Acorn Street

Acorn Street is paved with heavy, uneven cobblestones and remains one of the few streets in Boston to retain its original nineteenth-century surface. The brick row houses lining the narrow passage once accommodated the city’s working class and craftsmen who served the wealthy residents of the adjacent mansions. In eighteen twenty-three, a man named Zipporah Potter Atkins became one of the first African American women to own property here. She bought a small house, securing a place in a neighborhood defined by rigid social boundaries.