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When did JP secede?
By adamg on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 8:43pm
Lyss wonders after reading the following in a Globe story today titled In real estate sales, not all cities are equal:
And communities in Boston's inner belt - including Somerville, Brookline, Newton, and Jamaica Plain - are also doing somewhat better than Cambridge, with their single-family home sales collectively down about 22 percent from the first five months of 2007, he said.
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Comments
Don't see the problem
JP is a community, isn't it?
Couple it with the headline
And the other examples in that list, and it makes it seem like JP is an independent city or something. No, not a major sin, but just kind of weird.
Which One is Not Like The Others
And unlike the rest of the list, JP was never a separate town. In fact, it is a pieced together neighborhood. Most of it was part of then (separate town) Roxbury. Before Boston annexed Roxbury (1868), the West Roxbury area had already separated (1851). WR and JP developed different flavors as they changed from farm-based. JP in particular was on train lines from Boston to Providence, along the old toll road that started just below Forest Hills. The WR and JP folk joined Boston by annexation in 1873. We see more evidence of that history in the West Roxbury Court House in JP.
When we moved here from downtown Boston 20 years ago, I was unsure how to tell people where we were. To this day, some directory services list us in Boston and some in JP. When some delivery services like UPS hear Boston, they know enough to be sure they have the right ZIP code. When I originally went to the post office, I figured they could tell me. The facade had JAMAICA PLAIN chiseled into it. Yet, the guy behind the counter laughed heartily. "Let's just say Jamaica Plain is an unofficial post office. You live in Boston as far as we're concerned."