Preserving Roxbury’s Housing Through Adaptive Reuse

What is adaptive reuse? How has it supported preservation efforts in Boston?

Join the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library for a talk by this year’s Public Research Fellow, Madeline Webster, on adaptive reuse in the neighborhood of Roxbury. Maddie will discuss how Black Bostonians converted upper Roxbury’s Victorian-era single-family houses into multi-family homes in the postwar era, and how this additional income from rent allowed owner-occupants to build equity and maintain their houses despite exclusion from traditional funding sources.

This talk will feature a series of case studies to demonstrate how maps, building permits, census records, and other online databases serve to reconstruct stories of regular people shaping their environments and preserving their neighborhood’s housing stock.

Audience members whose families engaged in this form of adaptive reuse, or who rented a unit in a subdivided home, are encouraged to come with stories to share in a discussion to follow.

This talk will be held in the main conference room on the 1st floor of the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library.