Boston
Boston is the largest city in New England, the capital of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and one of the most historic, wealthy and influential cities in the United States of America.
Although technically not part of Boston proper, the cities of Cambridge (just across the Charles River, home to Harvard and MIT), Newton,Brookline and Somerville are in many ways an integral part of the larger city and are an essential component to any visit to Boston.
Boston is a city of diverse neighborhoods, many of which were originally towns in their own right before being assimilated into the city itself. These neighborhoods still go by their original names and people will often tell you they are from "JP" (Jamaica Plain) or "Eastie" (East Boston) rather than from "Boston". Alternatively, people from the suburbs will tell you they are from Boston when in fact they live in one of the nearby (or even outlying) suburbs. If in doubt, you can look for "Resident Parking Only" signs which will tell you what neighborhood you are in.
"Southie" is short for South Boston. Be aware, this is different from the South End (which is west of South Boston and north of Roxbury).
merican jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes once called Boston "the hub of the solar system", but common usage has expanded to the now-current Hub of the Universe. This half-serious term is all you need to know to understand Boston's complicated self-image. Vastly important in American history, and for centuries the seat of the USA's social elite, Boston lost prominence in the early twentieth century, largely to the cities of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Over the past two decades, Boston has regained political, cultural, and economic importance. Is it the center of everything? Don't expect a straight answer from a wry Bostonian.
The city was founded in 1630 by members of the Massachusetts colony, Puritan religious dissidents who had fled England to find freedom in the New World. It rapidly assumed a leading role in the fledgling New England region, with a booming economy based on trade with the Caribbean and Europe. The devastating Fire of 1760 destroyed much of the town, but within a few years the city had bounced back.
Boston was the center of America's revolutionary activity during the Colonial period; several of the first Revolutionary War skirmishes were fought there, including the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, and the Battle of Bunker Hill; the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought nearby. The residents' ardent support of independence earned the city the nickname The Cradle of Liberty.
Throughout the 19th century, Boston continued to grow rapidly, assimilating outlying towns into the metropolitan core. Its importance in American culture was inestimable, and its economic and literary elite, the so-called Boston Brahmins assumed the mantle of aristocracy in the United States. Harvard College in nearby Cambridge became, and in many ways remains, America's premier center of learning.
At the same time, the city's working class swelled with immigrants from Europe. The huge Irish influx made Boston one of the most important Irish cities in the world -- in or out of Ireland. Gradually the Irish laborer population climbed into city's upper class, evidenced no better than by the continued importance of the Kennedy family in national politics.
From the early twentieth century until the 1970s, Boston's importance on the national stage waned. Cities in what was once the frontier, like Chicago, San Francisco, and later Los Angeles, shifted the nation's center of gravity away from liberty's cradle. In the past two decades, Boston's importance and influence has increased, due to growth in higher education, health care, high technology, and financial services. It remains America's higher educational center--during the school year, one in five Bostonians is a univerity student.
Boston's nicknames include "Beantown", "The Hub" (shortened from Oliver Wendell Holmes' phrase 'The Hub of the Universe'), "The City of Higher Learning" (due to the plethora of universities and colleges in the Boston area) and - particularly in the 19th century - "The Athens of America," on account of its great cultural and intellectual influence.
Based on work by Ian, Betsy Devine, Evan Prodromou, John, Richard Kasperowski, Michael Roach, Paul James Cowie, Larry Cadloff, Steve Garfield, Ted O'Neill, Eric Savage, Ivy Media and Yann Forget and Wikitravel user(s) Venicemenace, Xltel, DrAwesome, Maj, Huttite, Cjensen, Wrh2, Mnd, Nzpcmad, EmilyHegarty, Mark, Brycen, JosephBarillari, Nickpest, Nurg, PierreAbbat, Jpatokal, Bletch, Secretlondon, Beland, Edgy, Nils, Christopher S. Penn, Rhobite, Ad Hoc and Hanzo. Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0.
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Boston
Among Boston's many neighborhoods, the historic areas of Back Bay, Bay Village, Beacon Hill, Chinatown, Downtown, the Fenway, the Financial District, Government Center, the North End, and the South End comprise the area considered "Boston Proper." It is here where most of the buildings that make up the city's skyline are located.
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