7 Reasons to Explore Boston’s Lesser-Known Neighborhoods

Boston is brimming with popular and important historic sites, from Faneuil Hall and Boston Common to the Red Sox’s storied Fenway Park – but The Hub’s more far-flung pockets offer unusual adventures. 

In Dorchester, trash has become treasure at the Museum of Bad Art. With a permanent collection of over 900 pieces, the MOBA shares a rotating selection of roughly 80 works in its public gallery, located inside Dorchester Brewing Co. 

Jamaica Plain, on the city’s southwest side, is home to the country’s oldest community theater, the Footlight Club. Founded in 1877, the theater still presents classic plays and contemporary works. Famous writers are remembered in nearby Forest Hills Cemetery, the final resting place of notables like abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, playwright Eugene O’Neill, and the inventor of the fountain pen. 

Head over to West Roxbury to visit Brook Farm. Now defunct, this transcendentalist utopian commune was one of the first sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts. Literary greats Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson signed on as some of its original shareholders and interested parties.

Check out some of the most interesting sites on the outskirts of Boston.