|
Boston (pronounced /ˈbɒstən/
(help·info))
is the capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. The city is located in Suffolk County, Massachusetts,
in the northeastern United States.The largest city
in New England, Boston is considered the economic and cultural
center of the entire region.[4] The city, which had an
estimated population of 590,763 in 2006, lies at the center
of the Cambridge–Boston-Quincy metropolitan area—the
10th-largest metropolitan area (5th largest CSA) in the
U.S., with a population of 4.5 million.
In 1630, Puritan colonists from England
founded the city on the Shawmut Peninsula.During the
late eighteenth century Boston was the location of several
major events during the American Revolution, including
the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Several early
battles of the American Revolution, such as the Battle
of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, occurred within
the city and surrounding areas. After American independence
was attained Boston became a major shipping port and manufacturing
center, and its rich history now attracts 16.3 million
visitors annually.[6][5] The city was the site of several
firsts, including America's first public school, Boston
Latin School (1635), and first college, Harvard College
(1636), in neighboring Cambridge. Boston was also home
to the first subway system in the United States.
Through land reclamation and municipal
annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the peninsula.
With many colleges and universities within the city and
surrounding area, Boston is a center of higher education
and a center for medicine. The city's economy is also
based on research, finance, and technology – principally
biotechnology. Boston has been experiencing gentrification
and has one of the highest costs of living in the United
States.
History
Boston in 1772.Boston was founded on September 17, 1630
by Puritan colonists from England.The Puritans of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony are sometimes confused with the
Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony ten years earlier
in what is today Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Barnstable
County, Massachusetts. The two groups are historically
distinct and differed in religious practice. The separate
colonies were not united until the formation of the Province
of Massachusetts Bay in 1691.
The Shawmut peninsula was connected
to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, and surrounded by
the waters of Massachusetts Bay and the Back Bay, an
estuary of the Charles River. Several prehistoric Native
American archaeological sites excavated in the city have
shown that the peninsula was inhabited as early as 5,000
BC. Boston's early European settlers first called
the area Trimountaine, but later renamed the town after
Boston, Lincolnshire, England, from which several prominent
colonists had emigrated. Massachusetts Bay Colony's original
governor, John Winthrop, gave a famous sermon entitled "A
Model of Christian Charity," popularly
known as the "City on a Hill" sermon, which captured
the idea that Boston had a special covenant with God. (Winthrop
also led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, which
is regarded as a key founding document of the city.) Puritan
ethics molded a stable and well-structured society in Boston.
For example, shortly after Boston's settlement, Puritans
founded America's first public school, Boston Latin School
(1635),[7] and America's first college, Harvard College
(1636). Boston was the largest town in British North America
until the mid-1700s.
Part of current downtown Boston by its harbor.In the 1770s,
British attempts to exert more stringent control on the
thirteen colonies, primarily via taxation, prompted Bostonians
to initiate the American Revolution.The Boston Massacre,
the Boston Tea Party, and several early battles occurred
in or near the city, including the Battle of Lexington
and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of
Boston. During this period, Paul Revere made his famous
midnight ride.
After the Revolution, Boston had
become one of the world's wealthiest international trading
ports due to the city's consolidated seafaring tradition – exports
included rum, fish, salt, and tobacco. During this era,
descendants of old Boston families became regarded as
the nation's social and cultural elites; they were later
dubbed the Boston Brahmins. In 1822, Boston was chartered
as a city.
The Embargo Act of 1807, adopted during
the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812 significantly
curtailed Boston's harbor activity. Although foreign trade
returned after these hostilities, Boston's merchants had
found alternatives for their capital investments in the
interim. Manufacturing became an important component of
the city's economy and by the mid-1800s, the city's industrial
manufacturing overtook international trade in economic
importance. Until the early 1900s, Boston remained one
of the nation's largest manufacturing centers, and was
notable for its garment production and leather goods industries.
A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting
it to the surrounding region made for easy shipment of
goods and allowed for a proliferation of mills and factories.
Later, a dense network of railroads facilitated the region's
industry and commerce. From the mid- to late nineteenth
century, Boston flourished culturally; it became renowned
for its rarefied literary culture and lavish artistic patronage.
It also became a center of the abolitionist movement.
The city reacted strongly to the Fugitive Slave Law, which
contributed to President Franklin Pierce's attempt to make
an example of Boston after the Burns Fugitive Slave Case.
Scollay Square in the 1880sIn the 1820s, Boston's population
began to swell and the city's ethnic composition changed
dramatically with the first wave of European immigrants.
Irish immigrants dominated the first wave of newcomers
during this period. By 1850, about 35,000 Irish lived
in Boston. In the latter half of the nineteenth century,
the city saw increasing numbers of Irish, Germans, Lebanese,
French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews settle
in the city. By the end of the nineteenth century, Boston's
core neighborhoods had become enclaves of ethnically
distinct immigrants – Italians inhabited the North
End, the Irish dominated South Boston, and Russian Jews
lived in the West End.
Irish and Italian immigrants brought
with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make
up Boston's largest religious community and since
the early twentieth century the Irish have played a major
role in Boston politics—prominent
figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, and John F.
Fitzgerald.
Trinity Church reflected in the façade of the John
Hancock Tower.Between 1630 and 1890, the city tripled its
physical size by land reclamation, by filling in marshes,
mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront,[17]
a process Walter Muir Whitehill called "cutting down
the hills to fill the coves." The largest reclamation
efforts took place during the 1800s. Beginning in 1807,
the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre
(20 ha) mill pond that later became Haymarket Square. The
present-day State House sits atop this shortened Beacon
Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century
created significant parts of the South End, West End, the
Financial District, and Chinatown. After The Great Boston
Fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as landfill
along the downtown waterfront. During the mid-to-late nineteenth
century, workers filled almost 600 acres (2.4 km²)
of brackish Charles River marshlands west of the Boston
Common with gravel brought by rail from the hills of Needham
Heights. In addition, the city annexed the adjacent towns
of Roxbury (1868), Dorchester (1870), Brighton, West Roxbury
(including present day Jamaica Plain, Roslindale and West
Roxbury), and Charlestown. The last three towns were annexed
in 1874.
The first community health center in the
United States was the Columbia Point Health Center in the
Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. It was opened in December
1965 and served mostly the massive Columbia Point public
housing complex adjoining it. It was founded by two medical
doctors, Jack Geiger of Harvard University and Count Gibson
of Tufts University. It is still in operation and was re-dedicated
in 1990 as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center.
The skyline of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, home to
some of the city's tallest skyscrapers, as seen from
the Back Bay Fens. The Prudential Tower, John Hancock
Tower, 111 Huntington Avenue, and the Christian Science
Center are all visible; left to right.By the early and
mid-twentieth century, the city was in decline as factories
became old and obsolete, and businesses moved out of
the region for cheaper labor elsewhere.Boston responded
by initiating various urban renewal projects under the
direction of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA),
which was established in 1957. In 1958, BRA initiated
a project to improve the historic West End neighborhood.
Extensive demolition garnered vociferous public opposition
to the new agency. BRA subsequently reevaluated its
approach to urban renewal in its future projects, including
the construction of Government Center. By the 1970s,
the city's economy boomed after thirty years of economic
downturn. Hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital,
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and
Women's Hospital led the nation in medical innovation
and patient care. Schools such as Harvard University,
MIT, Boston University, Boston College and Northeastern
University attracted students to the Boston area. Nevertheless,
the city experienced conflict starting in 1974 over desegregation
busing, which resulted in unrest and violence around
public schools throughout the mid-1970s.
In the early twenty-first century the city
has become an intellectual, technological, and political
center. It has, however, experienced a loss of regional
institutions,] which included the acquisition of the
Boston Globe by The New York Times, and the loss to mergers
and acquisitions of local financial institutions such FleetBoston
Financial, which was acquired by Charlotte-based Bank of
America in 2004. The city also had to tackle gentrification
issues and rising living expenses, with housing prices
increasing sharply since the 1990s.
Geography
A simulated-color satellite image of the Boston area taken
on NASA's Landsat 3
The headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist in
the Back Bay are dominated by a reflecting pool. The tall
buildings in the background are the Prudential Tower and
111 Huntington Avenue.Owing to its early founding, Boston
is very compact. According to the United States Census
Bureau, the city has a total area of 89.6 square miles
(232.1 km²)—48.4 square miles (125.4 km²)
of it is land and 41.2 square miles (106.7 km²) (46.0%)
of it is water. This compares with cities of comparable
population such as Denver at 154.9 square miles (401 km²)
and Charlotte, North Carolina at 280.5 square miles (726
km²). Of United States cities over 500,000 in population,
only San Francisco is smaller in land area. Boston's official
elevation, as measured at Logan International Airport,
is 19 feet (5.8 m) above sea level.The highest point
in Boston is Bellevue Hill at 330 feet (101 m) above sea
level, while the lowest point is at sea level.
Boston is surrounded by the "Greater Boston" region,
and bordered by the cities and towns of Winthrop, Revere,
Chelsea, Everett, Somerville, Cambridge, Watertown, Newton,
Brookline, Needham, Dedham, Canton, Milton, and Quincy.
Much of the Back Bay and South End
neighborhoods are built on reclaimed land—all of
the earth from two of Boston's three original hills,
the "trimount", was used
as landfill material. Only Beacon Hill, the smallest of
the three original hills, remains partially intact; just
half of its height was cut down for landfill. The downtown
area and immediate surroundings consist mostly of low-rise
brick or stone buildings, with many older buildings in
the Federal style. Several of these buildings mix in with
modern high-rises, notably in the Financial District, Government
Center, the South Boston waterfront, and Back Bay, which
includes many prominent landmarks such as the Boston Public
Library, Christian Science Center, Copley Square, Newbury
Street, and New England's two tallest buildings: the John
Hancock Tower and the Prudential Center. Near the John
Hancock Tower is the old John Hancock Building with its
prominent weather forecast beacon—whatever light
illuminates gives an indication of weather to come: "steady
blue. clear view; flashing blue, clouds are due; steady
red, rain ahead; flashing red, snow instead." (In
the summer, flashing red indicates instead that a Red Sox
game has been rained out.) Smaller commercial areas are
interspersed among single-family homes and wooden/brick
multi-family row houses. Currently, the South End Historic
District remains the largest surviving contiguous Victorian-era
neighborhood in the U.S.
Along with downtown, the geography
of South Boston was particularly impacted by the Central
Artery/Tunnel (CA/T) Project (or the "Big Dig").
The unstable reclaimed land in South Boston posed special
problems for the project's tunnels. In the downtown area,
the CA/T Project allowed for the removal of the unsightly
elevated Central Artery and the incorporation of new
green spaces and open areas.
Boston Common, located near the Financial
District and Beacon Hill, is the oldest public park in
the U.S.Along with the adjacent Boston Public Garden,
it is part of the Emerald Necklace, a string of parks designed
by Frederick Law Olmsted to encircle the city. Franklin
Park, which is also part of the Emerald Necklace, is the
city's largest park and houses a zoo.Another major
park is the Esplanade located along the banks of the Charles
River. Other parks are scattered throughout the city, with
the major parks and beaches located near Castle Island,
in Charlestown and along the Dorchester, South Boston,
and East Boston shorelines.
The Charles River separates Boston proper
from Cambridge, Watertown, and the neighborhood of Charlestown.
To the east lies Boston Harbor and the Boston Harbor Islands
National Recreation Area. The Neponset River forms the
boundary between Boston's southern neighborhoods and the
city of Quincy and the town of Milton. The Mystic River
separates Charlestown from Chelsea and Everett, while Chelsea
Creek and Boston Harbor separate East Boston from Boston
proper.
Climate
Boston has what may basically be described as a continental
climate, such as is very common in New England. Summers
are typically hot and humid, while winters are cold,
windy and snowy. Prevailing wind patterns that blow offshore
affect Boston, minimizing the influence of the Atlantic
Ocean.
February in Boston has seen 70 °F (21 °C)
only once in recorded history, on February 24, 1985. The
maximum temperature recorded in March was 90 °F (32 °C),
on March 31, 1998. Spring in Boston can be warm, with temperatures
as high as the 90s when winds are offshore, though it is
just as possible for a day in late May to remain in the
lower 40s due to cool ocean waters. The hottest month is
July, with an average high of 82 °F (28 °C) and
average low of 66 °F (18 °C), with conditions usually
humid. The coldest month is January, with an average high
of 36 °F (2 °C) and an average low of 22 °F
(-6 °C).Periods exceeding 90 °F (32 °C)
in summer and below 10 °F (−12 °C) in winter
are not uncommon, but rarely prolonged. The record high
temperature is 104 °F (40 °C), recorded July 4,
1911. The record low temperature is -18 °F (-28 °C),
recorded on February 9, 1934.
The city averages about 42 in (108 cm)
of precipitation a year, with 40.9 in (104 cm) of snowfall
a year. Snowfall increases dramatically as one goes
inland away from the city and the warming influence of
the ocean.Most snowfall occurs December through March,
usually with little or no snow in April and November and
rare snow events in May and October.
Boston's coastal location on the North
Atlantic, though it moderates temperatures, also makes
the city very prone to Nor'easter weather systems that
can produce much snow and rain. Fog is prevalent, particularly
in spring and early summer, and the occasional tropical
storm or hurricane can threaten the region, especially
in early autumn.
Demographics
According to the census of 2000,
there were 589,141 people, (the population estimate of
2006 was 596,638 people),239,528 households, and
115,212 families residing in the city. The population
density was 12,166 people per square mile (4,697/km²).
Of major US cities,only New York City, San Francisco,
and Chicago have a greater population density than Boston.
There were 251,935 housing units at an average density
of 5,203 per square mile (2,009/km²).
However, the population of Boston can grow
during the daytime to about 1.2 million. This fluctuation
of people is caused by suburban residents traveling to
the city for work, education, medical purposes, and special
events.
According to the 2000 census, the racial makeup of the
city was 49% Non-Hispanic White, 25% African American or
Black, 8% Asian American, 1% Native American, 4% from other
races, and 3% from two or more races. 14% of the population
was Hispanic or Latino who can be of any race.
According to a 2006 estimate, the White
population comprises 53.5% of the population, while Hispanics
make up 15.5%.People of Irish descent form the largest
single ethnic group in the city, making up 15.8% of the
population, followed by Italians, accounting for 8.3% of
the population. People of West Indian ancestry are another
sizeable group, at 6.4%,about half of whom are of Haitian
ancestry. Some neighborhoods, such as Dorchester, have
received an influx of Vietnamese residents in recent decades.
There were 239,528 households, out of which
22.7% had children under the age of 18 living in them,
27.4% were married couples living together, 16.4% had a
female householder with no husband present, and 51.9% were
non-families. 37.1% of all households were made up of individuals
and 9.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age
or older. The average household size was 2.31 and the average
family size was 3.17.
In the city the population was spread out
with 19.8% under the age of 18, 16.2% from 18 to 24, 35.8%
from 25 to 44, 17.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.4% who were
65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years.
For every 100 females, there were 92.8 males. For every
100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.2 males.
The median income for a household in the
city was $39,629, and the median income for a family was
$44,151. Males had a median income of $37,435 versus $32,421
for females. The per capita income for the city was $23,353.
19.5% of the population and 15.3% of families are below
the poverty line. Out of the total population, 25.6% of
those under the age of 18 and 18.2% of those 65 and older
were living below the poverty line.
Top of
Page
Web Design by Emediamasters.com
|
