As of the 2000 census, its population was 589,141. The Greater Boston
metropolitan area, including nearby cities like Cambridge, Somerville, and
Brookline, has about 5.7 million residents. Boston is the county seat of
Suffolk County. It is located at 42°20'N, 71°W.
History
Founded in 1630 on a peninsula called "Shawmut" by the Native Americans who
lived there, Boston is named after Boston, England, the town in Lincolnshire
from which several prominent first colonists originated. The Puritans who
led "Winthrop's fleet" of three ships were not Separatists as were the
Pilgrim Fathers who had founded Plymouth. Boston outnumbered Plymouth from
the outset, and the city, as the center of Massachusetts Bay Colony, grew
rapidly and became wealthy as the primary port for ships bound to Great
Britain and the West Indies from the colonies. During the first 200 years,
the city was primarily composed of Protestants who originally came from
Great Britain.
On March 20, 1760 the "Great Fire" of Boston destroyed 349 buildings.
Boston played a key role in the American Revolutionary War. The Boston
Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and several of the early battles of the
revolutionary war (such as the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Siege
of Boston) occurred near the city. During this period, Paul Revere made his
famous ride. As a result Boston is known as the Cradle of Liberty and
historic sites remain a popular tourist draw to this day.
After the revolutionary war, the city continued to develop as an
international trading port, exporting products such as rum, fish, salt and
tobacco. It was chartered as a city in 1822, and by the mid-1800s it was one
of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation noted for its garment,
leather goods, and machinery industries.
A poem about Boston, attributed to various people, describes the city thus:
"And here’s to good old Boston/The land of the bean and the cod/Where
Lowells talk only to Cabots/And Cabots talk only to God." But while wealthy
colonial families like the Lowells and Cabots (sometimes called the Boston
Brahmins) continued to be powerful in the city , by the 1840s waves of new
immigrants began to arrive from Europe. These included large numbers of
Irish, and Italians giving the city a large Roman Catholic population. It is
currently the third largest Catholic community in the United States (after
Chicago and Los Angeles).
The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which
later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opened in
Boston on November 1, 1848.
The Great Boston Fire of 1872 started on Lincoln Street on November 9 and in
two days destroyed about 65 acres (260,000 m˛) of city, 776 buildings, much
of the financial district and caused US$60 million in damage.
"As a literary centre Boston was long supreme in the United States and still
disputes the palm with New York," says Baedeker's United States (1893). "A
list of its distinguished literary men would be endless; but it may not be
invidious to mention Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Everett,
Agassiz, Whittier, Motley, Bancroft, Prescott, Parkman, Ticknor, Channing,
Theodore Parker, Henry James, T. B. Aldrich and Howells among the names more
or less closely associated with Boston." Most of the great publishing houses
of Boston have been acquired or moved, leaving little but the magazine The
Atlantic Monthly (founded 1857) and the publisher Houghton Mifflin to bear
witness to Boston's former literary glory.
On September 1, 1897 the Boston subway opened as the first underground metro
in North America. Today it is affectionately known as "The T" and is run by
the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
The first vaudeville theater opened on February 28, 1883 in Boston. The last
one, the Old Howard in Scollay Square, which had gradually evolved from
opera to vaudeville to burlesque, closed in 1953.
In 1950, Boston was slumping. Few major buildings were being built anywhere
in the city. Factories were closing up, and moving their operations south,
where labor was cheaper. The assets Boston had -- excellent banks, hospitals,
universities and technical know-how -- were minimal parts of the U.S.
economy.
But all that changed in the next 50 years and Boston boomed. Financial
institutions got far more latitude, many more people began to play the
market, and Boston became a leader in the mutual fund industry. Health care
became far more extensive and expensive, and hospitals such as Massachusetts
General, Beth Israel Deaconess, and Brigham and Women's became major profit
centers in the city. Universities, such as Harvard, MIT, Boston College,
Boston University and Tufts University brought thousands of bright students
to the area; many stayed and became citizens.
Finally, MIT and other universities became a source of high-tech talent.
Many MIT graduates, in particular, founded successful high-tech companies in
the Boston area. Powerful politicians such as John F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy
and Tip O'Neill made sure Boston got plenty of federal investment.
In 1974, the city had to deal with a crisis when a federal district court
judge, W. Arthur Garrity, ordered busing to integrate the city's public
schools. Violence flared in some neighborhoods of the city when some white
parents resisted the busing plan, and public schools - particularly high
schools - in these and some other city neighborhoods became the scene of
considerable unrest. The tension continued throughout the middle third of
the 1970s, leading to the term forced busing entering the American political
lexicon. Many parents chose to abandon the public school system, opting for
private schools instead.
As of 2004, the city is in the final stages of a massive highway
construction project called the Big Dig. Planned and approved in the 1980s
under Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, with actual construction
beginning in 1991, the Big Dig has moved several major highway routes
through the city from antique and crumbling elevated highways into newer,
larger underground tunnels, including a brand new tunnel built underneath
Boston Harbor called the Ted Williams Tunnel. The Big Dig project is meant
to both ease traffic congestion (which has become a major problem for the
city) and also contribute significantly to urban renewal, as it removes
enormous elevated highway structures and makes large areas of prime city
land available for public development. The Big Dig has been plagued by cost
overruns and delays, and it has become one of the largest and most expensive
construction projects in the history of the entire United States.
High tech, education, finance and medical research, and health care are key
industries and Boston has world-renowned cultural attractions (including the
Museum of Fine Arts and two famous orchestras, the Boston Symphony Orchestra
and the Boston Pops Orchestra).
The largest art theft in US history occurred in Boston on March 18, 1990
when 12 paintings, collectively worth $100 million, were stolen from the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by two thieves posing as police officers. As
of 2004 these paintings had not been recovered.
In recent years as of 2004, like many cities in the United States, Boston
has experienced a significant loss of regional institutions and practices
that once gave it a very distinct identity, and become part of a more
homogenized U. S. culture. Examples include: the acquisition of the Boston
Globe by The New York Times; the loss of Boston-headquartered publishing
houses (noted above), the acquisition of the century-old Jordan Marsh
department store by Macy's; the increasing rarity of ice-cream shops using
cone-shaped scoops; the financial crisis currently being experienced by the
Massachusetts Horticultural Society; and the loss, to mergers, failures, and
acquisitions of once-prominent local financial institutions such as Shawmut
Bank, BayBanks, Bank of New England, and Bank of Boston. In 2004, this trend
continued as Charlotte-based Bank of America acquired FleetBoston Financial
(formerly Bank of Boston).
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of
232.1 km˛ (89.6 mi˛). 125.4 km˛ (48.4 mi˛) of it is land and 106.7 km˛ (41.2
mi˛) of it is water. The total area is 45.98% water.
Much of the downtown area and most of the Back Bay is built on reclaimed
land. The sources of material were a number of nearby hills and gravel
shipped in from surrounding towns during the nineteenth century.
The city is divided into many neighborhoods (http://www.cityofboston.gov/neighborhoods/),
including: Allston/Brighton, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Charlestown, Dorchester,
East Boston, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan, the North End, Hyde Park, Roslindale,
Roxbury, South Boston, the South End, and West Roxbury. Each of the
neighborhoods has its distinct character. Allston/Brighton, for example, is
mostly populated by students from nearby Boston University and recent
graduates, with both groups of individuals often sharing their apartments
with roommates. The Back Bay, just west of the Public Garden, is a spot of
luxury housing for the better-off, and includes and adjacent to the shops
and restaurants on Newbury Street and the tallest buildings in Boston, the
Prudential and the John Hancock Building. The South End, just south of the
Back Bay, is a currently very trendy neighborhood with a mixed population of
gays, artists, yuppies, and African American and Hispanic communities. It is
noted for having one of the better restaurant scenes in Boston and is the
center of the area's gay community. Roxbury and Dorchester, located south of
downtown, are home to large African-American and Hispanic communities, as
well as middle-class Irish communities and a growing number of other middle-class
families priced out of more expensive downtown real estate. Boston is
notable for having one of the most desirable and livable urban cores in the
country, with correspondingly high housing prices.
Boston is bordered by the cities of Revere, Chelsea, Everett, Somerville,
Cambridge, Watertown, Newton, and Quincy, and the towns of Winthrop,
Brookline, Needham, Dedham, Canton, and Milton.
The Charles River separates Boston from Cambridge and Watertown. To the east
lies Boston Harbor and the Boston Harbor Islands, many of which are open to
the public.
Law and government
Boston has a "strong mayor" system in which the mayor is the dominant force
in city government. The mayor is elected to a four-year term by plurality
voting (see List of Mayors of Boston, Massachusetts). The City Council is
elected every two years. There are nine ward, or neighborhood, seats, each
elected by plurality voting by the residents of that ward. There are four at-large
seats. Each voter casts up to four votes for at-large councillors, no more
than one vote per candidate. The top four vote-getters are elected. The
President of the City Council is elected by the Councillors from within
themselves. The School Committee is appointed by the mayor, as are city
department heads.
In addition to city government, numerous state authorities and commissions
play a role in the life of Bostonians, including the Massachusetts Water
Resources Authority (water and sewer) and the Metropolitan District
Commission (some parks and most beaches). The Massachusetts Bay
Transportation Authority runs the "T", Boston's public transport system. The
Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) runs Boston's Logan International
Airport. (See the article on Boston transportation for more information.)
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there are 589,141 people, 239,528 households, and
115,212 families residing in the city. The population density is 4,696.9/km˛
(12,165.8/mi˛). There are 251,935 housing units at an average density of
2,008.5/km˛ (5,202.5/mi˛). The racial makeup of the city is 54.48% White,
25.33% African American, 0.40% Native American, 7.52% Asian American, 0.06%
Pacific Islander, 7.83% from other races, and 4.39% from two or more races.
14.44% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There are 239,528 households out of which 22.7% have children under the age
of 18 living with them, 27.4% are married couples living together, 16.4%
have a female householder with no husband present, and 51.9% are non-families.
37.1% of all households are made up of individuals and 9.1% have someone
living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is
2.31 and the average family size is 3.17.
In the city the population is 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
are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 31 years. For every 100
females there are 92.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there
are 90.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $39,629, and the median
income for a family is $44,151. Males have a median income of $37,435 versus
$32,421 for females. The per capita income for the city is $23,353. 19.5% of
the population and 15.3% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the
total people living in poverty, 25.6% are under the age of 18 and 18.2% are
65 or older.
Colleges and universities
The Boston area is well-known for its many prestigious colleges and
universities. The Boston area is home to 60 colleges. In addition to the
schools in Boston proper, such as Boston University, Emerson College, and
Berklee College of Music, surrounding cities host famous schools like
Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts
University.
Economy
The many prestigious colleges and universities have drawn high-tech
industries to Boston, including computer hardware and software companies
like EMC Corporation (headquartered in Hopkinton) and Akamai (headquartered
in nearby Cambridge), as well as biotechnology companies like Millennium
Pharmaceuticals and Biogen Idec. Other important industries include
financial services (especially mutual funds) and insurance.
Shoe and athletic apparel-maker Reebok is headquartered in nearby Canton.
Raytheon is based in nearby Lexington. Gillette is headquartered in Boston.
Newspapers and media
The Boston Globe, owned by the New York Times Company, and The Boston Herald
are Boston's two major daily newspapers. A local edition of The Metro, a
free paper, is also available. The Boston Phoenix and the Weekly Dig are
weekly newspapers. Spare Change is a bi-weekly paper.
Boston in Film, Opera and Theatre
Blown Away
The Boondock Saints
Fever Pitch
Good Will Hunting
Mystic River
Still We Believe: The Boston Red Sox Movie
Un Ballo in Maschera, Opera by Giuseppe Verdi
What's the Worst That Could Happen?
Famous Bostonians
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
Samuel Adams
Aerosmith
Ben Affleck
Crispus Attucks
Red Auerbach
Tom Brady
Conan O'Brien
Alexander Graham Bell
Tom Bergeron
Larry Bird
Ray Bourque
Benjamin C. Bradlee
Bob Cousy
Matt Damon
Michael Dukakis
Eliza Dushku
Benjamin Franklin
John Hancock
Juliana Hatfield
John F. Kennedy
Edward Kennedy
Robert Kennedy
John Kerry
Jay Leno
Leonard Nimoy
Bobby Orr
Edgar Allan Poe
Paul Revere
Bill Russell
Babe Ruth
Barbara Walters
Ted Williams
Malcolm X
Carl Yazstremski
Professional sports franchises
Boston Bruins (Ice Hockey - National Hockey League)
Boston Celtics (Basketball - National Basketball Association)
Boston Red Sox (Baseball - Major League Baseball)
Boston Cannons (Lacrosse - Major League Lacrosse)
Nearby Foxboro has the New England Patriots (National Football League) and
the New England Revolution (Major League Soccer).
Sites of interest
Back Bay
Beacon Hill
Boston Common
Boston Public Garden
Boston Public Library
Bunker Hill Monument
Charles River
Chinatown
Christian Science Center
Copley Square
Downtown Crossing
The Esplanade
Faneuil Hall
The Back Bay Fens
Fenway Park
Fleet Center
Granary Burying Ground
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
John F. Kennedy Library
Kenmore Square
Massachusetts State House
Museum of Science (http://www.mos.org)
Newbury Street
North End
Old State House
Old North Church
Paul Revere's House
Prudential Center
South End
South Boston
Trinity Church
USS Constitution
The Wang Center for the Performing Arts
Yearly events
Fourth of July (fireworks and music)
Boston Marathon
Boston (LBGT) Pride (parade and festival) (http://www.bostonpride.org/)
First Night (New Year's Eve)
Head of the Charles Regatta
Transportation
Boston transportation
Airports
Logan International Airport in East Boston
Hanscom Field in Lexington and Bedford
T. F. Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island
Manchester Airport in Manchester, New Hampshire
Intercity Trains
Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and Chicago lines originate at South Station and
stop at Back Bay. Northeast Corridor trains, which service New York City,
Washington, DC and points in between, also stop at Route 128 Station, in the
southwestern suburbs of Boston.
Amtrak's service to Maine originates at North Station
Sister Cities
Boston is a sister city of these municipalities:
Kyoto, Japan
Strasbourg, France
Barcelona, Spain
Hangzhou, People's Republic of China
Melbourne, Australia
Haifa, Israel
Padua, Italy
Taipei, Republic of China
Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana
