Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood in the City of Boston. Europeans have lived here since the 1630s but there were indigineous people who habited the area for thousands of years prior to that (we know very little about them except for scant archaeological evidence) but this is historical Massachusett tribe territories and home to their descendants to this day. Hyde Square takes its name from Jerusha Hyde and his son Leonard, who were early European settlers of the area and were farmers. It should not be confused with Hyde Park (the neighborhood of Boston) with which there is not a connection.
By the 1840s this area of Jamaica Plain was home to large numbers of Irish and German immigrants who were working in the industries along the Stony Brook. It became a residential working-class neighborhood. In fact, in the early 20th century Hyde Square housed the biggest German-American population in Boston. There were stores and institutions that were part of the community. By the 1960s the Germans had moved out to the suburbs and a new wave of immigrants from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic came to live in Hyde Square. Today, it is a vibrant Latinx community with the same small, locally-owned stores which cater to the community that the neighborhood has always had. In 2018, the Massachusetts Cultural Council designated this area the Latin Quarter cultural district.