ORCHARD PARK TO ORCHARD GARDENS

By: Travis Pearson

Before Orchard Gardens, there was Orchard Park. And before the headlines, there was a community.Orchard Park to Orchard Gardens: The People, Streets, Music, Struggle, and Legacy of a Roxbury Community tells the story of one of Boston's most remembered neighborhoods-from its beginnings as a public housing development in the 1940s to its transformation into Orchard Gardens.

This is more than a story about buildings. It is about the people who called them home.
Travel through the streets of Roxbury and remember the businesses, basketball courts, playgrounds, music, radio, transportation, and neighborhood landmarks that shaped generations. Explore Orchard Park's connection to the rise of New Edition, the influence of WILD radio, the changing world around Dudley Square, and the people who carried Roxbury's culture far beyond Boston.
The book also confronts the neighborhood's harder chapters: the crack era, violence, major criminal cases, policing, disinvestment, urban renewal, and the struggles families faced while trying to protect their community.
But Orchard Park's history did not end with demolition.
Residents organized, demanded a voice in redevelopment, and helped shape what came next. The buildings changed. The streets changed. Dudley became Nubian Square. Orchard Park became Orchard Gardens.

Yet the memories remained.

Built from public records, institutional histories, court records, journalism, scholarship, and neighborhood memory, Orchard Park to Orchard Gardens preserves a piece of Roxbury history for the people who lived it-and for the generations who came afterward.
They tore down the buildings. They didn't tear down the community.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HL43NVPL
• ISBN13: 9798176493658
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 89 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.2" x 6.0"