, worked for justice and neighborhood improvement. The institution had a strong influence on the Grove Hall area. In 1949, African American social worker activists Otto and Muriel Snowden formed an organization called Freedom House. The goal of Freedom House was to centralize activism towards neighborhood improvement while fostering and sustaining a stable, middle-class, racially-mixed neighborhood. Both the Nation of Islam and Freedom House continue to operate in Grove Hall today.

By the late 1960s, Grove Hall and the surrounding communities were almost entirely black. Corrupt real estate practices by brokers who exploited the Jews and African Americans contributed to the instability of the neighborhood (see entry for Blue Hill Avenue). Tension between Jewish property owners and African American renters increased.

Social unrest in the area reached its peak in 1937, when 30 black welfare mothers vowed to remain in the Grove Hall welfare office until their demands for work training programs, representation on welfare boards, and respectful treatment, were satisfied. The activists chained the doors of the office from the inside so that no one – including the workers – could leave the building. Hundreds of residents watched as Boston patrolmen smashed into the building to free employees. A riot erupted and spread to a five-block area. Jewish stores were burned and looted. The police force came under sniper-fire at the intersection of Blue Hill Avenue and Intervale Street. The entire Boston police force mobilized at Franklin Park Stadium to organize its response.

Long-term residents still refer to the riots, and the repercussions of this period of racial tension had long lasting repercussions for Franklin Park and the entire Grove Hall area.

In 2003, there are still no community gardens in the Grove Hall area. While plans have been made for improvements to Puddingstone Garden, in 2003 these plans have not yet been implemented. Elm Hill Park is a beautiful and well-tended resource for residents in the immediate area, but is not connected to other open space resources or well utilized by the wider community.

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SOCIAL ISSUES:
Health disparities:
Roxbury and Dorchester as a whole -- including Grove Hall -- have higher serious health disparities relative to other Boston neighborhoods, including higher rates of childhood asthma than any other part of the state, high diabetes rates, and high blood lead levels among children. A larger percentage of residents of these communities are overweight or obese than the Boston average (Boston Public Health Commission; see entry for Health disparities).

Violent crime:
In 2000, the Boston Police Department identified Grove Hall as one of the city's hotspots for violent crime. For the first four months of 2000, Grove Hall had the highest crime rate as measured by homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, firearms arrests, recovered firearms, and general calls for service. Of the 306 incidents in the eight city hotspots identified by City Police, Grove Hall accounted for the largest number, 57, or one-fifth of the total. Two of those were homicides. In 2000, police also recovered more guns from people in this area than from any other hot spot (Francie Latour, "Cluster crime," The Boston Globe, Aug. 27, 2000).

Youth population (crime, growth rate, and public facilities):
According to police authorities in the B2 Police District, Grove Hall also had the highest rate of violent crime among youth in the city in 2002. Gun traffic arrests were at the rate of about 2-3 arrests per shift, and incidences of young teens with guns increased in Districts 2 and 3 (Grove Hall community meeting, February 14, 2002).

The Grove Hall neighborhood has been home to at least two of the most dangerous gangs in the city. In 1998, 28 members of the "Castlegate Road Gang" were indicted in federal court and charged with conspiracy and distributing crack cocaine. At that time, District Attorney Martin said, "This is the beginning of the end of one of the oldest, largest, and most violent gangs in Boston." In 1996, Intervale Posse gang (on Intervale Street in Grove Hall), was targeted in a highly publicized crackdown through Operation Cease Fire. Fifteen of the gang leaders were arrested on federal drug charges.

The large youth population in Grove Hall has fewer public alternatives to the streets available to them than the youth in other Boston neighborhoods. Boston Public Schools report that 5,981 school-aged children live in Grove Hall.

In 2004 on Geneva Avenue in Grove Hall, a 7,000-square-foot temporary Grove Hall Community Center has been erected. The center, which is also known as "the bubble," is expected to be at the site for the next three years and includes a full-size basketball court, computer rooms, offices, and a multi-purpose room. It is also outfitted with a public address system. The structure is covered in vinyl supported by a metal frame and reinforced double-walls. Programs include a senior citizen exercise program, women's aerobics and step and community meetings. There are athletic activities available including badminton, volleyball, floor hockey, basketball, ping-pong and tennis; workshops, homework time and community meetings.

In September 2003, Mayor Thomas Menino and Archbishop Sean O'Malley unveiled a sign at 179 Columbia Road in Dorchester to announce the upcoming construction of the new Dorchester Community Service Center. The new service center will bring together the Haitian Multi-Service Center (HMSC), located at 12 Bicknell Street, with Catholic Charities' Greater Boston's Uphams Corner Community Center, located at 35 Bird Street. According to a release from the City of Boston, "The new facility, which is expected to improve service delivery in the area, will offer childcare, family counseling and support services, youth services, elder care, perinatal and youth parent services, AIDS counseling, vocational readiness, adult education and literacy services, and health education. The new Dorchester Community Service Center is expected to by open by spring 2005.

In 2003, the City of Boston is completing construction on the Brunswick Gardens Middle School on Columbia Road east of Brunswick Street on the outskirts of the Heart of the City. The new school will offer extensive play facilities that may be available to community members for use after school hours. 

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PLANNING PROCESSES:
Long Bay Management, a minority-owned developer, is rehabilitating the Silva Building at the corner of Warren Street and Blue Hill Avenue. The Heritage Flag Company is moving near the intersection of Intervale Street and Blue Hill Avenue and five artist's lofts will be built above the factory. Habitat for Humanity plans to construct 22 affordable homes on a large vacant lot just north of Intervale on Blue Hill Avenue, ('Blue Hill Upgrade,” The Boston Globe, March 31, 2003).

The Grove Hall Library is planning to move from its current location on Warren Street into the Jeremiah Burke High School. The existing building has frequently developed leaks and the problem has been reported to the City. The new library will include central air conditioning and heating, a community center, gym, and the merging of the Grove Hall Branch of the Public Library with the high school's library. Many are opposed to the library plans because they believe the new building is not conveniently located. Opponents are concerned about safety, accessibility, and parking and are uncomfortable with the idea of sharing facilities with high school students. The Grove Hall Library president is collecting petitions urging the city not to go forward with the renovation plans. However, supporters feel the new location will be beneficial because of the increased space (Jeremy Schwab, "Grove Hall Residents Fighting Library Move," The Boston Globe, December 2, 2004).

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TESTIMONIES:
"The Nation of Islam plays a major role in how Grove Hall develops" (Bruce Smith, Dorchester resident and deputy director of public health practice at the Harvard School of Public Health, 2002).

"They put the kingpins in prison and now its not bad around this area with the gangs" (Pers. com. with Roderick, Grove Hall resident for more than 30 years, in 2002 on Geneva Street).

"I strongly believe that Franklin Park Zoo is an important catalyst to the economic development of the Grove Hall business district" (Robert M. George, chair of the Board of the Grove Hall Business District and site director for the Franklin Park Zoo in 2000).

"Let me assure you, they will be coming back to Grove Hall" (Sandra McCroom, executive director, Roxbury Youth Works, in reference to the young gang members from Grove Hall who were incarcerated in the 1990s and who are now being released, February 14, 2002).

"If you look at traffic and development plans in Dudley Square, on Columbus Avenue and in Grove Hall, it's clear there needs to be a comprehensive plan" (City Councilor Chuck Turner).

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