in church affairs and sat in segregated seating. The African Meeting House was built in 1806 and by 1840 there were five black churches. The African Meeting House on Joy Street was a community center for members of the black elite. Frederick Douglass spoke there about abolition, and William Lloyd Garrison formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society at the Meeting House. It became a "hotbed and an important depot on the Underground Railroad." Blacks and whites were largely united on the subject of abolition. Beacon Hill was one of the staunchest centers of the anti-slavery movement in the Antebellum era. The Republican Party was founded by abolitionists. One of the earliest black Republican legislators in the United States was Julius Caesar Chappelle (1852–1904), who served as a legislator in Boston from 1883 to 1886 and whose district included the Beacon Hill area. Chappelle was a popular, well-liked politician and was covered by many of the black newspapers in the United States. Blacks migrated to Roxbury and Boston's South End after the Civil War. Immigrants In the latter part of the 19th century, Beacon Hill absorbed an influx of Irish, Jewish and other immigrants. Many homes built of brick and wood in the early 19th century were dilapidated by the end of the Civil War and were razed for new housing. Brick apartment buildings, or tenements, were built. Yellow brick townhouses were constructed, generally with arched windows on the first floor and a low ceiling on the top, fourth floor. Residential homes were also converted to boarding houses. The north slope neighborhood transitioned as blacks moved out of the neighborhood and immigrants, such as Eastern European Jews, made their homes in the community. The Vilna Shul was established in 1898, and the African Meeting House was converted into a synagogue. 20th century Better transportation service to the suburbs and other cities led a boom to the city's economy at the beginning of the 20th century. New buildings, "compatible with the surroundings", were built and older buildings renovated. To ensure that there were controls on new development and demolition, the Beacon Hill Association was formed in 1922. Into the 1940s there were attempts to replace brick sidewalks, but the projects were abandoned due to community resistance. Banks, restaurants and other service industries moved into the "Flat of the Hill", with a resulting transformation of the neighborhood. Red-light districts operated near Beacon Hill