BOSTON 



845 



BOSTON 



bo~rig_Wharf (today) 



Scene otBoston Tea Party 



OSTON, MASS., popularly called 

 THE HUB, or THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE, is 

 the capital of the state, the county seat of 

 Suffolk County, and the metropolis of New 

 England. Its population in 1910 was 670,585, 

 and in 1915, according to government estimates, 

 was 745,139. It covers an area of 30,295 acres, 

 or about 47.30 square miles. Boston is in 

 the east-central part of Massachusetts, on an 

 arm of Massachusetts Bay. It is 232 miles 

 northeast of New York, and lies about as far 

 north of the equator as Rome, Constantinople 

 and Vladivostok. 



The city has been for generations a com- 

 mercial and manufacturing center, but its chief 

 claim to fame is in its historical and literary 

 associations, its libraries and educational insti- 

 tutions in short, its position, more or less 

 freely acknowledged, as the chief center of 

 culture in the United States. It may be said 

 that the things of the mind and spirit books, 

 pictures, music, practical religion, the love of 

 nature and the healthy sports which bring mind 

 and body and spirit together all these are 

 characteristic interests of Boston, and they are 

 characteristic because they are so vitally inter- 

 esting to so large a portion of the population. 

 Oliver Wendell Holmes makes one of the char- 

 acters- in The Professor at the Breakfast Table 

 say that Boston is full of crooked little streets, 

 but it 



"has opened, and kept open, more turnpikes 

 that lead straight to free thought and free 

 speech and free deeds than any other city of 

 live men or dead men I don't care how broad 

 their streets are, nor how high their steeples." 



General Description. The site of Boston was 

 originally a small peninsula, with its shores 

 deeply indented by inlets and coves, surrounded 

 by marshes, and connected with the mainland 

 by a narrow neck, which was so low that it 

 was often submerged at high tide. The area 

 of the peninsula was 783 acres, but in the 

 nineteenth century this was increased to 1,829 

 acres by filling in the inlets, the tidal marshes 

 and the large area called Back Bay. This 

 district, which now includes the finest resi- 



dential section of the city, was once a part of 

 the wide mouth of the Charles River and 

 formed an inner harbor. The work of filling 

 in required thirty years (1856 to 1886), and 

 whole forests, quarries and hills were used in 

 the process. The narrow neck was gradually 

 widened until it became the widest part of the 

 peninsula. 



Until the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 the most conspicuous features of the landscape 

 were the three hills Beacon, Copp's and Fort. 

 Fort Hill has long since been leveled, but 

 Beacon and Copp's hills, though considerably 



METROPOLITAN DISTRICT 



ll_Waltham City 

 12 Newton City 

 13 Brookline 

 1 4 Needham 

 15 Dedham 

 1 6 Westwood 

 17 Hyde Park 

 18 Milton 

 19 Quincy City 



1 Winthrop 

 2 Revere 

 3 Chelsea City 

 4 Everett City 

 5 Medford City 

 6 Somerville City 

 7 Arlington 

 8 Cambridge City 

 9 Belmont 

 1 Watertown 



cut down, still remain. Beacon Hill, so called 

 because it was used as a signal station, is about 

 110 feet high, and is topped by the State House, 

 whose gilded dome is visible for many miles. 

 The oldest part of the city, the North End, 

 still retains to some degree its eighteenth-cen- 

 tury appearance. The narrow, winding streets 

 seem to follow the cow-paths of early days, 



