This exclusive video contains footage shot by West End Museum founder Jim Campano and edited by Museum volunteer Lyra Piscitelli. It features clips of (in order of appearance):
Thomas O’Connor, Boston College’s official historian and a professor of history, as well as author of “Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal 1950 to 1970.”
Jane Jacobs, urbanist, activist, and author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and “The Economy of Cities.”
Herbert Gans, author of “The Urban Villagers,” which details the eight months he lived on the West End studying the impact of urban renewal.
Marc Fried, a Boston College psychology professor and researcher who studied the effects of urban renewal on the West End’s residents.
The speakers address the “repulsive” process of lies told and promises unkept that sealed the West End’s fate. They also discuss the devastating effects that went well beyond the destruction of a vibrant, close-knit community and irreplaceable architecture to a severe grief response among the displaced residents, which led to immediate physical and long-lasting emotional suffering.
The video concludes with Jacobs saying, “I hope that we’ve learned enough lessons. It’s a terrible thing that a place like the West End should have been sacrificed so that people should learn things that they should have known ahead of time.”
Many photographs of the old neighborhood from The West End Museum’s archives are shown.
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