Like most sizeable American cities, Boston reveals the limits of the “melting pot” metaphor. Its relatively tiny geographic area (you can roller blade from one end to the other in less than 30min) and dramatically differentiated neighborhoods make the contrasts between these groups very easy to see: the towering corporate sanctuaries of the Financial District are visible from the tortuous, windy streets of the North End; phenomenally expensive Beacon Hill is just across the Boston Common from Chinatown; and the South End—chic, gentrified, and gay—melds into the inner city neighborhoods of Roxbury and Dorchester. The history of these and other contrasts is written not only in Boston’s architecture, the organization of its streets, and the layout of its subway system, but also in the earth on which the city sits: two of Boston’s original three hills were uprooted and thrown into the sea as the town grew outward from its original narrow peninsula.
The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony occupied present-day Charlestown in 1629, then moved to Shawmut in 1630 (as called by the Native American inhabitants), and named it Boston. The austere, hard-working, and ever-prudish character of their community remains a legacy for Boston’s, and New England’s, culture today.
The economic development of the Massachusetts colony was founded on maritime construction, fishing, and merchant shipping, including the infamous triangle trade with Guinea and the West Indies. By the mid-18th century, Boston was the largest center of trade in the colonies and the fourth-largest in the British Empire. The growing financial independence of the Boston merchants soon brought them into conflict with the demands of the Crown. Riots provoked by the Stamp Act and Molasses Taxes brought British troops, the Massacre of 1770, the Tea Party of 1773, and finally the closing of the Harbor by the English Prime Minister. Bostonians such as John Adams, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams were prominent rebels.
In response to the rebellion, the Crown closed Boston’s harbor. The economic problems and political crisis caused by the closing of the Harbor led to the convening of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774. The following year, a violent eruption in Lexington and Concord provided the catalyst for the American Revolution. The first two years of the war saw intense fighting in and around Boston, including the renowned battle of Bunker Hill (actually fought on Breed’s Hill). George Washington forced the British out of the city on St. Patrick’s Day 1776, still celebrated today in Middlesex County as Evacuation Day.
Many of the royalist merchants who had inhabited the city’s wealthiest districts were evacuated along with the British troops. They were replaced by newer families who quickly assumed the role of monied elite. This group’s fortune and the financial growth of the city in the late 18th century were founded on Boston’s fishing fleet, trade with China and India, and the growth of merchant shipping to and from Europe. A maritime depression in the early 19th century spurred a move into the manufacturing of wool, shoes, and leather. The Industrial Revolution came to Boston in the form of the power loom, which brought expanding textile production here.
While the city was eventually dwarfed by Philadelphia and New York in the first half of the 19th century, its expanding economy brought with it a golden age. The scientific and cultural activities of such prominent Bostonians as Louis Agassiz, Francis Parkman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes lent some credence to their habit of calling the city “the Athens of America.” Holmes’s designation of Boston as the “Hub of the Universe,” on the other hand, still seems a bit like hyperbole.
The first half of the 19th century saw massive increases in Boston’s population, as waves of immigrants arrived. The number of people in the city increased by almost 50% in both the 1830s and again in the 40s. The 1830s also saw the introduction of railroads, which transformed the geography of the city. The years leading up to the Civil War were marked by abolitionist efforts by many liberal Bostonians, among them William Lloyd Garrison and James Russell Lowell. Lesser known are the efforts of African-Americans, led by Lewis Hayden, to organize the “Underground Railroad.”
By 1880, the city was the fourth-largest industrial center in the country. The quick profits and ostentatious spending of the “Gilded Age” were somewhat less abundant in Boston than in some American cities, although the city’s financiers did rake in large sums of money as the importance of investment and banking grew. To Boston’s credit, however, much of this profit was plowed back into the cultural institutions that are now such essential parts of the city. The close of the 19th century saw construction and expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Boston Public Library, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, MIT, Boston University, Harvard University (which became a world-class institution under President Eliot), and many of the city’s parks.
Twentieth-century Boston has been marked by economic and social unrest as well as dramatic physical transformations of the urban environment. The city began to lose much of its middle class as improved rail transportation and the advent of the automobile sent many to the suburbs. By the 1920s the textile industry and much of the city’s manufacturing had fallen on hard times, which were only exacerbated by the Depression. The defense industry boom of WWII gave Boston’s economy a boost, but manufacturers continued to move away during the postwar period. By the 1950s, the devastating loss of much of the middle class tax base, coupled with the deterioration of many buildings and institutions, created an image of a city in decline.
The answer, engineered by a coalition of politicians and powerful bankers known as “The Vault” (supposedly still in existence today) was to redevelop the city in order to attract both businesses and middle-class professionals. This project was undertaken without consideration for the economically disenfranchised and non-white residents of the areas marked for renewal. The damage suffered by these communities, combined with years of governmental neglect, contributed to outbreaks of unrest and violence during these years. Boston’s redevelopment project succeeded on many levels: it rejuvenated the central districts, shifted the city’s economic structure to emphasize retail business, strengthened tourism, and attracted new kinds of industry, including electronics, computing, aerospace, and medical research. In rising from the ashes of postwar depression, however, portions of the city’s population were forced out by rising rents and property taxes.
