Continue down Bourne and then turn right onto Southbourne Road.
Now we have finally arrived at some examples of the houses built by the Boston Dwelling House Company. Remember, they purchased 30 acres in 1912 and planned to build a Garden City suburb. The BDHC was driven by some of the leading citizens of the era. It came out of the ideas of “Boston –1915” a progressive movement led by leading Boston citizens, chief among them Edward Filene. “Boston – 1915” aimed to greatly improve Boston by that year and overcrowded housing was one of the issues they hoped to overcome. A banker named Robert Winsor (who was a director of the Boston Elevated Railroad) became the Treasurer of the BDHC. The board members included William Cardinal O’Connell and national settlement house expert Robert Woods. They based their concept on the ideas of the Garden City movement and hired the best talent of the time to create the grounds and the buildings in Woodbourne.
The Garden City movement arose in England in the late 1800s. It was largely the concept of Sir Ebenezer Howard who sought to revolutionize urban planning. His idea was to create urban housing for the working class that would be more community-focused and include lots of healthy, green spaces. It was a reaction to slums and tenements that had grown up in cities. Originally, the landscaping of Woodbourne was to be done by the Olmsted Brothers. Alas their plan proved to be too expensive and was never realized. Eventually the landscape design – the streets and house lots - was created by Robert Anderson Pope. THe BDHC commissioned major architectural firms: Kilham & Hopkins, Grosvenor Atterbury, Parker, Allen & Colins, Thomas & Rice.
The ideas were simple: build quality, affordable housing for average workers near to public transportation. Build those structures in a configuration that fostered community – around a common. You see those concepts very well here, with these lovely stucco cottages that cluster around this courtyard. It’s meant to look quaint and evoke an earlier, simpler time. It’s really a long way from the crowded, unhealthy living downtown in neighborhoods like the North or West End. But still fostering the sense of community that people in those neighborhoods felt. These houses evoke the feel of an English village but within a short walk to the streetcar (or today, the T). This group of Arts & Crafts houses are by the architects Allen and Collins. They designed them in 1912 with rough stucco walls and steeply slanted slate roofs. Advertised as “the privileges of country life to those living within the five-cent fare zone.” These cottages are about 800 sq feet in total and the rooms are 10’x12’. But again, they were advertised as “not a foot of space but what is useful to the housekeeper.”