Old Colony Housing Project

Coordinates: 42°19′54″N 71°03′02″W / 42.3318°N 71.050666°W / 42.3318; -71.050666
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Old Colony Housing Project is a 16.7-acre public

South Boston, Massachusetts. First built in 1940 as a cluster of 22 three-story brick buildings housing 873 low-income units,[1] it is one of the Boston Housing Authority
's oldest developments.

Location

Old Colony is roughly a triangle, bordered by East 8th Street, Dorchester Street, Old Colony Avenue, and Columbia Road. It adjoins a traffic circle to the southwest and Babe Ruth Park, a youth park with baseball fields, to the south. 42°19′54″N 71°03′02″W / 42.3318°N 71.050666°W / 42.3318; -71.050666

Across the street from Old Colony, on the rotary to the southwest, is where

James "Whitey" Bulger owned a liquor store and headquartered his organized crime ring.[2] He grew up in the nearby Old Harbor Village housing project, later renamed the Mary Ellen McCormack housing project. The liquor store, formerly South Boston Liquor Mart, later became Kippy's Wine and Spirits, and as of 2017, it is Rotary Liquors.[3]

Prominent residents

Redevelopment

Old Colony is currently in the middle of a three-phase redevelopment that is moving most of its tenants from the original large multi-family complexes to mixed housing in newly constructed townhouse rows and apartment buildings that will replace the 1940s structures. Phase I, which replaced rows of brick buildings containing 164 units with 116 new affordable townhouse units along Old Colony Avenue and Columbia Road, commenced in late 2010 and was finished in March 2012.

US Department of Housing and Urban Development
, was completed in 2014. The groundbreaking for Phase III, which will replace 250 original housing units with 305 new housing units, was held on February 14, 2019.

References

  1. ^ Waller, John (2016-01-11). "The latest Boston, local and national news". Boston.com. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  2. ^ a b c Baker, Billy (March 21, 2012). "Old Colony gets a bright new facelift". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  3. ^ O'Connor, Ed (2011-03-02), South Boston Liquor Mart, retrieved 2021-02-15

External links