#3 Smith Court on Boston’s Black Heritage Trail is home of black historian William Cooper Nell
BLACK HERITAGE TRAIL
STOP 8
The last private residences on Boston’s Black Heritage Trail are a group of homes on Smith Court, numbers 2 through 7. Most were homes for black residents throughout the 1800s. The wooden houses (3, 5, 7, and 7A) are typical of those from the very early 1800s and are some of the few wooden homes left on Beacon Hill. The brick buildings on Smith Court are from the mid- to late 1800s. When immigrants flocked to the United States in the 1880s, most of the smaller wooden homes were torn down and replaced with brick tenement homes. By this time black residents were moving out of the neighborhood, and the North Slope of Beacon Hill became home to Eastern European immigrants.
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Last updated on October 28, 2025
