We’re Boston’s Dudley Square: Witnesses to a neighborhood’s rebirth
Tom Menino was nicknamed the Urban Mechanic, and one of the things he fixed was Roxbury’s Dudley Square. His funeral procession passed by 10 places in Boston with special meaning for him, and Dudley Square was one of them. He always believed in its potential, recalling its glory days when it was known as “Boston’s other Downtown.”
Only a couple of miles from the Financial District, Dudley Square was an important retail and transit hub for half a century. In the heart of the square was Ferdinand’s, once New England’s largest furniture retailer, boasting “over four acres of floor space” and a grand staircase that went directly to the elevated Orange Line train station. The train hugged the wedge-shaped Baroque Revival building so tightly as it screeched around the corner on Washington Street that passengers could window-shop from their seats.