We are planning a trip to Boston and understand the Roxbury Neighborhood is not a good one. However, we have ancestors who helped establish the city in the 1600s and would like to visit there to see places of interest. We will not have a car. What is the best way to see this area? Taxi? Hire a car and driver?

Hi mrdeyoung,

Do you know where your ancestors lived? Roxbury covers a fairly large area. Take a look at the website:
http://www.discoverroxbury.org/ Originally Roxbury included what is now Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury.

Most of Roxbury is fine for you to tour around. To make the most of your time, though, you might want to make arrangements to be driven around to the historical sites. Perhaps the website above can help.

My father-in-law was born in Roxbury, and my daughter lived there for a few years after graduating from college. There are many lovely historic and Victorian homes and outstanding architecture that even most Bostonians aren't aware of.

Many parts of Roxbury are rough and certainly not an area for tourists to wander around in, and I would recommend a hired driver, and work with him to plan your route in advance (be prepared with a good street map). Do you have specific places of interest?

Will echo the idea that Roxbury is indeed one of Boston's proverbial bad parts of town (Mattapan and various parts of Dorchester and Jamaica Plain also qualify). I'm not one to agree that Roxbury is generally fine to tour around in, as it's a really rough area. Anonymous has provided excellent advice -- definitely hire a driver, plan your itinerary ahead of time, do all exploring during daylight business hours, avoid parks and lonely spots, and don't stray far from the car if you decide to walk around. I would not use a taxi, as they will likely drop you and disappear, which strikes me as a really bad idea -- in fact, some taxis may refuse to go to Roxbury entirely, though they're not supposed to do this.

I am a homecare RN and about 8-10 years ago Roxbury was part of my area. While there have been some changes, I believe my experiences are still relatively valid.

Agree to hire a cab/driver by the hour. Have some idea where you want to go. Ideally, you want a cab driver very familiar with the area - he will know where you can and can not go. I might call a cab company and explain to them what you want to do - they may be able to send you a cab driver up to the job.

Parts of Roxbury are fine - triple deckers with working people just trying to raise their families and deal with today's economy. This is most of Roxbury. Even in housing projects, this is often the case. During daylight hours, driving thru almost all of Roxbury during daylight hours would not concern me.

However, there are a few pockets of trouble, and it would not be difficult to wander into these areas.

Morning hours are usually the safest - there is a joke among home care providers that morning is when the gangs and trouble makers are still asleep so that is when we would visit our clients living in the worst areas.

Thanks for all the info about Roxbury,especially the website. I have perused it and will look at in more again. We'd like to see the First Church of Roxbury that is a white colonial building no longer having services. It is deteriorating somewhat. There's a large picture of Reverend Eliot hanging inside.

The Roxbury Cemetery/Eliot Burying Ground holds the remains of one ancestor, Benjamin Bedunah. He would have been the son of Lydia Craft Bedoona. I'll go to the courthouse before we go to Roxbury as I'm sure there are other ancestors buried there somewhere. Thomas Bedoona/Bedunah and wife,Lydia are ones I would mainly like to find.

Also we'd like to see the Crafts House which in 1908 was standing on Tremont St. near the foot of Parker Hill Ave. I will need to get a GOOD map to find some of these places.

If you'd like to email me direct, it's [email protected].
Thank you again.
Marylin DeYoung

Roxbury has had its tough times, but it's not an area to avoid or be afraid of. As a current resident of the neighborhood, I can attest to most of it being a place where tourists are safe to explore. I once ran across a German couple who were advised by their American friends to explore Roxbury and they were enjoying themselves.

In addition to the tour & neighborhood information provided by Discover Roxbury (www.discoverroxbury.org), the neighborhood also has well-preserved colonial sites (the First Church in Roxbury, Dillaway Thomas House, the Shirley-Eustis House), an art museum (www.ncaaa.org), a film festival (www.roxburyfilmfestival.org), and lots of artists (www.roxburyopenstudios.org).

Check out this recent article in the Boston Globe which mentions one of the places Boston RESIDENTS are advised visit in Roxbury: http://www.boston.com/news/local/art...sing_the_pins/

You don't need to hire a driver, but you should consider getting a good map and rental car. There is public transportation, but if you don't know where your ancestors settled, you'll want to be able to move around. Keep in mind that some of the old streets and buildings you'd like to see may have been destroyed in the 1960s for a highway project that was never built.

Mrdeyoung, feel free to come to Roxbury and enjoy yourselves without hesitation or a hired driver (which was a ludicrous suggestion from previous posters). Having moved here 2 years ago from a suburb, I have not seen or felt any sort of trouble or roughness in my neighborhood at all, nor do I feel unsafe walking around. As with any area, even supposedly safe suburbs, I wouldn't recommend to walk around alone at night, some things are just common sense. I think that the poster Gail, being that she's been out of the area for 8-10 years is WAY out of date and am surprised she'd post any advise out-of-towners on something like that without even a current drive through the area. Roxbury is still in the midst of change, as are most cities. It has been going through a plethora of positive urban renewal and still is. Just last week the mayor visited Roxbury for a ribbon cutting for a new development. We're not there yet, but we've made great strides in the last DECADE. Please come to Roxbury and enjoy all of the history and culture that it has to offer.

My daughter lived on Parker Hill Ave, which is in the Mission Hill section of Roxbury, and for a while I worked on Tremont Street in that area. Nowadays, the two streets do not intersect; they're basically parallel. Unfortunately, the Crafts House, biult in the early 1700s, does not survive.

Saabguy, the need for a driver isn't primarily motivated by safety concerns, but by the nature of the streets and older neighborhoods of Boston, where it's so easy to get lost and so difficult to find a parking spot.

The City of Boston maintains the Eliot Burying Ground, which can be unlocked with 24 hours notice (but not on Sundays):

http://www.cityofboston.gov/parks/hbgi/visiting.asp

http://www.cityofboston.gov/parks/HB...info.asp?ID=13

Hello, Mrdeyoung.

I have visited Roxbury a few times and never felt unsafe.

Hire a taxi/driver if you plan on visiting too many sites that are distant from each other but not because of safety reasons.

Dress like a local, keep your valuables out of sight and you will be fine.

I think you will find this photoblog quite useful: http://bostonneighborhoods.blogspot.com/

As for a "good map," Google maps is your best friend. Use its "get directions" feature which is very useful (and printable) and you'll see that 10 Putnam Street, where First Church is, and the cemetery (corner of Washington and Eustis Streets) are only 10 or so city blocks away.

I hope this helps.

To all who responded need for driver as stupid or worse, op stated "WE WILL NOT HAVE A CAR" - and since Roxbury is an area with several MBTA stop on a couple of lines but served primarily by bus lines, I suggested a cab driver who knew their way around the area.

And, Mr. Saab - how do you know where I have been recently? True, the area has changed in the past decade, many areas for the better and a few for the worse. But I stated I had worked there 8-10 years ago, not that I had not been there since then. In fact, my 2 teenagers participated in quite a few Mass. State sporting events there in past 11 years (Reggie Lewis Ctr and Franklin Park) as well as having visited 3 different friends who live in 3 different areas of Roxbury several times/year.

I endorse the idea of having a car and driver because of traffic, one-way streets, double parking, short-cuts, and the kind of local knowledge that is critical in Boston's crowded neighborhoods.

I would recommend the same thing if the poster were planning to be in Southie. In more than 25 years living in Boston, I was never able to work my way through the maze of streets to the monument at the top of the hill, and I couldn't have found a legal parking spaced when I got there.

Try finding Davis Square in Somerville by car. It is one of the great places to go in the Boston area (mmmm, Redbones BBQ) but getting there by car from,say, Harvard Square, is difficult.

How do you find the entrance to Bay Village? I drove by one end for many years without figuring out how to get back in there because of one way streets.

I am amazed as so much information. Thanks so much and keep it coming.

Marylin DeYoung

I'm going to very, very strongly back Gail (in all her posts) and Anonymous on this and reiterate my own advice above. In short, hire the driver and don't take risks you don't need to. No way I'd personally do this any other way. And chances are if you're a tourist, you'll really, really look like it there -- it's just not a tourist area.

And yes, I've been to Roxbury recently.

Check out these Roxbury websites

http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genIn...ocIndex=274956

http://www.city-data.com/forum/bosto...bury-like.html

I'd be wary of any information in the epodunk site, since their illustration is of a park that's in WEST Roxbury, which doesn't even border Roxbury. And the other page is just a discussion board with some very subjective opnions! Sorry to sound so cranky, but I can't help being sensitive about bad information.

Interesting postcard on the epodunk site. It looks like an old postcard from the days when W. Roxbury was still a part of Roxbury. Easy mistake to make for someone not familiar with the history of the area.

Pinkhat: Thank you for linking to my blog. Appreciated.

Marylin: I live in the Back Bay, I'm white and not at all familiar with the Roxbury area/people/history, but I keep two photo blogs about Boston and its neighborhoods so I do a lot of walking around this city with my camera hanging around my neck and maps/notes sticking out of my pockets... Do I look like a tourist?

I didn't feel very comfortable taking photos in Mattapan (got stares from black hoodie wearing youngsters), but the time spent in Roxbury and Dorchester was certainly enjoyable. I encountered very friendly people, some of them even offered to help when they thought I was lost.

I drove to those neighborhoods then parked the car on busy streets and wandered around on foot, stopping here and there to take a photo.

No problems whatsoever.

Enjoy your time in Roxbury.

Cheers!