"We want a ground to which people may easily go when the day’s work is done, and where they may stroll for an hour, seeing hearing and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets, where they shall, in effect, find the city put far away from them..."
(Frederick Law Olmstead, 1870)

The neighborhood surrounding Wentworth is an area rich with culture and history. It has attracted developers, merchants, and artists for hundreds of years. As time washed through Boston it left behind a rich deposit of the work of humanity in the city. Its trophies include the Museum of Fine Arts, the Emerald Necklace park system, Longwood Medical Area, Fenway Park, Symphony Hall and the Elizabeth Stuart Gardener Museum. The area itself lends itself to learning and enrichment and acts as a center of student activity.

The Emerald Necklace, a majestic string of parks and waterways that stretches five miles from the Charles River to Dorchester, is the only surviving linear park of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), an artistic visionary responsible for the grounds of the Chicago World Fair and the Vanderbilt Mansion’s gardens. Making up over half of Boston’s park acreage, it took Olmsted almost twenty years to complete before it was finished in 1896. The Necklace consists of six distinct parks; the Back Bay Fens, Riverway, Olmsted Park (home to the endangered Three-Spined Stickleback), Jamaica Park, Arnold Arboretum and Franklin Park.

His vision was such that he saw his parks acting to restore the human mind and spirit as well as to act as a social forum where people from all backgrounds could meet. One of the subtleties of Olmstead’s design is that the Emerald Necklace encourages both active and passive recreation, with boating on the waterways, walking paths, picnic areas and sports fields. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy, a non-profit organization designed to protect the park system, was incorporated in 1998. The park system contains several of Boston’s gems, including the Franklin Park Zoo, the Make Way For Ducklings statue immortalized in Robert McCloskey’s beloved children’s book, and the Kelleher Rose Garden, which grows over 100 different kinds of roses.

In the early 1900’s the Fens consisted primarily of open farms and marshland. A combination of good location and inexpensive land attracted a number of hospitals to the area forming the Longwood Medical Area, located just a few blocks from Wentworth. It consists of 17 different medical facilities, including the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Children’s, Brigham and Women’s, and the Harvard Medical School. The various institutions in the area joined together in 1972 to form MASCO (Medical Academic and Scientific Community Organization, Inc.). The mission of MASCO is to plan, develop and enhance the Longwood Medical and Academic Area and to institute programs that aid their constituency. This includes the Longwood Medical Area Child Care Center, as well as significant involvement in area development and neighborhood planning as well as parking and transit services for those who live and work in Longwood.

In 1996, the Colleges of the Fenway was established as a collaboration of six colleges: Emmanuel College, Massachusetts College of Art, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Simmons College, Wentworth Institute of Technology, and Wheelock College, all bordering the Back Bay Fens portion of the Emerald Necklace. The goal of this consortium is to improve the quality of their student’s education, expand the academic horizon, and reduce costs while maintaining each college’s individual identity. The combined attendance of these six colleges represents 12% of Boston’s student population. Through COF cross-registration, students have access to courses ranging from sculpture and filmmaking to health psychology and dentistry with no additional tuition charge. When first initialized, COF examined, repaired and expanded the network of paths and walkways between the schools, emphasizing safety by adding call boxes, map kiosks and street lamps. The Colleges of the Fenway organization also coordinates other extracurricular activities for students at any of it’s constitute colleges, ranging from social gatherings to academic speakers.