Boston Massachusetts: Encyclopedia II - Boston Massachusetts - History

Boston Massachusetts - History

Boston was founded on September 17, 1630, on a peninsula called Shawmut by its original Native American inhabitants. The peninsula was connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, and surrounded by the waters of Massachusetts Bay and the marshes at the mouth of the Charles River. Boston's early European settlers first called the area Trimountain. They later renamed the town for Boston, England, in Lincolnshire, from which several prominent "pilgrim" colonists emigrated. A majority of Boston's early citizens were Puritans. Massachusetts Bay Colony's original governor, John Winthrop, gave a famous sermon entitled "a City upon a Hill," which captured the idea that Boston had a special covenant with God. Puritan ethics molded an extremely stable and well-structured society in Boston. For example, shortly after Boston's settlement, Puritans founded America's first school, Boston Latin School (1635), and America's first college, Harvard College (1636). Hard work, moral uprightness, and an emphasis on education remain part of Boston's culture.

During the early 1770s, British attempts to exert 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 became one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports — major exports were rum, fish, salt, and tobacco. During this era, descendants of old Boston families became regarded, in the American popular mind, as the nation's social and cultural elites; they were later dubbed the Boston Brahmins. In 1822, Boston was chartered as a city. 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, leather goods, and machinery industries. 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 ethnic composition began to change dramatically; groups like the Irish and Italians moved into the city and brought with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community. The Irish played a major role in Boston politics — prominent figures include the Kennedys and John F. Fitzgerald.

Between 1630 and 1890, the city tripled its physical size by land reclamation, specifically by filling in marshes and mud flats and by filling gaps between wharves along the waterfront.^[1] The most intense reclamation efforts were in the 1800s. Beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 hectares) mill pond that later became the Bullfinch Triangle and Scollay Square (now Government Center). The present-day Statehouse sits atop this shortened Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created the areas now known as the South End, West End, Financial District, and Chinatown. After The Great Boston Fire of 1872, building rubble was used as landfill along the downtown waterfront. The most dramatic reclamation project was the filling in of the Back Bay in the mid to late 1800s. Almost six hundred acres (240 hectares) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of Beacon Hill were filled in with soil brought in by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. Boston also grew by annexing the adjacent communities of East Boston, Dorchester, South Boston, Brighton, Allston, Hyde Park, and Charlestown, some of which were augmented by landfill reclamation.

By the early and mid-20th 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, including the demolition of the old West End neighborhood and the construction of Government Center. In the 1970s, Boston boomed after thirty years of economic downturn, becoming a leader in the mutual fund industry. Boston already had a reputation for excellent healthcare services. 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. Universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Boston University attracted many 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. The unrest served to highlight racial tensions in the city.

Over the past several decades, Boston has experienced a dramatic loss of regional institutions and traditions, which once gave it a very distinct social character. Boston has begun to resemble other parts of the continuous string of Northeast seaboard cities dubbed the BosWash megalopolis. The city faces gentrification issues and exorbitant living costs. Conversely, Boston's streets currently bustle with a vitality not seen since the 1920s. Once again Boston has become a hub of intellectual, technological, and political ideas.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki