Douglass, Frederick, Square Historic District

Lower Roxbury's Frederick Douglass Square Historic District is a compact five-acre pocket of brick row houses and apartment blocks, built on tidal marsh that the Tremont Improvement Company drained and filled in the late 1860s. Less than one-sixth of the original subdivision survives, since urban renewal demolition in the late 1960s cleared most of the neighborhood. The remaining 116 buildings are mostly two- and three-story Panel Brick and Queen Anne row houses. Seventy-seven were financed between 1886 and 1890 by Robert Treat Paine, Jr., a social reformer who believed housing for working families should be sanitary and also attractive. Architect George W. Pope gave the small side-passage houses bow fronts, pressed metal oriels, terra-cotta plaques and corbelled cornices. The district takes its name from the nearby square honoring Frederick Douglass, which became a gathering place for political rallies and Civil Rights protests in a largely African-American community. It is recognized for its architecture, community planning and social history.