Mission Hill

Mission Hill, an interesting section of Boston, borders Boston's Jamaica Plain, the town of Brookline and the Emerald Necklace. Mission Hill features a basilica Catholic church, nice parks, good restaurants, the New England Baptist Hospital, and many houses of Queen Anne architecture, a late-Victorian style. Boston's medical quarter is in Mission Hill. Served by buses 39 and 66 and both the Orange (subway) line and the Green Line trolley, it has great public transportation. The neighborhood is frequented by students from Northeastern University and other colleges just beyond the border of Mission Hill. The Museum of Fine Arts has a studio building on St. Alphonsus Street.

A word about Mission Hill streets. Those particular curvy row houses are on Wait Street (funny name!). Also to be seen is Shepherd Street, very near the site of the old House of Good Shepherd. Especially interesting is the plethora of American Indian names in Mission Hill. Those houses pictured above are on Calumet Street, near Sachem Street and Pequot Street. Allegheny, Cherokee, Iroquois and Pontiac Streets I haven't been on yet, but they're there! Tremont Street ends at Huntington but only by name. It crosses Huntington and becomes Francis Street, an important medical-area location. If you're on Francis Street and hear a deafening noise coming from a rooftop, it's the hospital helicopter, about to lift off and go pick up someone in dire condition and take him or her to the hospital.

The Green Line trolley (this is the E train) on Huntington Avenue. In the background, right side, is the original Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, now part of Brigham & Women's.

View of the City from a park/playground nicely located right between the Mission Church and the pretty Parker Hill branch of the Boston Public Library pictured at right.

Opened by Boston's famous mayor James Michael Curley in 1931, the Parker Hill branch of the Library was designed by Ralph Adams Cram, who also designed the John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse among other buildings.

Boston is the American city where you most expect to see old things. Even in Boston, however, manifestly irreplaceable old things stick out in a changing urban world of chain stores and new professional buildings. These gates and the brick wall are all that remain of The House of the Good Shepherd, a home for girls and women in need of shelter, education and training. In the 1960's Harvard bought up a lot of local land (their medical schools are in the vicinity) and the huge old building was demolished. On the actual site was built a large residential complex called Mission Park / Roxbury Tenants of Harvard, obviously something with a story in itself (I don't know the story yet!). The old gates and wall are in the 800 block of Huntington Avenue, a major Boston street that goes through Mission Hill and on into Copley Square in the Back Bay.

Mission Hill's most venerable buildings are The Mission Church, a basilica formally known as Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and its rectory, which adjoins the Mission Church They are on Tremont Street, a long, important Boston street that begins (or ends, if you prefer) in Mission Hill. Some years after the church towers were added in 1910, the neighborhood, Parker Hill, came to be known as Mission Hill. Senator Ted Kennedy's funeral service was held here at the Mission Church, which is usually open to worshippers and other visitors.