It’s often said that Boston is a city of neighborhoods. Each week, Metro will toss a dart at a map of the Hub, then provide you with a snapshot of what we’ve found.
Once referred to as Milk Row because of the small family farms that supplied milk and produce to Bos-ton, Somerville’s Union Square still has some of the characteristics that hearken back to earlier times.
Although the farms are gone, many independent shops and restaurants fill the storefronts in and around the square.
At the corner of Prospect and Washington streets is one of those shops. It’s an oasis of plants, shrubs and garden supplies set up in a maze. Ricky DiGiovanni has run Ricky’s Flower Market for 20 years. He said he enjoys running it in the area.
“It still has a nice flavor of mom and pop restaurants,” he said. “And it’s an ethnically diverse community.”
Across the street from DiGiovanni’s business is another throwback to earlier days. The Union Square post office building, built in 1935, was a former city municipal building.
Inside is a 20-foot long mural by Ross E. Moffett called “A Skirmish between British and Colonists near Somerville in Revolutionary Times.” It was commissioned and finished in 1939 as part of the federal program to help artists keep working through the Great Depression.
