2009 Historic Walking Tours
All tours are free and open to the public and all but one are offered on Saturdays at 11:00 a.m. sharp. †† Hyde Square tour starts at 12:00 noon. Tours last approximately one hour and are canceled in case of rain. No reservations are required. Please join us and bring along a friend!
| Tour Date | Location | Tour Date | Location | |
| May 9 | Monument Sq | August 8 | Green Street | |
| May 16 | Sumner Hill | August 15 | Woodbourne | |
| May 30 | Stony Brook | August 22 | Jamaica Pond | |
| June 6 | Hyde Square | August 29 | Monument Sq | |
| June 13 | Green Street | Sept 12 | Sumner Hill | |
| June 20 | Woodbourne | Sept 19 | Stony Brook | |
| June 27 | Jamaica Pond | Sept 26 †† | Hyde Square |
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| July 11 | Monument Sq | October 3 | Green Street | |
| July 18 | Sumner Hill | October 17 | Woodbourne | |
| July 25 | Stony Brook | October 24 | Jamaica Pond | |
| August 1 | Hyde Square |
Green Street
Laid out in 1836, the street played a key role in Jamaica Plain’s development, functioning as a residential, commercial, and transportation conduit in the lives of the district’s residents. Although Green Street was subdivided as early as 1851 for stores, factories and houses it was not extensively developed until the late 1870’s with construction continuing until the early 1900’s. The Bowditch School was completed in 1892 and early in the 20th century the United States Post Office moved from its location on Call Street at Woolsey Square to its new location at the corner of Green and Cheshire Streets.
Leaves from Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center, 640 Centre St.
Hyde Square
On this tour, you will see an 1813 farm house that gives a flavor of Hyde Square’s rural agricultural past. Learn about 1840s Hyde Square when German and Irish immigrants transformed the neighborhood with their businesses, schools, and institutions. See how in the early 1960s, Hyde Square changed again when Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican immigrants transformed it into Boston’s first predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. This tour also takes us to the home of Maud Cuney Hare, a prominent music historian and one of only two black women students at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1890. You will also learn about the property currently housing the MSPCA’s Angell Memorial animal hospital which was once the site of the Perkins School for the Blind. The tour will also walk through the Sunnyside neighborhood, the site of homes built by philanthropist Robert Treat Paine from 1889 to 1899 as a “worker’s utopia” for working families.
Leaves from 365 Centre Street at noon.
Monument Square
Tour a residential area that includes a National Historic District. View architecture that spans three centuries; the oldest community theater company in the United States; and an elegant 18th-century mansion that once served as the country’s first military hospital. Learn about the monument that commemorates fallen Civil War soldiers from West Roxbury and about Pauline Agassiz Shaw who established the class that became the model for continuous free kindergarten education. We will visit a house dating to 1716 that once served as a tavern, the Eliot School dating back to 1689, the home of the first woman to graduate from MIT, the First Church burial ground, and the oldest continuiously operating community theater in North America.
Leaves from Loring-Greenough House, 12 South St.
Jamaica Pond
Once a gathering point for Boston’s elite, the Pond had previously been put to industrial use as tons of ice were harvested there each winter. Learn about the movers and shakers such as Francis Parkman who made their homes on the Pond’s shores. Discover how the Pond was transformed from private estates and warehouses into the parkland we know today.
Leaves from the Bandstand, Pond Street and Jamaicaway.
Stony Brook
Explore a fascinating industrial area at the geographic heart of Boston that includes 19th-century tannery and brewery buildings, the homes of early German settlers, and today’s Samuel Adams beer company. In the 1970s, a coalition of community groups joined together to block construction of the Southwest Expressway through Jamaica Plain and other Boston neighborhoods. Today, the Southwest Corridor Park that runs through the Stony Brook neighborhood stands as a testament to the power of community activism.
Leaves from Stony Brook Orange Line T station.
Sumner Hill 
View a sumptuous sampling of 19th-century Victorian houses — one of the finest collections of “painted ladies” outside of San Francisco. The tour includes the ancestral home of the founder of the Dole Pineapple Company, as well as the homes of several early feminists and an anti- racism activist. Sumner Hill was designated a National Historic District in 1987.
Leaves from Loring-Greenough House, 12 South St.
Woodbourne
This neighborhood developed from nineteenth-century summer estates into a model suburban enclave. It contains examples of representative New England architecture with designs by local architects and builders. It also contains an unusual garden city model housing development by the Boston Dwelling House Company.
Leaves from church steps at the corner of Walk Hill and Wachusett Streets.
