Savin Hill has long been regarded one of the most desirable sections of Dorchester. It combines relative proximity to downtown Boston with a sense of distance from the city, and has the enviable combination of a hillside neighborhood of historic houses with water views and a beach, along with a subway stop nearby.
A beach neighborhood within Boston. Savin Hill is a beach neighborhood within Boston, and has a significant concentration of attractive historic houses. Savin Hill Beach is one of three public beaches comprising the Dorchester Shores Reservation, and was designed by the famous Olmsted Brothers landscape firm.
While the Savin Hill area was settled in the 1600s, the earliest surviving housing dates to the 1840s, and the majority to the late 1800s.
The Red Line and the Commuter Rail pass through the middle of the neighborhood, with the Savin Hill stop centrally-located. Residents in the northern section of Savin Hill can access both at the JFK/UMass station in adjacent Columbia Point. From the Savin Hill stop, it is two stops on the Commuter Rail and four stops on the Red Line to South Station.
Savin Hill is a fairly large neighborhood in northern Dorchester. To the north is South Boston's Andrew Square; to the east is Dorchester's Columbia Point; to the west are Jones Hill, Polish Triangle, and Upham's Corner, and Meeting House Hill; and to the south are Fields Corner, Clam Point/Harrison Square, and Commercial Point.
In the rather literal spirit of naming that led ____ Gosnold to name a particular vineyard after his [wife] Martha, and a particular cape after the [schools of cod], _______. This neighborhood was previously called Rock Hill, Old Hill, and finally Savin Hill, after the red juniper (savin) bushes abundant here. [or is it red cedar? trees not bushes?]
the Neponset tribe. The Neponset is a smaller division of the Massachuset tribe, who inhabited the state centuries before European settlers, from which the Commonwealth took its name.
The Neponset native Americans spent summers in Savin Hill for centuries, before the arrival of Europeans. In 1614, Captain John Smith of Virginia, the first English settler in America, visited Dorchester and traded with the Neponset tribe. Sixteen years later, in 1630, the ...Savin Hill was settled and founded in June, 1630, just a few months before Boston was settled. The first settlers were Puritans who arrived from England on the ship 'Mary and John'. They had previously settled near Hull, Mass. before moving north to the hill overlooking a protected harbor, Dorchester Bay. The original settlement was at today's intersection of Grampian Way and Savin Hill Avenue.
On October 8, 1636, Cutchamakin deeded the remainder of his territory, called Unquety, to Richard Collicot for 28 fathoms of wampum. This was in addition to the 56 acres of salt marsh and upland which Collicot received earlier from Chickataubut. Collicot's land grant, which became modern day Milton, was clearly delineated by land forms. It stretched from the Neponset River, between the Estuary and Fowl Meadow to the summit of the Great Blue Hill.
The sachem reserved the best land for himself; forty acres of upland, salt marsh, and fields including present day Ventura playground and Dorchester Park.
The first people arriving in the area were Puritans who came on the "Mary and John" from England. They had formerly settled further south on the coast, in the Hull area, before moving north to a hill overlooking a protected harbor, now called Dorchester Bay.
After the American Civil War, the Worthington family, who owned most of the land in present-day Savin Hill, started selling house lots. At that time, most of the Victorian homes that line the slope of the hill were constructed.
The original boundary of Dorchester extended almost to the Rhode Island border. As time went on, settlements broke away and the geographical size of the town continued to shrink until 1870, when the town of Dorchester was incorporated into the city of Boston.
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