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Roxbury's $2.9-million house
By adamg on Wed, 11/02/2016 - 11:31pm
It's on Fort Hill, but still. The Bay State Banner introduces us to the most expensive house in Roxbury history.
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Comments
where does roxbury end?
Depending on where you have roxbury end there are many houses near the south end that exceed that value.
Fort Hill is Roxbury.
Fort Hill is Roxbury.
This is officially Tulip Mania
The current owner (Robert Patton-Spruill, a filmmaker at Emerson) paid $451,000 in 2002. And now he wants three mil. Hey, more power to him. The movement to sucker unsuspecting out-of-towners into paying overinflated prices that they can't afford shouldn't be limited to the insufferable yuppies in 1,000-sq.-ft. South End dumps with bars on their windows over on the other side of Mass Ave.
And that end of Highland Park may eventually pick up once they do something with the old Bartlett Yard on Washington St. Unfortunately, it's all part of a movement to expand the white colonization of Fort Hill (I know, I know, they've been there forever, right?). The goal, of course, is to push the blacks and Hispanics out of the neighborhood and over toward Warren St.
But what do you-all think? For some reason, I never read any educated comments on this website about the issues facing Roxbury, Mattapan, and non-white Dorchester. Penny for your thoughts!
Yours certainly isn't one of them
Yeah but
neither is yours. And as usual we're treated to a bunch of generic comments but nothing by anyone who actually knows the neighborhood.
It's a million for the house
And two million for the extra land that the next owner can split off from the house and stick nine condos on.
It's an ambitious price, but it's not based on a single-family on 2/3 of an acre. It's zoned for three-family houses. It could be split up into four lots with three condos each as of right.
Only being a truly crappy neighborhood where nobody wants to live would preserve that land from development.
the goal
So like this is part of the master plan cooked up by Marty Walsh, the BRA and the Illuminati?
Gentrification sucks but I can't stand this view that any neighborhood is supposed to be locked in somehow. Fort Hill was a white immigrant neighborhood up until the 1950s and then it changed. So what? That's life in the modern age. Of course lots of Trump voters out there are equally mad about 'other' people moving into their communties so it's not an uncommon complaint.
Dismissive much?
"That's life in the modern age"? No, actually it was something much more heinous that caused the change.
Here you go, another history lesson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
Yes, gentrification sucks and it sucks mostly for those that can't afford the tremendous increases, which generally occur, in their rents and who are stuck searching for somewhere affordable to live which does not include a daily 3 round trip hour commute to their workplaces.
What, finders keepers?
White flight, redlining - all of it was a problem. However, my point is that cities change, neighborhoods change and I don't really buy that this is some game of musical chairs where demographics lock in at some arbitrary point. We need to provide affordable housing of course but then what's all that newish housing along Washington between Egleston and Dudley? I don't think that's being lived in by 'yuppies', is it?
And of course this is all exacerbated by the fact neighboring towns work very hard to ensure that this is Boston's problem not a regional issue. Really if the towns inside 128 built proportionate affordable housing and we had a regional school system, we could be a world class city.
?
Who ever came up with this idea that Roxbury is a black community? It was founded by English in the seventeenth century and has over 200 years of colonial history of them living side by side with Native Americans (surprisingly it was one place where Native Americans were actually treated as equals). Then it was a home successively to Irish, Germans, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Norwegians, and even some Italians - all of whom again were welcomed as equals. When blacks arrived in large numbers in the 1950s and 1960s, they were also not turned away.
Just because black people showed up about 50 years ago doesn't make Roxbury "theirs." In fact, if you look at the timeline of its complete history, blacks have lived in Roxbury for less time than any of the other groups that preceded them.
The whole idea of claiming ownership of a community for one ethic group is undemocratic and unAmerican; it just smacks of the worst kind of reverse racism. If any other community in America wanted to "keep someone out" based on their race, it would be seen as entirely unacceptable.
Roxbury is a community that has been characterized by a mix of many different people right from the start, and it's unfair to think it's somehow the possession of any one group.
Jesus H. Christ on a stick
Yeah, the North End isn't Italian and Brookline isn't Jewish. And not everybody who lives in the Polish Triangle is Polish.
I thought only UNESCO was trying this hard to eradicate a group's connection to where it lives. Maybe there's a job for you there.
Hey now
To be fair, the North End is basically yuppies now.
to be fair
Also, last time I checked neither the North End nor Brookline have a reputation for telling other groups that this is "their" community. Anyone feels welcome to move in or out of those neighborhoods.
Totally
In the North End they don't tell you anything, they just firebomb your shit to make you get out.
Really?
Try telling that to Hooters or Pinkberry!
Now.
n/t
Yeah, Brookline . . .
Isn't exactly well-noted for dealing with it's racial problems effectively.
...
...
Really?
Comparing Fort Hill to the Temple Mount?
I think it's a stretch.
? Indeed
I don't think anyone is saying it is "theirs"; Roxbury is a diverse community. However your statement "when blacks arrived in large numbers in the 1950s and 1960s, they were also not turned away" displays your bias. No, they came, starting in the 1940s actually, and the whites fled:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
(Oh, and living side by side with the Native Americans, you might want to check out the history of King Philip's War in this area for a start)
For the oblivious.
Take a ride through Roxbury before hitting the keyboard. Newsflash: People in Roxbury take care of their property, care about their neighborhoods and the city as a whole. Yes they put up with more difficulties than a Weston homeowner but then again they know their neighbors names.
Yup
There are some absolutely gorgeous houses in Roxbury, which look criminally underpriced when you compare them to the South End or even JP, a quarter mile up the road. The house they mentioned at the tail end of the article, the one on Humboldt Ave, is one of the most amazing properties I've ever seen, completely original woodwork and fireplaces everywhere, almost three thousand square feet, with a CARRIAGE HOUSE, and literally looks out onto Franklin Park. It was $900K, which is what 1200 square feet of prefab rowhouse will cost you on the opposite side of the park. Yes, it's a dicey neighborhood, but so was the South End... and Somerville... and JP... and every other part of Boston outside of Back Bay. With prices spiking the way they are, people are going to either roll the dice on neighborhoods improving, or they're going to have to move to Stoughton.
Roxbury didn't get remodeled
by cheap builders during the vinyl siding/ replacement windows mania.
South End
Is walking distance to downtown. Much of Roxbury (excluding Fort Hill, which is fairly safe and expensive,) on the other hand, is walking distance to a stray bullet and not much else. True, some of the houses are beautiful, but they're cheap for a good reason.
Roxbury and walking distance
This depends somewhat on your definitions of both "walking distance" and "downtown", but ... Dudley Square is a half hour walk from the Prudential Center.
Don't count your chickens...
It hasn't sold yet.
You should be more sensitive with your proverbs
http://www.universalhub.com/2016/headless-chickens-entrance-forest-hills...
To be fair
those headless chickens could clearly be categorized as being hatched.
also hatcheted
Video of Roxbury near Fort Hill 1982
This video show much of the area burnt out. Interesting that the limited dialog has one participant asking the other, when seeing the tower on Fort Hill, what is that?
http://bostonlocaltv.org/catalog/V_UTXETTJGKFFRAZO