CNN's "1,000 Best Neighborhoods of All Time": we've got three!

A typical rickets-free Kendall Park residence in 1902 -- the kind that dazzled CNN!

CNN has recently published its list of the 1,000 Best Neighborhoods Of All Time. And who should be appear on the list three times? Our very own Armitage Heights!

Armitage Heights (2007), Armitage Heights (1970) and Kendall Park (1902) were all picked by a panel of experts from a list of hundreds of thousands of neighborhoods throughout the entirety of world history, based on livability, safety, cost of living, infrastructure and cultural amenities -- and we didn't do too badly at all! Present-day Armitage Heights ranked at a respectable #688, right in front of Mount Auburn/Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1770), and right behind the E-Ninnu Temple District in Lagash, Sumer (2050 BCE). Between the Tories of Cambridge and the high priests of Sumeria, this is pretty outstanding company! The panel cited our "great public transit, historic architecture, and thrilling cultural scene" as distinguishing traits. We have the added distinction of being the only neighborhood in the state to make the list.

Kendall Park (1902) fared even better, placing all the way up at #159! The committee was wowed by the neighborhood's "legendary central square" (young people might be scratching their heads as to where exactly this is located -- it's now the site of the equally legendary Ellison Cooper Volberg Public Housing Towers) and "beautiful Italianate buildings." The panel also noted that "the unusually low instances of influenza, rickets and lockjaw in the area's natives made this the late autumn getaway destination for well-to-do vacationers from all over early-20th Century America." It's worth pointing out the Kendall Park still retains very low instances of rickets, and a great many of the beautiful brick row houses are still standing!

The 1970 Armitage Heights held up the end of the list at #933, and the article noted that "despite the radical criminality, high unemployment and decaying infrastructure of the time, there were many outstanding hippie sculpture parks and an attractive air of danger-tinged mod-ish free-spiritedness to the place, best captured in Kimball Burin's well-known 1972 non-fiction book Moloch of Stanton Ave."

The best neighborhood of all time, of course, was voted XIe arrondissement of Paris (1911), with the Upper East Side of New York City (1961) running a close second.

Next year, let's see if we can displace the Sumerians next year and inch up closer to the top!