Fort Hill, Boston

The area comprising Fort Hill contained mostly country estates and farm and pasture land in the era preceding the American Revolutionary War.[7] Despite its agrarian orientation, the area was strategically important to the colonial resistance to the siege of Boston.[8] The only road that connected the mainland with Boston on the Shawmut Peninsula passed through Fort Hill, dividing at John Eliot Square into the road to Brookline and Cambridge (Roxbury and Tremont Streets) and the road to Dedham (Centre Street).[8] The district's height overlooking the land connection and its puddingstone outcroppings made it an advantageous location for the Continental Army to build fortifications.

In the summer of 1775, the Continental Army built two forts in the area as part of a circle of defenses that eventually enabled the evacuation of the British from Boston.[3] The Lower Fort was located on two acres of land between Cedar, Highand and Linwood Streets. The High Fort was an earthworks structure that occupied the summit of the hill. The Revolutionary War resulted in the destruction of many of Fort Hill's colonial-era buildings, and the Dillaway-Thomas is the only surviving pre-Revolutionary structure in the district.[8]

Fort Hill began its transformation from agricultural to residential uses in the early nineteenth century. In 1803, what is now known as Washington Street was improved to become the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike, a road that connected Boston with Pawtucket, Rhode Island.[7] As early as the 1820s, a horse-drawn bus line was established along Washington Street to carry commuters into Boston, and in 1835 the railroad from Boston to Providence was sited along the Stony Brook Valley on the North side of Fort Hill.[9] These improvements in transportation drew wealthy estate builders and upper middle class businessmen to Fort Hill.

Roxbury's annexation to Boston in 1868 triggered the first wave of heavy suburbanization within the district. In 1869, Roxbury built the Cochituate Standpipe, the neighborhood's most widely known structure, to modernize its water system.[9] One additional development project significantly increased the attractiveness of the neighborhood. Electric trolley service began in 1889 and residents began to move to Fort Hill in mass, creating a market for row houses, triple-story houses, and single-family homes.[9]

During the early twentieth century, Fort Hill experienced an influx of immigrants of English, Irish, and German descent.[8] The influence of German immigrants is visible in some of Fort Hill's architecture in the area around Egleston Square.[7] Late nineteenth-century suburban development was dominated by the Yankee Protestant middle class, while the early twentieth-century witnessed the influx of a middle class Jewish population.[8] In the 1940s and 1950s, Fort Hill witnessed another wave of immigration, as many African American people from the American South moved into the neighborhood as part of the Great Migration.[10] Following the influx of African Americans, Fort Hill and Roxbury in general became what the City of Boston has characterized as the "heart" of black culture in Boston.[11]

The Dillaway School on Kenilworth Place in Fort Hill

Today, Fort Hill is home to an ethnically and linguistically diverse community. Fort Hill has been recognized for its sizable population of residents with Irish, Puerto Rican, Dominican, German and Sub-Saharan African roots.[12] Over the last decade Fort Hill has experienced an influx of professionals, artists and students, many of whom attend Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design or Wentworth Institute of Technology. Fort Hill is also often referred to as a neighborhood that is notable for having a high concentration of residents living with same-sex partners,[13][12] and has a history of its residents advocating for gay rights.[14]