Formed from the southern section of the 1630 Roxbury grant, West Roxbury and Roslindale grew rapidly as streetcar suburban communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In colonial times, the Washington Street spine of the Boston Neck and after 1834 the Boston & Providence Railroad corridor connected this area to the central city. Boston annexed these towns in 1874. The streetcar lines introduced in the 1890s brought the most intense period of real estate development. The construction in the 1930s of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Parkway, dividing West Roxbury from Roslindale, continued the residential expansion of the area.