In the 1950s, immigrant tenants in Boston’s West End resisted redevelopment that levelled nearly every neighbouring brownstone; a tiny building in the North Station project area became the area’s last tenement

Near North Station in Boston, a narrow brick walk-up stands squeezed between glass and concrete. It looks like it took a wrong turn somewhere, and in a way it did. It is what remains of a neighborhood that was cleared so completely that locals now call this one building the last tenement. It is not clear why the building at 42 Lomasney Way remained standing. Various accounts exist, including stories about tenants who refused to leave and claims that behind-the-scenes influence played a role. One documented fact is that 42 Lomasney Way remained standing while major redevelopment transformed the surrounding area. According to The West End Museum, the building was located within the North Station urban renewal project area rather than the West End project area.The West End held 23 nationalities before renewalBoston By Foot describes the old West End as a multicultural neighborhood that represented 23 nationalities before urban renewal transformed the area. In its tour description, the organization explains that urban renewal took place from the late 1950s into the 1960s, during which period over 2,500 families or 10,000 people were displaced.Boston declared the West End blighted in 1953According to The West End Museum's article The Last West Enders, the redevelopment proceeded through the use of eminent domain. All of this was done through the power of eminent domain as the city declared the neighborhood a blighted area in 1953 and began to raze the slums that housed the immigrants and their descendants. The process of razing went on for eighteen months between 1958 and 1959. There have been variations depending on where one looks as far as figures go. There was an entry in another museum about psychologist Marc Fried that gave 48 acres with 2,700 families involved, which is different from what the walking-tour group came up with.Elizabeth Blood resisted removal on Charles Street in 1960Resistance to urban renewal took many forms. One example, separate from the story of 42 Lomasney Way, involved Elizabeth Blood's eviction struggle at 379 Charles Street. By spring 1960, only 379 Charles Street remained. The occupant, Elizabeth Kearney Blood, had come from Ireland in 1918, and in May 1960 she and her two daughters resisted eviction. The women attempted to physically prevent access after the movers removed the front door from its hinges, and ultimately Blood sat herself on the hood of her car as her belongings were taken out of the house. She did succeed, however, in securing a slight victory through negotiation by the lawyer, Endicott Peabody, who later became the governor of Massachusetts, for one month of additional residency.The last tenement sat in a different project areaHowever, the very same article reports that the tenement at 42 Lomasney Way used to have more than 40 people in it. In the 1970s, its occupants were John and Rose Swietlikowski, Polish immigrants who had lived in the building with their children for roughly 50 years. The article offers several explanations for why the building remained standing. As reported in the article, the building was part of the North Station urban renewal project area, unlike the more well-known West End project area. One version suggests that the building may have been spared because of alleged Mafia connections, as its owner in 1972 was William Kazonis, an associate of New England Mafia boss Gennaro Angiulo. Later projects such as the Green Line and the Big Dig also did not remove the building.Marc Fried studied how displaced residents grievedThe best-known research on the West End's loss came from Fried, whose work the museum covers in its article Marc Fried and the Human Cost of Urban Renewal. In the West End, Fried interviewed hundreds of displaced residents in the late 1950s and worked with a team that embedded itself in neighborhood life to document pre-relocation and post-relocation effects. The study suggested that losing homes could also mean losing social ties and identity. Fried described that disruption as a form of bereavement, and later scholarship has cited the research as foundational to discussions about community displacement and root shock.Drawing on interviews conducted before and after relocation, Fried published Grieving for a Lost Home in 1963, a study that examined residents' emotional responses to displacement and demolition. Thus, he published his paper Grieving for a Lost Home in 1963.Fried described the loss as root shockAlso as noted in the article above, Fried found that such closely knit communities provided individuals with a sense of rootedness. According to Fried, destroying tightly connected communities could cause significant psychological distress. Later, psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove described similar community disruption through the concept of "root shock." One interviewee, Mrs. Borowski, compared it to uprooting a plant from its surroundings. The research suggested that people could mourn not only the loss of a person but also the loss of a place and way of life. In fact, it had an effect on how community mental health care was handled, not to mention urban renewal projects in the United States.Fried's research joined a wider body of criticismThe museum further adds that the article by Fried was included in Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy, a book compiled by the Joint Center for Urban Studies, a collaborative effort between Harvard and MIT. This book also contained contributions from Herbert Gans, Martin Anderson, and activist Chester Hartman. A decade later, Fried published The World of the Urban Working Class: Social Movements and Ideology (1973), drawing on years of research connected to the West End.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.