Boston Travel Guide
Capital and most populous city of Massachusetts is one of the oldest municipalities in the United States and the scene of several key events of the American Revolution.
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Places to See in Boston
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Freedom Trail
2.5-mile-long (4.0 km) path through downtown Boston, Massachusetts, that passes by 16 locations significant to the history of the United States including Bunker Hill Monument, Faneuil Hall, Kings Chapel and Paul Revere House.
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Beacon Hill
Historic neighborhood in Boston known for federal-style rowhouses, narrow gaslit streets and brick sidewalks
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Beacon Street
Major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and its western suburbs and passes through many of Boston's central and western neighborhoods
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Boston Central Library
Major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and its western suburbs and passes through many of Boston's central and western neighborhoods
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Boston City Hall
Seat of city government of Boston built in 1968 to assume the functions of the Old City Hall
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Boston Common
Central public park in downtown Boston dating from 1634, is the oldest city park in the United States
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Boston Navy Yard / Charlestown Navy Yard
One of the oldest shipbuilding facilities in the United States Navy
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Boston Public Garden
Large park in the heart of Boston, adjacent to Boston Common, was the first public botanical garden in America
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Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum
Museum featuring reenactments, a documentary, a number of interactive exhibits, and two replica ships of the period
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Charles River Esplanade
Park situated in the Back Bay area of Boston, on the south bank of the Charles River Basin
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Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park
Public park in the Boston's North End
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Commonwealth Avenue
Public park in the Boston's North End
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Copley Square
Public square in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood featuring several architectural landmarks
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Custom House Tower
Skyscraper tower in McKinley Square, in the Financial District neighborhood of Boston
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Dorchester Heights
Central area of South Boston featuring a 115-foot (35 m) marble tower, honoring the evacuation of Boston during the American Revolutionary War
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Emerald Necklace
1,100-acre (4.5 km2; 450 ha) chain of parks linked by parkways and waterways in Boston designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted
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Fan Pier Park
1,100-acre (4.5 km2; 450 ha) chain of parks linked by parkways and waterways in Boston designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted
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Fenway Park
Baseball park home to the Boston Red Sox, is the oldest active ballpark in Major League Baseball
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Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
Historic site preserving the home and office of Frederick Law Olmsted, recognized as the founder of American landscape architecture and the nation's foremost parkmaker of the 19th century
Harvard University
Ivy League research university founded in 1636 is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Ivy League research university founded in 1636 is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world
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Louisburg Square
Ivy League research university founded in 1636 is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world
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New England Aquarium
Public aquarium located in Boston, featuring the Giant Ocean Tank, a cylindrical 200,000-US-gallon (760,000 l) tank simulating a Caribbean coral reef
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Old City Hall
Home to Boston's city council from 1865 to 1969 was one of the first buildings in the French Second Empire style to be built in the United States
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Old South Church
Historic United Church of Christ congregation first organized in 1669 and known for its architectural significance as one of the finest High Victorian Gothic churches in New England
Quincy Market
Historic market complex in downtown Boston significant as one of the largest market complexes built in the United States in the first half of the 19th century
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Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway
Linear park located in several Downtown Boston neighborhoods consisting of landscaped gardens, promenades, plazas, fountains, art, and specialty lighting systems that stretch over one mile
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Trinity Church
Church know as the birthplace and archetype of the Richardsonian Romanesque style, characterized by a clay roof, polychromy, rough stone, heavy arches, and a massive tower
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USS Constitution Museum
Museum tells the story of the USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides") and the people who designed, built, and sailed her
Boston is the capital and most populous city of Massachusetts. the most populous city in New England.
Boston is one of the oldest municipalities in the United States, founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from the English town of the same name. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill and the siege of Boston. Upon American independence from Great Britain, the city continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing more than 20 million visitors per year. Boston's many firsts include the United States' first public park, Boston Common.
Boston's early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine (after its "three mountains", only traces of which remain today) but later renamed it Boston after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the origin of several prominent colonists. The renaming on September 7, 1630 (Old Style), was by Puritan colonists from England who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest for fresh water. Their settlement was initially limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River and connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The peninsula is thought to have been inhabited as early as 4000 BC.
In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's first governor John Winthrop led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced its early history; America's first public school, Boston Latin School, was founded in Boston in 1635.
Boston was the largest town in the Thirteen Colonies until Philadelphia outgrew it in the mid-18th century. Boston's oceanfront location made it a lively port, and the city primarily engaged in shipping and fishing during its colonial days. However, Boston stagnated in the decades prior to the Revolution. By the mid-18th century, New York City and Philadelphia surpassed Boston in wealth. During this period, Boston encountered financial difficulties even as other cities in New England grew rapidly.
Many of the crucial events of the American Revolution occurred in or near Boston. Boston's penchant for mob action along with the colonists' growing lack of faith in either Britain or its Parliament fostered a revolutionary spirit in the city. When the British parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, a Boston mob ravaged the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing the Act, and Thomas Hutchinson, then the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. The British sent two regiments to Boston in 1768 in an attempt to quell the angry colonists. This did not sit well with the colonists. In 1770, during the Boston Massacre, British troops shot into a crowd that had started to violently harass them. The colonists compelled the British to withdraw their troops. The event was widely publicized and fueled a revolutionary movement in America.
In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act. Many of the colonists saw the act as an attempt to force them to accept the taxes established by the Townshend Acts. The act prompted the Boston Tea Party, where a group of angered Bostonian citizens threw an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party was a key event leading up to the revolution, as the British government responded furiously with the Coercive Acts, demanding compensation for the destroyed tea from the Bostonians. This angered the colonists further and led to the American Revolutionary War. The war began in the area surrounding Boston with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Boston itself was besieged for almost a year during the siege of Boston, which began on April 19, 1775. The New England militia impeded the movement of the British Army. Sir William Howe, then the commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, led the British army in the siege. On June 17, the British captured the Charlestown peninsula in Boston, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British army outnumbered the militia stationed there, but it was a pyrrhic victory for the British because their army suffered irreplaceable casualties. It was also a testament to the skill and training of the militia, as their stubborn defence made it difficult for the British to capture Charlestown without suffering further irreplaceable casualties.
Several weeks later, George Washington took over the militia after the Continental Congress established the Continental Army to unify the revolutionary effort. Both sides faced difficulties and supply shortages in the siege, and the fighting was limited to small-scale raids and skirmishes. The narrow Boston Neck, which at that time was only about a hundred feet wide, impeded Washington's ability to invade Boston, and a long stalemate ensued. A young officer, Rufus Putnam, came up with a plan to make portable fortifications out of wood that could be erected on the frozen ground under cover of darkness. Putnam supervised this effort, which successfully installed both the fortifications and dozens of cannon on Dorchester Heights that Henry Knox had laboriously brought through the snow from Fort Ticonderoga. The astonished British awoke the next morning to see a large array of cannons bearing down on them. General Howe is believed to have said that the Americans had done more in one night than his army could have done in six months. The British Army attempted a cannon barrage for two hours, but their shot could not reach the colonists' cannons at such a height. The British gave up, boarded their ships and sailed away. Boston still celebrates "Evacuation Day" each year. Washington was so impressed, he made Rufus Putnam his chief engineer.
In the 1820s, Boston's population grew rapidly, and the city's ethnic composition changed dramatically with the first wave of European immigrants. Irish immigrants dominated the first wave of newcomers during this period, especially following the Great Famine; by 1850, about 35,000 Irish lived in Boston. In the latter half of the 19th century, the city saw increasing numbers of Irish, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians, French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews settling in the city. By the end of the 19th century, Boston's core neighborhoods had become enclaves of ethnically distinct immigrants with their residence yielding lasting cultural change. Italians became the largest inhabitants of the North End, Irish dominated South Boston and Charlestown, and Russian Jews lived in the West End. Irish and Italian immigrants brought with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community, and the Irish have played a major role in Boston politics since the early 20th century; prominent figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, and John F. Fitzgerald.
Between 1631 and 1890, the city tripled its area through land reclamation by filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront. The largest reclamation efforts took place during the 19th century; beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 ha) mill pond that later became the Haymarket Square area. The present-day State House sits atop this lowered Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created significant parts of the South End, the West End, the Financial District, and Chinatown.
Some of the most renowned and highly ranked universities in the world are near Boston. Three universities with a major presence in the city, Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, are just outside of Boston in the cities of Cambridge and Somerville, known as the Brainpower Triangle. Harvard is the nation's oldest institute of higher education and is centered across the Charles River in Cambridge, though the majority of its land holdings and a substantial amount of its educational activities are in Boston. Its business school and athletics facilities are in Boston's Allston neighborhood, and its medical, dental, and public health schools are located in the Longwood area.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) originated in Boston and was long known as "Boston Tech"; it moved across the river to Cambridge in 1916. Tufts University's main campus is north of the city in Somerville and Medford, though it locates its medical and dental schools in Boston's Chinatown at Tufts Medical Center, a 451-bed academic medical institution that is home to a full-service hospital for adults and the Floating Hospital for Children.
In the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, James Russell Lowell, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in Boston. Some consider the Old Corner Bookstore to be the "cradle of American literature", the place where these writers met and where The Atlantic Monthly was first published. In 1852, the Boston Public Library was founded as the first free library in the United States.
Several historic sites relating to the American Revolution period are preserved as part of the Boston National Historical Park because of the city's prominent role. Many are found along the Freedom Trail, which is marked by a red line of bricks embedded in the ground.
Boston has teams in the four major North American professional sports leagues, the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins, plus Major League Soccer, and, as of 2019, has won 39 championships in these leagues.
The Boston Red Sox, a founding member of the American League of Major League Baseball in 1901, play their home games at Fenway Park, near Kenmore Square, in the city's Fenway section. Built in 1912, it is the oldest sports arena or stadium in active use in the United States among the four major professional American sports leagues.
One of the best known sporting events in the city is the Boston Marathon, the 26.2-mile (42.2 km) race which is the world's oldest annual marathon, run on Patriots' Day in April.
Boston Common, near the Financial District and Beacon Hill, is the oldest public park in the United States. Along with the adjacent Boston Public Garden, it is part of the Emerald Necklace, a string of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to encircle the city. The Emerald Necklace includes the Back Bay Fens, Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Pond, Boston's largest body of freshwater, and Franklin Park, the city's largest park and home of the Franklin Park Zoo. Another major park is the Esplanade, along the banks of the Charles River. The Hatch Shell, an outdoor concert venue, is adjacent to the Charles River Esplanade. Other parks are scattered throughout the city, with major parks and beaches near Castle Island, in Charlestown and along the Dorchester, South Boston, and East Boston shorelines.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Boston", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
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