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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.
The "Leather District"
When I first started working in that area in the early 1980s (when the Blue Diner was an ACTUAL greasy spoon type diner and not a post-modern high end recreation of one) there was a push to modernize and get away from the then-outdated "Leather District" image of old. But as more restaurants and such moved in there seemed to be a cozy cachet in the thought of being located in what was once such an area, an actual identifiable "district" with a history, so it made a comeback.
But a neighboring neighborhood just faded away
No, not the Combat Zone, the Ladder District.
Weggie's
Anyone else a regular there?
Um...
I can't say I was a regular...but when I worked for Teradyne, at a small office they had on Beach Street, if I had to go to Lincoln Street to find someone I would often pass through the Wedge just in case they were there.
And then there was the Roof Deck...
Bollo...
...was the big bartender with his redheaded girlfriend.
Coldest air-conditioned bar and the budweiser was cold and cheap, too!
South End/Roxbury
The 02118/02119 Zip Code boundary is actually the historic boundary between the City of Boston [South End] and the Town of Roxbury, before the 1868 annexation. That would make it the historic legal boundary.
The BRA, BPDA, various social service agencies have come up with various conflicting definitions of the boundary in the past 60 years or so. At one the BRA moved its definition of the boundary south, to the proposed route of the Inner Belt Highway, now the site of Melnea Cass Boulevard. Now the same agency, or its successor, seems to want to move the boundary north, to Massachusetts Avenue. It seems that everyone who proposes an alternate boundary is trying to make some point or another. For many people, "South End" seems more "respectable" than "Roxbury".
I say, go with history, and the post office, and the legalities.
zip codes...
do not define neighborhoods. This has been discussed here at length.
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.
Sounds like a UHub Meetup
We can bear witness to your fulfilment of said promise, but be ready to celebrate with foot warmers and hot cider with/without ethanol.
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.
(ring, ring)
It's the 1930s calling! Can we have our words, clothes, and lack of irony back?
The thing is
There is a literal river between the Back Bay and the Fenway, or Fenway/Kenmore region.
That's a fairly obvious boundary.
Not really
The area along Edgerly Road, Symphony Road, Westland Avenue, Hemenway Street is called the "East Fens". NEC, the MFA, and the Gardner Museum are all part of the Fenway, but are on the same side of the river as the Back Bay.
But..
there's probably an illiteral river between those areas.
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.
Fenway
Yep. I lived there on Park Drive and later Peterborough in West Fenway. The other side of the Fens bounded by Mass Ave and Huntington by Northeastern is East Fenway.
It looks like it was (the building of the Emerald Necklace/Fens and annexation of the land from Brookline) originally intended to be an extension of the Back Bay project, down to continuing naming the streets alphabetically (Hereford…Ipswich, Jersey, Kilmarnock, Lansdowne…Peterborough, Queensberry…) I think as the neighborhoods grew, Back Bay was increasingly more affluent, thus the city and residents defined Back Bay as ending at Charlesgate.
The original bounds of the completed Back Bay were likely intended be the literal Back Bay Fens by the Gardner up to Beacon Street/Audubon Circle to the north, and Huntington to the south.
It’s kind of like how in New York the Upper East Side (unlike the UWS) doesn’t include the entire upper east side of Central Park, which like the Fenway was “othered” as a neighborhood given the socioeconomic differences more so than geographical. Whereas the Back Bay Fens had its own identity, 96th to 110th was banished to Harlem as East Harlem (which still doesn’t fit as it’s not Harlem either).
So in summation let’s settle this debate by renaming the Fenway “East Brookline”. CHB is wrongish, and I don’t mind the pile on since he’s insufferable, but this pales to something like Marky Mark calling UMass Boston “South Boston” in The Departed (which has a great shout-out to the Fens—shown as oceanfront property).
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.
Mexican food made by Mexicans!
Agreed. That place was great.
"our favorite Mexican place, in Roslindale"
Yucatan?
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.
Fenway/Kenmore
Fenway/Kenmore
02215 zipcode.
zip code
I think you mean 02215? Post office was on Deerfield Street. Not sure if it still is today.
Post office is on Park Drive
The 02215 post office is now on Park Drive, near Buswell Street, between Beacon Street and the Mass. Pike. I go by it often on the 47 bus.
The building on Deerfield Street was demolished for the new development, and USPS had to vacate.
Before Zip Codes were created in 1964, both 02215 and 02115 were part of "Boston 15". Growth in the Fenway/Longwood area made zone 15 too large, so they split it.
PO
I believe it moved to Audubon Circle
Whoops!
Keybounce. Fixed.
Fenway Park
Shaughnessy and others have been making this mistake for decades. It all has to do with confusion over the name of the nearby Back Bay Fens, which isn't referring to the Back Bay neighborhood, but to the long gone "bay" that preceded it.
Kenmore Sq.
I had a friend who lived on Peterborough St. ,and they considered their area a sort of "suburb" of Roxbury. It never felt that way to me. Kenmore/ Fenway was it's own thing. Once you crossed Mass Ave. you were out of the Back Bay.
The Fens was once part of Brookline.
In 1873 Boston annexed the area from center of the Muddy to St Mary's Street. At the time it was a marshy area until improvements to drainage was done. They brought in fill & the streets were laid out in the 1890s. For a long time the city, seemingly at a loss, considered the area as part of ROXBURY (think of how it connects to the Longwood Medical area). We all know it's called the Fens/ Fenway Area. Come on man.
While We're on the Subject
I always get a kick out of how much Chestnut Hill has expanded over the years!!!
Astor Station
As long we are at it, where did the name of the Post Office on Mass Ave "Astor Station" come from?
A guy named..
John Jacob Astor IV who was from a wealthy NYC family that owned property in Boston.
Fenway or Back Bay ...It's all stolen land
He works at The Globe and should know and acknowledge that. /S
Yes
and we all know you stole the land you're living on in Dot.
Another vote for Back Bay/Fens
n/t
t.d.-north garden (downtown):
https://www.universalhub.com/2024/did-td-boston-garden-move-downtown