You told everyone you were going to college in “Boston.” Well, you lied. You go to school in Cambridge, and that school is called Hah-vahd, you evasive wimp. With heavy workloads and Square convenience, months may pass with nary a glance in the downtown direction. But we at the Unofficial Guide, cannot impress upon you enough: GET THE HELL OUT OF THE SQUARE! Boston is an extraordinary city, safe and manageable in its size, accessible through public transportation, and full of tremendous museums, parks, bars, and restaurants, and real people, yes, real people! The best cure to beat the Harvard blues is to treat yourself to that city you told people you’d be going to.
Almost completely separated from the rest of Boston by Brookline, but much closer to Harvard than you would think, Allston-Brighton is one of the most integrated sections of Boston. These streets remind you that not every one goes to Harvard, and that sometimes that’s much more interesting. Expect to see friends running into each other as they go about their daily errands and groups of people talking happily to each other on corners. Ethnic business enclaves with unique restaurants and specialty stores have sprung up, mostly along Brighton, Commonwealth, and Harvard Avenues. These three streets form the main thoroughfares of this vibrant community. One deli may greet you with Russian gossip, while its neighbor establishment might fill your ears with conversation in Chinese. With several colleges nearby, Allston-Brighton has also become a students’ playground—boisterous games by day and carousing bar hoppers by night stir up the neighborhood calm.
The elegant Back Bay district of Boston did not exist until 1857, when developers filled in the brackish and smelly tidal basin that stretched from the foot of Beacon Hill to Sewell’s Point in Brookline. As new land crept westward, developers kept up, laying out a Parisian system of boulevards with atypical foresight. The 450 new acres of central Boston were lined with alphabetical cross-streets in a departure from the add-’em-as-you-go of old Boston’s convoluted streets. The district quickly attracted the monied classes, and it’s still one of the most posh neighborhoods in the city.
Home to Boston’s architectural and civic showpieces, the heart of Back Bay is Copley Square, named for the painter John Singleton Copley. Surrounding the Square’s grassy expanse is the Boston Public Library and H.H. Richardson’s Trinity Church. Towering over both buildings is I.M. Pei’s John Hancock Tower, the tallest building in New England (whoopie). Nearby, the urban malls at the Copley Place and the less-exclusive Prudential Center may seduce your wallet, but keep it in your pants. Wait for Newbury Street, a commercial avenue which may not be any cheaper, but at least it has more charm. Parallel to Newbury St. is trendy Boylston St. and the 220 ft. wide Commonwealth Ave. The Back Bay is probably one of Boston’s most walkable and scenic districts.
Perhaps the most “Bostonian” of the city’s neighborhoods, Beacon Hill occupies just one sq. mi. of area downtown, just north of the Boston Common and bordering the Charles River. This beautiful residential neighborhood is filled with historic homes and quiet streets dating back to the 1790s (thanks to strict architectural regulations). Winding brick-lined alleyways weave among Federal, Greek Revival, and Victorian-style buildings, often leading to hidden courtyards and tiny gardens. Beautiful Beacon Hill is also renowned for its flower boxes, gorgeous in the spring, and the subject of a yearly neighborhood competition. Also famous are the unusual purple glass windows seen on older Beacon Hill homes: these are a result of the old lead-based methods once used to craft the window glass favored by the “Boston Brahmins” who settled this area, and whose descendants still live in those houses.
On the south side of Beacon Hill, under the shadow of the gold-domed State House, sprawls the expansive Boston Common, the oldest public park in the nation. Legally, it still serves as public pasture for grazing cows (just like the Cambridge Common), but today you are more likely to see people reclining beside monuments commemorating the Boston Massacre, the Declaration of Independence, and the Civil War.
One of Brookline’s most famous residents, Frederick Law Olmsted (designer of the Emerald Necklace, an array of Boston parks including Boston Common and Franklin Park), designed much of Brookline as we know it today, including the widening of Beacon Street. The influx of urban aristocrats gave Brookline a distinct, moneyed character; near the turn of the century, Harper’s wrote that “Brookline is rich—very rich. It is the wealthiest town in the US. Its annual income is greater than that of the whole state of New Hampshire.” Today, half the residents of Brookline identify themselves as Jewish, making Brookline not only the center of much of Boston’s Jewish cultural life, but also home to Jewish institutions of international importance, such as the Boston Hebrew University and the Maimonides School. Brookline’s Harvard St. features a huge Jewish bookstore, kosher Chinese restaurants, bakeries, and, unsurprisingly, terrific bagels.
The place where the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company first settled in 1629 embodies all the modern dualities of a worn-out New England shipyard community. Nostalgic Bunker Hill Monument separates the struggling low-income housing in the shadow of highway underpasses from the steep, yuppified streets higher up on the hill, which look out patriotically over the harbor, “Old Ironsides”—the U.S.S. Constitution—and the Charlestown Navy Yard. Recent attempts, however, have been made to modernize and beautify Charlestown. Still, most visitors come not for the ambiance and city life itself but rather for a taste of Charlestown’s fine food and feel of the vibrant character.
To get into Charlestown by T, take the Orange Line to Community College, then walk toward the Bunker Hill Monument; otherwise, get off the T at North Station, walk across the Charles River Bridge, and then head toward the Bunker Hill Monument. If you really don’t want to make the 5-10min walk, take the T to Haymarket and then take the #93 bus to Charlestown City Sq.
Home to a diverse population of Laotians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Chinese, Chinatown is a densely populated maze of narrow streets and aging buildings wedged against the Common by the Mass. Pike and the Fitzgerald Expressway. The colorful signs and storefront displays of the shops and restaurants crammed into this tiny, bustling district reflect its multitude of cultures. The Imperial Gate on Beach St. is the lasting symbol of Chinatown; another sight worth seeing is the alleyway off Oxford Pl., which houses Chinatown’s oldest tenements. The district’s restaurants and bakeries are inexpensive and gratifying; one dim sum Sunday brunch here might make you ditch dining hall lox for good.
Thumbelina-sized Downtown Boston is anchored by the Park Street T stop, America’s first subway station. Alongside it, Tremont St. runs southward through the Theater District (home of Broadway shows and performances at the Wang Center) before heading into the South End. Near the Boston Common, the parallel “ladder streets” running between Tremont and Washington were once a fashionable residential area and now lead to one of Boston’s shopping districts, Downtown Crossing. Downtown is also home to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Marketplace. A snow-and-gas lights theme park in winter dedicated to the fine art of hard-core holiday shopping, Faneuil Hall is nevertheless one of Boston’s best-known historic sites (the inspiring speeches given here by Samuel Adams and other patriot leaders gave Faneuil Hall the title “The Cradle of Liberty”).
West of stately Copley Sq. is Fenway, a motley neighborhood created by the filling of the swampy basin of the Muddy River. Frederick Law Olmsted engineered the transformation of the smelly, unsanitary Fens into a waterside park that drew developers and institutions to the surrounding blocks. The Fens form the northern tip of Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, a series of connected parks running as far south as Jamaica Plain and Dorchester.
Nearby is Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox (Yankees Suck!), and Kenmore Sq., filled with student-oriented restaurants and clubs. The landmark 1965 pop-art hit Citgo sign watches over this aesthetically grim neighborhood of stumbling drunk 20-somethings and disgruntled fans making their way back to the T. The joylessly urban Boston University campus is strung out along Commonwealth Avenue from here down toward the BU Bridge, while a string of artistic establishments, ranging from the Berklee School of Music to Symphony Hall, line Huntington Ave.
Arriving in Jamaica Plain (“JP”) via the Jackson Square T stop, the unsuspecting Boston explorer is confronted by a daunting row of housing projects. You’re not in Harvard Sq. anymore. Glistening new Lexus sedans and SUVs zoom past in sharp contrast to the glum low income housing complex, more often than not reggae, salsa, or hip-hop emerging at high volumes from the nebulously tinted windows. But a walk past the projects down Centre Street (the central artery of JP) proves that what would appear to be an awkward economic middle ground between Brookline and Roxbury is in fact a blossoming commercial and residential community for some of Boston’s working class ethnic groups and twentysomething artists and hipsters. Entrepreneurs sell vegetables out of the back of vans, bodegas hawk Goya and cigarettes, Yely’s Coffee Shop features Puerto Rican rotisserie chicken, and groups of men hoot at passing boricuas. The shrieks of little children playing in parks and rock music drifting out of bowling alleys and brand-new coffee shops, the rich scents of frying just-ripe Cuban plantains, and the blaring colors of garish fashion ensembles and community murals will awaken your Harvard-blunted senses to the energy of diverse inner-city living.
Boston’s oldest and most romantic neighborhood, the historic North End quietly evokes a European flavor in the midst of downtown Boston. Hanover St., in particular, offers a friendly strip along which to wander, eventually leading down to the waterfront. Hanover and the surrounding streets and alleys abound with dozens of wonderful family-owned Italian restaurants and cafés where it is not uncommon to be enticed to dine by the very owners as you stroll by on the street.
The South End has had a rich history as one of the more confusing and conflict-ridden neighborhoods in a city renowned for both. Boston Neck, the narrow strip of land that connected Shawmut Peninsula to Roxbury and the mainland, was expanded by landfill until it developed into the South End in the mid-19th century. Briefly popular with Boston’s upper-classes during their perpetual migrations throughout the city, the neighborhood soon fell into disrepute. Immigrants and working-class families of diverse ethnic backgrounds settled here in the vacated townhouses-turned-apartments, and in the early 20th century the area became a thriving center of African-American culture. By the post-war period, however, it had gained a seedy reputation and it is only now being overcome by herds of young professionals renovating the old brownstone buildings and lowering the crime rate. The result is the arrival of more than a handful of voguish cafés, shops, and some of Boston’s most expensive and innovative diners, just a few blocks from run-down row houses and flashy condos in an area now known as SoWa (for South of Washington St., taking a cue from NYC’s hip neighborhoods). Many artists, writers, musicians, and vibrant gay and lesbian communities make the South End their home, resulting in a lively juxtaposition of diverse life-styles. The heart of the neighborhood’s dynamic energy (and café culture) is centered around the Boston Center for the Arts on Tremont St.
Much of South Boston’s current area is the product of landfill operations begun in 1836; it now extends farther into the harbor than any other residential section of the city. Although Southie was briefly fashionable, its popularity among the upper classes was short-lived; South Boston had become an industrial center by the latter half of the 19th century. While the first immigrants were mostly Italians, South Boston is mostly a closely knit, working-class Irish neighborhood, with smaller populations of African-Americans and Lithuanian and Polish immigrants.
The most recent arrival, however, has been a vocal gay and lesbian population often at odds with the Irish Catholic majority. In 1994, Act Up, a gay and lesbian group, petitioned to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The parade’s private sponsors tried to block them from marching, and the ensuing court case wound up at the Supreme Court, who upheld the sponsor’s decision to block the march.
Today the center of Boston’s shipping industry, South Boston is also home to the printing, clothing, and electronics industries. While such industries have replaced much of the district’s early luxury, a walk down West Broadway towards central South Boston reveals deserted factories blending into cozy townhouse neighborhoods just off the harbor. The neighborhood begins just across the Fort Point channel from Downtown, extends east to the Bay and west to Dorchester Ave., and borders the Dorchester Bay in the South. To get to South Boston by T, take the Red Line to South Station, Broadway, Andrew, or JFK/UMass stations.
