This was originally a crowded, close-knit neighborhood of about 7,000, settled by Jewish, Italian, and Polish immigrants right on the water. The old neighborhood had narrow streets, packs of four-story tenements, and retailers on most corners. Few traces of the original landscape survive today. The four-story brick apartment building at 42 Lomasney Way, shrouded in billboards and encircled by streets, has managed to avoid the wrecking ball. There is the grand Otis House on Cambridge Street, designed by Charles Bulfinch, built in 1796 and now open for tours. The West End Public Library, St. Joseph's Church, the West End House in Allston-Brighton and the struggling, sparse West End Museum on the ground floor of West End Place, all remain as landmarks in a part of the city that refuses to be forgotten. The West End is a touchy subject to those who lived there during it's 'urban renewal'. It was first left to rot in the 1950's when officials stopped collecting the garbage and modest homes were labeled slums. Then, in the name of progress, the city decided to level it. In 1959, buildings were destroyed and countless families displaced to make way for a high-rise complex of apartments (Charles River Park with the infamous sign - `If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now') few of them could afford. Since then, massive public works projects - the Big Dig, the Green Line tunnel trenching, and the demolition of the old Nashua Street Registry of Motor Vehicles - have nibbled away at the area's turf. This razing of the West End was made famous by Herbert Gans's book, The Urban Villagers in 1962.