History of Boston

File:A new and accurate chart of the harbour of Boston in New England in North America (1782) (tight crop).tif and Boston Harbor in 1782; the dotted features are mudflats and salt marshes that were exposed at low tide and unnavigable even at high tide.]]Prior to European colonization the region around modern-day Boston was inhabited by the Indigenous Massachusett people. Their habitation consisted of small, seasonal communities along what is now the Charles River. The river was accurately named Quinobequin in the Algonquin language of the Massachusett, and they knew it as "the meandering one". The people who lived in the area most likely moved between inland winter homes along the meanders of the Charles and summer communities on the coast. Game was most easily hunted inland during bare-tree seasons while the fishing shoals and shellfish beds on the tidal flats of Boston harbor were more comfortably exploited during the summer months.{{cite web |url=https://www.jphs.org/colonial-era/native-americans-in-jamaica-plain.html |title=Native Americans in Jamaica Plain |last=Marx |first= Walter H. |date=December 29, 1988 |website=Jamaica Plains Historical Society |access-date=September 21, 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171210220202/https://www.jphs.org/colonial-era/native-americans-in-jamaica-plain.html |archive-date=December 10, 2017}}{{cite web |url=http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~hsb41/Changing_Course/native_americans.html |title=The Native Americans' River |website=Harvard College |access-date=September 21, 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150711052312/http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~hsb41/Changing_Course/native_americans.html |archive-date=July 11, 2015}}{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cflNAAAAYAAJ&dq=Quinobequin&pg=PA119 |title=Sixth Annual Report of the State Board of Agriculture |author=Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations |date=January 1891 |location=Providence, RI |publisher=E. L. Freeman & Son |language=en}}

Being surrounded by mudflats and salt marshes, the Shawmut Peninsula itself was more sparsely occupied than its surroundings before the arrival of Europeans. Nevertheless, archeological excavations have revealed one of the oldest fish weirs in New England on Boylston Street. Native people constructed this weir to trap fish as early as 7,000 years before European arrival in the Western Hemisphere.{{cite web |url=https://massachusetttribe.org/chickataubut |title=Chickataubut |date=2018 |website=The Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag |access-date=September 21, 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611090719/http://massachusetttribe.org/chickataubut |archive-date=June 11, 2019}}

The Shawmut Peninsula was originally connected with the mainland to its south by a narrow isthmus, Boston Neck, and was surrounded by Boston Harbor and Back Bay, an estuary of the Charles River.{{cite web |url=http://www.sec.state.ma.us/mhc/mhcexh/exhidx.htm |title=Archaeology of the Central Artery Project: Highway to the Past |website=Commonwealth Museum – Massachusetts Historical Commission |year=2008 |access-date=April 6, 2007}} This neck of land was surrounded by infill beginning in 1803 and expanded to dozens of times its original width by the turn of the 20th century.

The first European to live in what would become Boston was William Blaxton. He was directly responsible for the foundation of Boston by Puritan colonizers in 1630. Blaxton had joined the failed Ferdinando Gorges expedition to America in 1623, which never landed. He eventually arrived later in 1623, as a chaplain to the subsequent expedition of Ferdinando's son, Robert Gorges, aboard the ship Katherine. This expedition landed in Weymouth, Massachusetts, five miles south of what is now Boston.{{Cite book |last=Banks |first=Charles Edward |title=Topographical dictionary of 2885 English emigrants to New England, 1620–1650 |publisher=The Bertram Press |year=1937 |page=96}}

By 1625 the colony at Weymouth had failed and all of his fellow travelers returned to England. Blaxton remained, moving five miles north to a 1 mi² rocky bulge at the end of a swampy isthmus surrounded on all sides by mudflats. Blaxton thus became the first colonist to settle in what would become Boston. He lived at the Western end of the Shawmut Peninsula at the foot of what is now Beacon Hill and was entirely alone for more than five years.{{Cite web |last1=Friends of the Public Garden and Common |last2=Moore |first2=Barbara W. |last3=Weesner |first3=Gail |last4=Lee |first4=Henry |last5=McIntyre |first5=A. McVoy |last6=Webster |first6=Larry |title=History of Boston Common |url=https://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/boston%20Common%20History%20&%20Map_tcm3-30691.pdf |access-date=October 19, 2022 |website=City of Boston}}

File:Boston, 1775bsmall1.png of Boston from 1775 showing the Mount Whoredom peak of Trimountaine just north of Boston Common.]]

In 1629 Isaac Johnson landed with the Puritans in nearby Charlestown, having left Salem for want of food. Blaxton and Johnson had been university contemporaries at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. The rockier highlands of Charlestown lacked easily tappable wells. Knowing of this difficulty, Blaxton wrote an historic letter in September 1630 to Johnson and his group of Puritans that advertised Boston's excellent natural spring, and invited them to settle on his land. This they did over the course of September 1630.{{Cite book |last=Morison |first=Samuel Eliot |title=English University Men Who Emigrated to New England Before 1646: An Advanced Printing of Appendix B to the History of Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1932 |location=Cambridge, MA |page=10}}{{Cite book |last=Morison |first=Samuel Eliot |title=The Founding of Harvard College |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1963 |isbn=978-0-674314504 |location=Cambridge, MA}}

One of Johnson's last official acts as the leader of the Charlestown community before dying on September 30, 1630, was to name the new settlement across the river "Boston." He named the settlement after his hometown in Lincolnshire, from which he, his wife (namesake of the Arbella) and John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather) had emigrated to New England. The name of the English city ultimately derives from that town's patron saint, St. Botolph, in whose church John Cotton served as the rector until his emigration with Johnson. In early sources the Lincolnshire Boston was known as "St. Botolph's town", later contracted to "Boston". Prior to this renaming the settlement on the peninsula had been known as "Shawmut" by Blaxton and "Trimountaine" by the Puritan settlers he had invited.{{Cite DNB |wstitle=Johnson, Isaac |volume=30 |last=Goodwin |first=Gordon |page=15 |short=1}}{{cite book |last=Weston |first=George F. |date=1957 |title=Boston Ways: High, By & Folk |location=Beacon Hill, Boston |publisher=Beacon Press |pages=11–15}}{{cite web |url=http://www.cityofboston.gov/archivesandrecords/guide/town.asp |title=Archives Guide ~ Town of Boston |website=City of Boston |access-date=March 20, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130420050502/https://www.cityofboston.gov/archivesandrecords/guide/town.asp |archive-date=April 20, 2013}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AhX-TaJKC6AC&dq=Botolph&pg=PA4 |last=Kay |first=Jane Holtz |author-link=Jane Holtz Kay |date=2006 |title=Lost Boston |location=Amherst |publisher=University of Massachusetts Press |page=4 |isbn=978-1-558495272}}{{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02709a.htm |last=Thurston |first=H. |chapter=St. Botulph |date=1907 |title=The Catholic Encyclopedia |location=New York |publisher=Robert Appleton Company |access-date= June 17, 2014 |via=New Advent}}

The Puritans settled around the advertised springs on the north side of what is now Beacon Hill (at the time called "Trimountaine" from its three peaks). Blaxton negotiated a grant of {{convert|50|acre|ha}} for himself in the final paperwork with Johnson, amounting to around 10% of the peninsula's total area. However, by 1633 the new town's 4,000 citizens made retention of such a large parcel untenable and Blaxton sold all but six acres back to the Puritans in 1634 for £30 ($5,455 in adjusted USD). Governor Winthrop, Johnson's successor as leader of the settlement, purchased the land through a one-time tax on Boston residents of 6 shillings (around $50 adjusted) per head. This land became a town commons open to public grazing. It now forms the bulk of Boston Common, the largest public park in present-day downtown Boston.{{Cite web |url=https://www.thefreedomtrail.org/trail-sites/boston-common |title=Boston Common |website=The Freedom Trail |access-date=2022-10-19}}{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/topographicalhis02shur/mode/2up |last=Shurtleff |first=Nathaniel B. |author-link=Nathaniel B. Shurtleff |date=1871 |title=A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston |location=Boston |publisher=Noyes, Holmes, & Co.}}{{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.kellscraft.com/bostonillustrated/bostonillustrated01.html |title=Boston Illustrated: Containing Full Descriptions of the City and its Immediate Suburbs, its Public Buildings and Institutions, Business Edifices, Parks and Avenues, Statues, Harbor and Islands, etc., etc. With Numerous Historical Allusions |chapter=I. A Glance At Its History |editor-last=Bacon |editor-first=Edwin M. |editor-link=Edwin Munroe Bacon |date=March 1891 |publisher=Houghton, Mifflin and Company |access-date=October 3, 2012}}

After Johnson's death the Episcopalian Blaxton did not get along with the Puritan leaders of the Boston church, which rapidly became radically fundamentalist in its outlook as it began executing religious dissidents such as Quakers. In 1635 Blaxton moved about {{convert|35|mi|km}} south of Boston to what the Indians then called the Pawtucket River and is today known as the Blackstone River in Cumberland, Rhode Island. He was that region's first European settler, arriving one year before Roger Williams established Providence Plantations.{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924104089440 |last=Horsford |first=Eben Norton |author-link=Eben Norton Horsford |date=1886 |title=The Indian Names of Boston, and their Meaning |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=John Wilson and Son}}

The peninsula on which the Puritans settled was rocky scrubland with few trees. It held three major hills: Copps Hill (now the North End), Fort Hill (later the Financial District), and Trimountaine (Beacon Hill). Trimountaine was the tallest of the three, with its name coming from its three separate peaks. The name was retained for the hill and in later years Trimountaine would be shortened to Tremont, for which Tremont Street was named.

The three peaks of Trimountaine were,

1. Cotton Hill—named for John Cotton, and later renamed Pemberton Hill (now Pemberton Square),
2. Centry or Sentry Hill—the present location of the Massachusetts State House, and
3. Mount Whoredom—also known as Mount Vernon, now the location of Louisburg Square, home to some of the most expensive real estate in the nation.

Over the next two centuries the three hills would be regraded and the geography of the area transformed through landfill and annexation. Beacon Hill or Trimountaine, though shortened between 1807 and 1824, remains a prominent feature of the Boston cityscape. It received its current name from the signal beacon erected on its highest peak to warn outlying towns of danger.{{cite report |url=http://www.sec.state.ma.us/mhc/mhcpdf/townreports/Boston/bos.pdf |title=MHC Reconnaissance Survey Town Report: Boston |publisher=Massachusetts Historical Commission |date=January 1981 |access-date=August 23, 2009}}{{cite web |url=http://www.bostoncharterday.org/ |title=Boston Charter Day |year=2007 |website=Bostoncharterday.org |access-date=September 25, 2008}}{{cite book |last=Whitehill |first=Walter Muir |url=https://archive.org/details/boston00walt |title=Boston: A Topographical History |location=Cambridge, Mass |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=1968 |edition=2nd |pages=3–4, 105–109 |url-access=registration}}

File:Boston quitclaim 19 March 1684.jpg

In 1684, fearing that the rumored revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Charter by King Charles II would come to pass, Boston city fathers sought to buttress their fifty year old claim to the land of the Shawmut Peninsula. To this end in early 1684 they attempted to secure legal ownership of the Shawmut Peninsula from the descendents of Chickatawbut (d. 1633), the Massachusett sachem at the time Blaxton first settled on the peninsula, fifty years prior. Such a descendent was located, a sachem named Josias Wampatuck. There is little evidence that this sachem, his grandfather Chickatawbut or any of their people ever inhabited the peninsula, however the lack of formal legal documents involving Indians during the Blaxton transactions encouraged the creation of a backdated deed (known in English common law as a "quitclaim") which Josias duly signed on March 19, 1684 (see document at right, and its transcription). The charter was revoked as promised later that year on the advice of colonial administrator Edward Randolph.{{cite web |url=https://www.masshist.org/object-of-the-month/objects/indian-deed-for-boston-2006-09-01 |title=Deed for Boston, 19 March 1685 |last=Supple |first=Carrie |date=September 2006 |website=Massachusetts Historical Society}}

File:Harvard_Old_College.jpg]]

Early colonists believed that Boston was a community with a special covenant with God, as captured in Winthrop's "City upon a Hill" metaphor. This influenced every facet of Boston life, and made it imperative that colonists legislate morality as well as enforce marriage, church attendance, education in the Word of God, and the persecution of sinners. One of the first schools in America, Boston Latin School (1635), and the first college in America, Harvard College (1636), were founded shortly after Boston's European settlement.

File:A South-East View of the City of Boston in North America.jpg

Town officials in colonial Boston were chosen annually; positions{{cite book |last=Seybolt |first=Robert Francis |date=1939 |title=The Town Officials of Colonial Boston, 1634–1775 |location=Cambridge, Mass |publisher=Harvard University Press}} included selectman, assay master, culler of staves, Fence Viewer, hayward, hogreeve,{{Cite book |chapter=Hogreeve: "chiefly in New England and south-eastern Canada: a person appointed to impound stray pigs, and to prevent or assess any damage caused by them." |title=Oxford English Dictionary |edition=3rd |date=2010}} measurer of boards, pounder,{{Cite book |chapter=Pounder: "a person whose occupation it is to pound cattle or other livestock." |title=Oxford English Dictionary |edition=3rd |date=2010}} sealer of leather, tithingman, viewer of bricks, water bailiff, and woodcorder.{{Cite book |chapter=Woodcorder: "a town official responsible for stacking cut wood for sale into standard 'cords' piles." |title=Oxford English Dictionary |edition=3rd |date=2010}}

Boston's Puritans looked askance at unorthodox religious ideas, and exiled or punished dissenters. During the Antinomian Controversy of 1636 to 1638 religious dissident leader Anne Hutchinson and Puritan clergyman John Wheelwright were both banished from the colony.{{cite book |last=Battis |first=Emery |title=Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony |url=https://archive.org/details/saintssectariesa0000batt |url-access=registration |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |place=Chapel Hill |year=1962 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/saintssectariesa0000batt/page/149 149–225]}} Baptist minister Obadiah Holmes was imprisoned and publicly whipped in 1651 because of his religion and Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard College during the 1640s–50s, was persecuted for espousing Baptist beliefs. By 1679, Boston Baptists were bold enough to open their own meetinghouse, which was promptly closed by colonial authorities. Expansion and innovation in practice and worship characterized the early Baptists despite the restrictions on their religious liberty.{{cite journal |title=Swimming Against the Current: The Strange Therapy of Persecution; The Price Paid for Religious Liberty by Some Early Massachusetts Baptists and the First Baptist Church of Boston |last=Ryder |first=Milton P. |date=March 2002 |journal=American Baptist Quarterly |volume=21 |number=1 |pages=11–27}} On June 1, 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged on Boston Common for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from being in the colony.

In 1652 during the Commonwealth of England, the Massachusetts General Court authorized Boston silversmith John Hull to produce coinage. In 1661 after Charles II came to the throne, the English government considered the Boston mint to be treasonous. However, the mint continued operations until 1682. The coinage was a contributing factor to the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter in 1684.{{cite journal |last1=Barth |first1=Jonathan Edward |date=2014 |title="A Peculiar Stampe of Our Owne": The Massachusetts Mint and the Battle over Sovereignty, 1652–1691 |journal=The New England Quarterly |volume=87 |issue=3 |page=514 |doi=10.1162/TNEQ_a_00396 |jstor=43285101 |s2cid=57571000 |hdl=2286/R.I.26592 |hdl-access=free}}

The Boston Post Road connected the city to New York and the major settlements in Central and Western Massachusetts. The lower route ran near present-day U.S. 1 via Providence, Rhode Island. The upper route, laid out in 1673, left via Boston Neck and followed present-day U.S. Route 20 until around Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. It continued through Worcester, Springfield, and New Haven, Connecticut.

File:AndrosaPrisonerInBoston.png]]

From 1686 until 1689, Massachusetts and surrounding colonies were united. This larger province, known as the Dominion of New England, was governed by Sir Edmund Andros, an appointee of King James II. Andros, who supported the Church of England in a largely Puritan city, grew increasingly unpopular. On April 18, 1689, he was overthrown due to a brief revolt. The Dominion was not reestablished.

Boston's first circulating library was established in 1756 which included 1,200 volumes of books. During this period, many wealthy persons amassed large libraries and loaned books within their social circles.{{Cite book |last=Taylor |first=Dale |url=http://archive.org/details/writersguidetoev0000tayl |title=The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Colonial America |publisher=Writer's Digest Books |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-89879-772-5 |location=Cincinnati, Ohio |page=217}}

A particularly virulent sequence of six smallpox outbreaks took place from 1636 to 1698. In 1721–1722, the most severe epidemic occurred, killing 844 people. Out of a population of 10,500, 5889 caught the disease, 844 (14%) died, and at least 900 fled the city, thereby spreading the virus.{{cite book |editor-last=Campbell |editor-first=Ballard C. |editor-link=Ballard C. Campbell |date=2008 |title=American Disasters: 201 Calamities That Shook the Nation |location=New York City |publisher=Campbell Books |pages=21–22 |isbn=978-0-816066032}} Colonists tried to prevent the spread of smallpox by isolation. For the first time in America, inoculation was tried; it causes a mild form of the disease. Inoculation was itself very controversial because of the threat that the procedure itself could be fatal to 2% of those who were treated, or otherwise spread the disease. It was introduced by Zabdiel Boylston and Cotton Mather.{{cite book |last=Winslow |first=Ola Elizabeth |author-link=Ola Elizabeth Winslow |date=1974 |title=A Destroying Angel: The Conquest of Smallpox in Colonial Boston |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |isbn=978-0-395184530}}

In 1755, Boston endured the largest earthquake ever to hit the Northeastern United States, (estimated at 6.0 to 6.3 on the Richter magnitude scale), called the Cape Ann earthquake. There was some damage to buildings, but no deaths.{{cite journal |url=https://archive.org/details/1755-cape-ann-earthquake/mode/2up |title=The Cape Ann earthquake of November 1755: A historical perspective on its 250th anniversary |last=Ebel |first=John E. |date=2009 |journal=Seismological Research Letters |volume=77 |number=1 |pages=74–86}}{{cite book |editor-last=Campbell |editor-first=Ballard C. |editor-link=Ballard C. Campbell |date=2008 |title=American Disasters: 201 Calamities That Shook the Nation |location=New York City |publisher=Campbell Books |pages=28–30 |isbn=978-0-816066032}}

The first "Great Fire" of Boston destroyed 349 buildings on March 20, 1760. It was one of many significant fires fought by the Boston Fire Department.

{{See also|American Revolution|American Revolutionary War}}

File:Boston, 1775bsmall1.png's tactical evaluation of Boston in 1775]]

Boston had taken an active role in the protests against the Stamp Act of 1765. Its merchants avoided the customs duties which angered London officials and led to a crackdown on smuggling. Governor Thomas Pownall (1757 to 1760) tried to be conciliatory, but his replacement Governor Francis Bernard 1760–1769) was a hard-liner who wanted to stamp out the opposition voices that were growing louder and louder in town meetings and pamphlets. Historian Pauline Maier says that his letters to London greatly influenced officials there, but they "distorted" reality. "His misguided conviction that the 'faction' had espoused violence as its primary method of opposition, for example, kept him from recognizing the radicals' peace-keeping efforts.... Equally dangerous, Bernard's elaborate accounts were sometimes built on insubstantial evidence."{{cite book |first=Pauline |last=Maier |title=From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-aQuIbSA19YC&pg=PA151 |year=1973 |publisher=W.W. Norton |pages=151–152 |isbn=978-0-393308259}} Warden argues that Bernard was careful not to explicitly ask London for troops, but his exaggerated accounts strongly suggested they were needed. In the fall of 1767 he warned about a possible insurrection in Boston any day, and his exaggerated report of one disturbance in 1768, "certainly had given Lord Hillsboro the impression that troops were the only way to enforce obedience in the town." Warden notes that other key British officials in Boston wrote London with the "same strain of hysteria."{{cite book |last=Warden |first=G. B. |date=1970 |title=Boston 1689–1776 |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Little, Brown & Company |pages=213–214}} Four thousand British Army troops arrived in Boston in October 1768 as a massive show of force; tensions escalated.

File:Boston area colonial map.jpg during the Siege of Boston. From "Marshall's Life of Washington" (1806).]]

By the late 1760s, Patriot colonists focused on the rights of Englishmen that they claimed to hold, especially the principle of "no taxation without representation" as articulated by John Rowe, James Otis Sr., Samuel Adams and other Boston firebrands. Boston played a major role in the American Revolution, including the American Revolutionary War. On March 5, 1770, nine soldiers of the 29th Regiment of Foot opened fire at a crowd of Bostonians which was verbally and physically harassing them; five people were killed in what came to be known as the Boston Massacre, dramatically escalating tensions.{{cite book |last=Zobel |first=Hiller B. |author-link=Hiller B. Zobel |date=1970 |title=The Boston Massacre |location=New York City |publisher=W.W. Norton |isbn=978-0-393053760}} The British Parliament, meanwhile, continued to insist on its right to tax the Britain's North American colonies and finally came up with a small tax on tea. Up and down the Thirteen Colonies, American colonists prevented merchants from selling the tea, but a shipment arrived in Boston Harbor. On December 16, 1773, members of the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Native Americans, dumped 342 chests of tea in the harbor in the Boston Tea Party.{{cite web |url=http://www.masshist.org/revolution/teaparty.php |title=Coming of the American Revolution 1764 to 1776: The Boston Tea Party |website=Massachusetts Historical Society |access-date=December 28, 2013}} The Sons of Liberty decided to take action to defy Britain's new tax on tea, but the British government retaliated with a series of punitive laws, closing down the Port of Boston and stripping Massachusetts of its self-government.{{cite book |last=Roza |first=Greg |title=Analyzing the Boston Tea Party: Establishing cause and effect relationships |date=2006 |publisher=The Rosen Group |location=New York}} The other colonies rallied in solidarity behind Massachusetts, setting up the First Continental Congress, while arming and training militia units. The British sent more troops to Boston, and made its commander General Thomas Gage the governor. Gage believed the Patriots were hiding munitions in the town of Concord, and he sent troops to capture them. Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott made their famous midnight rides to alert the Minutemen in the surrounding towns, who fought the resulting Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. It was the first battle of the American Revolution.

Militia units across New England rallied to the defense of Boston, and Congress sent in General George Washington to take command. The British were trapped in the city, and suffered very heavy losses in their victory at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Washington brought in artillery and forced the British out as the patriots took full control of Boston. The American victory on March 17, 1776, is celebrated as Evacuation Day. The city has preserved and celebrated its revolutionary past, from the harboring of the {{USS|Constitution}} to the many famous sites along the Freedom Trail.

{{Historical populations |type=USA

|1722 |10567

|1765 |15520

|1790 |18320

|1800 |24937

|1810 |33787

|1820 |43298

|1830 |61392

|1840 |93383

|1850 |136881

|1860 |177840

|1870 |250526

|1880 |362839

|1890 |448477

|1900 |560892

|1910 |670585

|1920 |748060

|1930 |781188

|1940 |770816

|1950 |801444

|1960 |697197

|1970 |641071

|1980 |562994

|1990 |574283

|2000 |589141

|2010 |617594

|2011 |625087

|footnote=* = population estimate. {{Historical populations/Massachusetts municipalities references}}{{cite journal |title=1950 Census of Population |volume=1: Number of Inhabitants |at=Section 6, Pages 21–7 through 21-09, Massachusetts Table 4. Population of Urban Places of 10,000 or more from Earliest Census to 1920 |publisher=Bureau of the Census |access-date=July 12, 2011 |year=1952 |url=http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/23761117v1ch06.pdf}}{{cite web |url=https://www.census.gov/popest/data/cities/totals/2011/tables/SUB-EST2011-03-25.csv |title=Table 3. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places in Massachusetts: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2011 (SUB-EST2011-03-25) |website=U.S. Census Bureau |access-date=January 18, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130309152534/http://www.census.gov/popest/data/cities/totals/2011/tables/SUB-EST2011-03-25.csv |archive-date=March 9, 2013}}

}}

Boston was transformed from a relatively small and economically stagnant town in 1780 to a bustling seaport and cosmopolitan center with a large and highly mobile population by 1800. It had become one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports, exporting products like rum, fish, salt and tobacco.{{cite web |url=http://www.universityarchives.com/browse.asp?sn=39159-001&show=True&thumbnails=True |title=Colonial Boston |website=University Archives |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090207181331/http://www.universityarchives.com/browse.asp?sn=39159-001&show=True&thumbnails=True |archive-date=February 7, 2009}} The upheaval of the American Revolution, and the British naval blockade that shut down its economy, had caused a majority of the population to flee the city. From a base of 10,000 in 1780, the population approached 25,000 by 1800. The abolition of slavery in the state in 1783 gave blacks greater physical mobility, but their social mobility was slow.{{cite journal |title=A Change 'as Remarkable as the Revolution Itself': Boston's Demographics, 1780–1800 |last=Carr |first=Jacqueline Barbara |date=December 2000 |journal=New England Quarterly |volume=73 |number=4 |pages=583–602}}

Boston was part of the New England corner of triangular trade, receiving sugar from the Caribbean and refining it into rum and molasses, partly for export to Europe. Later, confectionery manufacturing would become another refined product made from similar raw materials. Related companies with facilities in Boston included the Boston Sugar Refinery (inventors of granulated sugar), Domino Sugar, the Purity Distilling Company, Necco, Schrafft's, Squirrel Brands (as the predecessor Austin T. Merrill Company of Roxbury{{Cite web |url=http://www.cambridgehistory.org/discover/candy/squirrel.html |title=Candy Land: The History of Candy Making in Cambridge, MA - Squirrel Brand Nuts |last=Moravek |first=Natalie |date=2011 |website=Cambridge Historical Society |access-date=July 10, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150221032415/http://www.cambridgehistory.org/discover/candy/squirrel.html |archive-date=February 21, 2015}}) American Nut and Chocolate (1927){{Cite web |url=https://amnut.com/our-history |title=Our History |website=American Nut & Chocolate Co.}} This legacy continued into the 20th century; by 1950, there were 140 candy companies in Boston. Others were located in and some moved to nearby Cambridge. The Boston Fruit Company began importing tropical fruit from the Caribbean in 1885; it is a predecessor of United Fruit Company and Chiquita Brands International.

Boston had the status of a town; it was chartered as a city in 1822.{{cite web |url=http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3865.html |title=History of Boston, Massachusetts |website=US History.com}} The second mayor was Josiah Quincy III, who undertook infrastructure improvements in roads and sewers, and organized the city's dock area around the newly erected Faneuil Hall Marketplace, popularly known as Quincy Market. By the mid-19th century Boston was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation, noted for its garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries. Manufacturing overtook international trade to dominate the local economy. A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region made for easy shipment of goods and allowed for a proliferation of mills and factories. The building of the Middlesex Canal extended this small river network to the larger Merrimack River and its mills, including the Lowell mills and mills on the Nashua River in New Hampshire. By the 1850s, an even denser network of railroads (see also List of railroad lines in Massachusetts) facilitated the region's industry and commerce. For example, in 1851, Eben Jordan and Benjamin L. Marsh opened the Jordan Marsh Department store in downtown Boston. Thirty years later William Filene opened his own department store across the street, called Filene's.

Several turnpikes were constructed between cities to aid transportation, especially of cattle and sheep to markets. A major east–west route, the Worcester Turnpike (now Massachusetts Route 9), was constructed in 1810. Others included the Newburyport Turnpike (now Route 1) and the Salem Lawrence Turnpike (now Route 114).

Boston's "Brahmin elite" developed a particular semi-aristocratic value system by the 1840s—cultivated, urbane, and dignified, the ideal Brahmin was the very essence of enlightened aristocracy.{{cite book |last=Story |first=Ronald |date=1985 |title=Harvard and the Boston Upper Class: The Forging of an Aristocracy, 1800–1970 |location=Irvington, NY |publisher=Wesleyan University Press}}{{cite journal |title=Ethics and Enterprise: The Values of a Boston Elite, 1800–1860 |last=Goodman |first=Paul |date=September 1966 |journal=American Quarterly |volume=18 |number=3 |pages=437–451 |doi=10.2307/2710847|jstor=2710847 }} He was not only wealthy, but displayed suitable personal virtues and character traits. The term was coined in 1861 by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Holmes entitled the first chapter of his 1861 novel Elsie Venner "The Brahmin caste of New England"; he had long been writing about the group without using the term "Brahmin." The Brahmin had high expectations to meet: to cultivate the arts, support charities such as hospitals and colleges, and assume the role of community leader. Although the ideal called on him to transcend commonplace business values, in practice many found the thrill of economic success quite attractive. The Brahmins warned each other against "avarice" and insisted upon "personal responsibility." Scandal and divorce were unacceptable. The total system was buttressed by the strong extended family ties present in Boston society. Young men attended the same prep schools and colleges,{{cite journal |title=Harvard Students, The Boston Elite, And The New England Preparatory System, 1800–1870 |last=Story |first=Ronald |date=Fall 1975 |journal=History of Education Quarterly |volume=15 |number=3 |pages=281–298 |doi=10.2307/367846|jstor=367846 }} and had their own way of talking. Heirs married heiresses. Family not only served as an economic asset, but also as a means of moral restraint. Most belonged to the Unitarian or Episcopal churches, although some were Congregationalists or Methodists. Politically, they were successively Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans.

A poem about Boston, attributed to various people, describes the city thus: "And here's to good old Boston / The land of the bean and the cod / Where Lowells talk only to Cabots / and Cabots talk only to God." While wealthy colonial families like the Lowells and Cabots (often called the Boston Brahmins) ruled the city, the 1840s brought waves of new immigrants from Europe. These included large numbers of Irish and Italians, giving the city a large Roman Catholic population.

File:The_Liberator_masthead_detail_1861.jpg of The Liberator]]

In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator, an abolitionist newsletter, in Boston. It advocated "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves" in the United States, and established Boston as the center of the abolitionist movement. While living in Boston, David Walker published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.{{Cite web |last=Walker |first=David |date=1829 |title="Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829". |url=https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/menu.html}} After the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Boston became a bastion of abolitionist thought. Attempts by slave-catchers to arrest fugitive slaves often proved futile, which included the notable case of Anthony Burns and Kevin McLaughlin. After the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854, Boston also became the hub of efforts to send anti-slavery New Englanders to settle in Kansas Territory through the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company.

The earliest Irish settlers began arriving in the early 18th century. Initially, they were indentured servants who came to work in Boston and New England for five to seven years, before gaining their independence. They were mainly individuals and families, and they were forced to hide their religious roots since Catholicism was banned in the Bay Colony. Then in 1718, congregations of Presbyterians from Ulster in the north of Ireland began arriving in Boston Harbor. They were referred to as Ulster Irish but later were referred to as Scots-Irish because many of them had roots in Scotland. The Puritan leaders initially sent the Ulster Irish to the fringes of the Bay Colony, where they settled places like Belfast, Maine, Londonderry and Derry, New Hampshire, and Worcester, Massachusetts. But by 1729 they were permitted to set up a church in downtown Boston.{{cite book |url=http://globepequot.com/irish_boston_2nd-9780762788347 |last=Quinlin |first=Michael |date=2013 |title=Irish Boston: A Lively Look at Boston's Colorful Irish History |publisher=Globe Pequot Press |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130813113657/http://globepequot.com/irish_boston_2nd-9780762788347 |archive-date=August 13, 2013}}

File:Irish Famine Memorial, Washington St, Boston. - panoramio (2).jpg]]

Throughout the 19th century, Boston became a haven for Irish Catholic immigrants, especially following the Great Famine of the late 1840s. Their arrival transformed Boston from a singular, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant city to one that has progressively become more diverse. The Yankees hired Irish as workers and servants, but there was little social interaction. In the 1850s, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant movement was directed against the Irish, called the Know Nothing Party. But in the 1860s, many Irish immigrants joined the Union ranks to fight in the American Civil War, and that display of patriotism and valor began to soften the harsh sentiments of Yankees about the Irish.{{cite book |last=O'Connor |first=Thomas H. |author-link=Thomas H. O'Connor |date=1995 |title=The Boston Irish: A Political History |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Northeastern University Press |at=Chapter 3}} Nonetheless, as in New York City, on July 14, 1863, a draft riot attempting to raid Union armories broke out among Irish Catholics in the North End, resulting in approximately 8 to 14 deaths.{{cite book |last=Tager |first=Jack |year=2001 |title=Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence |publisher=Northeastern University Press |place=Boston |pages=[https://archive.org/details/bostonriotsthree00tage/page/135 135–139] |isbn=978-1-555534615 |url=https://archive.org/details/bostonriotsthree00tage}} In the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln received only 9,727 votes out of 20,371 cast in Boston (or 48 percent) while receiving 63 percent of the vote statewide, and Boston Irish Catholics mostly voted against Lincoln.{{cite book |last=Tager |first=Jack |year=2001 |title=Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence |publisher=Northeastern University Press |place=Boston |page=[https://archive.org/details/bostonriotsthree00tage/page/134 134] |isbn=978-1-555534615|url=https://archive.org/details/bostonriotsthree00tage}}

Even to the present day, Boston still commands the largest percentage of Irish-descended people of any city in the United States. With an expanding population, group loyalty, and block by block political organization, the Irish took political control of the city, leaving the Yankees in charge of finance, business and higher education. The Irish left their mark on the region in a number of ways: in still heavily Irish neighborhoods such as Charlestown and South Boston; in the name of the local basketball team, the Boston Celtics; in the dominant Irish-American political family, the Kennedys; in a large number of prominent local politicians, such as James Michael Curley, in the establishment of Catholic Boston College as a rival to Harvard University, and in underworld figures, such as Whitey Bulger.{{cite book |last=O'Connor |first=Thomas H. |date=1995 |title=The Boston Irish: A Political History |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Northeastern University Press |at=Chapter 9}}

The Great Boston Fire of 1872 started at the corner of Summer Street and Kingston Street on November 9. In two days the conflagration destroyed about 65 acres (260,000 m²) of the city, including 776 buildings in the financial district, totaling $60 million in damage.

File:Looking_northerly_in_Scollay_Square_Section_7_(19185823151).jpg

File:19th_century_idealized_illustration_of_Copley_Square,_Boston.jpg from an 1890s clothing catalog, prominently featuring H. H. Richardson's Trinity Church]]

From the mid-to-late-19th century, the Boston Brahmins flourished culturally—they became renowned for its rarefied literary culture and lavish artistic patronage. Literary residents included, among many others, writers Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., James Russell Lowell, and Julia Ward Howe, as well as historians John Lothrop Motley, John Gorham Palfrey, George Bancroft, William Hickling Prescott, Francis Parkman, Henry Adams, James Ford Rhodes, Edward Channing and Samuel Eliot Morison. Also there were theologians and philosophers such as William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mary Baker Eddy. When Bret Harte visited Howells, he remarked that in Boston "it was impossible to fire a revolver without bringing down the author of a two-volume work." Boston had many great publishers and magazines, such as The Atlantic Monthly (founded 1857) and the publishers Little, Brown and Company, Houghton Mifflin, and Harvard University Press.{{cite book |last=Brooks |first=Van Wyck |author-link=Van Wyck Brooks |date=1955 |title=The Flowering of New England |location=New York |publisher=Dutton}}

Higher education became increasingly important, principally at Harvard (based across the river in Cambridge), but also at other institutions. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) opened in the city in 1865. The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opened in Boston on November 1, 1848. The Jesuits opened Boston College in 1863; Emerson College opened in 1880, and Simmons College for women in 1899.

The Brahmins were the foremost authors and audiences of high culture, despite being a minority. Emerging Irish, Jewish, and Italian cultures made little to no impact on the elite.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y6ZL0-hg2owC&pg=PA286 |last=Baltzell |first=E. Digby |author-link=E. Digby Baltzell |title=Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia |year=1979 |publisher=Transaction Publishers |pages=286, 430 |isbn=978-1-412832571}}

To please a different audience, the first vaudeville theater opened on February 28, 1883, in Boston. The last one, the Old Howard in Scollay Square, which had evolved from opera to vaudeville to burlesque, closed in 1953.

The public Boston Museum of Natural History (founded in 1830 and renamed the New England Museum of Natural History in 1864, and the Boston Museum of Science in the mid-twentieth century), was run by the Boston Society of Natural History. It served the function of public and professional education in natural history, including ocean life, geology and mineralogy. Around the end of the 19th century a scientific library and children's rooms were added. In addition, the private Warren Museum of Natural History at Boston operated 1858–1906. It was acquired by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1906.{{cite book |last=DiMaggio |first=Paul |editor1-last=Mukerji |editor1-first=Chandra |editor2-last=Schudson |editor2-first=Michael |name-list-style=amp |date=1991 |title=Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies |chapter=Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston |location=Berkeley, CA |publisher=University of California Press |pages=374–}}

File:Pleasant_Street_Incline_junction.jpg is the oldest subway tunnel in North America]]

As the population increased rapidly, Boston-area streetcar lines facilitated the creation of a profusion of streetcar suburbs. Middle-class businessmen, office workers and professionals lived in the suburbs and commuted into the city by subway.{{cite book |last=Warner |first=Sam Bass |author-link=Sam Bass Warner |date=1978 |title=Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900 |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Harvard University Press}} Downtown congestion worsened, prompting the opening of the first subway in North America on September 1, 1897, the Tremont Street Subway. Between 1897 and 1912, subterranean rail links were built to Cambridge and East Boston, and elevated and underground lines expanded into other neighborhoods from downtown. Today, the regional passenger rail and bus network has been consolidated into the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Two union stations, North Station and South Station were constructed to consolidate downtown railroad terminals.

From the late 19th century until the mid-20th century, the phrase "Banned in Boston" was used to describe a literary work, motion picture, or play prohibited from distribution or exhibition. During this time, Boston city officials took it upon themselves to "ban" anything that they found to be salacious, immoral, or offensive: theatrical shows were run out of town, books confiscated, and motion pictures were prevented from being shown—sometimes stopped in mid-showing after an official had "seen enough". The phrase "banned in Boston" came to suggest something sexy and lurid; some distributors advertised that their products had been banned in Boston, when in fact they had not.

File:Boston-view-1841-Havell.jpeg|alt=Painting with a body of water with sailing ships in the foreground and a city in the background|Downtown Boston from Dorchester Heights in 1841

File:TremontSt ca1843 Boston byPhilipHarry MFABoston.png|Tremont Street in 1843

File:Harper's_weekly_(1865)_(14578749118).jpg|The Old City Hall was home to the Boston city council from 1865 to 1969.

File:General view of Boston, by J. J. Hawes.jpg|View of Boston by J. J. Hawes, {{circa|1860s–1880s}}

File:Haymarket Square.JPG|alt=Colored print image of a city square in the 1900s|Haymarket Square in 1909

File:Twentieth century Boston (2674949807).jpg

File:1917 Boston Index Card Co byLewisHine 1.jpg.]]

In 1900, Julia Harrington Duff (1850–1932) became the first woman from the Irish Catholic community to be elected to the Boston School Committee. Extending her role as teacher and mother she became an ethnic spokesperson as she confronted the power of the Yankee Protestant men of the Public School Association. She worked to replace 37-year-old textbooks, to protect the claims of local Boston women for career opportunities in the school system, and to propose a degree-granting teachers college. In 1905, the 25 member committee was reduced to five, which blocked women's opportunities for direct participation in school policies.{{cite journal |url=https://www.westfield.ma.edu/historical-journal/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Kaufman-combined-summer-90.pdf |title=Julia Harrington Duff: An Irish Woman Confronts the Boston Power Structure, 1900–1905 |last=Kaufman |first= Polly Welts |date=1990 |journal=Historical Journal of Massachusetts |volume=18 |number=2 |pages=113–137}}

Around the start of the 20th century, caught up in the automobile revolution, Boston was home to the Porter Motor Company,{{Cite web |url=http://www.stanleysteameronline.com/Literature,%20Porter%20Motor%20Co.htm |title=Porter Motor Co. |website=Stanley Steamer Online |access-date=March 9, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081204234725/http://www.stanleysteameronline.com/Literature,%20Porter%20Motor%20Co.htm |archive-date=December 4, 2008 |url-status=dead}} headquartered in the Tremont Building, 73 Tremont Street.{{cite book |last=Clymer |first=Floyd |author-link=Floyd Clymer |date=1950 |title=Treasury of Early American Automobiles, 1877–1925 |location=New York |publisher=Bonanza Books |page=13}}

On January 15, 1919, the Great Molasses Flood occurred in the North End. Twenty-one people were killed and 150 injured as an immense wave of molasses, which rushed through the streets at an estimated {{convert|35|mph}}, crushed and asphyxiated many of the victims to death. It took over six months to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes. Boston Harbor ran brown until summer.{{cite journal |url=http://edp.org/molpark.htm |last=Park |first=Edwards |title=Without Warning, Molasses in January Surged Over Boston |journal=Smithsonian |date=November 1983 |volume=14 |issue=8 |pages=213–230 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |via=Eric Postpischil |access-date=December 16, 2006}}

During the summer of 1919, over 1,100 members of the Boston Police Department went on strike. Boston fell prey to several riots as there were minimal law officers to maintain order in the city. Calvin Coolidge, then governor of Massachusetts, garnered national fame for quelling violence by almost entirely replacing the police force. The 1919 Boston Police Strike would ultimately set precedent for police unionization across the country.

The most infamous swindler was from Boston in the 1920s. "Charles Ponzi, a dapper, five-foot-two-inch rogue who in 1920 raked in an estimated $15 million in eight months by persuading tens of thousands of Bostonians that he had unlocked the secret to easy wealth. Ponzi's meteoric success at swindling was so remarkable that his name became attached to the method he employed," the "Ponzi scheme."{{cite web |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-ponzi-we-trust-64016168 |title=In Ponzi We Trust |last=Darby |first=Mary |date=December 1998 |website=Smithsonian}} "Charles named his concern the Securities Exchange Company"{{Cite web |url=https://www.acfe.com/article.aspx?id=4294968365 |title=Fraud Resources |website=Association of Certified Fraud Examiners}} on 27 School Street in Boston, Massachusetts.{{Cite web |url=https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/enf-actions-ponzi.shtml |title=SEC Enforcement Actions Against Ponzi Schemes |date=July 11, 2019 |website=U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission}}

On August 23, 1927, Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were sent to the electric chair after a seven-year trial in Boston. Their execution sparked riots in London, Paris and Germany, and helped to reinforce the image of Boston as a hotbed of intolerance and discipline.

File:Old_John_Hancock_Tower_and_the_Boston_skyline_in_summer_of_1956.jpg and Boston skyline, as it appeared in 1956]]

File:Boston, Massachusetts 1955 Yellow Book.jpg The I-695 Inner Belt shown on this map was never built. I-95 is shown here approaching the urban core from the southwest, but it was never built beyond the outer loop shown on this map (which was built as Route 128 and which I-95 was later re-routed over).

In 1934, the Sumner Tunnel created the first direct road connection under Boston Harbor, between the North End and East Boston.

In May 1938, the first public housing project, Old Harbor Village was opened in South Boston.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D855PFwzHzoC |last=Vale |first=Lawrence J. |date=2000 |title=From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Harvard University Press}}

By 1950, Boston was slumping. Few major buildings were being built anywhere in the city. Factories were closing and moving their operations south, where labor was cheaper. The assets Boston had—excellent banks, hospitals, universities and technical know-how—were minimal parts of the U.S. economy. To combat this downturn, Boston's politicians enacted urban renewal policies, which resulted in the demolition of several neighborhoods, including the New York Streets district in the South End, the old West End, a largely Jewish and Italian neighborhood, and Scollay Square. In their places went a new headquarters for the Boston Herald, the Charles River Park apartment complex, additions to Massachusetts General Hospital, and Government Center. These projects displaced thousands, closed hundreds of businesses, and provoked a furious backlash, which in turn ensured the survival of many historic neighborhoods.

In 1948, William F. Callahan had published the Master Highway Plan for Metropolitan Boston. Parts of the financial district, Chinatown, and the North End were demolished to make way for construction. By 1956, the northern part of the Central Artery had been constructed, but strong local opposition resulted in the southern downtown portion being built underground. The Dewey Square Tunnel connected downtown to the Southeast Expressway. In 1961, the Callahan Tunnel opened, paralleling the older Sumner Tunnel.

By 1965, the first Massachusetts Turnpike Extension was completed from Route 128 to near South Station. The proposed Inner Belt in Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, and Somerville was canceled due to public outcry. In 1971, public protest canceled the routing of I-95 into downtown Boston. Demolition had already begun along the Southwest Corridor, which was instead used to re-route the Orange Line and Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.

On November 28, 1942, Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub was the site of the Cocoanut Grove fire, the deadliest nightclub fire in United States history, killing 492 people and injuring hundreds more.

During the war years, antisemitic violence escalated in Boston. Gangs largely composed of Irish Catholic youths desecrated Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, vandalized Jewish stores and homes, and physically assaulted Jews in the streets. The Boston police force, which was made up largely of Irish Catholics, seldom intervened.{{cite journal |last=Norwood |first=Stephen H. |year=2003 |title=Marauding Youth and the Christian Front: Antisemitic Violence in Boston and New York during World War II |journal=American Jewish History |volume=91 |issue=2 |pages=233–267 |doi=10.1353/ajh.2004.0055 |s2cid=162237834}}

In 1950, the Great Brink's Robbery was committed; at the time it was the largest bank robbery in the United States, with the thieves stealing $2.775 million.

In 1953, the Columbia Point public housing projects were completed on the Dorchester peninsula. There were 1,502 units in the development on {{convert|50|acre|ha}} of land. In 1966, the Columbia Point Health Center opened and was the first community health center in the country.

On January 15, 1961, American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell and a fellow Nazi Party member attempted to picket the local premiere of the film Exodus at the Saxon Theatre on Tremont Street in Downtown Boston while staying at the Hotel Touraine across the street. After Boston Mayor John F. Collins (1960–1968) declined to deny Rockwell the right to picket, members of the local Jewish Defense League chapter organized a counterdemonstration of 2,000 Jewish protestors in response on the corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets on the day of the premiere, which forced police to converge on the theater and force Rockwell into a police cruiser that took him to Logan International Airport where Rockwell was then boarded onto a flight to Washington, DC.{{cite book |last1=Levine |first1=Hillel |last2=Harmon |first2=Lawrence |title=The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions |year=1992 |place=New York |publisher=Free Press |pages=260–266 |isbn=978-0-029138656}}

Between June 14, 1962, and January 4, 1964, as many as thirteen single women between the ages of 19 and 85 were murdered in Boston by the infamous Boston Strangler. (The actual number remains in dispute.)

In March 1965, an investigative study of property tax assessment practices published by the National Tax Association of 13,769 properties sold within the City of Boston from January 1, 1960, to March 31, 1964, found that the assessed values in the neighborhood of Roxbury in 1962 were at 68 percent of market values while the assessed values in West Roxbury were at 41 percent of market values, and the researchers could not find a nonracial explanation for the difference.{{cite journal |last1=Oldman |first1=Oliver |last2=Aaron |first2=Henry |title=Assessment-Sales Ratios Under the Boston Property Tax |year=1965 |journal=National Tax Journal |publisher=National Tax Association |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=36–49 |doi=10.1086/NTJ41791421 |jstor=41791421 |s2cid=232213907}}{{cite book |last=Rothstein |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Rothstein |title=The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America |title-link=The Color of Law |year=2017 |place=New York |publisher=Liveright Publishing Corporation |pages=170–171 |isbn=978-1-631494536}} In 1963, Boston Mayor John F. Collins and Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) executive Edward J. Logue organized a consortium of savings banks, cooperatives, and federal and state savings and loan associations in the city called the Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group (B-BURG) that would reverse redline parts of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan along Blue Hill Avenue.{{cite book |last1=Levine |first1=Hillel |last2=Harmon |first2=Lawrence |title=The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions |year=1992 |place=New York |publisher=Free Press |pages=167–299 |isbn=978-0-029138656}} Despite the passage of legislation by the 156th Massachusetts General Court banning racial discrimination or segregation in housing in 1950, as well as the issuance of Executive Order 11063 by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 requiring all federal agencies to prevent racial discrimination in all federally-funded subsidized housing in the United States, the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) Board actively segregated the public housing developments in the city during the Collins administration as well, with BHA departments engaging in bureaucratic resistance against integration through at least 1966 and the Board retaining control over tenant assignment until 1968.{{cite book |last=Vale |first=Lawrence J. |year=2000 |title=From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors |place=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Harvard University Press |pages=301–320 |isbn=978-0-674025752}}

File:MIT_Chapel_Kresge_Auditorium_aerial.JPG were important to the emergence of Boston's tech industry]]

In the 1970s, after years of economic downturn, Boston boomed again. Financial institutions were granted more latitude, more people began to play the market, and Boston became a leader in the mutual fund industry. Health care became more extensive and expensive, and 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. Higher education also became more expensive, and universities such as Harvard, MIT, Boston College, BU and Tufts attracted hordes of students to the Boston area; many stayed and became permanent residents. MIT graduates, in particular, founded many successful high-tech companies, which made Boston second only to Silicon Valley as a high-tech center.

On April 1, 1965, a special committee appointed by Massachusetts Education Commissioner Owen Kiernan released its final report finding that more than half of black students enrolled in Boston Public Schools (BPS) attended institutions with enrollments that were at least 80 percent black and that housing segregation in the city had caused the racial imbalance.{{cite report |title=Because It Is Right Educationally |year=1965 |page=viii |publisher=Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education|url=https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/downloads/neu:m039wk782?datastream_id=content |access-date=April 3, 2021}}{{cite book |last1=Levine |first1=Hillel |last2=Harmon |first2=Lawrence |title=The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions |year=1992 |place=New York |publisher=Free Press |pages=212–213 |isbn=978-0-029138656}}{{cite book |last=Formisano |first=Ronald P. |title=Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s |year=2004 |orig-year=1991 |place=Chapel Hill, NC |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |page=34 |isbn=978-0-807855263}} From its creation under the National Housing Act of 1934 signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Federal Housing Administration used its official mortgage insurance underwriting policy explicitly to prevent school desegregation.{{cite book |last=Rothstein |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Rothstein |title=The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America |title-link=The Color of Law |year=2017 |place=New York |publisher=Liveright Publishing Corporation |pages=64–67 |isbn=978-1-631494536}} The Boston School Committee denied racial segregation existed within Boston schools provoking protests by parents, community activist, and Boston clergy. The Racial Imbalance Act was signed into law by Governor Volpe on August 20, 1965. Rev. Vernon E. Carter picketed outside the Boston School Committee building from April 28, 1965, until August 20, 114 days. A few thousand joined him in challenging de facto segregation. Massachusetts Governor John Volpe then went on to file a request for legislation from the state legislature that defined schools with non-white enrollments greater than 50 percent to be imbalanced and granted the State Board of Education the power to withhold state funds from any school district in the state that was found to have racial imbalance, which Volpe would sign into law the following August.{{cite book |last=Formisano |first=Ronald P. |title=Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s |year=2004 |orig-year=1991 |place=Chapel Hill, NC |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=35–36 |isbn=978-0807855263}}{{cite web |title=The Racial Imbalance Act of 1965 |publisher=University of Massachusetts Boston|url=https://bosdesca.omeka.net/exhibits/show/racial-imbalance_bps/racial-imbalance-act-1965|access-date=April 3, 2021}}

From September 1974 through September 1976, at least 40 riots occurred in the city following the Phase I and Phase II rulings by Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. in Morgan v. Hennigan that ordered desegregation busing to integrate the city's public schools. Racially motivated violence erupted in several neighborhoods (many white parents resisted the busing plan). Public schools—particularly public high schools—became scenes of unrest and violence. Tension continued throughout the mid-1970s, reinforcing Boston's reputation for discrimination. A famous photograph, The Soiling of Old Glory, was taken in front of Boston City Hall, viscerally depicting the conflict.

The Columbia Point housing complex deteriorated until only 350 families remained living there in 1988. In 1984, the city of Boston gave control of the complex to a private developer, Corcoran-Mullins-Jennison, who re-developed and re-vitalised the property into a residential mixed-income community called Harbor Point Apartments. It is a very significant example of revitalisation and re-development and was the first federal housing project to be converted to private, mixed-income housing in the USA. Harbor Point has won much acclaim for this transformation, including awards from the Urban Land Institute, the FIABCI Award for International Excellence, and the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence.{{cite web |title=Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence |url=http://www.brunerfoundation.org/rba |website=Bruner Foundation |access-date=September 3, 2013 |archive-date=September 14, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130914092210/http://www.brunerfoundation.org/rba/ |url-status=dead }}{{cite journal |url=http://www.nbm.org/blueprints/summer97/page4/page4.htm |title=Rethinking Public Housing |last=Kamin |first=Blair |date=Summer 1997 |journal=Blueprints |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=National Building Museum |volume=XV |number=3 |page=4 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011134151/http://www.nbm.org/blueprints/summer97/page4/page4.htm |archive-date=October 11, 2007}}{{cite book |url=http://www.lib.umb.edu/archives/points.html |title=A Decent Place to Live: From Columbia Point to Harbor Point |last=Roessner |first=Jane |date=2000 |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Northeastern University Press |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060919221130/http://www.lib.umb.edu/archives/points.html |archive-date=September 19, 2006}}{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE1DB103BF930A15752C1A967958260 |title=Boston War Zone Becomes Public Housing Dream |author= |date=November 23, 1991 |newspaper=The New York Times}} It was used as a model for the federal HUD HOPE VI public housing program begun in 1992.Cf. Roessner, p.293. "The HOPE VI housing program, inspired in part by the success of Harbor Point, was created by legislation passed by Congress in 1992."

On March 18, 1990, the largest art theft in modern history occurred in Boston. Twelve paintings, collectively worth over $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by two thieves posing as police officers. The paintings were not recovered.{{citation needed|date=October 2014}}

File:Boston_cityscape_(5238285410).jpg is a result of the Big Dig.]]

In 2007, the Central Artery/Tunnel project was completed. Nicknamed the Big Dig, it had been planned and approved in the 1980s under Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. With construction beginning in 1991, the Big Dig moved the remainder of the Central Artery underground, widened the north–south highway, and created local bypasses to prevent east–west traffic from contributing to congestion. The Ted Williams Tunnel became the third highway tunnel to East Boston and Logan International Airport as part of the project. The Big Dig also produced the landmark Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, and will create over 70 acres (280,000 m²) of public parks in the heart of the city. The project as a whole has eased (but not eliminated) Boston's notorious traffic congestion; however, it is the most expensive construction project in United States history.{{cite web |url=http://www.elcosh.org/docs/d0100/d000067/d000067.html |last=Moir |first=Susan |title=Big Dig |website=Electronic Library of Construction Occupational Safety and Health |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111006081657/http://www.elcosh.org/en/document/82/d000067/big-dig.html |archive-date=October 6, 2011}}

The city also saw other transportation projects, including improvement and expansion to its mass transit system, notably to its commuter rail system to southeastern Massachusetts and the development of a bus rapid transit (BRT) system dubbed "The Silver Line." The maritime Port of Boston and Logan International Airport were also developed.

File:Boston skyline from Malone Park, Chelsea, February 2014.jpg]]

Recently, Boston has experienced a loss of regional institutions and traditions, which once gave it a very distinct social character, as it has become part of the northeastern megalopolis. Examples include: the acquisition of the Boston Globe by The New York Times; the loss of Boston-headquartered publishing houses (noted above); the acquisition of the century-old Jordan Marsh department store by Macy's; and the loss to mergers, failures, and acquisitions of once-prominent financial institutions such as Shawmut Bank, BayBank, Bank of New England, and Bank of Boston. In 2004, this trend continued as Charlotte-based Bank of America acquired FleetBoston Financial, and P&G has announced plans to acquire Gillette.

Despite these losses, Boston's ambiance remains unique among world cities and, in many ways, has improved in recent years—racial tensions have eased dramatically, city streets bustle with a vitality not seen since the 1920s, and once again Boston has become a hub of intellectual, technological, and political ideas. Nevertheless, the city had to tackle gentrification issues and rising living expenses. According to Money Magazine, Boston is one of the world's 100 most expensive cities.{{cite web |url=https://money.cnn.com/2005/06/21/pf/costliest_cities/ |title=World's most expensive cities |date=June 22, 2005 |website=CNN Money |access-date=June 30, 2005}}

Boston was the host city of the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The city also found itself at the center of national attention in early 2004 during the controversy over same-sex marriages. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that such marriages cannot be banned under the state's constitution, opponents and supporters of such marriages converged on the Massachusetts State House as the state legislature voted on a state constitutional amendment that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman. Much attention was focused on the city and the rest of Massachusetts when marriage licenses for same-sex couples were issued.

Also in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years, following it up three years later with a victory in 2007, another in 2013, and another World Series win in 2018. Boston sports continue to dominate.

On April 15, 2013, two bombs were detonated during the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds.

On August 20, 2017, the .boston top-level internet domain (GeoTLD) officially started taking registrations.{{cite news |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/08/10/the-dot-boston-domain-now-open/06SU5Q82wWHMTW51ZfwoJO/story.html |title=The dot-Boston domain is now open |last1=Bray |first1=Hiawatha |date=August 10, 2017 |newspaper=Boston Globe |access-date=February 18, 2018 |url-access=subscription |quote=The .boston domain was initially awarded to the city of Boston and the Boston Globe in 2012, but the media company sold off nearly all its interests in the venture to Minds + Machines Group Limited, a company specializing in the operation of Internet domains. The Globe retains a small ownership percentage in the new domain and will receive some revenue from the sale of .boston addresses.}}

File:Boston annexations 1880.jpg

The City of Boston has expanded in two ways—through landfill and through annexation of neighboring municipalities.

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, a process Walter Muir Whitehill called "cutting down the hills to fill the coves." The most intense reclamation efforts were in the 19th century. Beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a {{convert|50|acre|ha|adj=on}} mill pond that later became the Bulfinch Triangle (just south of today's North Station area). The present-day State House sits atop this shortened Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created significant parts of 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 19th century. Almost {{convert|600|acre|ha|abbr=off|spell=in}} of brackish Charles River marshlands west of the Boston Common were filled in with gravel brought in by rail from the hills of Needham Heights.

Boston also grew by annexing the adjacent communities of East Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, West Roxbury (including Jamaica Plain and Roslindale), South Boston, Brighton, Allston, Hyde Park, and Charlestown, some of which were also augmented by landfill reclamation. Several proposals to regionalize municipal government failed due to concerns about loss of local control, corruption, and Irish immigration, including:{{cite news |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/01/22/welcome-megaboston/nYTuQFpRryVrd8i35yFjsL/story.html# |title=Welcome to Megaboston |first=Chris |last=Marstall |date=January 22, 2012 |newspaper=Boston Globe |access-date=January 22, 2012}}

• 1896 – "County of Boston" proposal in the state legislature
• 1910 – "Real Boston" proposal by Edward Filene to create a regional advisory board
• 1912 – "Greater Boston" proposal by Daniel J. Kiley that would have enlarged the City of Boston to include all 32 municipalities within 10 miles
• 1919 – Annexation proposal by Boston Mayor Andrew Peters

The state government has regionalized some functions in Eastern Massachusetts, including the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (public transit), the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (water and sewer), and the Metropolitan District Commission (parks, later folded into the statewide Department of Conservation and Recreation).

File:Boston annexation landfill.png

Timeline of annexations, secessions, and related developments (incomplete):

• 1705 – Hamlet of Muddy River split off to incorporate as Brookline
• 1804 – First part of Dorchester by act of the state legislature{{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.kellscraft.com/bostonillustrated/bostonillustrated07.html |title=Boston Illustrated: Containing Full Descriptions of the City and its Immediate Suburbs, its Public Buildings and Institutions, Business Edifices, Parks and Avenues, Statues, Harbor and Islands, etc., etc. With Numerous Historical Allusions |chapter=VII. New Boston and the Suburbs |editor-last=Bacon |editor-first=Edwin M. |date=March 1891 |publisher=Houghton, Mifflin and Company}}
• 1851 – West Roxbury (including Jamaica Plain and Roslindale) is split off from Roxbury as an independent municipality.
• 1855 – Washington Village, part of South Boston, by act of the state legislature
• 1868 – Roxbury
• 1870 – Last part of Dorchester
• 1873 – Boston-Brookline annexation debate of 1873 (Brookline was not annexed)
• 1874 – West Roxbury, including Jamaica Plain and Roslindale (approved by voters in 1873)
• 1874 – Town of Brighton (including Allston) (approved by voters in 1873)
• 1874 – Charlestown (approved by voters in 1873)
• 1912 – Hyde Park{{cite report |url=http://www.cityofboston.gov/bra/PDF/ResearchPublications//pdr529.pdf |first1=Geoff |last1=Lewis |first2=John |last2=Avault |first3=Jim |last3=Vrabel |title=History of Boston's Economy, Growth and Transition 1970–1998 |date=November 1999 |page=31 |place=Boston, Massachusetts |publisher=Boston Redevelopment Authority |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070616172652/http://www.cityofboston.gov/bra/PDF/ResearchPublications//pdr529.pdf |archive-date=June 16, 2007}}
• 1986 – Vote to create Mandela from parts of Roxbury, Dorchester, and the South End passes locally but fails citywide.

Timeline of land reclamation (incomplete):

• 1857 – Filling of the Back Bay begins
• 1882 – Present-day Back Bay fill complete
• 1890 – Charles River landfill reaches Kenmore Square, formerly the western end of the Back Bay mill pond
• 1900 – Back Bay Fens fill complete

File:Oldandnewboston.jpg|Original Boston shoreline vs. 1903

File:Boston 1630 1675.jpg|Boston in 1630 vs. 1880. The original area of the Shawmut Peninsula was substantially expanded by landfill.

File:Boston 1772.png|Boston in 1772 vs. 1880

File:1852 Middlesex Canal (Massachusetts) map.jpg|Greater Boston in 1850 (Middlesex Canal highlighted)

File:Situationsplan von Boston (Massachusetts).jpg|A larger view of Boston in 1888 (see also Colonial wide-area view, 1814 map, 1842 map, 1880 railroad map, 1903 map)

• American urban history
• List of newspapers in Massachusetts in the 18th century
• Timeline of Boston
• History of Irish Americans in Boston
• History of Italian Americans in Boston

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |title=Records Relating to the Early History of Boston – Selectmen Minutes 1818–1822 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=olMMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA98 |publisher=City of Boston |year=1909}}
• {{cite book |last=Bacon |first=Edwin M. |author-link=Edwin Munroe Bacon |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-YR5aY_o5ygC&pg=PA181 |title=The Book of Boston: Fifty Years' Recollections of the New England Metropolis |year=1916 |publisher=The Pilgrim Press |location=Boston |isbn=978-0-788428951}}
• {{cite book |last=Bacon |first=Edwin M. |author-link=Edwin Munroe Bacon |title=Boston Illustrated |url=http://www.kellscraft.com/bostonillustrated/bostonillustratedcontent.html |year=1886}}
• {{cite journal |last=Cole |first=William I. |title=Boston's Pauper Institutions |journal=The New England Magazine |volume=24 |issue=2 |date=April 1898 |url=http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=AFJ3026-0024-33}}
• {{cite book |url=http://maps.bpl.org/details_10717/?srch_query=boston+harbor+1867&srch_fields=all&srch_style=exact&srch_fa=save&srch_ok=Go+Search |date=1867 |title=Chart of Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay with Map of Adjacent Country |publisher=E. P. Dutton|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090207181504/http://maps.bpl.org/details_10717/?srch_query=boston+harbor+1867&srch_fields=all&srch_style=exact&srch_fa=save&srch_ok=Go+Search |archive-date=February 7, 2009 }} A good map of roads and rail lines in and around Boston.
• {{cite book |last=Downst |first=Henry P. |title=Random Notes of Boston |url=http://kellscraft.com/NotesBoston/NotesBostoncontentpage.html |publisher=Humphrey Publishing |year=1916}}
• {{cite book |last1=Harris |first1=Patricia |last2=Lyon |first2=David |name-list-style=amp |title=Boston |location=Oakland, California |publisher=Compass American Guides |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-679-00284-0}}
• {{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Howard Mumford |last2=Jones |first2=Bessie Zaban |name-list-style=amp |title=The Many Voices of Boston: A Historical Anthology 1630–1975 |location=Boston |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |year=1975 |isbn=978-0-316-47282-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/manyvoicesofbost00jone}}
• {{cite journal |last=Langford |first=Jane Ellen |title=Colonial Boston Unearthed |journal=Archaeology |date=September 26, 1997 |url=http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/boston/}}
• {{cite book |last=Seasholes |first=Nancy S. |title=Gaining ground : a history of landmaking in Boston |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=MIT Press |year=2003 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GAHs1C9q1EsC |isbn=978-0-262194945}}
• {{cite book |last=Shackleton |first=Robert |title=The Book of Boston |url=http://www.kellscraft.com/BookofBoston/BookofBostoncontentpage.html |year=1916}}
• {{cite book |last=Snow |first=Caleb H. |title=History of Boston : The Metropolis of Massachusetts |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7eovZyvw7S8C&pg=PA9 |location=Boston |publisher=Abel Bowen |year=1828 |isbn=978-0-608400068}}
• {{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/boston_1842.jpg |last=Tanner |first=H.S. |author-link=Henry Schenck Tanner |date=1842 |title=The American Traveller; or Guide Through the United States |chapter=Boston |location=New York |publisher=H.S. Tanner |edition=8th}}
• {{cite book |url=http://www.helloboston.com/80_LocalBook.Cfm |editor-last=Winsor |editor-first=Justin |title=The Memorial History of Boston Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts 1630–1880, Vol.1 |year=1880 |location=Boston |publisher=James R. Osgood & Co. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061113122453/http://www.helloboston.com/80_LocalBook.Cfm |archive-date=November 13, 2006}}
• {{cite book |editor-last=Winsor |editor-first=Justin |title=Memorial History of Boston, Vol.1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1z8OAAAAIAAJ |publisher=James R. Osgood & Co. |year=1881}}
• {{cite book |editor-last=Winsor |editor-first=Justin |title=Memorial History of Boston, Vol.2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U0AOAAAAIAAJ |publisher=James R. Osgood Publisher |year=1881}}
• {{cite book |editor-last=Winsor |editor-first=Justin |title=Memorial History of Boston, Vol.3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_UAOAAAAIAAJ |publisher=James R. Osgood Publisher |year=1881}}
• {{cite book |editor-last=Winsor |editor-first=Justin |title=Memorial History of Boston, Vol.4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eD8OAAAAIAAJ |publisher=James R. Osgood Publisher |year=1881}}

{{further|Bibliography of Boston}}

{{Commons category|History of Boston}}

• [http://www.bostonhistory.org/ The Boston Historical Society]
• [http://www.mapjunction.com/ Boston Mapjunction] – Over 200 historical maps since 1630 and aerial photos compared with Maps of Today
• [http://www.cityofboston.gov/environment/program.asp City of Boston Archaeology Program and Lab] – The City of Boston has a City Archaeologist on staff to oversee any lots of land to be developed for historical artifacts and significance, and to manage the archaeological remains located on public land in Boston, and also has a City Archaeology Program and an Archaeology Laboratory, Education and Curation Center.
• [http://digitalcollections.lib.neu.edu/Greenstone/collect/freedomh The Freedom House Photographs]{{dead link|date=November 2017|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}} Collection contains over 2,000 images of Roxbury people, places and events, 1950–1975 (Archives and Special Collections of the Northeastern University Libraries in Boston, MA).
• [http://bos-gw.rays-place.com/bos/index.htm Vital Records of Boston.] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20130201190620/http://bos-gw.rays-place.com/bos/index.htm |date=February 1, 2013 }}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110616235828/http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~landc/fulltext/LandC_32_3_Zboray.pdf Reading and Everyday Life in Antebellum Boston: The Diary of Daniel F. and Mary D. Child]
• {{cite web |url= http://bostonlocaltv.org/catalog?f%5Blocation_facet_s%5D%5B%5D=Boston+%28Mass.%29 |title=Boston 1960s–2000 |work=Boston TV News Digital Library |publisher=WBGH}}
• {{cite web |url=http://guides.bpl.org/c.php?g=172226&p=1136022 |title=Boston History |website=Research Guides / LibGuides}}
• {{cite web |url=https://www.facebook.com/Mapping-Boston-History-1635862749995316 |title=Mapping Boston History |website=Facebook}}]

{{BostonMA}}

{{Boston African American community pre-Civil War}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Boston}}