Discover Bay Village

The Secret Boston Neighborhood

With only 6 square blocks and about 700 residents, historic Bay Village is the smallest of all Boston neighborhoods . . . and without a doubt, one of the city’s best-kept secrets.

In fact, many locals have never heard of this special Boston neighborhood.   Most travel guides don’t even mention it.

If you discover this hidden area, you’ll experience Boston from an earlier time - and you'll discover one of the city's most treasured enclaves.

Located just a couple of blocks south of the Public Garden, Bay Village is sandwiched between Back Bay, the Theatre District, and the South End.   It’s also just a 5-10 minute walk from Chinatown and Beacon Hill.   With such easy access to great restaurants, super shopping, and Boston theaters and nightlife, the location is hard to beat.

Architectural Treasures

What makes this leafy Boston neighborhood so special are the well-preserved red brick Federal Period townhouses lining narrow, tree-filled streets.  

Art Deco architecture details grace later buildings.   Gas street lamps and almost-hidden gardens complete the picture.

Walk down Fayette Street, for example, and you’ll feel transported back to the 1830s when the English Neoclassic houses were built.

Stroll over to Melrose Street and you’ll find larger, more elaborate Greek Revival townhouses.

Closer to Stuart Street, which separates Bay Village from Park Square with its exclusive hotels and some of the best steakhouses and seafood restaurants in Boston, you’ll see warehouses-turned-luxury-condos as reminders of the neighborhood’s colorful relationship with the film industry.

Bay Village residents love their neighborhood because of its friendliness, convenient location, and the eclectic mix of singles, couples, families with children, students, and professionals who live here.

I love Bay Village because of its tranquility.

Once you enter its quiet streets, the buzz of city noise fades away.   Aside from a handful of restaurants and businesses along the outer edges, Bay Village is a collection of homes.

The neighborhood truly feels like a small village. Sit on a bench in one of its small parks . . . listen to the birds singing . . . enjoy a peaceful moment.

You’ll have to remind yourself that you’re still in 21st century Boston.

Filling the Bay to Make a Neighborhood

Like so much of Boston, Bay Village is a neighborhood built on top of land made by filling in a shallow bay.

Developer Ephaim Marsh created—and thus became the owner of—the land for much of Bay Village in the 1820s. After laying out the streets once the former mud flats became buildable in 1925, he built some of the neighborhood’s finest houses, including his own at 1 Fayette Street.

Although Marsh’s house no longer stands - Bay Village Park with its lovely garden now fills the space - you can see similar houses that he constructed at 33-39 Fayette Street. All together, he built 300 post-Revolutionary buildings and houses in Boston, including many on Broad Street and in Beacon Hill.

In fact, the architecture of many of the neighborhood's buildings echoes those in Beacon Hill. This resemblance is because they were built during the same period - and by the same people. Many of the carpenters and craftsmen who built the grand houses in Beacon Hill settled here and built smaller, simpler versions for themselves.   Original residents also included blacksmiths, sail makers, musical instrument makers, tin workers, and rope makers.

Initially the neighborhood was called the Church Street District due to the Presbyterian church built on Church Street in 1827.  When that name fell out of favor later, the area came to be called Bay Village, evoking the neighborhood's watery origin as well as tiny Bay Street (off Fayette, near Marginal Road). 

Raising the Neighborhood - Literally!

As massive landfills laid the foundations for nearby Back Bay and South End neighborhoods, Bay Villagers experienced sewer disaster when their older, sea-level neighborhood no longer drained properly. By the early 1860s, the sewers could no longer drain at all—and residents’ basements and other low-lying areas filled up with malodorous sewage and storm water.

After considering various options, none of them easy, the City of Boston decided to raise the neighborhood - literally.   Starting in 1865, the City jacked up streets, 457 houses, and 24 stores on pilings 18 feet above sea level and hauled in gravel by rail to place under them.   They filled back yards only to 12 feet, meaning that new gardens sat 6 feet below street level.

As you walk along the quiet streets, you can still discover sunken gardens throughout much of the neighborhood.   Can you spot the few houses skipped by the neighborhood-raising process? Hint: you’ll see their ground floor windows below street level.

After resolution of the sewage problem, the neighborhood once again became a desirable place to live.

Developers erected Victorian-style luxury residential hotels on Cortes and Isabella Streets.

Businesses set up throughout the neighborhood.

At 12 Piedmont Street, Master Silversmith William Haynes founded a company to produce flutes that became internationally known for their purity of tone.

Today, generations later, you can still walk down the narrow lane and spot the small blue sign marking the building where the Wm. S. Haynes Co. continues to create world-renowned Haynes performance flutes and piccolos.

The First Corps of Cadets Armory (also known as "The Castle")

Everyone wonders about this landmark Bay Village building, built in the 1890s at the corner of what's now Columbus Ave and Arlington Street to house the First Corps of Cadets, a private military organization founded in 1741 to guard the Massachusetts Bay Colony governor. 

John Hancock commanded the Corps in 1776.  Members served in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I.  In 1940, the Corps became a National Guard Unit, and finally stopped using the building in the late 1960s.

Surely the Armory must be one of Boston's most unusual buildings.  Built from granite blocks specially cut to look "rustic," this late Victorian building faithfully emulates medieval design with its 6-story crenellated tower complete with slit windows for arrows, a drawbridge, and corbel towers. 

After a stint as a University of Massachusetts library and convention facilities for the nearby Park Plaza Hotel, the Armory now houses one of Bay Village's restaurants.

Changes in the Neighborhood

Early in the 20th century, Bay Village became the center of Boston's film industry. 

Boston's blossoming Theatre District just to the north and east of Bay Village brought actors, musicians, and other entertainment industry professionals to the neighborhood.  Several film distribution companies moved in.

To clear space for massive film warehouses, the studios demolished Federal-period houses on Piedmont, Winchester, and Church Streets.

You can still see the some of the Art Deco warehouses, now transformed into professional offices and stylish dwellings.   If you're in the neighborhood, take a look at 48-50 Melrose Street, originally built as a two-story film studio in 1915.  A 1985 renovation added two more floors (looks like one from the street) in the same deco-like style.

Other non-residential structures, such as the Chemical No. 2 fire station on Church Street, also provide residential space.

During Prohibition, the period during the 1920s and early 1930s when an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned alcohol, Bay Village became home to many speakeasies - illegal bars - and also to Boston’s film industry, including major film and newsreel production studios.

In 1983, the Boston City Council passed an ordinance to preserve the neighborhood’s design heritage by designating the community as a Boston Architectural Conservation District.  All external alterations to buildings and houses now require Historic District Commission approval—notoriously hard to get.

Disaster and Death

One of Boston’s most horrific disasters occurred on a cold November night in 1942 when the popular Cocoanut Grove nightclub on Piedmont Street burned down .

Paper decorations inside the club caught on fire when a busboy, trying to screw in a light bulb, lit a match in order to see better. As the band continued playing, waiters tried to stop the fire - and then flames swept through the building.

A former speakeasy, the Cocoanut Grove still had many doors bricked up or bolted shut. The main entrance, a revolving door, quickly jammed when the 1,000 people packing the 500-person capacity building tried to escape.

A stark plaque at the site, now occupied by the Radisson Hotel, commemorates the 492 people who died within 15 minutes that night. The disaster led to the creation and enforcement of more stringent fire codes in Boston and across the U.S.

What You’ll Find in Bay Village

The biggest attraction is the historic neighborhood’s architecture - particularly the Federal period houses on Fayette and Melrose Streets.

However, Bay Village is also the birthplace of famous American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe, born in 1809 in a boarding house on a part of Carver Street erased years ago by street reconfigurations—although he lived here less than a year before his parents, itinerant actors in the adjacent Theatre District, moved on.

A 1928 map shows a square at the intersection of Broadway, Fayette, and the now-defunct part of Carver Streets named after him - but this, too, appears to have been to the vicissitudes of urban redevelopment.

In the not-so-distant past, entertainment attractions from Boston’s former Combat Zone spilled over into nearby Park Square.   Bay Village’s own contribution to Boston adults-only nightlife, Jacques Caberet on Piedmont Street, features female impersonation performances.

Aside from commercial buildings along the outside perimeters of the neighborhood, especially Stuart Street and Charles Street South, the neighborhood is primarily residential.   A few professional offices as well as a small New England School of Law office are tucked among the residences. A corner site at 12 Church Street provides space for a small café.

Neighborhood real estate prices reflect the desirability of this location. Although attractive mid-century apartments can be found along Stuart Street, much of the rest of the neighborhood consists of townhouses and condos.

French Renaissance-style Our Lady of Victories Church on Isabella Street features 14 large German-designed stained glass windows. Windows flanking each side of the sanctuary are from Chartres, France.   Marist Fathers established the church after arriving in the U.S. in 1880, and it continues to be a French National Church, although services are in English.

Bay Village Restaurants

Although the neighborhood is primarily residential, you’re in no danger of starvation. You’ll find several attractive and tasty eateries, including one of Boston’s best French restaurants.

Other restaurants in Back Bay, the South End, Chinatown, and the Theatre District are only a few minutes away.

Getting to Bay Village

Closest T Lines/Stations: Green Line/Arlington; Orange Line/Back Bay or New England Medical Center

Nearby Parking Garages:  The Motor Mart Garage on Stuart Street near Arlington Street is just across from Bay Village in Park Square.  Like most Boston parking garages, it is fairly pricey.  Also check out other Boston parking garages near the Theatre District.

You can also find a small parking lot at the corner of Church and Shawmut Streets, and another on Arlington Street just past Piedmont.  

With the exception of 2 visitor parking spaces at the Arlington Street/ Piedmont Street intersection, the rest of the on-street parking is Residents Only. 

Do not attempt to drive through this neighborhood – the streets are much too narrow, and besides, this special place is best experienced on foot.