Books about Jamaica Plain
Edwinaby Jill Hofstra, soft cover, 252 pages
Jill Hofstra’s new book Edwina chronicles the life of a precocious and delightful girl who lived in Jamaica Plain in the early 1900s. Jill Hofstra knew her grandmother had a passion for capturing childhood experiences and life reflections in writing. But it was not until after her death that her journals were discovered and a collection of colorful memories were revealed. Hofstra pored over the diaries of her grandmother and edited them into a compelling work that takes readers to turn-of-the-century America, where they find Edwina happily growing up on Paul Gore Street in Jamaica Plain, Boston.
“What makes this compilation so interesting, heartwarming and entertaining are the personalities she meets, young Edwina’s open and honest approach to them and to the problems she confronts,” Hofstra writes. The journals, written as remembrances of childhood by an older Edwina, add a layer of wise perspective to the blissful unawareness of youth. She recalls how the harsh challenges of poverty and growing up Protestant in a Catholic community never seemed so bad through the filter of an optimistic young girl’s mind. Edwina also reveals what it was like growing up with a working mother - a dressmaker - and a mysterious father she barely knew. A fascinating procession of characters leaves indelible marks on Edwina’s life and that of the reader.
This book is also available at Jamaica Plain Historical Society events and from the following locations in Jamaica Plain:
Jamaicaway Books, 676 Centre Street, 617-983-3204
Rhythm and Muse, 470 Centre Street, 617-524-6622
Jamaica Plain: Then & Nowby Anthony M. Sammarco, soft cover, 96 pages
Vintage Jamaica Plain photographs are placed alongside contemporary ones showing well-known buildings and streetscapes as they once were and as they appear today. Included are historic photographs of Jamaica Pond with its icehouses, streetcars, schools, places of worship, and homes. Anthony M. Sammarco is a noted historian and author of more than forty books on the history of Boston and surrounding cities and towns. Sammarco teaches history at the Urban College of Boston.
This book is also available at Jamaica Plain Historical Society events and from the following locations in Jamaica Plain:
Ace Hardware, 656 Centre Street, 617-983-5466
Jamaicaway Books, 676 Centre Street, 617-983-3204
Rhythm and Muse, 470 Centre Street, 617-524-6622
How to Find the History of Your House and LotFind a wealth of informational sources for learning the history of a house or lot. Learn how to search municipal records, find original homeowners, and locate tax assessor’s records. You will learn about title searches, deeds, mortgage records, property plans, and Probate Records. Also included is information about street names and Boston Landmarks Commission Preservation Studies. You will learn that the Fine Arts Department of the Boston Public Library has an extensive card file of information on Boston buildings and architects, including references to books, articles, obituaries, prints, photos, and plans. Additional sources covered by this pamphlet include city building permit records, the Boston City Directory, local newspaper archives, Boston Fire Department records, collections of early photographs, and the archives of utility companies.
This pamphlet also contains an eclectic guide to places and institutions in Jamaica Plain’s history. Learn how Jamaica Plain took its name, the chief streets, the Monument, Eliot School, Eliot and Curtis Hall, significant surviving residences, Pinebank, Curley House, John Hancock’s country-seat, Allandale Spring, Peacock Tavern, Seaver’s Store, First Church, St. John’s Episcopal Church, schools, Forest Hills Cemetery, Arnold Arboretum, Faulkner Hospital, and about some notable residents of Jamaica Plain.
Jamaica Plainby Anthony M. Sammarco (1997.) Soft cover, 128 pages
Sometimes called the Eden of America, Jamaica Plain has a rich and colorful history reaching back to pastoral roots in the seventeenth century. Some say the neighborhood was named during the heyday of rum shipments from Jamaica to Boston in the 1660s, following Cromwell’s seizure of the Caribbean island. Later part of Roxbury and still later West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain was a summer playground for elite New Englanders before finally becoming part of Boston in 1874. Author and noted local historian Anthony Mitchell Sammarco combines powerful text and images in this volume to create a compelling visual history of one of New England’s loveliest neighborhoods.
Local Attachmentsby Alexander von Hoffman (Johns Hopkins, 1996)
This book explores the emergence of Jamaica Plain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like other American urban neighborhoods of the era, Jamaica Plain experienced the arrival of many ethnic groups, a house-building boom for members of every social class, and the creation of commercial, industrial, and recreational areas within its boundaries. Businesses, churches, schools, clubs, charitable societies, and political organizations spun a web of social ties that fostered a powerful sense of allegiance to the local community. Drawn from a wealth of primary sources and illustrated with more than fifty photographs and maps.
A Home in the Heart of a City: A Woman’s Search for Communityby Kathleen Hirsch (August, 1998)
Hirsch has written of homeless women in Songs from the Alley and now she reports on one woman’s home - her own. Her portrait of Jamaica Plain is full of nostalgia and soft colors. As she reconstructs the many small but vital triumphs won by zealous individuals, she also offers fascinating portraits: Eddie Ortega’s transformation from drug dealer into the 22-year-old director of the local YMCA, 73-year-old native Ruth Parker, who has known everyone in the neighborhood and who relishes, as Hirsch puts it, “the magic and the muddle of being human together.” It’s the gritty details that bring this story alive, so when Hirsch wanders off, as she often does, into philosophizing about community and her deep feelings for it, the book suffers. Before misguided urban planning led to the decline of Jamaica Plain, Hirsch’s mythic Jamaica Plain seems to have existed in a haze of neighborliness without abandoned stores or lots. The unanswered question is what happens next: Hirsch reports that friends in search of good public schools are leaving for the suburbs, and as she surveys the local elementary school, one is left wondering where she’ll ultimately send her young son. The energy needed to hold such a disparate community of races, cultures, economics and education together is enormous. We can only hope Hirsch found some answers. - Publishers Weekly
Books About Neighboring Communities
 Dorchester Available at Amazon.com |  Roxbury Available at Amazon.com | |
 West Roxbury Available at Amazon.com |  Roslindale Available at Amazon.com | |