Roslindale Village: The Story of a Streetcar Suburb Inside Boston
Roslindale grew from farmland into a commuter village with a lively square. A look at how it got its name and how its main street came back.
Roslindale is one of those Boston neighborhoods that feels like a small town. Its center, Roslindale Village, has a square, a commuter rail stop, bakeries, a farmers market in season and blocks of comfortable houses spreading out in every direction. Its history explains how it kept that village character.
A Scottish-sounding name
Roslindale was once part of Roxbury and then, after 1851, part of the town of West Roxbury. In the late 1800s, residents needed a distinct name for their village, in part to set up their own post office. The name they chose is often said to have been inspired by Roslin, a village near Edinburgh in Scotland, because the local hills and valleys reminded someone of it.
The town of West Roxbury, including Roslindale, was annexed to Boston in 1874.
Like many outer neighborhoods, Roslindale grew because of transit. Rail service and later streetcar lines made it possible for families to live in a house with a yard and commute to jobs downtown. Builders put up single-family homes, two-families and triple-deckers on former farmland and estates in the decades around 1900.
The commercial center grew up around the rail station, which is still there today as part of the Needham commuter line.
A main street that came back
By the late twentieth century, Roslindale Village, like many older business districts, had struggled as shopping moved to malls and highways. In the 1980s, Roslindale became one of the first urban neighborhoods in the country to adopt the Main Street approach, a model for reviving historic commercial districts through local organizing, design improvements and support for small businesses. The effort is widely credited with helping the square recover, and the approach was later expanded to other Boston neighborhoods.
Parks and green edges
- Adams Park, the small green at the heart of Roslindale Square.
- The Arnold Arboretum, whose Peters Hill and southern entrances border Roslindale.
- Fallon Field and other neighborhood playing fields.
- Small neighborhood playgrounds and ballfields used by local families and youth leagues.
A mix of people
Roslindale has long been home to Irish, Italian, German, Greek, Lebanese and Syrian families, and in more recent decades many Haitian, Dominican and other Caribbean and Latin American families. Older bakeries, social clubs and churches stand alongside newer restaurants that reflect the neighborhood’s mix.
Exploring the village
A good winter visit starts at Roslindale Square. Walk around Adams Park, browse the shops on Washington Street and South Street, and stop for coffee and a pastry. If the weather allows, walk up to the Arboretum’s Peters Hill for one of the best views of the Boston skyline.
Roslindale is a useful reminder that the city is more than its downtown. Some of Boston’s best neighborhood life happens in places like this, where a train stop, a square and a few blocks of shops still hold a community together.
