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ReporterOther2179 t1_iye7i2q wrote

Reply to comment by singalong37 in This photo was taken in Boston in 1975. In fact, it won the 1976 Pulitzer for photography. It shows a young woman and a little girl falling from 15 meters high. More info in original post. by ReimundLachi

Bostonian here. Yes in the 40s to late 90s the South End was mostly single room occupancy, inhabited by grizzled bachelors and lonely spinsters and widows, and a slew of drunks and druggies who spent their day trudging from scutwork job to liquor store to drunken stupor. But the neighborhood wasn’t built for them but for the upper working class of Boston. Cycles, everything cycles from new to used to used for something else. People who performatively despair of conditions should know this.

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singalong37 t1_iyewc8f wrote

Yes-- but in the South End, considerably earlier than the 1940s. Here's a description from the 1906 publication, the Lodging House Problem in Boston.

"Every effort was made to make the district attractive. The houses were extremely well built for the period and no expense seems to have been spared to make them elegant, and in many instances even luxurious. Provision was made for parks, and some of the prettiest places in Boston to-day are the little parks and "squares" of the South End lodging house district. Especially may be mentioned West Chester Park, Worcester Square, and Union Park. For almost a quarter of a century liveried coachmen and white-capped nursemaids airing their charges were a common sight on Tremont Street and other thoroughfares, while the cross streets were gay with the voices of children. The South End, then, was once a city of private homes; now it is a wilderness of factories, tenements and lodging houses. Fully five sixths of the old residences are now rooming houses."

The writer says that as Back Bay was filled in, South End people began building houses there. Wealthy families trickled out of the South End gradually in the 1870s then got out like rats through the '80s. By 1890 the movement was finished and the South End was predominantly lodging houses.

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