Route of the other midnight ride holds offerings for tourism, arts

By Robin Washington – Special to the Journal
May 17, 2018

This is a story about small business and community development — but first, an American history lesson about the evening of April 18, 1775.

Had the waters of the Charles River been choppier that night, Paul Revere would have been slowed crossing over to his horse in Charlestown. That would have left William Dawes, his fellow patriot who took the land-only route to Lexington, riding into history books.

“‘One if by land’ would have meant the British troops were marching down the Neck through Roxbury,” says Byron Rushing, a South End state representative who’s also a historian. “Longfellow would have had to find words that rhyme with ‘Dawes,’ and Roxbury would be on the Freedom Trail.”

In that alternate universe, the community surely would have capitalized on its history. But with its actual heritage no less colorful, Roxbury’s boosters are determined to market it now — if a few hundred years late. This Saturday such efforts will culminate in the official kickoff of the Roxbury Cultural District, to showcase the retail, historical and cultural offerings of a neighborhood that was once the second-busiest shopping district in Boston.

“We’re really looking to make this a destination,” says Christine Araujo of The American City Coalition, one of the partners behind the Roxbury Cultural District, described as “where art, culture, history and commercial activity all converge.”

Designated in a soft launch a year ago by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the district officially kicks off May 18 with a 6 p.m. gala at the Bolling Building and a free May 19 fair at the First Church of Roxbury and the Blair Lot, both just off Dudley Square. In its heyday in the early- and mid-1900s, the square was a sleepy streetcar suburb in which the Orange Line elevated trains would roar into the iron porticos of the Dudley Square Station. Its anchor was the Ferdinand Building, the tallest structure in Boston south of downtown and home to New England’s largest furniture retailer.

By the time the Orange Line was relocated and the elevated tracks torn down in 1987, disinvestment was in full swing. The building was an empty eyesore, and shifting demographics made Roxbury synonymous with “inner city” — TV anchors’ code-word for crime.

But it’s back, says Kelley Chunn. The district’s president during its startup phase, she’s handing the reins over to artist Napoleon Henderson Jones, whose ceramic mural, “Roxbury Rhapsody,” graces a renovated Ferdinand Building. Renamed for the late city councilor Bruce Bolling, it houses Boston Public Schools headquarters, meeting space, small business/tech incubators, nonprofits and retail shops.

Haris Hardaway and his parents run one of them. The colorful women’s fashions of Final Touch with Class seem to mimic Henderson Jones’ work. “Fashion is art and it’s the only art you get to wear,” says Hardaway, opening a box of items handpicked on a buying trip to Los Angeles. The store is one of several black- and minority-owned small businesses that Araujo says outnumber chain stores, helping to keep money circulating in the community.

Yet that doesn’t mean closing the doors to visitors.

“I know that everyone’s worried about gentrification, as we all should be,” Araujo says of residents’ fears of being priced out of the neighborhood where they grew up. “But I don’t think bringing people into the community to use disposable income is bad for the community. How many times do parents come here to Northeastern (looking for something to do after dropping off their kids)?”

Within minutes of Northeastern’s dorms are historical sites dating back to the 1630s, including the First Church and Eliot Burying Ground, where John Eliot, the Puritan “Apostle to the Indians,” preached and is buried. It’s also the resting place of several Dudleys, the family for whom the square is named, including two early governors and a chief justice.

Twentieth-century landmarks are equally historic. A young Martin Luther King Jr. shared the pews and the pulpit of the 12th Baptist Church while attending Boston University in the early 1950s, and a teenaged Malcolm Little — better known later as Malcolm X — lived on nearby Dale Street.

On a lighter note, DJ Elroy Smith changed pop music history when he practically reached out the window of radio station WILD to grab a single that Maurice Starr had just pressed of his fledgling boy band from the Orchard Park projects. Starr later duplicated his New Edition success when he brought a Dorchester group — New Kids on the Block — to record at his studio across the street from the First Church.

The city is continuing to ride that fame with a $2 million renovation in 2016 of Ramsey Park and its Michael L. Bivins Basketball Court, named for the New Edition member who played hoops there. Another project is a $17.2 million renovation of the Dudley Branch Boston Public Library, for which the city announced an RFP for art projects last week.

Though the city could do that whether the area was designated a cultural district or not, merchants are looking to the designation to spark business. “I hope it becomes an area where there’s a mix of businesses, cultural businesses, where everybody can come to shop and get something that they need,” says Leonard Egerton of Frugal Bookstore.

A local history of Roxbury on his shelves seems to support that, especially for anyone seeking to learn more about William Dawes … who some in the neighborhood might argue took a midnight ride just as good as Paul Revere’s.

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2018/05/17/roxbury-businesses-seek-revitalization-through.html#g/434776/1