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Founded in 1630 (contemporaneously with Boston), West Roxbury, Massachusetts was originally part of the town of Roxbury and was mainly used as farmland. West Roxbury formed its own government in 1851, and was annexed by Boston in 1874. The town included the neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Bordered by Roslindale and Hyde Park, West Roxbury's main thoroughfare is Centre Street, lined with local restaurants and commercial establishments. Today, the neighborhood's tree-lined streets and mostly single family homes give it a suburban feel in an urban setting. Life in the neighborhood centers on political and civic activism as well as local parishes and youth athletic leagues. The community boasts a significant proportion of persons of Irish decent as well as a smaller number of more recent Irish immigrants. The Roxbury Latin School, founded in 1645 and located on Saint Theresa Avenue in West Roxbury since 1927, is the oldest school in continuous existence in North America. The school's endowment is estimated at $143.8 million, the largest of any boys' school in the United States. The neighborhood was home to an experimental transcendentalist Utopia community called Brook Farm, which attracted notable writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. Like its neighboring communities, West Roxbury's residential development grew with the construction of the West Roxbury branch of the Boston and Providence Rail Road; the area grew further with the development of electric streetcars. Research Tips
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