Wood frame triple deckers on the side streets, and the Washington Street tavern that played McGill's in Mystic River.
What Jamaica Plain looks like
is the walkable shopping street through the neighborhood, lined with three and four storey brick buildings over ground floor storefronts. The Seaver Store Building at 743 Centre Street is panel brick with limestone trim, a store and a post office below two floors of flats, built in 1875. Its neighbor at is a four storey brick swell front block with sixteen flats, built in 1897 and 1898.
On the side streets, wood frame triple deckers run three storeys, each floor its own unit with a porch stacked up the front. Near and Lee Street the houses stand close together in clapboard and shingle siding, bay windows breaking the front wall and cars parked along both curbs. Most of the houses here date from the 1870s to the 1900s.
covers 60 acres and is ringed by a footpath, part of the Emerald Necklace park system. Trees crowd the near shoreline down to a narrow gravel beach, with the water opening out to a wooded ridge on the far side.
At the corner of Centre and South Streets stands the Soldier's Monument, a 27 foot Gothic spire in grey and dark granite topped with a seven foot statue of a Union soldier leaning on his rifle, dedicated in 1871. First Church stands across the intersection. A block south, is a three storey red brick building with a columned portico, joined to a glass and steel wing that holds the library.
Shot in Jamaica Plain
stood in for the tavern McGill's in Mystic River, Clint Eastwood's telling of the Dennis Lehane novel. The same corner also appears in the heist drama 21 and in William Friedkin's 1978 caper film The Brink's Job.
Mystic River, 2003
Doyle's Braddock Cafe
Doyle's Braddock Cafe plays the bar McGill's. Dave watches Jimmy's daughter Katie dancing on the bartop there, the night before she disappears.
What Jamaica Plain can double for
Winter Hill in Somerville, Massachusetts
Winter Hill is packed with the same wood frame triple deckers as Jamaica Plain, three floors with a porch stacked up each one, built in the same New England triple decker boom. Somerville's denser lot lines and closer building spacing show up in a wide shot, so a tighter street level frame holds the illusion better. Try searching wood frame triple deckers now.
Vernon Hill in Worcester, Massachusetts
Vernon Hill's early triple deckers went up in the same wood frame construction during Worcester's own triple decker boom, some with Queen Anne porch brackets and scallop cut shingle trim. Vernon Hill's more ornate porches and wider building spacing need a tighter frame or dressing to match Jamaica Plain's plainer rows. Try searching Queen Anne triple deckers now.
