The Neponset neighborhood, sometimes known as Port Norfolk, is part of Dorchester a formerly independent town that was incorporated in 1630, the same year as Boston.
Dorchester became part of the city of Boston in 1870 when it was still primarily a rural community of 12,000. Streetcars and rail lines produced rapid growth. Within 50 years, the population swelled to 150.000. As of 2000 Dorchester had a population of 92,000, the most populous neighborhood in Boston, and covers a vast stretch of the southern part of Boston. The different parts of Dorchester are very distinctive so they’ll be covered separately.
Neponset is the most southeastern part of the city of Boston, hugging the Neponset River to the South and East with the rest of Dorchester to the north and east.
The population in Neponset is very stable. Half the people now living there moved into the area before 1978. It’s a little more than one square mile, with a population of 7300 people. The people there are 78% White, 10% Black 6% Latino and 6% Asian. The median household income is $61,000 a year. The population is overwhelmingly Catholic and Democratic, with Irish being the most common ethnic type, although in recent years many Vietnamese families have moved in.
The median age in Neponset is 35 although the median age for women in this neighborhood is 39. It’s a neighborhood that favors families led by married couples, 38% of the residents living this way. In 57% of the marriages, both work.
Neponset has a lot of blue collar workers, with 23% working in construction, extraction and maintenance compared to less than one in ten for the city as a whole. Most people did not graduate from college.
There aren’t a lot of apartment buildings in Neponset. Most of the apartments available for rent are in two family homes or triple deckers. Most of the housing stock was built before 1939. In fact, there’s been practically no apartment or home construction in the area in the last twenty years. The median rent in Neponset is $1012 a month compared to $1025 for Boston as a whole. Most renters pay between $1000 and $1250 a month. Most of the apartments available for rent have five rooms.
Less than 3% of the people don’t speak English well. Less than 17% are foreign born. Only one out of ten US born are natives of another state.
When it comes to public transportation, it is well served by a loop bus line the Adams-Neponset route that goes to Fields Corner station and is within half a mile of Ashmont Station on the Red Line. The Southeast Expressway, I-93 runs through the area.
Pope John Paul II Park is on the banks of the Neponset River and is a great place to walk, people walk and run with the dog. Tenean Beach is at the mouth of the Neponset and offers protected ocean swimming. The Toohig playground has a baseball diamond, children’s play area and basketball courts. The Devine skating rink is a public rink open seasonally.
I spent the first couple of decades of my life in Neponset and can vouch for it being a cohesive community that’s a good place to raise children. Although part of the city, this neighborhood in many ways retains a small town feel.
