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 taverns and offices for lawyers and doctors. The opening of the Boston to Worcester turnpike (1805) deflected traffic farther south; the arrival of railroad lines did little to alter this pattern. Following the Civil War, wealthy Bostonians discovered Weston as a district for estate development of both substantial new houses and remodeled earlier residences. Weston Center attained its coherent Colonial Revival image in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Now one of the most affluent suburbs of Boston, Weston has become the land of McMansions, out-of-scale residences on suburban lots, especially since the 1990s.
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