Join us for a free historic walking tour through the Hyde Square neighborhood, led by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society exclusively for the Vassar community. After the tour, we will have lunch at a local restaurant, Abuela’s Table.

🚶11:00 a.m. Walking tour of Hyde Square: 
Throughout the tour, learn how Hyde Square in Jamaica Plain was first developed in the 1840s when German and Irish immigrants transformed the neighborhood with their businesses, schools, and institutions. In the early 1960s, Hyde Square changed again when Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican immigrants transformed it into one of Boston’s first predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. This tour stops at the home of Maud Cuney Hare, a prominent music historian and one of only two black women students at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1890. We will also learn about the property currently housing the MSPCA’s Angell Animal Medical Center which was once a site of the Perkins School for the Blind. The tour will then walk through the Sunnyside neighborhood, the site of homes built by philanthropist Robert Treat Paine from 1889 to 1899 as a “worker’s utopia” for working families, reflecting how Boston’s persistent need for affordable housing was addressed in Jamaica Plain in the past.

• Meet at 11am at Brendan Behan Pub, 378 Centre St. Tour will last approximately 60 to 90 minutes.

🍽️ 12:30 p.m. Lunch at Abuela’s Table (optional): 
After the tour, we will have lunch at Abuela’s Table, a nearby Mexican restaurant, to continue the conversation and connect more with present-day Hyde Square’s Hispanic community. There are menu options for a variety of dietary preferences, including vegan and gluten-free. Alums will self-pay for lunch at the restaurant, with a VC Boston $10 discount per person.

Space is limited. Please register by Thursday, September 11th so we can provide a final headcount to our guide and restaurant.