Wharfing out and landmaking: Why Boston Proper streets are laid out the way they are

Are the old names for Washington Street. The street would change names every few blocks until it was renamed Washington Street after the Revolutionary War.

Also, all streets that cross Washington between the Old State House and the Pike change names.

19th century UK was all the rage for new placenames here besides the old ones which were just named for English towns. Some new railroad / streetcar communities (i.e. real estate schemes of the mid 1800's) grabbed English / Scottish names: Roslyn(dale), Aberdeen, Melrose, and Belmont to name a few.

The West End was bulldozed (this is only my thought) to keep it from becoming an African American neighborhood.

The North End was fairly homogenous and had political representation high up in city and state government. The BRA ran into a buzz saw in Charlestown politically and backed off from their plans to pancake most of the neighborhood for housing projects.

The West End was smaller and like many older Jewish working class neighborhoods (Chelsea, Lynn, Malden), was seeing white flight. Remember, the largest ethnic group to leave Boston for the Burbs by far were the Jews, maybe not in whole numbers but absolutely as a percentage of the area's ethnic makeup.

Mattapan / Roxbury / Dorchester in 1950 had a Jewish population of around 90,000 to a handful of families by 1980. Think about that. It would be like every single person in Cambridge today left in the course of 30 years. That's unreal.

The South End was a mostly African American area and Beacon Hill (the neighborhood) saw the West End was the next neighborhood which would become African American and in turn Bay Village. The rich panicked and out came the bulldozers. You may not find this written down anywhere, but the demo of the West End reeks of behind the scenes class control from up on high.

Same thing with the New York Streets. That demo reeks of being a fire break for people.