Historic photos of Mission Hill from the 1800s and 1900s will go on display May 8 in an exhibit titled “For the Public Good” at the Parker Hill Branch Library at 1497 Tremont St.
Assembled as part of Preservation Month by the Friends of Historic Mission Hill, the collection is focused on the iconic civic identity of the neighborhood, Friends co-founder Alison Pultinas told the Gazette.
Featured sites include Mission Church, the Mission Hill Playground, the Parker Hill Branch Library and the Tobin municipal building.
According to Friends member and exhibit organizer Marie-Claire Dumornay, the images are courtesy of local resident Barry Twomey, the Boston Public Library archives, City of Boston archives, Historic New England, Harvard Medical School Library, Mission Church and Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections. Artist Peter Bass is also exhibiting watercolors of various Mission Hill landscapes.
The title “For the Public Good” refers to the multiple eminent domain takings that created the Mission Hill Playground in 1917, originally a more than 4 acre park that subsequently shrunk when first the library, then the Tobin building, then the Tobin elementary school were built, Pultinas said.
“Eminent domain of course has played a major role in Mission Hill,” she said.
The exhibit will be on display in the library through the end of May. A talk about the exhibit is planned for May 8, with speakers Tessil Collins, from Roxbury Crossing Historical Trust; Meghan Hanrahan, a preservation planner at the Boston Landmarks Commission; Rev. John Lavin from Mission Church; and James Madden, co-creator of “People, Places & Planning in Boston.”
CORRECTION: This article has been edited to correct the exhibit’s opening date.
Home at St. Alphonsus and Smith Streets on Sept. 10, 1958. Those houses have since been torn down to build apartment towers. (Courtesy City of Boston Archives)
The now-demolished Samuel Dudley house in the area of today’s Tremont and Francis streets in 1863. (Courtesy Boston Public Library)