The hill called by the Indians Shawmut or Mushawomut and by the settlers Trimountain corresponds to the current Beacon Hill, on which the Government Palace stands. The name of Boston was adopted on September 16, 1630, in homage to the city of Lincolnshire from which many of the settlers came, who landed on the site of present-day Charlestown on June 17, 1630.
The enlargement of the city is also due, as mentioned, to the great works of regularization of the port and of the waterways, carried out in the course of the century. XIX. Just think that on the edge of the Common, the oldest (1634) of the green spaces for public use, the English troops embarked to cross the Charles River in 1775, on the eve of the battle of Lexington. But the works carried out since 1814 made the waters stagnant, and in 1858 the definitive filling of the Back Bay was begun, giving rise to the district, elegant and with wide regular streets (notable above all Commonwealth Avenue, 72 meters wide, one of the most beautiful tree-lined streets of all America), which still retains this name. The creation of this neighborhood represents one of the two most notable urban changes in Boston; the other was determined by the reconstruction of the center, carried out after the memorable fire (the most serious among those that devastated the city) of 9-10 November 1872, which destroyed 776 buildings and entire streets, producing damages valued at $ 75 million. Nevertheless, the reconstruction was carried out without taking into account the further development of the city: for this reason, and for the need not to demolish buildings of historical importance, the business district still includes quite a few relatively narrow and winding streets. (among them one of the main city arteries, Washington Street). With the building changes and the increase in population (in 1930, 781.188 residents) Mainly due to immigration (of particular importance, also to the effects of city politics, that of Ireland) there has also been a shift for which the North End is it was abandoned to various groups of immigrants, who succeeded it, as the Back Bay became the aristocratic neighborhood.
The gradual extension of the city, whereby even centers that have independent city systems, such as Cambridge and Somerville, are actually part of the urban area of Boston, where a large part of their population goes daily, has made the problem of urban and suburban communications: the tunnel of the underground railway under the estuary of the Charles River is remarkable in this respect.
According to Toppharmacyschools, the park system surrounds the city with a double ring: in the inner circle, the most notable is Franklin Park, while the outer one includes, among other things, the Blue Hill Reservation, with the hill where the important meteorological observatory is located. Next to the Common is the 1859 Public Garden, adjacent to Commonwealth Avenue. The port can be considered divided into two sections: the external one, with a rocky and uneven bottom, and the internal one, with numerous canals and inlets from which the whole takes on truly gigantic proportions. In the harbor are numerous islands, including Deer, Long and Castle Island, the latter fortified (Fort Independence).
Cultural life. – In addition to the Public Library and the Athenaeum, the cultural institutes include Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (later transferred to nearby Cambridge), one of the most important engineering schools in the United States, and the Lowell Institute, founded in 1839 under the will of John Lowell jr., With an endowment of $ 237,000; lecture courses are held there, inviting eminent scholars from every country. Other notable institutes, besides the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, are the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Boston Society of Natural History.
Musical life is also, and above all has been, very remarkable: an institute of culture, the New England Conservatory of Music and the Symphony (not: Music; cf. fig. On p. 562, top left) Hall, which hosts the concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Monuments. – The Museum of Fine Arts, built in 1908 (see figure; the fig. On p. 562, top right, represents the ancient building, from 1876) contains, in addition to the aforementioned, important collections of Arezzo vases and Japanese pottery and paintings.
The Government Building (New State House, or simply State House) was rebuilt between 1795 and 1798, enlarged towards the middle of the nineteenth century (see fig. On p. 563, above) and again with the addition of two side wings in stone.
King’s Chapel, built in 1688 for the Anglican cult that the Puritans did not want to host in their churches, was later replaced by the current building, with the nearby cemetery, so the oldest existing church is the Old North Church, built in 1723. Other buildings notable, also connected with memories of the revolution, are the Old State House, from 1748 and restored in 1882 (from its balcony the rejection of the Stamp Act, the declaration of independence and peace with England were proclaimed), and the Faneuil Hall, so called by Peter Faneuil, built in 1762-63, enlarged in 1805 and rebuilt in 1898, seat of important committees. In Charlestown, on Breeds Hill, that is, within the lines of the redoubt built by the insurgents, stands the memorial to the battle of Bunker Hill,
History. – The episode of December 16, 1773 is known in American history under the name of Boston tea party (“the invitation to Boston tea”). This was followed by the English reaction, carried out by General Thomas Gage (not: Guya; 1721-1787; commander-in-chief of the English forces in America from 1763, governor of Massachusetts from 1774).
Important reforms were introduced to the primitive city order of 1822 in 1909, increasing the powers of the mayor, and reducing the number of councilors to nine; in 1926, however, these were raised to 22.
In table CXVI, the illustration above refers to Boston in Lincolnshire (VII, p. 564); the one below, in Boston, Massachusetts.
