Boston
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Boston, city, capital of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and seat of Suffolk county, in the northeastern United States. It lies on Massachusetts Bay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean. The city proper has an unusually small area for a major city, and more than one-fourth of the total—including part of the Charles River, Boston Harbor, and a portion of the Atlantic—is water. Area city, 46 square miles (119 square km). Pop. (2010) 617,594; Boston-Quincy Metro Division, 1,887,792; Boston-Cambridge-Quincy Metro Area, 4,552,402; (2020) 675,647; Boston Metro Division, 2,054,736; Boston-Cambridge-Newton Metro Area, 4,941,632.
Character of the city
The area, the people, and the institutions within its political boundaries can only begin to define the essence of Boston. Its nickname “Beantown” has its origin in colonial times, when Boston, as a stop on a major trade route with the West Indies, had a steady supply of molasses from the Caribbean, thus leading to the creation of a popular dish that became known as Boston baked beans (beans baked in molasses). As a city and as a name, Boston is a symbol of much that has gone into the development of the American consciousness, and its presence reaches far beyond its immediate environs. As the spiritual capital of the New England states, as the progenitor of the American Revolution and the nation, and as the earliest centre of American culture, Boston has influenced the country for some three centuries. Though Boston, like New England in general, has played a lessening role in national life since the early 20th century, it has remained the focal point of what may be the most diversified and dynamic combination of educational, cultural, medical, and scientific activities in the United States.
Landscape
The Boston region’s topography was largely shaped by the glaciers that covered the land during the last ice age. The city and its sheltered deepwater harbour sit in a basin that extends to Lynn in the north and Quincy in the south and is ringed by modest hills: the Middlesex Fells (north) to the Blue Hills (south). There are harder, higher surface rocks (mostly granites) on those northern and southern edges, while inside the basin the lower-lying rocks—commonly known as pudding stone—are found mostly below the surface in such areas as Roxbury, Newton, Brookline, Mattapan, West Roxbury, and Dorchester. The land, enormously compressed by the vast accumulation of glacial ice on it, has since been rebounding (rising up) at an extremely gradual rate.
Numerous drumlins (mounds of glacial debris) form low hills in the city and islands that dot the harbour. At the beginning of English settlement in the 17th century, the Shawmut Peninsula was called Trimountain (or Tramount) because of its dominating three-topped hill on the northwest corner near the mouth of the Charles River. Beacon Hill is its only surviving, though greatly reduced, remnant. The other portions were leveled to become landfill that added to the city’s area in the 19th century.
Area of the colonial town
The hilly Shawmut Peninsula, upon which Boston was settled, originally was almost completely surrounded by water. It was connected with mainland Roxbury to the south by a narrow neck of land along the line of present-day Washington Street. To the west of the neck were great reaches of mudflats and salt marshes that were covered by water at high tide and known collectively as the Back Bay. The Charles River flowed through the Back Bay to Boston Harbor and separated the peninsula from the mainland to the north and west. To the east, Town Cove indented Boston’s harbour front and divided the city into the North End and the South End. The centre of the colonial town was at the Old State House (built 1711–47).
Although that original centre and the colonial South End have long been given over to offices and retail stores, a few 18th-century buildings remain: Faneuil Hall (1742–1805), the Old Corner Bookstore (1718), the Old South Meeting House (1729), and King’s Chapel (1750). The North End is the only part of the early town that has remained residential since the 1630 settlement. Colonial survivals such as the Paul Revere House (c. 1680) and Christ Church (1723)—the Old North Church from which lanterns revealed the route of the British march to Lexington in 1775—coexist with the busy life of a traditionally Italian American community.
The long shoreline, only a few minutes’ walk from any part of the peninsula, provided ample space for wharves and shipyards. From the first years of settlement, the shoreline constantly encroached on the harbour as wharves were built and marshy coves were filled. West of the original settlement lay Boston Common, a tract that has remained public open space since its purchase by the town in 1634.