Savin Hill sits serenely above a tangle of teeming transportation arteries. The neighborhood offers a delightful jumble of residential architectural styles lining streets that circle the hill to the park at its very top. Here you can enjoy views of the sea, downtown Boston, the peninsula of UMass Boston and the JFK Library—as well as its own ocean beach and two yacht clubs.

The neighborhood dates to 1630, when Puritans built a temporary settlement for about 140 people on what they called Rock Hill. By the 1800s the arrival of railroad transportation transformed Savin Hill. These new arteries first connected the area to Boston; it became one of the city’s first suburbs. Yet ironically, they also isolated it.

Cut off from the ocean in the early 1930s and from the surrounding urban area in the 1950s, Savin Hill became an increasingly identifiable neighborhood. Still, being cut off from the outside world has enhanced rather than detracted from its neighborly feeling and livability.

Click for “WalkBoston’s Savin Hill Walking Map” on Google Maps