BigDaddyData.Com: Massachusetts Boston

    Boston (1990 pop., 574,283) is the capital of Massachusetts and New England's largest city. The city is named for the English port in Lincolnshire. It is situated on a hilly peninsula, where the Mystic and Charles rivers flow into Massachusetts Bay. With one of the finest natural harbors in the United States, it is New England's most important seaport.

    Reclamation of swampy tidal flats has more than doubled the size of Boston's original peninsula. The city has grown by annexation and reclamation to more than 35 times its colonial size. Included within the city limits are East Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Dorchester, Brighton, West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and Hyde Park. The metropolitan area, however, includes parts of at least 5 counties.

The Contemporary City

    A 30-year decline in population in the core city was reversed between 1980 and 1990 as the population increased by 2 percent. In 1990 blacks constituted about 25 percent of the population. The Irish form the largest white ethnic group, and Italian and French Canadians are also numerous. South Boston remains an ethnic stronghold of the Irish, and Little Italy is found in the North End section. A Chinatown is adjacent to the Washington Street downtown shopping area. Hispanics make up 11 percent (1990) of Boston's population.

    The city serves the New England region as a major financial and insurance center as well as an important industrial center. Small-scale and widely diversified industries characterize the manufacturing structure. In recent years research and development facilities, concentrating in sophisticated electronics, computers, and chemicals, have had a great impact on the industrial structure of the metropolitan area. Although on the decline, an important fishing fleet operates from the city. Boston has a significant tourist industry.

Cultural InstitutionsBoston has been an educational and cultural center since 1635, when the first American public school, Boston Latin School, was established. More than 50 institutions of higher learning are found in the metropolitan area. These include Northeastern University, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and the New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston proper; Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge; and Boston College in Chestnut Hill (Newton), Tufts University in Medford, and Wellesley College in Wellesley.

    The Boston Public Library, the first free public library in the United States, opened in 1854. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts contains some of the nation's prime art holdings. The Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Orchestra are important musical elements in the city.

    Historic landmarks abound in the Boston area. Churches of significance include King's Chapel, Christ Church, Trinity Episcopal Church, Holy Cross Cathedral (Roman Catholic), Saint Paul's Cathedral (Episcopal), and the first Christian Science church (1894). Other notable buildings include the Old State House, Paul Revere's house, Faneuil Hall, Old South Meeting House, and the Quincy Markets.

History

    In 1614, Capt. John Smith mapped Boston Harbor, and in 1630 the settlement of Boston was established on the hilly peninsula. By 1700 the settlement's principal activities were shipbuilding, whaling, fishing, and trading. Bostonians were at the forefront of colonial resistance to England. In 1770, British troops and citizens clashed in the Boston Massacre, and three years later Bostonians dumped British tea into the harbor in the Boston Tea Party. After the war Boston developed a profitable trade with China; also manufacturing and other industries were becoming more important.

    During the late 1830s and 1840s rails began to link the city to the New England hinterland. European immigrants, especially from Ireland, arrived to become a new supply of labor. Around 1830, Boston was also a center for the antislavery movement. By the late 19th century, the city had become the urban hub of an enormous suburban area.

    In the 1960s an extensive renewal project for the decaying downtown area began, changing Boston's low skyline to one dominated by skyscrapers. The Prudential Center, Government Center, and the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company building are among these landmarks. A later downtown project, Lafayette Place, including a shopping complex and hotel, was completed in the 1980s. In the late 1980s and ongoing into the 1990s a huge public-works project to clean up the polluted Boston Harbor was under way.

    In 1974 a court-ordered busing plan for the desegregation of public schools was disrupted by violence and a boycott by white students. In September 1985 a federal judge returned control of the schools to the city's school committee, but racial conflict is still being felt. By 1993, whites made up less than 20 percent of the student body.

    Daniel Gonsalves
Bibliography: Bunting, William H., Portrait of a Port (1971); Campbell, R., and Vanderwarker, P., Cityscapes of Boston (1992); Durang, Charles F., Boston: A Brief History (1988); Formisano, Ronald P., Boston against Busing (1991); Formisano, Ronald P., and Burns, Constance K., eds., Boston 1700-1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics (1984); Freeland, Richard M., Academia's Golden Age (1992); Handlin, Oscar, Boston's Immigrants, rev. ed. (1959; repr. 1991); Jacobs, Donald M., ed., Courage and Conscience (1993); Kennedy, Lawrence W., Planning the City upon a Hill (1992); Levesque, George A., Black Boston (1994); O'Connor, Thomas H., The Boston Irish (1995) and Building a New Boston (1993); Rutman, Darret Bruce, Winthrop's Boston (1965; repr. 1972); Shand-Tucci, D., Built in Boston (1988).