Leather industries drove the economic development of Woburn from the seventeenth into the early twentieth centuries. Initially settled as an outlying village of Charlestown, Woburn was established in 1642 as a separate community. The Aberjona River, a tributary of the Mystic, provided...
The automobile made Burlington. Although a meetinghouse was raised here in 1732 as a second parish of Woburn and a separate town of Burlington incorporated in 1799, growth remained slow until after World War II. Modest examples of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings survive at...
Despite its proximity to Route 128 and major corporate developments, Bedford manages to retain some of its colonial character. Indeed, most of the town's history speaks of agricultural uses and modest population growth until the 1920s.
Incorporated from parts of Concord and...
Touted as “The Town of Homes,” Belmont projects the image of the ideal bedroom community. Whereas agriculture and minor industries supported the town economy throughout most of its history, by the early twentieth century Belmont had become a residential extension of the metropolitan core....
The original agricultural community of Menotomy was established as a section of Cambridge. In 1807 West Cambridge became a separate community, renamed Arlington in 1867. A few early farmhouses survive, especially along Massachusetts Avenue, the route to Revolutionary conflicts in Lexington...
Best known as the site of the “shot heard 'round the world” that inaugurated the American Revolution, Lexington still glories in its colonial past. The image of the Revolution is stronger than the reality, however, as relatively few of the buildings standing in 1775 remain. Rather,...
Careful regulation of the natural and man-made environment has allowed Lincoln to remain surprisingly pastoral in character. Formed from sections of Concord, Watertown, and Cambridge that were originally deemed too distant, Lincoln incorporated in 1754 as Niptown. The civic center formed...
Concord was established as the first Massachusetts town settled above the tidewater, where the Assabet and Sudbury rivers join to form the Concord River. Its natural advantages also inspired its most famous residents, the transcendentalist writers of the nineteenth century. Now an elite...
Ironically called “The Farms” originally, Weston had relatively little prime agricultural land. Hived off from the Watertown grant of 1636, Weston became an independent town in 1713. The main trail of the Boston Post Road produced an important travelers' economy in the colonial period, with...
The floodplain of the Sudbury River attracted early colonists from Watertown for common field agriculture along the river meadows. Part of the 1639 Sudbury grant, East Sudbury separated as an independent town in 1780 and changed its name to Wayland in 1835. Bridges over the Sudbury River for...
Settled in 1639 along the dominant east-west trail leading into the interior of Massachusetts (later the Boston Post Road), Sudbury grew slowly, hampered by heavy losses in an April 1676 raid during King Phillip's War. A small number of mills augmented a subsistence agricultural economy in...
The Charles River, wrapping around three sides of Newton, determined the original development of “The City of Trees.” Within this riverine arc, seven hills demarcate the territory of what has become one of Metropolitan Boston's largest suburbs.
Originally granted as part of Newtowne/...
As the home of the first country club in the United States, Brookline boasts the status of poster child for the nation's affluent suburbs. Indeed, its staunch resistance to annexation by Boston made it an island of privilege surrounded on three sides by Boston neighborhoods. Nevertheless,...
Located in the rocky uplands of the Charles River, Wellesley developed slowly, becoming an affluent suburb in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although part of the Dedham grant of 1636, Wellesley experienced settlement from several directions—Newton to the east, Watertown to the...
A rugged terrain and limited waterpower potential kept Dover a sparsely settled community throughout its history. Part of the 1636 Dedham grant, a separate town of Dover was only incorporated in 1836. Relatively few farms were developed along the Charles River in the colonial period, and the...
A model for similar experiments, Natick was originally settled in 1651 as an Indian Praying Town, a plantation for Christianized Native Americans. Wigwams were erected along Europeanized streets flanking the Charles River at what is now South Natick; a frame building surrounded by a circular...
Isolated from surrounding communities by the meandering Charles River, Needham, incorporated in 1711 from lands originally part of the Dedham grant of 1636, developed slowly until after the Civil War. Although bridges were built in the seventeenth century across the Charles River to Newton on...
Westwood remained primarily a rural community until the construction of Route 128 in the 1950s brought suburban pressure to its doorstep. Formed from adjacent Dedham in 1636, the Town of Westwood only incorporated in 1897. Scattered farmsteads emerged in the eighteenth century, joined by...
Canton's importance rests on its early village for Praying Indians, a center of nineteenth century industrial expansion and a district of estate development beginning in the early twentieth century. Part of the Dorchester new grant of 1636 was set aside in 1657 as Ponkapoag Plantation for...
Strategically positioned on a plateau between the Charles and Neponset rivers, Dedham possessed natural advantages on which its residents quickly capitalized. The Massachusetts Bay Colony established the Dedham grant in 1636, and a nuclear village was laid out, with High Street as its spine,...
Milton enjoys a dramatic physical location overlooking the Neponset River marshes and Boston skyline to the north and rising on the south to the height of Great Blue Hill (635 feet), the tallest elevation within ten miles of the ocean along the Atlantic coastline from Maine to Florida....
Quincy, “The Granite City,” derived its identity and nineteenth-century prosperity from the stone quarried in its western hills. The Mount Wollaston Colony (1626) at Merrymount (part of Quincy) predated the English settlement of Boston. In 1640 the town of Braintree was established; the name...
No single story of Massachusetts’s buildings and landscapes exists. To present in a neat narrative the rich, varied, and vibrant history of the Commonwealth’s built environment would do a disservice to the many peoples who shaped the physical world around them...
While tobacco cultivation shaped the entire Chesapeake region both culturally and materially, it remains most evident on the Western Shore, encompassing Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary’s counties. It was the first region in the state to embrace...
The establishment of Leonardtown at the head of Britton’s Bay in 1708 occurred after the capital was moved from St. Mary’s City to Annapolis. St. Mary’s City mayor Phillip Lynes laid out a hundred lots, designating one for the construction of a new...
Port Tobacco was the site of a Native American settlement of the late Woodland period, noted by English explorer Captain John Smith in 1608, prior to its establishment by European settlers in 1684. By the mid-eighteenth century the town was one of the...
Lower Marlboro represents the once commonplace wharf communities that formed along the Western Shore for the shipment of tobacco and other produce from local farms. It was established in 1706 and by the mid-eighteenth century encompassed warehouses,...
Annapolis is Maryland’s capital and a gem of the colonial and post-Revolutionary eras, encompassing some of America’s premier Georgian architecture and one of its most sophisticated early town plans. Its origins can be traced to a 1649...
