Some of the brunch menu standouts: a prosecco float with coconut rum, pineapple juice, and blue curacao affectionately named “Shark Bite,” and a French toast and fried chicken sandwich coated with maple syrup. Brownstone is also an excellent venue for a drink at the bar with friends. With tantalizing dishes like smoked salmon eggs Benedict with home fries, the menu offers a fresh take on everyone’s favorite meal. Brownstoneīrownstone is one of the few restaurants in Boston that is best known for its brunch, served every Saturday and Sunday. The gently meandering path, popular with dog walkers, joggers, and cyclists, is dotted with community gardens maintained by local residents. A stroll along the section between the Massachusetts Avenue and Back Bay subway stops is a great way to start a visit to the South End.
Southwest Corridor Park follows the Orange Line nearly five miles, from Forest Hills in Jamaica Plain to Back Bay station. But there are still plenty of places to grab good cheap food and lots of trendy boutiques and performing arts venues. Pricey restaurants like chef Barbara Lynch’s Butcher Shop, B&G Oysters, and Aquitaine Bar à Vin Bistrot draw locals as well as those from surrounding suburbs. And it has become a popular place to work for artists. Seven-figure townhouses abut several large subsidized housing projects. Still home to a sizable gay community, it also has a considerable Hispanic population. Today, the South End is one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods, both economically and racially. But it underwent another gentrification beginning in the late 1970s, led primarily by gay men. At the same time, it began to attract gay men and women drawn by the many single-sex rooming houses that provided them with social cover.īy the early 1960s, the area had become synonymous with crime and poverty. During the 1940s, the South End became home to a vibrant African American middle class. By the 1880s, many of its wealthy founding families had been replaced by waves of immigrants from Ireland, Lebanon, and Greece, and tenements and settlement houses were built to accommodate them. The area has long had cycles of boom and bust. In 1973, the South End was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as “the largest urban Victorian neighborhood in the country.”
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Tree-lined streets are graced by connected brick bow-front townhouses surrounded by iron gates and built around a series of shaded pocket parks, many with elegant fountains. Today, Bulfinch’s imprint can still be found.
Prominent architect Charles Bulfinch (the Massachusetts State House, the Boston Common, and much of the US Capitol), designed the new neighborhood.
Most of the residential cross streets are named after the towns (Dedham, Newton, Canton, Dover, etc.) that were served by the former Boston and Providence Railroad, which originally bordered the South End.ĭeveloped in the mid-19th century to relieve overcrowding in downtown Boston and Beacon Hill, the neighborhood-originally a narrow strip of land surrounded by salt marshes connecting Boston to Roxbury-was created with landfill from nearby Needham. Bordered by the Back Bay, Chinatown, and Roxbury, the primary commercial area runs along Tremont Street, Columbus Avenue, and Harrison Avenue. One of Boston’s most beautiful neighborhoods, and one of its most culturally diverse, the South End has a rich history.