Boston's South End: The Clash of Ideas in a Historic Neighborhood

Boston's South End is one of the largest intact Victorian row house districts in the United States. It also has stylish twenty-first century condo buildings, Modernist housing projects, and award-winning gardens and parks. For centuries, people have come to this densely populated one square mile neighborhood carrying their dreams of a better life and ideas about what constitutes healthy urban living.

The South End has been home to nineteenth century preachers, sixties radicals, and millenni...