Fenway | Kenmore

In a city nicknamed The Athens of America, The Fenway is the center of Boston’s rich intellectual and artistic heritage.

Originally part of Brookline, the Fenway was annexed by Boston in 1873 and was envisioned as a new neighborhood for Boston’s burgeoning upper-classes. At its heart was Frederick Law Olmsted’s verdant Emerald Necklace, a lush green paradise which wound its way through the center of the neighborhood and around which expansive residential apartment buildings on either side which were built to strict design standards ensuring an appropriate esthetic quality.

But as the neighborhood rapidly expanded, it was Boston’s educational, cultural, and medical institutions that emerged as the predominant force in The Fenway’s development. Over time, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Symphony Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Berklee College of Music, the Boston Conservatory and Longwood Medical Center, to name but a few, established themselves in the Fenway. Simultaneously, due to its trolley and subway connections, the neighborhood’s Kenmore Square area became a lively mix of hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs catering to residents, college students and visitors to Fenway Park, America’s oldest (1912) and most beloved ballpark.