Despite the name, Jamaica Plain glories in a varied topography. Rocky, hilly terrain frustrated early farming and attracted estate development in the eighteenth century and early suburbanization in the nineteenth. Open space remains a key asset, with Jamaicaway and Jamaica Pond (...
Formed from the southern section of the 1630 Roxbury grant, West Roxbury and Roslindale grew rapidly as streetcar suburban communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In colonial times, the Washington Street spine of the Boston Neck and after 1834 the...
The southernmost section of Boston, Hyde Park lies in a valley created by the Neponset River and Mother Brook. Formed from sections of Dorchester, Dedham, and Milton, Hyde Park grew along River Street, laid out as early as 1661–1662 by Dorchester. Industrial development along the rivers...
The section of Cambridge closest to Boston, East Cambridge, developed in the early nineteenth century as a residential and industrial extension of the larger city. The earliest residence in Cambridge, the house of surveyor Thomas Graves, was built here in 1629. But the area remained...
Central Square, surrounded by Cambridgeport to the south and east and Mid Cambridge to the northwest, provides one of the key public and commercial nodes of Cambridge. Here the civic center arose in the mid-nineteenth century, located between the villages of...
Mens et manus (“Mind and hand”) is the motto of MIT. A petition to the Commonwealth by the Massachusetts Conservatory of Arts and Sciences incorporated the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its objective was “the advancement of the Mechanical...
The origins of Cambridge lie in the area of Harvard Square (HS1). Founded in 1630 as Newtowne, Cambridge (the name was changed in 1638) was intended to serve as the center for the government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A defensible...
The campus of Harvard University has influenced American collegiate architecture for centuries. From the beginning, Harvard was conceived as a residential college, its Puritan founders committed to creating a community of scholars. The Massachusetts Bay...
The North Yard provided space for institutional expansion in the decades following the Civil War. As President Charles W. Eliot, inaugurated 1869, attempted to revolutionize modern higher education at Harvard, he needed new space for scientific education and professional schools. The...
The area between Harvard Yard and the Charles River marks the site of the original “Towne” of Newtowne. Protected by a palisade, here rose the meetinghouses and courthouses of colonial Cambridge surrounded by a regularly ordered and densely inhabited village. As the colonial...
The quadrant of Cambridge from the Common to Avon and Observatory hills represents a distinctive and coherent section of the city. The original common consisted of thousands of acres and stretched west into modern Arlington. While most of the common was slowly granted for...
One of the best addresses in the Boston area, Brattle Street provides an excellent catalogue of important domestic architecture from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Sections of Brattle Street perpetuate “the Highway,” the Indian trail converted to the colonial turnpike...
Now a varied landscape of three-decker housing and commercial development, Northwest Cambridge grew more slowly than the rest of Cambridge. This section of the city is actually composed from parts of three early settlements—Watertown, Charlestown, and Newtowne (Cambridge). The...
Like Charlestown across the Mystic River, Chelsea rose from the ashes of a massive fire to assume its current form. A peninsula surrounded by the Mystic, Chelsea, and Island End rivers at the entry to Boston Harbor, the site possessed obvious natural advantages that attracted Englishman...
Located along the eastern shore of the Mystic River, Everett emerged as an important industrial center in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Although settlement began in the mid-seventeenth century, no sustained growth occurred until the arrival of the railroad in 1854. Following...
A day at the shore is the essence of Revere, home of the nation's first public ocean beach. Claimed by Boston as early as 1634, Rumsey March (as the area was initially called) raised its first meetinghouse in 1710. The land above the salt marshes was used for farming alone until the 1830s,...
Winthrop capitalized on its physical advantages, poised on the narrow peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean on the east and Boston Harbor on the west. Claimed by Boston in 1634, the peninsula became part of Chelsea in 1739 and Revere in 1847 before incorporation as Winthrop in 1852. The...
Leather industries determined the development of Lynn, “The City of Shoes,” especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Founded in 1629 by settlers from the New England Company at Salem, Lynn remained a minor agricultural community through the colonial period. Leather...
The American love of summering by the sea started in Nahant. By 1800, Nahant had already become a resort destination, with visitors boarding in farmhouses to enjoy the ocean views and the healthy breezes. Steamship service from Boston began in 1817. Thomas Handasyd Perkins, who built a cottage...
The discovery of iron ore at Saugus in 1630 determined the future of the community as an industrial center. The initial settlers probably came from Governor Endicott's Salem colony in 1629–1630. Iron production by 1640 attracted further immigrants, although iron production ceased by 1688. The...
Isolated from major transportation routes throughout much of its history, Lynnfield remained primarily agricultural until the mid-twentieth century. As early as 1638, residents of Lynn divided and occupied land in this area, which became a separate parish in 1712. Some shoe production...
Poised between Lake Quannapowitt (source of the Saugus River) and Crystal Lake, Wakefield was destined to become a water-powered industrial center. Lynn Village, formed from the 1639 Lynn grant, became part of the independent town of Reading in 1644; the name of this section was changed to...
Located at the headwaters of the Mystic, Ipswich, and Saugus rivers, Reading developed an impressive industrial base before becoming a residential suburb of Greater Boston in the mid-twentieth century. English settlers from Lynn arrived in 1639, but they did not raise the first meetinghouse...
Although it would be unfair to call Malden a one-company town, the dominant role of the rubber shoe industry gave the city its industrial identity. Formed from part of the original Charlestown grant, Malden became a separate town in 1649 and incorporated as a city in 1881. The navigable Malden...
A classic example of a suburban residential community of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Melrose generally relied on other cities to provide an economic base for its citizens. Melrose grew from the original Charlestown grant, becoming an independent town only in 1850 and...
Shoes, especially for women and children, drove the industries of Stoneham. Sited in a north-south valley above the Boston Basin, Stoneham is bounded by the Middlesex Fells Reservation of the Metropolitan District Commission to the south, I-93 on the west, and Route 128, the area's major...
Once the meatpacker of New England, Somerville grew rapidly as an industrial and suburban city from its incorporation in 1842 through World War II. The city began as agricultural grazing land for the 1630 Charlestown grant. Brick making, especially in West Somerville, emerged as a...
A substantial spine of red Medford granite, running north and south, splits this community into two halves. The meeting of this ledge with the Mystic River marks the division between the Boston Basin and the Fells Uplands, the head of navigation and the site of the town's historic importance...
Situated in a large valley at the head of the Mystic Lakes, fed by the Aberjona, or Mystic, River and by Horn Pond Brook, Winchester was originally part of the Charlestown grant. Home to the earliest Indian reservation (1638–1639) in Massachusetts, the area...
