MassMarrier didn't say he had anything against MGH, just that the neighborhood filled up with MGH employees once the area was, if you'll pardon the expression, ethnically cleansed.

Why do so many of your posts involve sweeping judgments of a person's entire character based on (presumably) a single comment the person has made? (If this assumption is wrong, then please, give us some background so we know how you know what kind of person massmarrier is.) Judging from your blog, you come across as an intelligent fellow. Why not stick to debating the facts instead of attacking people?

If you need some perspective, try thinking back on all the times you ran and cried and deleted your blog because you felt someone had judged you.

That entire West End rasing is a particularly disgraceful bit of politics and economics. The developers got the protection and permission of the city and federal governments, along with money, with strings. They could toss out thousands of families and individuals from mediocre housing stock, but buildings that met code and were safe. For that, they were to keep a mix of pricing permitting middle and lower-middle class residents.

Well, come the condo craze, they were in court. They had announced a conversion for a big killing in the hot realty market that clearly violated the letter and spirit of their agreement. The big part of the buyers were physicians at MGH, many speculating with purchases of multiple units. We should not confuse that group with the institution, no matter how convenient it is for the professionals who work nearby.

They got a city judge to let them complete the conversion. Jerry got richer and the middle class residents were tossed for the potential economic benefit of those who could afford to gamble on the condos.

You can check the history of urban renewal and inevitably find the West End "redevelopment" as a shameful land grab and the example of how not to do urban renewal. It was protrayed by those involved as clearing up a slum, but that's not the way scholars view it. (One of the earliest analyses is still great and at the library, Herbert Gans' The Urban Villagers.)

If you want bitter, go to Malden and similar suburbs where displaced West Enders still live and remember.

To Ron's point, there were Jewish settlements in Roxbury and Mattapan, at least until many no longer felt safe and fled. However, to the end, the immigrant Italians and Jews filled the West End, moving after they settled and improved their lot enough.

Cities do well by all of us when they offer ways and places for newcomers. Ripping up real communities for the benefit of private developers is not the way.

Oh, we shouldn't overlook either that when the West End went under the bulldozer blades, other newcomers were filling it. Many were African-American or Hispanic by 1959.

The Italian-American presence was still very strong though.

It really doesn't make people all that cynical if they say that race and culture factored heavily into whose housing was expendable.