Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

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Sep 15, 2007

City official name :Boston
Founded date :
Location :Massachusetts State
Elavation :? ft (? m)
Area :Approximately ? square miles (? km²).
Facts :Boston is the capital and most populous city of Massachusetts. The largest city in New England, Boston is often considered to be the unofficial economic and cultural center of the New England region. The city of Boston had an estimated population of 590,763 in 2006; however, the city lies at the center of America's eleventh-largest metropolitan area, known as Greater Boston, which is home to over 4.4 million people. It is also part of a wider region that includes the nearby cities of Worcester, Providence, and Manchester, with a population of 7.4 million. Residents of Boston are called Bostonians.

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 Boston became a major shipping port and manufacturing center, and its rich history now attracts 16.3 million visitors annually. 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 is also home to the first subway system in the United States.

Through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded throughout the peninsula. It has become one of the most culturally significant cities in the United States, and is recognized as a global city. With many colleges and universities within the city and surrounding area, Boston is a center of higher education and a center for health care. 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.

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 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), and America's first college, Harvard College (1636). Boston was the largest town in British North America until the mid-1700s.

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 quickly became one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports because it was the closest major American port to Europe—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.

In 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, 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.

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, 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.

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, and Boston College 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.

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Photos

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Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

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Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

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Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

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Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

Boston
Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

Boston
Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

Boston
Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

Boston
Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

Boston
Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America

Boston
Boston, Massachusetts - United States of America