Neighborhood Details
It is often confused with the ballpark of the same name, where Boston’s most famous franchise plays. Then there’s The Fenway, a road that loops through the area and borders an open space called the Back Bay Fens. This muddies the waters even more, which is fitting given that the Muddy River flows through the Fens.
Like its more upscale neighbor, the Back Bay, the Fenway came about when the city used landfill to claim a swampy tidal area. The process began in the 1880s, and institutions both new and established took advantage of the real estate that surrounded the then-pastoral Fens, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted as part of Boston’s Emerald Necklace of parks.
The Fenway begins where the Back Bay leaves off, at Massachusetts Avenue, and contains some of the city’s landmark cultural, medical, and academic institutions: Symphony Hall, the Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard Medical School, Children’s Hospital, Northeastern University, and the Boston Latin School.