If You Lived Here ... You’d Never Want To Leave

What makes a street a great street? Is it leafy verdure, or honking-big houses? Proximity to lip-smacking vittles? Or bragging rights over the next neighborhood’s schools? Well…yes, yes, yes, and yes.

To determine which roads, lanes, avenues, drives, circles, and courts best fulfill those qualifications and rank as the area’s most desired addresses, we started by polling hundreds of Hub real estate brokers. (Thanks to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors for distributing our survey to its members.) Working from their nominations, our judge then logged 1,200 miles on Greater Boston asphalt to check out the candidates, tease out subtle distinctions, and make some hard choices. Streets were graded on six criteria—aesthetics, environment, amenities, public services, affordability, and access to transit—and when a town or neighborhood had more than one high-ranking thoroughfare, we chose only the top scorer. In some cases, a street had a certain extra something—an “X-factor,” in our system—that helped bump it up in the standings.

Three months and one “check engine” light later, we have our winners. Oh, and by the way: Professional ethics precluded us from including streets currently inhabited by our editorial staffers. But if any readers want to express gratitude for a spike in their property values, they should feel free to send checks to the author, care of Boston magazine.

The City
1. Waltham Street, South End
Aesthetics, Amenities, Transit
The South End’s seemingly endless supply of historic row houses, replete with rounded bay windows and wrought-iron railings, is the pride of the area’s blithely trendy residents. At a slight discount from those on idyllic Union Park and West Canton, homes on Waltham—around $600,000 for a two-bedroom condo, and $1 million for a townhouse—come with a vest-pocket park and are a five-minute walk from the Back Bay T stop. The block between Tremont and Shawmut, in particular, is a foodie haven, anchored by Barbara Lynch’s B&G Oysters and the Butcher Shop on one end and gourmet stinky-cheese shop South End Formaggio on the other. Parking on this one-way street tends to be tight, but that only leads to another bonus: less traffic.
X-factor: Lynch’s Plum Produce, a bodega at 106 Waltham that happens to sell $5 heirloom tomatoes.

2. Mount Vernon Street, West Roxbury
Aesthetics, Amenities, Transit, Environment
The part of West Roxbury known as “the Highlands” is full of leafy, suburban-style streets with big Blue Hills views. But the neighborhood is also in close proximity to the local commuter rail stop and a nucleus of Asian restaurants, pizza joints, and new boutiques like women’s clothing shop Talula Gray. The residences on Mount Vernon and neighboring Montview are a mix of big brick mansions and painted-lady Victorians. “Inside, they have, like, 13 or 14 rooms with pocket doors, fireplaces, and slate roofs,” says longtime Realtor Joe Bellanti, co-owner of Bostonia Properties. “They are really elegant…and expensive.” But they’re not as expensive as you might think, with prices ranging from a relatively reasonable $600,000 to a still-under-a-million $850,000.
X-factor: Millennium Park’s five new playing fields, built from Big Dig fill on a former garbage dump, just a two-minute drive away.

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