West Roxbury is a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts bordered by Roslindale to the northeast, the village of Chestnut Hill and the town of Brookline to the north, the city of Newton to the northwest, the towns of Dedham and Needham to the southwest, and Hyde Park to the southeast. West Roxbury is often mistakenly confused with Roxbury, but the two are separated from each other by Roslindale and Jamaica Plain.

Before 1630, the area was inhabited by the Wampanoag Indian Tribe.

Founded in 1630 (contemporaneously with Boston), West Roxbury was originally part of the town of Roxbury and was mainly used as farmland. West Roxbury seceded from Roxbury in 1851, and was annexed by Boston in 1874. The town included the neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain and Roslindale.

West Roxbury’s main commercial thoroughfare is Centre Street. West Roxbury Main Streets is a local non-profit that works to enhance and promote the business district. The neighborhood has some two-family houses but mostly single family homes; many of Boston’s civil servants live there.

West Roxbury is home to District E-5 of the Boston Police Department, Boston Emergency Medical Services Ambulance 5 that posts at the intersection of West Roxbury Parkway at Centre St and Paramedic 5 stationed at the Faulkner Hospital provide EMS service, and there are two Boston fire stations, Ladder 25 & Engine 30 on Centre Street and Engine 55 on Washington Street. The Needham Branch of the MBTA Commuter Rail network has three stations in West Roxbury (Bellevue, Highland and West Roxbury). Several MBTA bus lines run through and/or terminate in West Roxbury. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located opposite the Charles River on the VFW Parkway near the Dedham line. West Roxbury is home to several places of worship, including three Catholic parishes, churches of various Protestant denominations, and a Jewish synagogue.

The neighborhood was home to an experimental transcendentalist Utopian community called Brook Farm, which attracted notable figures including Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance is based on his stay there.

Like its neighboring communities, West Roxbury’s residential development grew with the construction of the West Roxbury branch of the Boston and Providence Railroad; the area grew further with the development of electric streetcars.

Education

Primary and secondary schools

Boston Public Schools operates public schools. Ludwig van Beethoven Elementary School, William Ohrenberger School, Joyce Kilmer K-8 School, and Patrick Lyndon K-8 School are in West Roxbury. The three schools in the West Roxbury Education Complex, Media Communications Technology High School,Parkway Academy of Technology and Health, and the Urban Science Academy were located in West Roxbury, but closed in 2019 due to structural issues in the building.

The Roxbury Latin School, a private school for boys, is located in West Roxbury. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston operates the Holy Name Parish School as well as the St. Theresa of Avila School in West Roxbury.

Catholic Memorial School, which is an all boys middle and high school, is located on Baker Street.

Public libraries

Boston Public Library operates the West Roxbury Branch Library. In 1876 the city library took over the West Roxbury Free Library, establishing a delivery station in West Roxbury. The West Roxbury facility was upgraded to a library branch in 1896. In the years of 1921 and 1922 a library building was constructed on the West Roxbury Branch Library current site. In 1973, a fire destroyed the adjacent West Roxbury Congregational Church. The land formerly occupied by the church was donated to the trustees of the library system so an addition could be built. The addition opened to the public on 24 September 1989.

Demographics

Until the 2000 census West Roxbury’s population had been recorded as declining slightly, but it increased at the 2010 census. This could be due to more rigorous counting procedures instituted by the City of Boston and Massachusetts in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid losing the state’s tenth congressional seat.

West Roxbury has historically been a heavily Irish Catholic neighborhood. In the twentieth century, upwardly mobile Irish Americans moved to the neighborhood from elsewhere in Boston. By the first decade of the 21st century, an influx of new residents contributed to increased ethnic diversity in the neighborhood.

The Irish Social Club of Boston, founded in Dorchester in 1945, moved its headquarters to West Roxbury in 1978, and had a membership of 15,000 in the mid-1970s. The club closed in 2011 due to financial troubles and declining membership (the club had around 300 members at the time, mostly seniors). Support from the city council and state lawmakers allowed the club to obtain a liquor license and reopen, and by 2013 the group had about 800 members.

In March 1965, an investigative study of property tax assessment practices published by the National Tax Association of 13,769 properties sold within the City of Boston under Mayor John F. Collins from January 1, 1960 to March 31, 1964 found that the assessed values in Roxbury in 1962 were at 68 percent of market values while the assessed values in West Roxbury were at 41 percent of market values, and the researchers could not find a nonracial explanation for the difference.