Boston is the capital and largest city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. It is the unofficial capital of the region known as New England, and one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most culturally significant large cities in the United States. Its economy is based on education, health care, finance, and technology.

Boston has many nicknames. The City on a Hill came from the original Massachusetts Bay Colony's governor John Winthrop's goal to create the biblical "City on a Hill." It also refers to Boston's original three hills. Beantown refers to early Bostonian merchants' habit for making baked beans with imported molasses. The Hub is a shortened form of writer Oliver Wendell Holmes's phrase The Hub of the Solar System , now more commonly referred to as The Hub of the Universe . William Tudor, co-founder of the North American Review , christened the city The Athens of America for its great cultural and intellectual influence. Boston is sometimes called Puritan City because its founders were Puritans. The city is also sometimes called The Cradle of Liberty for its role in instigating the American Revolution. Citizens of Boston are called Bostonians .

The city lies at the center of the Boston CMSA (Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area), the seventh largest in the United States. The area encompasses parts of the states of New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The city also lies at the center of Greater Boston , which also includes the cities of Cambridge, Brookline, Quincy, Newton, and many suburban communities farther from Boston.The Greater Boston region is a unique mix of historic culture and modern change. A vibrant and diverse business sector, prestigious colleges and universities, unrivaled hospitals, world-renowned museums, rich history, and close proximity to the beaches of Cape Cod and the White and Green Mountains, are just some of the characteristics that define Greater Boston.

Boston was founded on September 17, 1630, on a peninsula called Shawmut by its original Native American inhabitants. The peninsula was connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, and surrounded by the waters of Massachusetts Bay and the marshes at the mouth of the Charles River. Boston's early European settlers first called the area Trimountain . They later renamed the town for Boston , England, in Lincolnshire, from which several prominent colonists emigrated. A majority of Boston's early citizens were Puritans. Massachusetts Bay Colony's original governor, John Winthrop, gave a famous sermon entitled "a City upon a Hill," which captured the idea that Boston had a special covenant with God. Puritan ethics molded an extremely stable and well-structured society in Boston. For example, shortly after Boston's settlement, Puritans founded America's first school, Boston Latin School (1635), and America's first college, Harvard College (1636). Hard work, moral uprightness, and an emphasis on education remain part of Boston's culture.

During the early 1770s, British attempts to exert control on the thirteen colonies , primarily via taxation, prompted Bostonians to initiate the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre , the Boston Tea Party , and several early battles occurred in or near the city, including the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston . During this period, Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride.

After the Revolution, Boston became one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports ? major exports were rum, fish, salt, and tobacco. During this era, descendants of old Boston families became regarded, in the American popular mind, as the nation's social and cultural elites; they were later dubbed the Boston Brahmins . In 1822, Boston was chartered as a city. By the mid-1800s, the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance. Until the early 1900s, Boston remained one of the nation's largest manufacturing centers, and was notable for its garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries. From the mid-to-late-nineteenth century, Boston flourished culturally ? it became renowned for its rarefied literary culture and lavish artistic patronage. It also became a center of the abolitionist movement.

In the 1820s, Boston's ethnic composition began to change dramatically; groups like the Irish and Italians moved into the city and brought with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community. The Irish played a major role in Boston politics ? prominent figures include the Kennedys and John F. Fitzgerald.

Between 1630 and 1890, the city tripled its physical size by land reclamation, specifically by filling in marshes and mud flats and by filling gaps between wharves along the waterfront.^[1] The most intense reclamation efforts were in the 1800s. Beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 hectares) mill pond that later became the Bullfinch Triangle and Scollay Square (now Government Center). The present-day Statehouse sits atop this shortened Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created the areas now known as the South End, West End, Financial District, and Chinatown. After The Great Boston Fire of 1872 , building rubble was used as landfill along the downtown waterfront. The most dramatic reclamation project was the filling in of the Back Bay in the mid to late 1800s. Almost six hundred acres (240 hectares) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of Beacon Hill were filled in with soil brought in by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. Boston also grew by annexing the adjacent communities of East Boston , Dorchester , South Boston , Brighton, Allston, Hyde Park, and Charlestown , some of which were augmented by landfill reclamation.

By the early and mid-20th century, the city was in decline as factories became old and obsolete, and businesses moved out of the region for cheaper labor elsewhere. Boston responded by initiating various urban renewal projects, including the demolition of the old West End neighborhood and the construction of Government Center. In the 1970s, Boston boomed after thirty years of economic downturn, becoming a leader in the mutual fund industry. Boston already had a reputation for excellent healthcare services. Hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital , Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women's Hospital led the nation in medical innovation and patient care. Universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Boston University attracted many students to the Boston area. Nevertheless, the city experienced conflict starting in 1974 over desegregation busing, which resulted in unrest and violence around public schools throughout the mid-1970s. The unrest served to highlight racial tensions in the city.

Over the past several decades, Boston has experienced a dramatic loss of regional institutions and traditions, which once gave it a very distinct social character. Boston has begun to resemble other parts of the continuous string of Northeast seaboard cities dubbed the BosWash megalopolis. The city faces gentrification issues and exorbitant living costs. Conversely, Boston's streets currently bustle with a vitality not seen since the 1920s; crime and poverty remain very low for an American city. Once again Boston has become a hub of intellectual, technological, and political ideas.

Climate

Boston experiences a continental climate that is very common in New England . The weather in Boston, like much of New England, changes rapidly. It is not uncommon for the city to experience temperature swings of 54 ?F (30 ?C) or more over the course of several days. The summers are typically warm and humid, while the winters are cold and windy. It has been known to snow in October and get quite warm in February. The hottest month is August, with an average high of 80 ?F (27 ?C) and a low of 64 ?F (18 ?C). The coldest month is January, with an average high of 36 ?F (2.2 ?C) and a low of 22 ?F (−5.6 ?C).^[2] Brief periods exceeding 100 ?F in summer and below 0 ?F in winter are not uncommon. The city averages 42 in (1,100 mm) of rainfall a year. It also coincidentally averages 42 in (110 cm) of snowfall a year, though this increases dramatically as one goes inland away from the city.

 

Economy

Boston's colleges and universities have a major impact on the city and region's economy. Not only are they major employers, but they also attract high-tech industries to the city and surrounding region, including computer hardware and software companies as well as biotechnology companies like Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Biogen Idec. Other important industries include financial services, especially mutual funds and insurance. Boston-based Fidelity Investments helped popularize the mutual fund in the 1980s, and has made Boston one of the top financial cities in the United States. The city is also the regional headquarters of major banks such as Bank of America and Sovereign Bank, and a center for venture capital. Boston is also a printing and publishing center. Textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin is headquartered within the city. The city is also a major convention destination with four major convention centers: the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay, the Bayside Expo Center in Dorchester, and the World Trade Center Boston and Boston Convention & Exhibition Center on the South Boston waterfront. Because of its status as a state capital and the regional home of federal agencies, law and government is another major component of the city's economy.

Major companies headquartered within the city include Gillette, owned by Procter & Gamble, and Teradyne, one of the world's leading manufacturers of semiconductors and other electronic equipment. New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. has its headquarters in the city. Other major companies are located outside the city, especially along Route 128. The Port of Boston is the largest and busiest seaport in Massachusetts. It is also a major seaport along the United States east coast as well as a major fishing port.

 

Colleges and universities

Considered by ePodunk to be America's greatest college town amongst cities with 300,000 people or more,^[7] Boston's reputation as the Athens of America derives in large part from the teaching and research activities of over 100 colleges and universities located in its metropolitan area. Boston College was the first institution of higher education established in the city. It was originally located in the South End before moving to Chestnut Hill, on the city's western edge. Its campus, initially envisioned as an Oxford in America , subsequently expanded so that almost half of it is now within the city's political boundaries. Boston University , now the city's second largest employer and one of the largest private universities in the country, was originally established in Vermont before moving to Brookline and later to its present campus in the Back Bay in the 1950s. Harvard University , the nation's oldest institution of higher learning, is based across the Charles River in Cambridge ; however, most of its current land holdings lie in Boston. These holdings include the Arnold Arboretum , and its business and medical schools. Harvard recently announced plans to expand its main campus across the Charles River into Boston's Allston neighborhood, which already hosts some of the university's dormitories and sports facilities. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) operates several major laboratories within the city. Emerson College , a highly regarded arts & communications school, maintains a campus near the Theatre District at the southwest corner of Boston Common . Northeastern University , a large private university with a distinctive work/study program, maintains a campus in the Fenway district. Suffolk University , a small private university known for its law school, maintains a campus on Beacon Hill. The city is also home to a number of conservatories and art schools, including the Massachusetts College of Art , New England Conservatory , Boston Conservatory , and Berklee College of Music .

 

Culture

Boston shares many cultural roots with greater New England , including a dialect of the Eastern New England accent popularly known as Boston English , and a regional cuisine with a large emphasis on seafood and dairy products. Irish Americans are a major influence on Boston's politics and religious institutions and consequently on the rest of Massachusetts. Italian, Chinese, and Hispanic groups also have major contributions to Boston's cultural composition. Boston has its own collection of neologisms known as Boston slang .

Many consider Boston a highly cultured city, perhaps as a result of its intellectual reputation. Much of Boston's culture originates at its universities. The city also has a number of ornate theatres, including the Cutler Majestic Theatre and The Wang Center for the Performing Arts . Renowned performing arts groups include the Boston Ballet , Boston Symphony Orchestra , Boston Pops , Boston Lyric Opera Company , and the Handel and Haydn Society (the oldest choral company in the United States). There are a number of major annual events such as First Night, which occurs during New Year's Eve, and several events during the Fourth of July. These events include the weeklong Harborfest festivities and a Boston Pops concert accompanied by fireworks on the banks of the Charles River .

In contrast to what might be considered the more "refined" aspects of Boston's culture , the city is also one of the birthplaces of the hardcore punk genre of music. Boston musicians have contributed greatly to the hardcore scene over the years (see also Boston hardcore ). Boston also had one of the leading local ska scenes in the ska revival of the mid-1990s with bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Allstonians, and Skavoovie and the Epitones.

External links

 

• City's official website
• Maps of Boston neighborhoods
• Boston guide organized by square
• Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau
• Guide to the local language
• The Boston Historical Society
• About.com for Boston
• Boston Urban Discussion
• Boston travel guide at TripAdvisor
• Travel guide to Boston

• Maps and aerial photos