Boston Redevelopment Authority

As their work on the 72-unit Camden Street housing development was drawing to a close in 2019, Cruz Construction staff were knee deep in pre-construction work on the larger 285-unit Lenox apartments.

Community members and officials on April 13 celebrated major milestones in the redevelopment of the Flat 9 at Whittier complex. Members of local, state and federal government, joined by members of the development team and community residents, marked the completion of the second phase of the redevelopment as well as the groundbreaking of its third and final phase.

Up until the late 1960s, the area of Lower Roxbury around Madison Park was a vibrant neighborhood where luminaries such as jazz drummer Roy Haynes, former state Rep. and minister Michael Haynes, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan and former Boston Police Superintendent William Billy Celester came of age. But a plan that was hatched in 1962 would soon wipe the neighborhood from the city’s map.