Talk: South End Character: Speaking Out On Neighborhood Change with Anne Alison Barnet
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Presented by
The West End Museum
Thursday December 4th 2014
Time: 6:30 pm
@ The West End Museum
Cost: FREE
How many people know that the South End’s New York Streets neighborhood was the city’s first “slum clearance” project—before the West End? Alison Barnet, author of South End Character: Speaking Out on Neighborhood Change and a West End Museum member, will read from her book about the South End and lead a discussion about neighborhood change, gentrification, and loss.
South End Character is a collection of columns that have run in the South End News since 2009. The title refers not only to neighborhood characters but to the character of the neighborhood. The first section, “Alison’s Adventures,” tells how Alison came to the South End as a BU student in 1964 and her life in an unusual household. “Rants from the Old South End” is a set of reflections on gentrification, such as “Our Slick and Silly South End,” “The ‘revitalization’ of Washington Street,” and “Dogs.” People and places, contemporary and historic, such as the New York Streets story, make up the final section.