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Today's Boston puzzler: What neighborhood is Fenway Park in?
By adamg on Fri, 11/22/2024 - 11:57am
Let's ask Dan Shaughnessy!
Now lest you think that's just some copy editor blurbing badly, it's actually in the column, written by the longtime resident of Newton, which isn't really all that far from Fenway Park:
Ed. note: Yes, as a recovering Brooklynite, ye ed has been known to get Boston neighborhood lines wrong. But really? Saying Fenway Park is in the Back Bay is sort of like saying Lincoln is buried in Grant'sTomb.
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Comments
Meh
Not a huge deal if you ask me. I would also say that 2024 Back Bay and Fenway residents are pretty much the same compared to 30 years ago. It looks like he didn't want to use the actual word "Fenway" to describe the neighborhood since he was talking about a team that plays in the park with the same name.
Edit: I do love the obsessive geography hunters on this site though. "You have the headline wrong Adam, you said this crime happened in Grove Hall when everyone knows the Domestic Wine aisle of Crown Liquors located at 387 Columbia Road in Dorchester is actually called the Bowdoin neighborhood by residents who bought condos here after the 2017 real estate crash."
But he is right on Soto or anything else the Red Sox do. They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt on anything they try to do until they actually do it.
The park is called the Back
The park is called the Back Bay Fens, and historically the Fenway area was where the Muddy River flowed into the Back Bay, (not quite along its current route) so there's some plausible logic for treating them as overlapping categories, even if most of the time people treat them as separate things.
According to the zip code
02215 is Boston. That zip code services Kenmore Square.
So, according to the zip code, Fenway Park is in the Kenmore Square neighborhood of Boston.
Never use a Zip code as the basis for Boston neighborhoodness
Never, I say never.
There are just too many exceptions, my favorite being 02121 which is Dorchesterish, except it stretches across Roxbury almost to Jamaica Plain.
Then there's 02118, which on the whole is the South End, except past Mass. Ave. when it becomes Roxbury.
And you do not want to try to unparse the jumble of Zip codes for Downtown, the Back Bay, the North End and Chinatown. Well, unless you like headaches.
And in any case, Kenmore Square is not its own neighborhood, not even according to the Boston Planning Department, which just loves splitting neighborhoods (it has a separate category for the Leather District, which, fine by me, but it's really just a part of Chinatown, or maybe Downtown?). And 02215 is a Fenway Zip code (same as 02136 is a Hyde Park Zip code, not a Cleary Square Zip code).
Nah, man
While I agree with zip codes not having a basis in real geography, the Leather District has been a thing since well before I was born, although, certainly there was a point when Chinatown was still expanding it encroached into it, but those days seem to have ended.
Hasn't "bring your talents to _____"
been banned by now, as it quickly symbolized the public performance of something that shouldn't be done in public?
A former sister-in-law of mine once confused that expression with "dropping some kids off at the pool." Someone set her straight on that one right away.
Ah The Neighborhood Bounds Question
Walter Muir Whitehill, who wrote a lot on Boston always considered Bay State Road and Kenmore to be an extension of the Back Bay.
However, John Taylor, the son of the person who started the Globe (CHB's Employer) and built Fenway was reported to say that Fenway Park was called that because it was in The Fenway.
PS - I will walk barefoot across the Frog Pond ice for 10 minutes if they sign Soto.
Back Bay/ Fenway-Kenmore
“Back Bay/ Fenway-Kenmore”
“Back Bay Fens” (Fen’s way?)
Was it meant as a commentary on the definitional neighborhood lines: Charlesgate West, etc. not being as meaningful as it’s constituency and proximity to BB?
Also, “New Baseball” equals not baseball. Baseball is what happens between the plays as much as anything. Baseball is not a timed sport. Now baseball is just fodder for gaming and commercials.
On the subject of neighborhoods
Since you brought it up.....I have always been somewhat chagrinned that the UHub list of neighborhoods does not include "Symphony", which I define as the area bordered by Huntington and the Back Bay Fens, Mass Ave and....wherever Mission Hill starts? It's a distinctive area that is not Fenway, or Mission Hill, or Back Bay or South End.
Symphony
So would this place locations such as Boston Latin and The Gardner Museum in the conceptual "Symphony" neighborhood or in the Fenway? I've even heard them described as being in Mission Hill, but I cannot abide by that. Maybe the "Symphony" distinction should end at Longwood Ave.
East Fenway
"Symphony" is just the East Fenway my internet friend.
i agree, but the neighborhood
i agree, but the neighborhood should be mass ave, boylston, huntington, fenway, and either opera, forsyth way, or louis prang st.
Back Bay vs the Back Bay
Personally, I'd lose the "the" in front of Back Bay.
Can't We All Just Get Along?
We are all residents of Boston and except for getting a resident parking sticker, I don't think that there is any other neighborhood-specific benefits doled out to citizens of the City. For what it is worth, the official City of Boston neighborhood map has "Fenway/Kenmore" and "Back Bay" as separate neighborhoods. https://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/Neighborhoods_tcm3-8205.pdf
I was burned by a zip code change many years ago -- happily bought a house in Roslindale (02131) and later was against my will transplanted to West Roxbury (02132) by change of a zip code line. (I was unhappy, but my house value went up and car insurance rate went down).
The worst part was that after about one year, even with the correct street address but the old zip code, the post office started to refuse to forward mail (instead returned to sender with "Address Unknown"). It was some kind of worker revolt, even after I called the local postmaster to complain.
I remember that 02131/02132 exchange!
All of a sudden, our favorite Mexican place, in Roslindale, became part of West Roxbury, and yet it didn't move.
Glad to see the rationale - 02132 would enhance property values over 02131 - worked, at least, although I suspect nowadays the reverse might be true.
The big Emerald Necklace park a block away
is called the Back Bay Fens. So I don't see Shaughnessy's statement as being wrong.
For neighborhood boundary questions, I always go
to Bostonology's Crowdsourced Neighborhood Maps.
According to these, most Bostonians would put Fenway Park squarely in the Fenway / Kenmore neighborhood, not remotely in Back Bay, and I am one of them.
then there's the T stop
Seems every time I go to a ball game, there are comments (maybe from first time D line riders?) about why the T stop named after the baseball park* is so far away from the park.
* Their comment, not mine.