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Mattapan is a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally part of neighboring Dorchester, Mattapan was annexed to Boston in 1870. Like other neighborhoods of the time, Mattapan developed, residentially and commercially, as the railroads and streetcars made downtown Boston increasingly more accessible. Predominantly residential, Mattapan is a mix of public housing, small apartment buildings, single homes and two and three family houses. Blue Hill Avenue and Mattapan Square, where Blue Hill Avenue, River Street, and Cummins Highway meet, is the commercial heart of the neighborhood, home to banks, law offices, restaurants, and retail shops.
Mattapan also has a significant amount of open space, including Franklin Park, the Franklin Park Zoo, and the historic Forest Hills Cemetery.
Demographic change
In the 1960's and 70's Mattapan went through a major change in the makeup of its population. It changed from a predominantly white Jewish neighborhood to one that is almost entirely black. The years between 1968 and 1970 made up the most dramatic period of ethnic transition. According to Levine and Harmon in their book Death of an American Jewish Community, redlining the area, blockbusting, and fear in neighborhood residents created by real estate agents brought about panic selling and white flight. The banking consortium Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group (B-BURG) allegedly drove the Jewish community out of Mattapan and are claimed to bear partial responsibility for the deterioration of the neighborhood, especially along the Blue Hill Avenue corridor.
Again, according to Levine and Harmon, the reason behind this orchestrated attack on the community was to lower market values to buy property, sell the housing with federally guaranteed loans at inflated prices to black families who couldn't afford it, and to get the white community to buy property owned by the banks in the suburbs.
Today Mattapan is seeing another major population shift, albeit a natural turn over of housing, as a large number of Haitian immigrants continue to move in. Mattapan now has the largest Haitian community in Massachusetts. The neigborhood also faces many problems related to gang violence in modern times, so much so that some Bostonians refer to the area as "Murderpan." Today community leaders are working with police to control gang violence within the area.
Transportation
The Mattapan-Ashmont trolley line of the MBTA serves Mattapan as well as several bus routes. The Fairmount Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail also serves Mattapan at Morton Street, providing service to downtown Boston and the suburbs. In the near future an additional station at Blue Hill Avenue will be added. Plans for the reconstruction of Mattapan station have been approved and construction should begin in late 2006.
Links
- Heart of the City, Mattapan, The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University article on Mattapan
- Why the Jews Left Boston, New York Times book review of Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed.
- Why the Jews Left Boston, Boston Globe book review of Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed.
- Death of an American Jewish Community. Amazon reviews
- First Year Urban Project, A Harvard University urban program.
"Mattapan, Massachusetts"