CONDITIONS
CONTEXT
HISTORY
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

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Roxbury as a whole entry 2 of 2

NOTE: Because the Heart of the City database is concerned with the communities immediately surrounding the major greenspaces at the geographic center of the city, this entry will focus on the highland area of Roxbury near Franklin Park. These areas of Roxbury, including Egleston Square, Elm Hill, Grove Hall, Seaver Street, Columbia Road, the Jeremiah Burke, the Grove Hall Mecca Mall, and Blue Hill Avenue, are discussed in depth in individual entries.

CONDITIONS:
The neighborhood of Roxbury has tremendous resources and faces tremendous challenges. The neighborhood boasts dramatic topography and massive outcroppings of Roxbury Puddingstone, an art museum, a revitalized business district, stunning places of worship, and Franklin Park. At the same time, Roxbury's children are more likely to have serious asthma than any other children in the Commonwealth. There is still too much vacant and unproductive land, and violent crime among youth in areas such as Grove Hall remains high.

Topography:
According to the City's Department of Neighborhood Development (DND), Roxbury is 3.9 square milles in area. Roxbury rises in elevation from north to south, beginning with expansive flatland ("The Roxbury Interim Planning Overlay District (IPOD): Open space needs assessment and planning study," Boston Urban Gardeners, 1989). The rocky hills of the Roxbury highlands near Franklin Park are drumlins formed by glacial activity. The hills afford beautiful views and Elm Hill (also known as "Sugar Hill") is perhaps the most significant of these. Many of the parks and some of the residential areas of Highland Roxbury contain massive outcroppings of Roxbury Puddingstone (a type of composite rock).

As noted in a 1989 open space plan created by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and Boston Urban Gardeners (BUG), "Roxbury's diverse topographically and significant environmental character is often underestimated because the most beautiful parts of the neighborhood are least visible to the majority of residents and visitors alike" ("The Roxbury IPOD: Open space needs assessment and planning study," Boston Urban Gardeners, 1989, p12).

Parameters:
As mentioned above, the Heart of the City focuses on Highland Roxbury near Franklin Park. Roxbury's southern boundaries are blurred except for the fact that the neighborhood land ends at Franklin Park. Both Grove Hall and Egleston Square are centers of activity in Roxbury, and both places are ambiguous in terms of neighborhood identity. Egleston Square is part of Jamaica Plain as well as Roxbury, while Grove Hall is part of Dorchester as well as Roxbury.

Commercial areas:
Grove Hall and Egleston Square -- both designated Boston Main Streets -- are the central commercial areas in southern Roxbury. Investment in recent years has been particularly significant in Grove Hall at the Grove Hall Mecca Mall. The site, which had been vacant and environmentally contaminated by underground storage tanks, was cleaned and redeveloped and now contains the only supermarket in the area.

About 2,300 people are employed in the Egleston Square area, 1,200 are employed in Grove Hall, and 3,200 are employed along Columbus Avenue and the Southwest Corridor just north of the Heart of the City ("Access Boston", Boston Transportation Department, 2000).

Schools:
Roxbury schools that fall within the Heart of the City include: 1) Jeremiah Burke High School on Washington Street (Dorchester) near the Grove Hall Mecca mall, which lost its accreditation for more than a year in the 1990s. 2) Trotter Elementary School. 3) Boston Latin Academy, which is one of Boston's three "testing schools," and is on the outskirts of the Heart of the City.

In 2002, the new Brunswick Middle School is being constructed just north of Columbia Road. Also, Mother Caroline Academy, a private school for girls from moderate and low-income families, runs in Grove Hall on Blue Hill Avenue.

Transportation:
Although Roxbury is well connected to downtown Boston and other neighborhoods by public buses, the relative quality of the transportation service compared to the service in other neighborhoods is an issue. The bus routes in Roxbury have very high usage in comparison to other areas in the Heart of the City. Both #23 (Ashmont to Ruggles via Washington and Warren Streets) and #28 (Mattapan to Ruggles via Blue Hill Avenue and Warren Street) receive the highest use on a daily basis, with 11,700 riders each. Route #22 from Ashmont to Ruggles via Blue Hill Avenue and Warren Street has 8,300 riders each day. A relatively high percentage of trips taken within Roxbury are by foot or by bike -- an estimated 63% ("Access Boston", Boston Transportation Department, 2000).

According to the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan published in 2004 Route #28 (Mattapan to Ruggles, via Grove Hall) and Route #44 (Franklin Park Zoo to Ruggles, via Blue Hill Avenue) service should extend into non-peak hours, or additional off-peak service should be required to provide important connections to cultural, recreational, and shopping destinations. It is important that this expansion of service hours be on weeknights as well as on weekend nights to facilitate access to jobs.

There are 15,681 workers over 16 years of age who utilize some form of transportation to get to work in Roxbury. Forty percent (6,277 people) drive, 15% (2,422 people) use a car pool, 36% (5,722 people) use public transportation, and 6% (985) use a bicycle or walk to work. The average travel time it takes to get to a job for all workers over 16 years of age is 33 minutes (The Roxbury Strategic Master Plan).

The streets in the Roxbury highlands that receive the heaviest vehicular traffic are Columbus Avenue with 39,000 vehicles each day, Seaver Street with 30,000 vehicles each day, Blue Hill Avenue with 19,000 vehicles, Warren Street with 13,000 vehicles, and Washington Street with 12,000 vehicles (("Access Boston", Boston Transportation Department, 2000).

Neighborhood institutions:
Important neighborhood institutions include the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Freedom House, and the Grove Hall Library.

Significant places of worship in the Roxbury Highlands include the enormous and historic United House of Prayer for All People on Seaver Street, the Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church on Warren Street, Mohammed's Mosque #11 on Blue Hill Avenue (started by Malcolm X), and the First Haitian Baptist Church on Blue Hill Avenue. Two of these architecturally stunning churches were previously Jewish temples.

Housing:
In Roxbury, the three-family home is the most common housing type. The median price in 1998 for a three-family home was $103,000. By 2000 that number had rise 94% to $200,000. Rent for a two-bedroom apartment rose 66% between 1995 and 2000 from $688 to $1,100. The median sale price for a one-bedroom home rose 48.2% between 2000 and 2001 to $214,950.

1995                 1998             1999              2000     
_____________________________________________

$688                  n/a              $1,100           $1,400

2001              2002        % increase 1995-2002
_________________________________________
$1,300          $1,400                 103%

While housing prices in other neighborhoods increased steadily over time, housing in Roxbury experienced a dramatic increase over a short period of time in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For example, the median monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Roxbury rose 41% during the third quarter of 1999 alone and 38% between 1999 and 2000 (Weismann, "More than Shelter" in Governing Greater Boston, 2002).

Through the efforts of the Department of Neighborhood Development, Boston Housing Authority, Boston Redevelopment Authority, and Inspectional Services Department, Roxbury has met or exceeded most of its goals since 2001. Major accomplishments include:

-- 7,726 new units of housing permitted
-- 2,244 unit of affordable housing permitted
-- 1,032 units of vacant public housing renovated
-- 3,142 at-risk federally subsidized unit preserved
-- More than 1,000 units of housing made available to the homeless
-- 401 parcels of city-owned land made available for affordable development and another 508 parcels on track to be offered through 2006.
-- Abandoned residential buildings reduced by 33%
(Roxbury Strategic Master Plan)

The appearance of housing in Roxbury varies tremendously. Along certain heavily traveled corridors such as Humboldt Avenue and Warren Street, the vacancy rate is high and many homes are in poor condition. The most beautiful sections tend to be off the major thoroughfares and thus invisible to most visitors. Areas such as Elm Hill Park, lower Elm Hill Avenue, and the intersection of Crawford, Harold, and Abbotsford, offer beautiful views and newly renovated homes.

Parks, open space, and recreation:

Roxbury has a total of 538 acres in its protected open space inventory of parks, playgrounds, squares, and malls under the Parks Department and othe providers. This is the third largest total for protected open space acres in a Boston neighborhood. (Boston Parks and Recreation Department)

Franklin Park forms the southernmost section of Roxbury, and areas such as Crawford Playground in the Heart of the City provide young Roxbury residents with popular and accessible opportunities for recreation. Roxbury, however, has the second lowest playground quality in the city as measured by a three-year study by Harvard and Northeastern Universities entitled "Play Across Boston." While the median Boston neighborhood has 107 youth per recreational facility, Roxbury has 117 youth per recreational facility. Roxbury youth participate less frequently in sports and physical activity programs than the median Boston neighborhood. The ratio of participation to population is 0.82 in Roxbury and 1.09 in Boston as a whole.

The Parks Department has invested over $15 million in capital construction and re-construction in the parks and playgrounds of Roxbury during the 1993 to 2000 period. Franklin Park recieved the lion's share of this funding: $9 million. (Boston Parks and Recreation Department)

The Roxbury Strategic Master Plan published in 2004 recommends conducting a vacant lot analysis to establish a framework for balancing open space needs with the growing demand for developable housing parcels on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. The Plan also recommends redeveloping Peabody Circle to encourage safe enjoyment of Franklin Park and community activities at his significant entry point.

Arts and culture:
The Roxbury Strategic Master Plan published in January 2004 recommends that the neighborhood initiate a Cultural Heritage Campaign to promote Roxbury's image, marketability, and cultural identity. The Plan also makes other suggestions such as institute regular Roxbury Heritage Walking Tours, provide incentives for businesses and institutions to invest in arts, events, and cultural affairs, explore options for a jazz museum, and encourage the inclusion of artist spaces to be made available for community use.

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CONTEXT:
Demographics for Roxbury as a whole:
In 2000, Roxbury had a total of 58,725 residents. At 15,058 people per square mile, it is the most densely populated neighborhood in the Heart of the City. It is still, however, less than half as dense as the Back Bay/ Beacon Hill neighborhood ("Commercial Trends Boston 2002", City of Boston Department of Neighborhood Development, 2002).

The majority of residents of the Roxbury highlands are African American (63% according to the 2000 Census), although there are a growing number of Hispanic residents. Between 1980 and 2000, Roxbury's Hispanic population grew by 80% and Hispanics are now 24% of the total population. In 2000, Roxbury as a whole had the second largest Hispanic population of all Boston neighborhoods. The total population of Roxbury remained relatively stable between 1980 and 2000, when it was 56,658 (1980 - 2000 U.S. Census).

The census tract north of Seaver Street and east of Humboldt Avenue is both one of the densest (between about 14,000 and 41,000 people per square kilometer) and most transit dependent (between 53% and 80% of households do not have an automobile) in the city (Otake, "Analysis and strategies for transit justice in Greater Boston," 2002).

Connections to greenspaces:
Although the Roxbury Highlands area adjoins Franklin Park, the 527-acre park is not accessible to many people who live here. An impassible zoo fence stretches from Elm Hill Avenue along Seaver Street to Columbia Road on Blue Hill Avenue and blocks all access to the park. Likewise, along much of this stretch there are no sidewalks, making access even more difficult.

Also, despite Roxbury Highlands' history as a land famous for agricultural innovation (Grove Hall was so named after orchards and productive farmland) there are virtually no community gardens in the Roxbury Highlands. The two small exceptions are located in the Egleston Square area near the border with Jamaica Plain.

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HISTORY:
Geologic:
Roxbury was a rocky promontory of land separated from the Boston peninsula by water except for a long, thin spit of high ground that flooded at high tide. This thin connector of land became Washington Street, as Boston grew over time, people filled in the lowlands to create more land ("The Roxbury IPOD: Open space needs assessment and planning study," Boston Urban Gardeners, 1989).

Early history:
Roxbury was settled by a first wave of immigrants, led by William Pynchon, in 1630. The town was originally called Rocksberry or Rocksborough. At this time, the town extended eight miles east to west and two miles north to south and encompassed much of the Heart of the City. Roxbury had many resources the colonists were looking for: open farmland, the Stony Brook for water power, and timber and stone for building. Outcroppings of Roxbury Puddingstone from the Roxbury Highlands have been used over the centuries in buildings throughout the Boston area. Additionally, its location on what was then the only road to Boston gave the town an advantage in transportation and trade, as well as a strategic military position.

The English settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Company established a group of six villages, including Boston on the Shawmut Peninsula. Three miles south of Boston along the only land route to the peninsula, they founded Roxbury. The original boundaries of the town included the neighborhoods of Mission Hill, West Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain, as well as present-day Roxbury.

Roxbury in the 18th century was a farming town. The steepness of the land kept out industry and made it suitable for summer homes and estates. Jamaica Plain and the Roxbury Highlands were one sprawling district of suburban estates and country homes. Roxbury became locally famous for its many types of fruit trees, including the Roxbury Russet apple.

Industrial development occurred and denser settlements were constructed in the early 1800s as transportation infrastructure improved. When the Boston and Providence Railroad was built in 1834, the formerly unified area was split in half and Roxbury and Jamaica Plain developed in distinct ways on either side of the Stony Brook Valley. Greater isolation between the two areas occurred with the creation of Franklin Park, which made the highlands into a "residential cul de sac" (Warner, S.B., Streetcar Suburbs, 1978).

Roxbury became a city in 1846 and a part of the City of Boston in 1868. However, the boundaries of Roxbury have varied dramatically over time. At one point, Roxbury included parts of the Back Bay. Today, although the boundaries are still variously defined, many consider Melnea Cass Boulevard to be the northern boundary of the neighborhood. The neighborhood employed people throughout the city and grew rapidly, with Dudley Square at its center. Between 1865 and 1870 the population of the neighborhood grew by 61%, reaching a total of almost 46,000 people. As the population of the town grew, the neighborhoods developed around small squares and parks because residents were willing to make financial sacrifices to retain the garden character of the town as it grew in population  (Warner, S.B., Streetcar Suburbs, 1978). By the late 1800s, the Roxbury Highlands were an island of expensive and moderate homes in a sea of lower-to-middle class construction to the north.

Ethnic transition beginning in 1900:
Beginning in 1900, the ethnic characteristics of the Roxbury Highlands changed rapidly from Catholic and Protestant middle and upper-middle class whites first to working class Jewish and second to working poor black/ African Americans. From 1920, extending through this period of migration, little or no new housing was constructed in Roxbury and families lived in cramped, overcrowded spaces. It was not until the late 1960s that blacks began to move into other parts of the Heart of the City (O'Connor, T., Boston A to Z, 2001).

During this transitional period from a largely Jewish to a largely African American population, ethnic communities were strictly segregated from one another in Roxbury and throughout the city by what historian Thomas O'Connor describes as "unwritten laws." O'Connor argues that until the 1950s, the burgeoning African American population "accepted the unwritten law of residential segregation" (O'Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History, 1995, p239).

Families were in effect frozen in particular communities, and black families in particular found it difficult to move to other areas in the Heart of the City. In 1967, The Boston Globe  published a description of Boston neighborhoods in a booklet entitled "Boston: its neighborhoods, its people and its problems." In it, a black Roxbury resident named Robert B. Williams who lived on Crawford Street was quoted as saying, "'I'd like to get a better apartment for my wife and kids, but I've tried Milton, Mattapan -- and I'd say I've been refused apartments 15 or 20 times.'

Between 1950 and 1980, Roxbury lost more than half of its population -- a total of 63,353 people. The population transitioned from 80% white in 1950 (mostly Jewish and Irish) to 75% African Americans and 13% Hispanic. Most African American residents arrived from the rural south, while most Hispanics came from Puerto Rico.

During these years, actual property values in Roxbury declined as they rose in the rest of the city. Roxbury/ North Dorchester had the most deteriorating and dilapidated housing in the Heart of the City in 1960. The market price for homes and rent levels were far below the city-wide average in 1965 and of about 27,000 housing units, only 56% were considered sound (1965/1975 General plan for the City of Boston and the regional core). As the value of Roxbury's housing fell, Roxbury's parks and open spaces also fell into severe disrepair ("The Roxbury IPOD: Open space needs assessment and planning study," Boston Urban Gardeners, 1989).

Assessed values of Roxbury property, however, did not keep pace with actual changing market values, and it has been well documented that Roxbury was an overtaxed neighborhood between 1950 and 1980. By 1972, a family in Roxbury was charged almost 60% more in taxes than other families living in similar houses in other Boston neighborhoods. In 1985, market researchers Aaron and Oldman wrote, "One region, Roxbury, is clearly the most heavily assessed" (National Tax Journal, 1985).

Then, beginning in the first half of the 1980s, property values began to rise. This change was attributed in part to a dramatic reduction in taxes in the area as a result of Proposition 2 and 1/2. Between 1981 and 1984, taxes on one-family homes in Roxbury dropped 63%, while citywide taxes on similar properties throughout Boston dropped only 37%. There was a 49% decline in total property taxes in Roxbury, as compared to a citywide decline of 35.8% (Avault & Seko, National Tax Journal, 1985). Market values for one-family homes in Roxbury increased 205% between 1975 and 1984, whereas in the city as a whole, values increased 155%. According to the 1989 Roxbury open space report, between 1980 and 1985, property values increased more than five-fold, from $14,000 to $72,000 for one- to three-family homes. Also, in the late 1980s, the Department of Parks and Recreation invested approximately $3.5 million in Roxbury's parks and playgrounds.

And still there was extensive vacant land, widespread poverty, and low rates of home ownership. In 1985, 31% of the population was living below the poverty line, and 85% of residents rented their homes. In 1987, Roxbury as a whole had the highest percentage of public or assisted housing of any Boston neighborhood. In 1987, vacant land constituted 249 acres of Roxbury, which is about 10% of the entire neighborhood ("Boston's Open Space: An Urban Open Space Plan 1987 (Volume I)," City of Boston, 1987).

This situation set the stage for an explosion of community gardens on vacant land in Roxbury and throughout the Heart of the City in the 1970s and 1980s, but few of the gardens were located in the Roxbury Highlands.

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ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: 
-- Asthma rates in Roxbury are higher than in any other neighborhood in Boston. The asthma rate in Roxbury is 178% higher than the state average. (Urban Environmental Initiative/ EPA). Roxbury has 9.8 hospitalizations per 1,000 people versus a state average of 2.1 per 1,000 people. In 1997, 21% of all Bostonians taken to the hospital for asthma lived in Roxbury (Boston Public Health Commission, Report to the Mayor, 1999). Asthma is related to poor indoor and outdoor air quality. Efforts to counteract this trend in Roxbury have focused on outside air quality and diesel buses on the one hand, and indoor air quality in old, dilapidated, or poorly-constructed housing on the other. 

-- With the exception of two small community gardens in Egleston Square, there are no community gardens in upper Roxbury. This situation is particularly problematic between Humboldt Avenue and Columbia Road, where access to Franklin Park is blocked and there is little accessible greenspace of any kind. Opportunities for the development of community gardens in vacant lots in this area abound. One particularly large and interesting collection of open lots lies behind the Jeremiah Burke High School between Geneva and Laredo Streets. Vacant lots on the corner of Castlegate Road and Normandy, as well as vacant land in the vicinity of new housing in Egleston Square and Academy II housing, also offer compelling opportunities for new gardens.

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Roxbury as a whole (2 of 2)