The West End Museum

This fascinating specialized museum honors the West End, one of Boston's nearly forgotten areas, and is hidden away in West End Place off Staniford Street. The late Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy was born in the West End, which is bordered by Beacon Hill and the North End. The West End was mostly demolished in the mid-20th century to make room for high-rise condos and governmental structures, including the infamously brutalist City Hall complex. Fortunately, the museum's founders rescued objects and stories that are now on display in three rotating displays each year as well as permanent exhibits that reflect more recent events that have brought the area back to prominence. There are also a ton of entertaining activities, such walking tours of the West End.

Three exhibition spaces and an archive make up the museum. They further host ongoing programs. The West End Museum now hosts the permanent exhibit "The Last Tenement," which was first created by the Bostonian Society in 1992 and moved there in 2003. It has a dedicated space of 1,100 square feet (100 square meters) to itself. Three rotating exhibitions are staged annually in the spacious (1400 square foot) exhibition area. There have been performances of "Leaving the River" and "The Middlesex Canal: Boston's First Big Dig." Each year, six rotating exhibitions are staged in the Members Gallery, which is next to the administrative offices. Past exhibits in this area have included "Twenty Five Years of the West Ender Newsletter," "The Boston Canal," which extended the Middlesex Canal through Causeway Street in the Bulfinch Triangle to Haymarket Square, and West End images from the Bostonian Society's archives.

Google Rating: 4.7/5.0

Location: Entry on, 150 Staniford Street, Lomasney Way Suite 7, Boston, MA 02114

Contact: info@thewestendmuseum.org

Website: thewestendmuseum.org

Opening hours: Tuesday & Friday (12 pm- 5:00 pm); Saturday (11:00 am – 4:00 pm)