Boston. The city. Downtown Boston

Boston is the capital of Massachusetts and the largest city in New England. It is also New England's leading business, financial, government, and transportation center. Boston lies along the Atlantic coast in eastern Massachusetts. Its sheltered harbor helps make the city a busy seaport. In addition to its commercial importance, the Boston area is a center of education, medicine, and technology. Its many outstanding universities, libraries, and other centers of learning have earned it the nick names the Hub of the Universe and the Athens of America.

Boston, Massachusetts, lies on the Atlantic coast

Boston is one of the oldest and most historic cities in the United States. English Puritans founded it in 1630. They named it after the town of Boston, England, where many of them had lived. Boston grew rapidly in size and wealth during the 1600's and 1700's because it served as the American Colonies' chief seaport for ships bound for England and the West Indies. Elegant houses and stately churches that date from the 1700's still stand along Boston's narrow, winding streets.

Boston is known as the Cradle of Liberty because it was the birthplace of the Revolutionary War in America (1775-1783). The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and several major battles of the Revolutionary War occurred in or near the city. Every year, large numbers of tourists come to Boston to see Paul Reveres house, the Bunker Hill Monument, Faneuil Hall, the Old State.

After the Revolutionary War and through the 1 800's, Boston continued to be a leading port. Also, the city's industries grew rapidly and made it an important manufacturing center. The city also began to receive many immigrants. In the mid-1800's, for example, hundreds of thousands of Irish people poured into Boston to escape starvation in Ireland, where the potato crop had failed.

In the last half of the 1900's, Boston experienced many of the same problems faced by most other major United States cities. These problems included poverty, racial unrest, declining neighborhoods, and a loss of families and businesses to the suburbs. To ease some of its problems, the city undertook a huge urban renewal program in the early 1970's.

The construction of modern apartments, offices, and stores and gradual improvement in the city's public schools helped attract families and businesses back to the city, in the late 1900's and early 2000's, the downtown area became the focus of a number of development projects.

The city. Boston covers 51 square miles (134 square kilometers). The Neponset River borders the city on the southeast. The Charles, Chelsea, and Mystic rivers separate Boston from several suburbs to the north and west.

Since its founding in 1630, Boston has grown to about 40 times its original size. The English founded the city on a 783-acre (317-hectare) peninsula between the Charles River and Boston Harbor. The Indians who lived in the region called the peninsula Shawmut In the mid-1 800's, the city added 3,000 acres (1 ,200 hectares) of land to the Shawmut peninsula by filling in some of the shallow coastal waters.

Over the years, Boston also expanded by annexing many nearby towns. Most of the city's neighborhoods, such as Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury, and South Boston, were once independent. Boston has many neighborhoods. They include Downtown Boston, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, the North End, South Boston, East Boston, Charlestown, Brighton-Allston, Roxbury, Dorchester, the South End, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, and West Roxbury.

Downtown Boston occupies the center of the Shawmut peninsula. It is a blend of historic landmarks, old factories and office buildings, and glass-and-steel skyscrapers. The area's parks, stores, historic sites, and other attractions draw millions of visitors yearly.

At the north end of the downtown area stands Government Center, a 60-acre (24-hectare) complex of offices, shops, and plazas. The center includes City Hall, which was completed in 1969, and the twin towers of the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building. East of City Hall is historic Faneuil Hall and the Faneuil Hall Market-place. Bostonians met in Faneuil Hall before the Revolutionary War to protest British tax and trade policies. The marketplace was developed in the 1970's from the old Quincy Market, South Market, and North Market, it includes numerous shops, food stalls, and restaurants. Boston's financial district lies south of Government Center along Congress, Federal, and Devonshire streets. A few blocks west, shoppers crowd Filene's and other department stores on Washington Street.

Boston's famous Freedom Trail begins in the downtown area and extends into the North End. The trail, a 3-mile (4.8-kilometer) marked path, passes many of the city's historic landmarks. Stops on the Freedom Trail include the site of the Boston Massacre, in which British troops fired on civilians, and the Old South Meeting House, where colonists met before the Boston Tea Party, a protest against a British tax on tea. Many of these landmarks and others from the revolutionary era are part of the Boston National Historical Park.

Boston Common, the nation's oldest public park, covers 45 acres (18 hectares) along the western edge of downtown. John Winthrop, the leader of Boston's founders, set aside the land in 1634 as a military training field and as a public cattle pasture. Women found guilty of witchcraft in the late 1600's were hanged in the Common. The American statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin grazed his family's cow there during his boyhood. Today, the park is a favorite meeting place for open-air political rallies. Just west of the Common lies Boston's formal Public Garden. During the spring and summer, many people like riding in the graceful swan-shaped paddleboats on the Public Garden's lake.

Back Bay stretches from the Public Garden west to the suburb of Brookline. The Back Bay area was a marshy section of the Charles River until the city's land-fill project created the community in the mid-1800's. Today, long rows of beautiful old townhouses (houses that share a common wall) stand along the neighborhood's treelined streets. Many of Boston's most expensive stores and finest restaurants are on fashionable Boylston and Newbury streets in Back Bay.

The Back Bay area, once a marshy section of the Charles River, was created on landfill in the mid-1800's. The John Hancock Tower, Boston's tallest building, rises in the background.

Wealthy families lived in the Back Bay area until the 1920's, when they began to move to Boston's northern and western suburbs. Many of the townhouses were then converted into apartments. Today, Back Bay is a popular neighborhood among college students, young unmarried workers, and some families.

Two high-rise complexes stand out against the Back Bay skyline. Prudential Center on Boylston Street includes apartment buildings, a hotel, a civic auditorium, over 50 shops, and the 52-story Prudential Tower office building. A few blocks northeast of Prudential Center lies Copley Square. In the square stand the main branch of the Boston Public Library and the 60-story John Hancock Tower.

The Hancock building ranks as the tallest skyscraper in New England. A public observation deck on the 60th floor offers visitors a fine view of Boston. Massive Trinity Church also stands in Copley Square. The church was designed by the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson in the 1870's. It is considered a national landmark.