West End Demolition is completed.

(March) Only a few buildings (Old West Church, first Harrison Gray Otis House, and St. Joseph’s Church) are spared, some 2,800 units in low-rise buildings are torn down, and 4,000 working-class families are displaced to make way for construction of high-rise and townhouse apartments for middle and upper-middle class residents. The project provokes widespread criticism and prompts New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable call it “A definitive demonstration of how to destroy a community with a bulldozer.” Walter Muir Whitehill subsequently writes, “The experience of the West End created a widespread conviction that if urban renewal were necessary in Boston, some less drastic form must be devised.”